How I got a teens respect

My apologies if you find this odd. I am in the middle of bad cold so my writing will be on and off for the next few days. (I have recycled this article over from TRonMarketing-its got a sting) Anyhow- My neighbors spotted teenager asked me about cool adds and I pulled out the well known mustached milk adds. He is after all a key market segment. His comment “whatever” told it all.
Since that humiliating experience I have been on a mission to catch his attention. A few days ago I heard about the California Milk Campaign which tries irony. Think shades of Spinal Tap and a retro young ironic hip cool vibe? Who would have thought to put milk inside a guitar? In the hands of a musical phenom by the name of White Gold?
And you may ask what was the spotted ones response. Coool or something like that. Anyway it seems irony is the new cool. I am cool again.
Respect.

Has Hillary Clinton Lost ?

The Gallup daily reports that the the democratic race is widening between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. HAS SHE LOST?. I love testing survey groups like the Gallup Poll . Its a science but its also a mix of magic and marketing. What do you think — and quite frankly what difference does it make if she retires or not?.
SHOULD SHE RETIRE?

Adventurers and Cache

Sunday is for reflection and today I came across a gem of technology trivia.

Cache which we know is temporary storage entered English in the 17th century from highly volatile but very proud crews of Canadian French and Indian adventurers called Voyageurs. The Voyageurs piloted huge canoes deep into the Canadian north. Those trips were long and required a lot of energy so the Voyagers placed along the way secret “cachers” of food. And thats how cache- as a on demand reserve entered our technology vocabulary – riding on a canoe.

Who would have guessed?

“Dance With the Tiger,” a Sunday Meditation

Its Sunday and its a good time to take time out and meditate on life, inspiration and how to grab it. Often that is not easy. My advice is try an article thats in this weekends Sunday New York times written by Johnny Cash’s daughter Rosanne Cash ” Measure for Measure” how to write songs and other mysteries”.

Its a story of her own loss and pain, which she like her father has had in spades. In January she experienced the loss of her friend John Stewart (”Daydream Believer,” “Gold,” “California Bloodlines”).

She recounts John Stewart “used to say to me, upon hearing a new song of mine that he thought might be too perfect or careful or contrived, either lyrically or structurally, “But where’s the madness, Rose?” His belief in songs, and his sense of liberation and expansion when he approached writing, was deeply inspiring. John showed me that songs were the expression of the essential language that all other languages hinged upon. When I first began to know him, I felt that I had been speaking with a vocabulary of 200 words, and in a few months he taught me 10,000 more.

Rosanne Cash took John Stewart’s advice  and let a little madness,  paradox and uncertainty into her life  and the result was  “Dance with the Tiger” (1990) . Read her article first and see what takeaways you will get for drawing inspiration in the lifelong “Dance with the Tiger of Life”

Kids 8-11 flock to Social Networks

In the United Kingdom its is reported by BBC that more than a quarter of eight to 11-year-olds who are online in the UK have a profile on a social network .

Do you know what your Kids are doing on Social Networks?

BBC reports that most sites, such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook, set a minimum age of between 13 and 14 to create a profile but none actively enforce the age limit.

It really seems as if the adoption of social networks is happening at a faster rate than nearly all other forms of communication.

For the full report go to Ofcom which is the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, with responsibilities across television, radio, telecommunications and wireless communications services.

Persepolis and Understanding Iran

I will get nothing from Google ranking for this post but yesterday I got myself down to to a theater to see Persepolis. Right there is a classic in the making. Its a movie with a great story and production techniques that hearken back to the early and glorious Disney days. Sadly the new Disney probably would not have the courage to produce it. Its a revealing movie about Iran and very well told. Everything is seen from the point of view of the main character who brings forth her memories as a little girl in Iran, as a teenager in exile and as a married woman back in Iran. The story is always interesting, heart-felt, funny, sarcastic at times, nostalgic, cruel and absurd at some points but very very convincing. I highly recommend it.

I love stories and that speak from the heart and show character. Read Marjane Satrapi’s two books and rush off and see her movie Persepolis.

Make sure you check out the Persepolis website. That website is so bang on to the topic. Well done to whoever produced it.

The biggest asset of the Persepolis is that it doesn’t preach, it leaves everything to the viewer’s judgment, and this is something to be appreciated because we all know that cartoons can be very effective propaganda devices.

RUSH OFF AND SEE IT.

And make sure you read Marjane Satrapi’s two autobiographical graphic novel (comics) that describes her childhood in Iran after the revolution. They are brilliantly told and illustrated.