Here's a sample of current artistic abilities (I love this ad by the way). I'm only 23, so if I have the same fortune as Byung Hwa Yoo (and probably natural talent), maybe I'll be producing awesome artwork in a few years.

Maybe I'm making a bigger deal out of this than I should. I'm not planning on becoming a designer, I just want to have the best portfolio possible to help me get a job in a down economy. Maybe I should just stick to focusing on my writing skills, which I'm confident about.

If you want to see awesome design, check out eROI Design Team's blog Fresh, at http://welikeitfresh.com/. I love how the background changes each time I visit it.

Labels: design

Posted by: Jeff Kempf at 11:17 AM  |  Permalink

Scams are everywhere, and they’ll probably increase with the employment rates. Yesterday I got a phone scam telling me I had to do something about the factory warranty on my car. I don’t remember exactly what they wanted me to do because I was very skeptical and didn’t give the automated system my full attention. A few months ago I got a new car, so the scam might have been relevant (depending on what they wanted). Anyways, I have some advice for avoiding scams.

First of all, be skeptical of anything that contacts you and asks for your information. Remember that some place, like your bank or college, already has all your information, so there’s no reason that they’d need to contact you over the phone or email to collect it. If you think a message might be real, contact that business first. Use contact information from something you acquired yourself, like a business card or bank statement. DO NOT USE THE WEBSITE, EMAIL ADDRESS, OR PHONE NUMBER LISTED IN THE SUSPECTED SCAM. Another thing that tipped me off was the fact that this phone call didn’t mention what company it was with. It just said I had to renew my warranty, or something along those lines, and offered to connect me to an operator. In case you’re curious, this scam called me from the following number: (605)462-6063.

Unfortunately, scammers are resourceful. As technology advances, so do scams. We’ve all seen, or at least heard about email scams, but now we also have Facebook scams. Read Dylan’s post and the article he links to for more information at http://theemailwars.com/2008/11/13/sweet-you-found-facebook/. Remember what I said about being skeptical? Well, I think this article speaks for itself. Personally, I think this sounds like the most obvious scam ever, but I guess some people must believe it. I love the last line in the article stating that your friends are unlikely to get stranded penniless in West Africa. Posted by: Jeff Kempf at 11:42 AM  |  Permalink

Everyone’s a critic when it comes to blogging. This is probably because just about everyone blogs to some degree. I have three blogs in my blogger account (2 eROI blogs, and my personal one), which is a jump from the zero I had about 3 – 4 months ago.
Anyways, as blogging increases in popularity, more issues seem to emerge about the validity and future of blogging. Originally, I thought of blogging as some nerdy form of ranting taking place in parents’ basements across the world. Hopefully not too many people still believe this. True, there are a lot of personal blogs that could fit that description, but blogging is a major part of mainstream media now. TV programs use blogs to interact with their viewers, and people use blogs to find reviews of movies, TV, books, and other media forms.
There are tons of discussions about whether we should continue to blog or not, but it has been talked about too much already. I’d like to bring another question to mind. Assuming blogging stays, how should we go about determining the credibility of bloggers? In the old days, a reporter’s reputation and credibility was determined by the publication he or she wrote for. For instance, if I started my journalistic career at the Washington Post, I would be a more credible source than if I started at some small town paper. However, blogging is a relatively new form of communication. Do you think enough time has passed for us to know how credible each blog is? Do you think this is even a good system for measuring credibility? If not, how should we do it? Should we base credibility on blogs’ links to other media, like being part of a TV news program?
The beauty of blogging is that anyone can do it. All you need is internet access and something to write about; however, therein lays a major problem with blogging. With all the ideas and information posted online, some will be more reliable than others. I recommend looking at multiple sources to verify important news and facts, but with all the linking that occurs in blogging, it can be tricky. How many times have you searched for a story or article, and found that exact article in multiple places? What do you think? Posted by: Jeff Kempf at 9:42 AM  |  Permalink

Yesterday I attended a branding symposium at the University of Oregon Turnbull Center in the White Stag building (the one with the giant Made in Oregon sign on it). The event consisted of a few advertising students, faculty, professionals, and the guests of honors, Scott Bedbury and Stuart Redsun. See their bios below.

These two branding geniuses discussed tons of issues about branding, marketing, and advertising. If you’re like me, you might not understand the differences between these. Luckily, I asked them for their definitions of each of these seemingly intertwined areas of business. Their answer? All three fall within communications; however, marketing is the broadest, followed by branding, then advertising. Marketing is a process, which is used as the catalyst of communication. All branding and advertising messages are marketing messages. Ideas usually start in marketing. Branding is how you want your company or brand to be perceived by users. Your employees design the brand, not marketing efforts. While companies undergo branding efforts, the users have ultimate control over branding. Their perceptions are the reality of your brand. Advertising is the process of sending the message to the targets. It emphasizes storytelling. Advertising is not the communication stage of branding and marketing because they are all communications, but advertising is the most direct, blatant communication form of these. If you’re still confused, you’re not alone. I still don’t completely understand the differences, but at least now I have a base to build from.

Bedbury and Redsun discussed some best practices they’ve picked up during their careers. Some of it sounded like common sense. For instance, a company can’t build a brand until it knows who it is. This ties to the concept of not being able to solve a problem until you understand it. It’s a remarkably simple concept; however, I could see how it might be difficult to execute from an inside perspective. Take some time out to step back and view your company or problem from an outside point of view.

The single most important concept they pushed was corporate social responsibility (CSR). Internet use has made business completely transparent. Therefore, every decision and employee must reflect a philanthropic purpose. If a boss mistreats his or her employees or a business makes a controversial or hypocritical business decision, chances are, it will leak to the public eventually. Keep this in mind while you conduct your business, bad employees and clients drive out good ones.

Here are their bios:

Scott Bedbury

Scott Bedbury is a genius at unleashing brand potential through innovative products, creative positioning, careful distribution, and strategic partnerships. He has served as a brand architect for twenty years and for some of the world’s most dynamic brands, helping make “Just Do It” part of the global lexicon and tall lattes a part of everyday life for millions.

Bedbury graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from University of Oregon in 1980 and took a product management job for a small foods company. He then moved on to work for the largest advertising agency in Seattle at the time, Cole & Weber (and Ogilvy & Mather affiliate).

In 1987, Bedbury left the advertising-agency business. He joined up with Nike, who at the time was a distant number three behind Reebok and Adidas, to be the worldwide advertising director. Under his leadership Nike won every conceivable advertising and marketing award in the US, Europe, and Asia and grew to a $5 billion corporation. In 1994, he left Nike to write, consult and spend time with his two children.

After starting work on his book, he sent samples of chapter to a handful of CEO’s. When Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz received his sample, he immediately called upon Bedbury and asked him to consider joining him as chief marketing officer. Eventually, Bedbury accepted and in 1995, he became CMO of Starbucks. At Starbucks, he managed to help the emerging regional coffee company to grow to several thousand stores while also introducing the brand into new channels of distribution and opening markets overseas. He helped to redesign Starbucks stores, to enter dozens of new markets, to develop Starbucks Ice Cream and bottle Frappuccino for the grocery channel and to establish a global relationship with United Airlines.

In 1997, he signed from Senior VP-marketing to a position he created called senior VP-brand development at Starbucks. He stepped out of the day-to-day marketing duties, and was then charged with mapping the company’s long term branding and marketing strategy and ultimately giving him new rein to develop new forward-thinking, non-traditional marketing directions.

In 1998, his coffee break ended and Bedbury went on to establish Brandstream, a global brand development consultancy in Seattle, WA. Clients include Coca-Cola, Co., Disney, The Limited, and Levi Strauss & Co. Currently, he remains the CEO of Brandstream.

In 2002, he published his book A New Brand World: 8 Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century. In it, he explains how to apply the principles that grew Nike and Starbucks more than fivefold and established their trademarks as leaders in their categories.


Stuart Redsun

Stuart Redsun joined Sony Electronics in July of 2006 as Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing. At Sony, he is responsible for planning and directing the marketing of all Sony Electronics products (except for PlayStation) in the USA by establishing an overall brand strategy and leading all marketing communications. He and his team also create and manage specific marketing plans for individual product lines across all consumer and business/professional products. In 2007, Sony Electronics launched its largest and most successful unified marketing campaign in the company’s history, HDNA, which was the first time a creative idea spanned multiple product categories across both the consumer and professional divisions.

Redsun’s technology marketing experience also included three years at Motorola, where he served as Worldwide GM of Brand Marketing. At Motorola, he directed all demand creation programs for Motorola's consumer division and was responsible for worldwide advertising, sports marketing/sponsorships, image design and collateral, brand and promotional activities, entertainment marketing and customer marketing materials. Stuart was responsible for the global positioning and creative materials that launched the industry-changing Moto Razr handset, along with leading Motorola’s new Retail Design (shop-in-shop) strategy.

Prior to his position at Motorola, he spent eleven years in various marketing management positions at Nike, Inc. Stuart is credited with creating Nike's Retailer Advertising program (under the mentorship of Scott Bedbury) while also managing numerous award-winning brand advertising campaigns. In 1994 he became the youngest member of Nike's Senior Management team when he was named Director of Retail Resources (Nike's Customer Marketing department). In this role, he directed all integrated marketing efforts including the national development of Nike's Concept Shop program (mini-Niketowns inside of retailers). Then, as Director of International Marketing for Nike Golf, he launched the Golf business outside of the USA, and was responsible for the marketing and brand positioning efforts of Tiger Woods and Nike Golf.

Stuart graduated from the University of Oregon School of Journalism (Advertising) way back when the football team was bad. Posted by: Jeff Kempf at 9:47 AM  |  Permalink

One of our employees, Mitchell, wrote a post about why some copywriters don't like to write for the web. His answer, fear. The web continues to evolve, and we scurry to keep up with it. As a result, we haven't set as many rules in stone when it comes to writing for the web. Some copywriters also believe they might not get the recognition for their work when they post it online. Read this post and let us know what you think.

http://welikeitfresh.com/2008/10/30/dont-fear-web-copywritin/ Posted by: Jeff Kempf at 9:08 AM  |  Permalink