Now that I’m an adult, there are some topics I can’t write about. Not because I don’t have the knowledge, although there are plenty of areas in which I’m ignorant, but because things are too personal. For instance, my public self doesn’t have a sex life, except for a few humorous offhand remarks (or reflections on the past). I don’t write gossip about my friends and acquaintances, as much fun as that would be. Basically, I’m not journaling anymore. Instead, I’m journalisming. Sort of. I’m learning how to report instead of relate. To be clear, “learning” is the operative word.
I used to write about romance, sex, and friendship all the time, back when Tumblr was my primary venue. I also wrote more about mental health than I do now, in part because the primary thing going on in my life was depression and attempts to tackle it. Currently my intellectual pursuits occupy the foreground, whatever I’m reading and thinking about. Work, employment—separate items, unfortunately—marketing, media: these are my main concerns.
It’s an odd feeling. I don’t necessarily want to be the center of my writing anymore, unless that serves the piece (as in this case), but writing is still how I process. Recording emotions and new ideas is how I deal with them. I want to maintain a personal “voice”, to write like a friend, to be candid, to have space for silliness and self-conscious tangents. But I don’t want to expose so much that I’ll be uncomfortable or hurt the people close to me.
Obviously this is a shift still in progress, so who knows if it’ll be permanent or even significant. Self-analysis is faulty, but I can’t help doing it anyway.
PS, the title is obviously (at least I hope it’s obvious) a reference to The Sound of Music:
I like to critique billboards (read: make fun of them). There’s plenty of material along the freeway or in downtown areas. A few of them are good. The frequent winner is Apple, with their colorful-but-minimalist ads. Recent displays have been boring–dude, I know what an iPhone looks like–but at least they make sense. (Granted, the “Shot on iPhone 6” campaign is brilliant, but I haven’t seen it many places.)
Most billboards are headscratchers, especially Verizon and AT&T ads, which are full of inscrutable acronyms. To this day I don’t know what LTE stands for, and I don’t care enough to look it up. This indicates that Verizon and AT&T have failed, especially since I actively pay attention to advertising, unlike most people.
Verizon proudly announces, “We’ve doubled our 4G LTE bandwidth in cities coast to coast.” Okay, um, what does that even mean? Here is a better thing for Verizon to say: “Fast, reliable texting and data, available all over America.” Or something to that effect, preferably shorter and simpler.
People seem to think it’s fine to resize a magazine ad and slap it on a building. They are wrong! Often the magazine ads aren’t very good in the first place, so this is doubly ineffective. I am consistently amazed by how many billboards neglect to communicate extremely basic information: 1) the company’s name, 2) what the product is and what it does, and 3) what action the potential customer should take.
When you look at this ad, the immediate question is, “Am I one in twenty-six what?” The answer is “epileptics”, but unless you stop to examine the lower lefthand corner, you won’t figure that out. Very few people are going to slow down to closely examine the small print. This ad just doesn’t work, because billboards are usually not the place for high-concept, or even intermediate-concept, artwork. Billboards need to be punchy, delivering their message immediately.
There are situations where you can ignore the basics. For instance, if you’re Apple and everybody already knows what your brand sells and how to get it. At that point you can do high-level emotional marketing. (See also: beer and car ads.) Most brands are not in this position. They try to be clever and complex, although it would be wayyy more effective to say, “We are [name]. We sell [product]. Find us at [location/website].” A+ if you can figure out how to say that your product is superior, but brand recognition is probably all you should shoot for with a billboard. Remember, most people aren’t paying attention. They’re looking at the road. If they’re on the train, they’re looking at their phone. Your billboard should be SUPER SIMPLE, easy to comprehend at a glance.
The HipChat billboard above toes the line between “Ahhh I see what you did there, that’s funny” and “Huh?” Joking about the horrible boss from Office Space is cute, but you have to pay attention to the ad to get it. You also have to have seen Office Space. (Steve Carell’s character from The Office would have been a similar-but-better choice.) Sure, some people are going to notice the billboard, get the joke, and enjoy it, but most people aren’t going to pay attention long enough to go through all that. At least HipChat’s logo is big and readable, but the explanation of the service is too small for people to scan while changing lanes.
I could do more examples, but I’ve probably harped on this enough now. What do you think? Comment below, or hit me up on Twitter/Facebook.
Here, observe these bunny friends, because I’m super stoked about about successfully switching from Blogger to WordPress! It was an ordeal (I’m not tech-savvy) but definitely worth it. I have a big-kid website now! Not to brag, but I’ve also been tying my own shoelaces, like, since I was five. Or whenever it is that kids learn how to do that.
My economic politics are conflicted. On the one hand, I believe in relying on hard work and individual competency to get ahead. On the other hand, I realize that people are not created equal in any sense of the word. We can venerate the Declaration of Independence as much as we want, but ideals are ideals, not reality.
“Welcome to the Brave New World, one featuring even fewer haves and more have-nots than the current one.”
As someone who has suffered from debilitating depression, I know that hard work is not available to everyone. As for individual competency, that’s mostly luck. I happened to be born to wealthy white Ivy-educated parents, both very smart people. It sounds like bragging but I’m trying to be matter-of-fact. I’m intelligent and I do good work, because of cumulative circumstances beyond my control.
Anyway, this is related to something I posted on Medium: “Ew, Who Wants Meritocracy?” (The piece ended up there because I was in the process of revamping this website, so it was down.)
Quick thought sparked by the first letter in a recent Ask a Manager post: Email conversations should require one salutation/introduction, in the first message. After that, everyone should just say whatever they have to say. No need to write “Hello” and “Sincerely” every time.
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