Off Topicness: Edumacationalism

The Wire, Season 4. See it and understand.

Had a chance to stop by AdVerve with the incomparable Bill Green and Angela Natividad. The discussion had a whisp of advertising threaded throughout, but BG & Ang were swell enough to let me jack the conversation and wax existential on public education and all things Bawldimore, Marelynn.

Have a spare hour and change? Give it a listen. The inherent uncensoredness of AdVerve guarantees it'll be a naughty pleasure for all you unruly adholes out there.

Go here to hear.

Enjoy. And feel free to disagree.

Links of note: What got me into this mess; fixing public education in 1-2-3-4-5 easy steps.

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Cameo!

If my adding a little andouille to The BeanCast gumbo weren't enough, I had a chance to stop by AdVerve, a new podcast hosted by Make The Logo Bigger's Bill Green and peripatetic ad diva Angela Natividad.

I channeled my inner-Busey for a five minute segment/stream-of-conscious essay on the devolution of consumer preference. Yeah. That's what that was.

So give AdVerve a download, give it a listen, and definitely give it a review. Disclaimer, this is not the Oldsmobile of advertising podcasts. There's cussin' and swearin', pardners, so if you work at a place where they've never heard the eff word or the bee word or the ess word or whatever word, wear headphones.

Or blast it real loud and give 'em a vocabulary lesson. After all, this is how people naturally talk about the industry.

AdVerve on iTunes HERE.
AdVerve direct download HERE.

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Friday Ad Haiku: Responding to a-holish blog comments

So we had a conversation internally today about the best way to respond to lulz and trolls who leave nasty, incendiary, and otherwise jerk-offish comments on blogs. I remembered a post our homegirl Angela Natividad (of AdRants fame) wrote on her personal site, talking about how the Air Force public affairs department handles stuff like that.

The answer: A flowchart.

(If you're a patriot, you'll click to make it bigger)

Totally simple. Totally logical. Totally brilliant.

A surprisingly user-friendly tool for we social media shills (and I say that with much love, respect, mad proppers and what have you) tasked with convincing clients to put themselves out there in the cold, scary woods of blogdom. I endorse pilfering the flowchart for fun and profit.



Proprietary?
Schmaprietary. You can't
patent common sense.


Previously in the Friday 5-7-5: Blog Pimpin'

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Friday Ad Haiku: Blog Pimpin'

(click photo to initiate bigness)

One of our bestest ad blog buddies, Where's My Jetpack?, is making it rain (as much as any blogger not named Seth Godin can make it rain anyway) with his "Futureman Describes Twitter" comic (above).

It was only a matter of time before his stuff got noticed enough to get stolen, copyright infringed, and passed around. Like a well-muscled Amish woman sweating over a butter churn, 'Packs consistently stirs up some of the best creative and advertising-centric content on the Webs of our Wide World.

Along with Bill Green's Make the Logo Bigger, Angela and Steve's AdRants, and Simon Veksner's Scamp, WMJP? is on constant rotation in our RSS feed. If you like smart things, make them a part of your daily reading, too.

The moral:

Link to better blogs
than yours to coax more traffic.
Now that's karma, holmes.


Previously in the Friday 5-7-5: The Intern Sweatshop

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FPO, Charlie Brown!

I'm a sullen and unapproachable guy around the holidays. No real reason for it. It's not like I saw my family get shanked by a Salvation Army Santa when I was 10 or anything like that. It's just a reflective time. Maybe that's why the broadcast airing of A Charlie Brown Christmas has always been appointment viewing for me, even in this time of DVR and online video.

As far as Christmas specials go, it's pretty melancholy. Hell, it's damn-right depressing. But there's something in Charlie Brown that I think many of us have in ourselves this time of year. Slate did a great article dissecting the allure of ACBC. It helped me put the holiday in perspective, and I recommend it.

But before you go, check out the personal blog for Angela Natividad (of AdRants fame). She turned me on to an ad agency spoof of ACBC. Suddenly, my seasonal disposition isn't so surly. Video below:


Find more videos like this on AdGabber

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