The average Mid-Twenty something is too busy worrying about taking care of themselves to even consider taking care of others around them. I myself am very guilty of this. For many of us, this is a stage in our lives with the responsibility and rewards of adulthood but without some of the major life developments (cough cough BABIES cough) that force us to think of people other than ourselves.

The reality, however, is that giving back to others is easy. Everything you need can be found in/on your own person.  Without further ado: The self-centered, stressed out, young professional’s guide to giving back:

1. Become an Organ Donor – This took me all of 3 minutes.  I refuse to accept any argument against this. The stats are compelling: http://www.transplant.bc.ca/stats_faqs_main.htm#Organ%20Transplantation%20Fact%20Sheet
2. Donate blood – It’s in you to give! Pretty clever campaign, right? This took approximately 37 minutes. Quit being so selfish and share some of that AB Negative.
3. Donate old clothes – You probably aren’t going to wear that Senor Frogs Puerto Vallarta shirt you got from your parents 3 years ago… there are donation bins all over the city and great organizations like Covenant House http://www.covenanthousebc.org/that would benefit greatly from your unwanted threads. This took me about 16 minutes.

Total: 56 Minutes

Doing kind things for others make you feel great and can actually have a very real impact in other people’s lives, not all kind things have to be time/money consuming. So what are you waiting for?

Replenishing my Sodium Levels

We boinked in the rain
We boinked on the street
We boinked so people
in need could eat

Our

clothes were soaked
But our spirits stayed high
Thanks to everyone who
Stopped by to say hi

My name is Al and I`ve been working at Spring for about a month now. What follows is my survival guide to all my fellow advertising newbies. Some things I learned in my time here others I sourced from my co-workers experiences.

Man vs. Agency: Born Survivor by Al Theuri (read: Grylls)

Okay, you did your due diligence and now you are in: You are finally working in an ad agency. But now what? Though you are extremely proud of your own personal achievement, no one else seems phased at all — and rightfully so! Looking through the company bios you quickly realize that the people around you are not only some of the more attractive members of society, they are also some of the smartest and most talented people you are ever likely to meet. So, to help you through your first couple of weeks, here is my advertising survival guide.

They can smell fear

Agency folk are a bit like sharks. Or bears. Or Sharkbears

Or pretty much any predatory creature with canines long enough to force Kristen Stewart to make another tough decision(#TeamJacob). And similar to their blood-thirsty counterparts, agency folk seem to have the ability to sense fear. Prepare yourself for a lot of good natured ribbing, my recommendation is to avoid letting anyone know that you are scared with a healthy dose of Axe body spray every morning.

That being said, you will probably meet the most genuinely friendly people you have ever met while working at an ad agency. They are all passionate about what they do and are always willing to help out wherever and whenever they can.

Take a deep breath

If you played your cards right the agency you are at is busy, I mean so busy you forget to eat. So busy that you seriously consider the time saving attributes of adult diapers. The point I’m getting at is: Don’t forget to breathe. Just take it one task at a time and you will get through it. Unless, of course, you over did it with the Axe. Then you might want to hold your breath for a little while… and probably go home and take a shower.

Get stuck in

It’s easy to get into a groove of always just doing enough and for a while no one will notice because they are really busy (see above point). But remember; you are surrounded by a bunch of over-achievers — people who look at the world and generally think “I could probably have done that better.” So, really get in there- perhaps, “stuck in” if you want to stick out.

It’s probably going to be nothing like Mad Men

Again, assuming that

you are in an agency that has a decent number of clients, you will almost never be doing the 5 martini lunches. Again, you will be too busy for this. But if we are being completely honest, this is probably a good thing; no one really wants to be a functioning alcoholic whose main concern in life is navigating from one office affair to the next… right?

Grow thicker skin

If you are one of those people who can’t take criticism, constructive or otherwise, you probably want to work on that. Or, alternatively, you could hire a really good therapist to get you through what will inevitably be a very short stint in advertising.

If you are in an agency that values the work they put out, you will find that everyone cares about the quality of your work and will not hesitate to let you know when your work isn’t up to par. What you have to understand though is that when people say “Your shit is crap” they are really just saying “I love you, and though you are very talented, this shit is crap.” Well, at least that’s what I tell myself.

Grow

When you walk in through that door, despite how talented you are, you will find that there is still much to learn. Take time to foster your own perspective, grow and develop your skills to reach your furthest potential. The biggest hindrance to your time in an agency is stagnancy and complacency! Remember how hard you worked just to get here? That’s just a taste of how hard you are going to have to work to stay here and be good here.

OK, this morning’s latest Chevrolet commercial was the proverbial straw. I can no longer leave it without a rant. So here goes. The marketing efforts at General Motors are just wrong. I had written stronger words but have since calmed down a bit. Chrysler is as bad. Ford, a little better. But the bar could not be lower.

Let’s start with the basic premis that there are a number of factors that go into any buying decision. It’s a mistake to look at these as logical. In his recent TED Talk on the “why” of companies, Simon Sinek points out that real purchasing decisions are made on a gut level. When you think about this, you are rewarded with an explanation for thousands of different brands of jeans, colours of cars, and choices of beer. Yes logic does fit in a buying decision but it takes a back seat to factors that live in a whole different part of the brain.

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

This is simple stuff. You get it, I get it. GM, apparently does not. Their advertising budget often feels like it would be better off unspent. Here, let’s try a little demonstration using the typical copy found in an average Chevy radio spot and apply it to something that people don’t wait for a discount to buy.

MUSIC: Upbeat, contemporary music, female singer, light hip feel.

ANNCR: It’s wowed the critics all over the world, with sleek European inspired aluminum styling and lightning fast

processing speed. The award winning Apple Macbook is the laptop computer that everybody’s talking about.
SING: Yeah!
ANNCR: Now get in to your Apple dealer and get the 500 gig solid-state hard drive that the competition can’t touch. And get $200 dollars off when you come in now!
SING: Apple!
ANNCR: Apple. Future! Dependable! Value!

Now how about a dealer spot?

IAN: Ian and Steve here for Maple Ridge Macintosh. Steve I have never seen the deals on Macs better than this.
STEVE: That’s right Ian, that’s cause the manager’s away and we’re going craaaaaazzzzzyyyy!

Etc…

That splat you just heard was the value of a brand. When it comes down to it, GM products are pretty good. They just lack self-respect.

Respect. An important idea when it comes to a purchase as big and important as a car. We respect a luxury brand like Mercedes because it touches our aspirations. We respect a value brand like KIA when it’s honest in its thrift. We are learning to respect Hyundai because they have relentlessly improved their products and are dedicated to being a design leader. We respect Volkswagen because of, dare I say it, their advertising. We respect Toyota because they are blandly reliable. We could easily argue that none of these cars are any better. They just help their customers feel good about themselves when they buy.

So what’s with GM? I don’t blame the dealers. But I suspect that they’re part of the problem. Can you blame them? They’re embattled. After decades of being saddled with poor design and bad ideas from the factory, they’ve suffered a slow, demoralizing decline. As market share has plummeted and competition has cranked up, famine has reached the sales floor. It’s only natural that advertising used during such times should smack of a certain sort of short-term thinking. What person in this position would want to build a brand/customer relationship? So it’s about the deal. In advertising the deal means this: Stuff a lot of features in, find some third party endorsements – no matter how tenuous, and badger your audience. Voila, a few customers show up, the kind who only live for the deal. Suddenly there’s a little food in the showroom. Then do it again. And again. Short-term food. Long-term, death. Starving populations usually eat their seed crops.

The short-term solution. Meanwhile, marketing staff are shivering behind a moat of market research that drowns any brave ideas. And from top to bottom, all are looking for the analgesic effect of short-term performance to block out the shrieks of yet another short-term thinker, the shareholder.

Imagine for a moment advertising that made its way into the collective consciousness and got a laugh, a smile, and a reaction that came from the gut or the heart of the viewer. A relationship would begin again. It would take time, patience and stamina but in the long run it would work. Imagine a world where people aspire to buy a brand that their grandparents coveted, one that built factory towns and help knit together a lot online canadian pharmacy of North America. Imagine a scene where the neighbor comes home in a new Impala and you feel a pang of jealousy. Imagine GM as a brand that people respect. It could happen. Just ask Hyundai.

Oh yeah, and don’t get me started on those stupid Dodge RAM ads.

We consumers live in

an overbuilt world. In the digital realm that goes without saying. To use myself as an example, I have a rather huge music collection that has absolutely no chance of ever filling up the 160 GB iPod Classic that it lives on. Actually I don’t even use that device anymore. It all fits on the new phone. But overbuilt is everywhere. There is no earthly reason for urban pickup truck drivers to wheel around in 80-foot tall 100-foot long boulder haulers. But they do and we accept this without so much as a roll of the eyes. Fact is, consumers don’t like consumer products. They like professional products. That’s why one-time specialized brands like Timberland, the North Face, Carhart and Makita have become mainstream consumer products. That’s why Dodge or GM or Ford or all of the above refer to their trucks as ‘professional grade.” If I could think of a professional grade food, I’d go into business with it…Oh wait. Gatorade.

Which brings up the inevitable content of most early 21^st century marketing blogs, a rant about Apple.  Some history. There was a time, a time before the i-anything when a Mac was an expensive, high performance tool used by designers, art directors, print production artists, photographers, video and film people and, well and that’s about it. It was a professional grade niche brand that struggled along from design to design under the weak updraft of the committed faithful. Why were they faithful? Its operating system was the only one that really worked in the creative industry. And that’s it. Apple was as professional a product as Finning is a tractor.

We all know Apple had trouble. It needed to be a consumer product to survive. Better a consumer product than no Apple for anyone right? Well of course! So along came the letter i. Soon the world had a new darling consumer brand. Apple enjoyed a growth curve that inspired the undeserved self-congratulations of a thousand marketing guest speakers. It bucked a recession, became synonymous with the word innovation and started showing up in the coffee shop chairs, then schoolbags of everyone who had a little cash and a self image that needed to tell the world it was “Creative.”

Great. Apple had brought the world a parcel of beautiful and even groundbreaking consumer products. Meanwhile it kept the pro’s

happy with a bunch of products creatively labeled as well, “Pro.” Predictably, consumers wanted to own Pro too. So, like trucks and tools, and shoes, and coats, it became a consumer product. Sadly, and inevitably Apple products began to emerge with all the disposable build quality of the average cheap consumer product. Sure the price tag stayed high, why not? It wasn’t the product that was for sale anymore, it was the brand. So now, photographers, film companies, design and ad shops have a large pile of dead, nearly dead and we-won’t-admit-it-but-it’s-dead-too, Apple gear. And a point of view that has travelled from undying support, to grief to angry blogs.

By way of example, and maybe revenge, I report that here at Spring we have had three top-of-the-line $4000 plus MacBook Pro’s drop dead in the past year – Apple Care covered the repairs but we’ll never get our weeks of down-time back. The really good iMac that was in production died an ugly death just days after its first birthday. Weirdly, we forgot to get Apple care on it. You would think we would know better. Its big brother came to us dead in the box. It never worked at all.

Account services uses PCs. They cost about $600 each. In seven years, not one has packed it in before its obsolescence.

You can say that my point of view might be as obsolete as those old PCs. After all, Apple isn’t computers, it is phones and iPods and Apple TV and iTunes. True. However, as the technology gap closes between Apple and its competitors, the quality of products must stand up as a touchstone to what sets the brand apart. A product that can no longer earn the respect or even trust of its professional users cannot hope to hide behind an old reputation for long. Just ask Detroit in 2008.

I’m not happy to see the cracks in Apple. I’d prefer that they sold great machines that one can depend on. It is a wonderful world where a person with curiosity, work ethic and creativity can make something amazing while seated in a coffee shop, classroom or basement. But to use a cliché as old as me, they don’t make ‘em like they used to. But in this case it’s not a cliché, it’s a fact. Take for example the 2007 and earlier Macbook Pro. It has a bladder under the keyboard to protect it from spills. Sensible. It’s not on the newer ones. Sad.

Now I finally arrive at the point of all this. If ever one line in a commercial tore a leak in its competition, Samsung did it to Apple with its spot-on parody of the Apple faithful, portrayed as slavishly standing in line for the release of the iPhone 5. I swear the line of TV script delivered by a hilariously well cast Apple zealot will be seen in the future as the iceberg that ultimately sank the brand.

HIPSTER GUY:     The headphone jack is going to be on the bottom!!! Phfeeeew! (Hipster Guy makes a mind-blowing noise while using his fingers to mimic his own head blowing off)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf5-Prx19ZM

So let’s see. The products aren’t very good. Now they’re not very cool either. Sell the stock if you have it. Buy Samsung if you can. You heard it here first.