The Other Drummer

Welp, got laid off a couple weeks ago. It was a Wednesday, I think. Kinda sucks.

Should have known something was up when my check engine light came on the night before.

No hard feelings toward my former employers. This is the third round of layoffs in as many years and they broke the news with graciousness and emphasized that it was strictly due to the fact that I hadn’t been busy for quite a while (mild understatement) and that it didn’t appear that I would become busy anytime soon.

When I came home my wife’s reaction was about the coolest one could expect: she started laughing.

She has a lot of faith in me. And I love her for that.

I’ve been blessed with a lot of job leads in a very short amount of time. Thank you to everyone who reached out to me and for me. I’m truly appreciative.

Why haven’t I mentioned this sooner? Well, getting laid off wasn’t the worst thing that happened. Here’s the sequence of events:

1. Tuesday night the check engine light comes on. Bad omen?
2. Wake up Wednesday feeling a bit queasy. Go to work anyway.
3. Grandma A. checks into the hospital for open heart surgery.
4. Get laid off. Wow.
5. Get the flu. Feel gross.
6. Thursday I sleep in then play with my kids all day. Grandma A. has surgery.
7. Friday 7:30 AM – get a call. Grandma A. has had a severe stroke. Rush to hospital to give a blessing.
8. Spend the next several days trying to be helpful to my wife and her family.
9. Tuesday Grandma A. passes away.
10. Funeral for Grandma A. was the following Saturday.

So, yeah. Rough couple of weeks.

Now that things have settled down a bit (relatively) I hope to get back to blogging a bit more. I’ll keep you apprised of how the job hunt is going and if you happen to know anyone who needs a copywriter or social media strategist, let me know.

Image courtesy of here.

Check it:

Looks pretty good to me. Expected, but good. Give them some time to mess around a bit and get really comfortable with the platform and I think it’ll be even better.

While this video demonstration alone doesn’t make me want to run out and buy an iPad right away, I’d definitely pay extra for a digital subscription along side the standard print version.

On a separate note, digital print publications (I may have just coined a new term) will have the ability to track effectiveness of advertising in a way never before possible. Think about it: instant A/B testing in a print publication. Push out the new edition, give it a week, then replace the lower performing of the two ads. Never before possible in “print” media. Plus, you can get data on exactly who sees your ad, for how long and whether or not they interact with it.

What did you think of the video? Did it get you excited for the iPad?

Perhaps you saw the bold move by Dove (traditionally a brand with a strong female target audience) to branch into men’s products with this ad:

Old Spice responded with this:

Point to Old Spice.

The other day I’m driving home and there was a little girl on the side of the road standing behind a card table with a sign hanging off the front which read, “Lemonade Kool-Aid 25 cents.” Smiling, I remembered back to summers when I was a kid and tried the same venture, so I pulled over, rolled down my window and said, “One cup please.”

The cute little girl smiled at me showing off a full set of braces. As she poured my glass I fished around for a quarter. As I looked up, she was holding out what looked like an incredibly small cup. I was a bit taken aback. It was tiny. It was one of the little Dixie cups kids keep near the sink to use while brushing their teeth. It was this size (see below), but not this cool because it didn’t even have a TIE fighter on it.

I handed her the quarter and thanked her. Then I looked in the cup. It was only half full. The little girl skipped happily back to her table waiting for her next customer/victim.

I took my 1/16 gulp of sugary water and pondered my transaction.

After doing a little research, I found that the cup size she used was 3 oz. Filling it only half full meant she sold me 1.5 oz of Kool-Aid for 25 cents. If I’m doing the math right, that means the retail/street value of a pitcher of Kool-Aid is a little over $11, or $5.50 per liter.

Since we Americans don’t do the whole metric thing, let me put it in more general terms:

THIS LITTLE GIRL WAS SELLING KOOL-AID AT MORE THAN $20 PER GALLON.

Her overhead: nothing – she probably stole everything from her mom.

And she doesn’t pay taxes.

I think I’m in the wrong business.

Stand image courtesy of here.
Cup image couresy of here.

I found this beaut’ on KSL’s homepage. If I understand correctly, it reads:

“Education! What separates us from a dead fly.”

Now, I generally eschew taking advertising too literally but I’m not sure how else to interpret this one. And why is the fly hovering? Thoughts?