Social Media Campaigns

Personally I am a fan of ad's that use social networking sites like Facebook and Youtube to promote their ideas and products because it changes things up. I'm all for change, especially when it comes to seeing an advertisement. Americans are blasted with thousands of images everyday so whenever a company can mix things up to present their ideas differently, I say go for it! My favorite example of an internet company who utilizes every possible outlet is Threadless a very awesome t-shirt company where the basic democratic system it operates from relies on people to submit designs, then other people vote on those designs, and whatever shirts are voted 5 and a $Buy$ (0-5 scale) wins and gets printed for a limited time. Not to mention the designers win up to $2,500, which makes the competition worth the while for all involved because it makes designers design harder, thusly making the shirts awesome and awesomer. (it's a blog, mistakes will be made!) Threadless's ad's can be seen throughout the internet on sites such as Facebook and the like.

Here's my favorite shirt design by Sebastien Heintz

"Renaissance"

Favorite Ad Campaign

My personal favorite ad campaign is from a Chipotle radio marketing campaign in which two guys compose one minute short songs about burritos. The lyrics are witty and catchy like in the song "Life is Burritoful" with a chorus of "Life is burritoful, life is fajitaful, everything's keen with rice and some beans, life's okie dokie, getting down at Chipotle. Chipotle will brighten your day!" It's just a nice and clean ad, no pressure, everything is "keen" as they say and that's what I really like about it. It's not a high priced, flashy, and expensive ad, it's just a good old toe-tappin tune can sing along with and that is very appealing to me. My other favorite songs lyrics make no sense but it doesn't really matter;

"Burritos make you crazy
Burritos get you high
Burritos make you happy and you don’t know why

They full of rice and beans
They can set your sould free
They’re almost as good as swimming with manatee

But why would you even go swimming in a no wake zone
When you can have a nice burrito right here at home
So go swimming if you want to with or without a manatee
don’t forget the best burritos come from chipotle
the best burritos come from chipotle
the best burritos come from chipotle

You can go swimming if you want to with or without a manatee
don’t forget the best burritos come from chipotle"

Now who doesn't love a fun song about burritos and manatees?

TV News What to do?

I would like to be a part of a creative team who produces a series of short segments. I would really like to produce one segment, then shoot a different show (or more than one). Basically I want to make awesome interesting shows that might live up to the expectations of the most professional news team pictured above.

TV News

What would you like to say?

I think that I would prefer to have a creative role in this class by shooting, and producing a series of short stories focusing on either local people and how they are an integral part of the Shepherdstown/Shepherd University community, or to highlight specific issues relating to Shepherdstown. I'm a big fan of programs that tell stories by using the people that are most passionate, or have a unique take on a certain idea or issue. For example "This American Life" which started out as a radio show on PRI, produced two TV seasons which featured different people and their interesting stories in a series of acts all focused on an overall theme. one of my favorite episodes is called "My Way" where one of the stories features a politician named Brad Blanton who's main platform is "Radical Honesty", the idea of never telling a lie, always speak the truth, no matter what. TAL is really great at showing different ideas, from a unique perspective and that is the kind of angle that I would like to work from.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0zg05N2tuY

Coding is hard

and I'm having trouble doing so but hopefully this week will be productive. Just like from what I saw on the Colbert Report today, the Muslim community center in NYC that has everyone up in arms looks cool as shit. Productivity, aka productive in society.



I mean seriously, it looks cool, it's better than than this:

an abandoned burlington coat factory.

Online Identity

I think as a citizen of the internet that users have a certain responsibility to use the web in an ethical manner. While were in new ground when it comes to internet law, meaning that things aren't as black and white as with everyday life in the streets, anonymity gives people the opportunity to do, and say things that they normally wouldn't be able to do, since it's practically impossible to trace ones identity. For example with the sock puppet case where the mother posed as a 16 year old boy to seek revenge on her daughters ex-friend, she was able to toy with an insecure child's feelings, which ultimately led to her suicide. Even worse this wasn't illegal and if not for an accomplice's confession, the mom would have gotten away with it. As a society that has braced this awesome technology, we must not abuse this privilege. Facebook is an important tool in todays society, where everyone is connected to all things simultaneously, where we are confronted with multiple versions of what some consider the truth, we must be able to decipher and decide what is in fact real and not. It's a two way street where we should try to post the truth, while at the same time figure out what isn't honest.

Website Idea

So for my website for this class I am going to base it upon white water rafting and all of the aspects that concern this topic. Things like different rivers, classes of rapids, types of boats and gear, what to do when, so on and so forth. This is a very interesting topic to me and is relevant in my life because I'm a third year rafting guide on the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers with River and Trail Outfitters. I think it will be easy to find 25 pages worth of content to fill a site and look forward to the challenge of building a website since this is going to be my first attempt.