Ads if Everyone Advertised like Old-Spice Advertised...Advertising

Everyone knows about Old Spices clever new ads. They're some of the few commercials people will actually intentionally search out, and they are really sucessful: following the debut in 2010, sales went up 11% in 2011. Outside of how funny and clever and absolutely ridiculous these adds are, I think a large part of their appeal comes from the fact that they don't take them to seriously but are completely honest. This is in stark contrast to the Axe advertisements that seem to make silly promises of sexual prowess and attraction if their product is used; Axe's ads are absurd but it seems like they are taking themselves too seriously. The Axe campaign, if it was trying to be tongue in cheek, failed to do so well and completely turned me off to the product. Because I'm a spiteful little turd, I will not support a product with such a blatantly "HAHA, we're kidding, but seriously chicks will dig you" because, well they're doing it wrong. Old Spice is doing the same thing, but they tell you they are doing it, and that's fun. I'm not a big sucker, but I'm not even particularly fond of Old Spice's product, but I bought one because I like the ads and want to support the continuation of their running (also the product was called "Wolfthorn", and that is awesome and ridiculous).

Today's society is one with a complete saturation of endless advertisements. It's refreshing to see one that is fun and isn't trying to trick you someway. It just makes you associate its product with fun and humor and that makes me want to buy it.

So what if more companies used this approach to advertising (absurdity, transparency, comedy , etc)?

Well I decided to make some up.

5 Things About OCD That Everyone Misunderstands

Mark Hill recently wrote a really interesting article on Cracked called 5 Facts Everyone Gets Wrong About Depression. This inspired me to write something similar (steal the concept entirely) about my good ol' pal Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I was diagnosed with this wee little quirk when I was eight years old and spent the following eight years in therapy and being medicated for it, so I am about to present a lot of anecdotal arguments and points about it. Normally, I would mock anecdotal anything because it, by nature, is not factual, but this is my article and I am special. I do however, plan on throwing in enough actual science to make myself look more intelligent.

What I am trying to say is that the term “OCD” gets thrown around a lot, and few people seem to understand what it really is, so allow me a moment to mash some information through your lookin’ holes into your cerebral cortex.

9 Steps to Writing a Decent Poem

Newest Draft, Read First.

I think learning the way someone writes a piece is really intriguing and cuts a lot of labor out of trying to figure out what the author had intended. That being said, revealing the process of a poem is generally a big no-no. It takes a lot of the mystique out of the art form and peals away some of the layers of meaning and thus the overall enjoyment of the piece. See, a lot of what makes a poem appealing, outside of sound and imagery, is its ambiguity and interpretation. Contrary to what you may have learned there is a right way to read a poem, but that does not mean that your way is unacceptable. There is a world of difference between artist's intent (what I want to to convey in the piece) and how it makes you feel. Sometimes how a piece makes you feel totally changes the way you go about unpacking and scanning a poem (a process of analyzing the poems imagery, meter, word choice, allusions, and form) by skewing the lens in which you do so. This means your emotional reaction changes the way you can intelligently decode a poem. This can put distance between artist's intent and your interpretation.

or not.

maybe not at all.

Good poems live in this realm of clarity and ambiguity where you can know nothing and know a piece is beautiful. Sometimes the poet intends something and what is on the page is not that at all. The process can be somewhat akin to trying to nail a cube of jello to your forehead; it's gonna be hard, it probably wont work, and the process might hurt your head.

Poets are also very, very fond of taking credit for brilliance within their work that is entirely accidental, so me revealing how I do something cripples my ability to say I sought to achieve something when in actuality, I blindly tripped, dick over fist, into it.

Anyway...

Is Pepsi Okay?

There’s a joke online about a more accurate slogan for Pepsi Cola:

The joke being that when one asks for a drink at a restaurant the default request is always coke, but some restaurants sign deals with Pepsi Cola to only serve their product. Therefore there is no coke to be had and the waiter must respond with "Is Pepsi okay?" The joke is that Pepsi is only the choice when there is no other alternative. Ha Ha, internet, you are clever.

The thing is, my father works for Pepsi, so Pepsi is clearly a superior product to Coca-Cola, and that this joke is understood universally makes me a bit sad. But not really, I just wanted to challenge myself to making up slogans for a company. So lets play with your advertising a bit here...

Planet Fitness Key to Success

I am agitated.

A really good (lazy) way of showing agitation through writing is by foregoing introductions and jumping directly into your venomous topic.

or you can punch the keyboard

uewsyhigesdfrvjhbluidsvbmn,

sadfgjhlhb

fdsgrwaegfaddasgftwregstadfrffb mjnvd

That was a bad joke, Hayden, and your pathological need to use humor as a way to make people like you is softening the argument you are to start now.

I despise Planet Fitness. It is a sham of a gym with too little equipment that makes policies and has services that are deliberately detrimental to actual training.The more infamous of these being the Lunk Alarm (used to single out people grunting or using excessive weight) and days where the gym itself provides high carb and fat foods like pizza and bagels. The floor plans of the gym are also very focused around shamefully placing the free weights in the corner (because you might feel "gymtimidated"by heavy lifters),  tightly clustering the weight machines [which makes them unpleasant to be in as you are forced to stare at someone either face to face, or gaze directly into their asshole (I think Nietzsche has a famous quote about what happens when one stares into the abyss)], and only giving physical and visual space to the circuit training area (for short, timed, and ordered exercises) and the cardio equipment. 

Now notice how the circuit training equipment is yellow and the cardio equipment is either black or white, while the weight machines are all that foul purple?

Notice how the circuit training area is set up so that you don't have to look directly at someone and is typically in a semi-circular enclosure so outsiders cannot really look in?

Why do you think a gym would seek to push out bodybuilders and power lifters willing to pay more for gym memberships?

Why provide bagels and pizza?

Why cater to people demanding to pay less for your gym?

Continue on for more ranting...

Self Licking Ice Cream Cone: Why You Want to Hire an English Major

Why an English Degree is a Good Thing in the Business World.

                First off I would like to point out what I titled this entry, and I use the word entry because this is going to be more train of thought than strict essay because I graduated fairly recently, and it will be another few months before I want to write a formal essay again. Also the word is off-putting and some of you would likely run screaming into the night if I referred to this entry as an essay, but I digress. I titled this entry “Why an English Degree is a Good Thing in the Business World,” because I, like most literature majors, understand the immense power words have.

                You see how I began with the word “Why”? I did so because it is a simple and inviting phrase that tells you that I will be answering a question and/or proving a point (the fact that no one asked and you might not care is irrelevant; you are my audience and I shall do with you as I please). People like to ask “why?”, and they like answers; so my essay… I mean entry… begins by selling its very purpose to you, because that’s what an intelligent paper, entry, or essay does; it sells you, the reader, on investing your time into letting me sell you my product, which in this world is but a humble idea. That’s right I am comparing word choice to sales. You’re still reading so I still have you. Suck it.

                Upon reading my entry’s title you will also note that I use the phrase “English Degree,” and not “Liberal Arts Degree.” That is because my major was English and this is my blog, also the phrase “English Degree” reads like it has much more prestige and is free of the negative connotation associated with “Liberal Arts Degree.” I cannot speak for the value of people with other majors, because I am not them, and they’re not helping me write this, so why would I let them hang off my coattails? I’m nowhere near successful enough to have moochers. People see “Liberal Arts” and they think “easy” or at best “not focused,” well that’s not true, and to avoid that stigma, boom, “English Degree.” Again I am demonstrating the power of word choice. You see how I make my point seem more sophisticated by using a term no more or less meaningful than the one it replaces, but is more free of the “silly youth squandering an education” connotation of “Liberal Arts”.  Again, I’m using word choice and connotation, both drilled endlessly into my brain by my education, to sell you on my idea and myself.

Myself, Punching Literature with my Brain Fist

           

Job Applications

A lot of the time, when I have been perusing (and I am using that word properly, because it actually means to "read (something), typically in a thorough or careful way") job listings and pounding out mind numbing job applications for literally minutes, I begin to make doodles like this:

I'm not proud, but I am kind of proud.

Sometimes when I'm doing applications I get earth shatteringly annoyed at the inefficiency of the process; many websites allow you to submit a resume but then require you to then fill in all of the information that is in the resume that you spent several hours making and refining. Some websites will actually pull the information from your resume and use said information to fill out the various forms. My immediate reaction is that companies that do this are probably much better to work for than the ones that do not. Clearly they are geared towards an efficiency of labor and time management. Awesome. But then I start to wonder if this efficient process also allows lazier people to apply, and if more lazy turds are applying some must slip through the cracks (hehehe) and get hired, so maybe the companies with the less efficient, more labor intensive applications are the way to go.

Maybe I shouldn't care and should just find a job, which might be considerably easier if I spent more time doing applications than analyzing the motive for using various providers and then reviewing them on a blog no one reads.



SHUT UP, ME!

Hire Me

Hello, I am a creative individual who loves deadlines, challenges, and saying things of questionable honesty to get my foot in the door to your company. I am a very hard worker and gifted writer who is not above working for food and/or a luxurious cardboard box to live in (preferably with a glossy coating to better water proof it).

I studied dominantly social sciences and creative writing at the finest of state universities, and I believe that these two fields of study get together, light a candle, and make a lovely writing baby. My love of flash fiction (six word stories and the like) is like that baby's super cool mentor, or the wise janitor in 80's movies, it nurtures that baby to win the big writing football game sport or some other, more appropriate metaphor for my skill in this field.

Further evidence of how good I am at writing things can come from my famed ability to name a great manner of complex things in such a way that it's name succinctly describes it and makes it memorable. I was once working with a strange product, one of those things that has always been around, but no one really notices. It was a product everyone needed, or at least should have, but it lacked a certain marketing pizzazz to really push it into everyone's collective want. 

This product's main competitor was this a very mismarketed bodywash with a cooling effect called Sweat. Clever name right? They were definitely thinking things through on that one. In order to establish my product's dominance, I first proposed that it be marketed as a much more multipurpose product than a simple cleaner with a cooling sensation. I wanted this stuff everywhere, but it needed a name and a bad name can destroy an adequate product (like Sweat) and we needed this name to piggy-back on the minor notoriety of Sweat, but differentiate it as a much better, more refreshing product. 

First I looked at the name, Sweat. It was obviously caked in an air of negative connotations, so we had to branch off. Because it was the first letter of the name, the first seen, heard, and spoken, we decided to ax the 'S' entirely. We wanted no associations with the onomatopoeic sizzle sound from that snakey little letter. Weat obviously would not have worked as it looks like it could be pronounced like "Wheat" or "We At". People will not say a product by name is they do not know how to pronounce it for fear of looking stupid, so a name of product no one wants to say loses all word of mouth advertising.

Next we thought calling "Wet" would work. It described the product, it had pleasant connotations, was easily read, and obviously pronounced. The other issue with that name was that it rhymed with the competition; we wanted to cash on their nostalgia, but not be an obvious reference. To bring home this game, I made the decision to swap the 'E' that made it rhyme and describe with a softer 'A". I knew this sound would make it seem mellower, more utilitarian, than Sweat with its hard vowel sounds. The last thing I decided for the name was to add the -er suffix to it; I wanted to really sell that it was better than, that is more than, it's competitor, and I knew that everyone would unconsciously understand the two were linked, but that mine was better. 

It was because of my decisions, that everyone wants "Water" and no one wants "Sweat". It's because of me that this product saturates well over seventy percent of the world.

Some of my other experience with product names, slogans, and etc include: automobile (the name came to me in a fever dream; it had to have a sound similar to "bicycle" for the transport allusion, reference its owner, Tom and his mafia affiliations, with a dash of the European 'au' for some french grace.); onion...I named those too. 

I would also like to take the time to differentiate myself from the swarms of other applicants. I, like many individuals right now, am desperately seeking employment so that I may discontinue my subscription to Parent’s Basement Quarterly. Unlike the rest of your applicants, my fun loving attitude serves mostly as a way to make my brutal work ethic more palatable; I am serious in my work, but try to make everything fun. Also, and most importantly, I am pretty jacked and therefore willing to fight any of your current employees or other applicants to the death for your amusement and a position.

I like to write. I also like money and being able put food inside my tummy. One day I hope to be successful enough as a writer to be able to afford a cocaine addiction that will let me rise out of my own ashes like a Joaquin Phoenix and recapture all the hearts and minds of the people who had forgotten me with my harrowing tale of redemption. As an employer, you have access to money that you can give me in return for me giving you the news in a funny, satirical way. So it’s almost like our needs and capabilities are complimentary.

               

Thank you,

Hayden R. Carroll

Also because I am not above doing this: Satire SEO Agency Masters Phd Degree Political Science TheOnion The Daily Show Writing Research Optimization Handsome 6 Years Bard Fordham Journalism Local Experienced