NYC Style

Yesterday, along with the sad, gloomy skies, I too was sad and gloomy.  Realizing I had nowhere to habitually go in this big city (since I'm a newbie), I wandered the  streets letting my tears blend in with the drops from the clouds.  It's a very unsettling feeling to pass so many people and know noone and feel alone.  [I know it sounds dramatic but telling lies is much more dramatic.]  

Anyways, after finding more mom-and-pop convenience stores that I know what to do with and passing many swanky Upper East Siders, watching my first movie alone (Julie and Julia is a must), and reading a book I already purchased in the cafe at Barnes&Noble (Starbucks had no seats), I eventually ended up in a place only two blocks away from my house.  

THIS will be MY place: The park along the EAST RIVER.  It's gorgeous and the view changes with every position of the sun and moon.  I just stared and walked for at least an hour in awe of the gigantic beauty that buildings and nature, in harmony, produce.  THIS is why I love NYC, it's never all or nothing, it has something for everyone.  You just have to have the energy to find which part makes you happy.    

(Excuse the phone-quality pics and take in the content.)  

Ad of the Day: MTV's 2009 VMAs

I complained awhile back about the excessive 'tributes' that seemed to take advantage of the passing of the King of Pop (yes, MJ).  However, MTV has created something I can get behind.

Their newest ad for the 2009 MTV VMAs is clean, respectful, creative and delivers a clear message - something MTV is not notorious for.  Their ads are normally neon, haphazard and slightly offbeat in an effort to be 'cool.'  

Check it out: 

The end copy is still the tacky voice over that MTV always resorts too but the imagery has one upped all of the company's past ads.

While I love this raining MJ ad, I do hope the awards aren't solely about the King, leaving this year's fresh talent left out of the spotlight.           

More on Social Media

Is social media really advertising?  Or it is a partnership with brands?  Who has the upper-hand?  Is it an equal relationship where one contributes to the other and vice-versa or do advertisers still trickle into the minds of the masses and influence their purchase decisions?  

Well, for my sake, I hope advertisers still have a hand in the game.

Michael Ramah of Advertising Age says of the transition from marketing to marketing against social media: "The real value of the marketer now is to delve into the conversations and reams of information and build a strategic framework -- to discover how, in a medium dominated by navel-gazing narcissists, we can insert a brand in a meaningful way."  He says of the millions of all-age contributors to social media, "it's true that individuals are empowered to become marketers. By virtue of their online savvy and assertive personalities, they can put their stamp on a product or service and send their message of like or dislike far and wide, to the networks they've built from their living rooms."

Luckily, Ramah shares the same viewpoint with me:  People are contributing to media through online networks, but there is definitely room to create a strategy to purge this new over-sharing, crowded market and take advantage of the ears-wide-open, constantly engaged online audience.  

Ramah acknowledges that while the hype from certain networking sites might some-day die down (i.e. Facebook with the inclusion of parents), he says, "... The medium and the conversations and the personal influence as-powered-via-connectivity are here to stay."

He notices that since the introduction of sites like Facebook and Twitter, brands have 'scrambled' to secure fan pages and twitter accounts in order to seem 'young and nimble" and secure an audience in the social media world.  He says, "Indeed, most of them have succeeded in setting up their presence, branding it and starting conversations."  

That's where we (marketers ready to delve into the new medium) come in.  The space left for marketers (the real ones with degrees; not kids tweeting away about what they ate for breakfast giving Cheerios a  free plug) is a space that allows us to use our creative strategy skills and interact with a consumer to personally influence their brand decisions.  

Social media strategists can operate in this new field to conduct those 'conversations' that a brand's membership to online sites allows.  They will guide the exchange choosing what is said, how it's said and how the audience responds... thereby increasing their client's sales and thriving in the new realm.  

The challenge then is to evolve faster than the online media - choosing how to break through the consumers' noise and reign supreme.  This is where we stand now.  Will there be a formula to fall back on for social media marketing?  Something to teach in universities?  Or is marketing calling for true innovation and challenging its producers to truly shine?  I'm hoping for the challenging option... back to good ol'fashioned ingenious breakthroughs.    

Ad of the Day: Google Earth

Coincidentally synced up with the supposed release of Monopoly City Streets (a Google Earth/Hasbro baby meant to be a REAL WORLD monopoly experience shared by all citizens on one online game board), the Google Japan ad for Google Earth  (released 9-01-09) is making international ad news.

Meant to demonstrate how Google Earth works, the Wall-E type character takes street-view pics of a neighborhood and carefully works through the night ensuring every picture is safe for public view - protecting peoples' privacy by listening to public feedback and blurring license plates, etc.

In the end, he sends a little wave your way; how could you possibly be upset with such a cute technology?  

After all, he is only exposing your home to billions of people across the planet.         

NYC Style

This is what happens when you leave your bike outside overnight in NYC (even in the Upper East Side):

Missing parts: seat, wheels, tires, bike lights, shocks, handle bars...

Parts still there: LOCKED frame, rusty chain, pedals

Sorry Ted; lesson learned.  

Conspiracy Theory: Bike stores steal parts to make us NEED parts sooner.  HMPH. 

First Bite of the Big Apple

Let's preface this story with a picture:

Yes, that's a box-spring making its way up a fire-escape.

Now, back to the relocation story...  It all started along time ago in a place far, far away in Allston, MA on August 31st.  

Up bright and early with only a few items left to pack, Ted and Sean (the man of the other couple we moved alongside), set out to retrieve our BUDGET rental truck, a 16 footer.  Approximately 5 hours later, they called with the definite news that Budget had lost BOTH of their reservations and would not be able to give them ANY size truck.  Don't worry Budget, it's not like we aren't contractually obligated to get ALL of our stuff out of our houses by MIDNIGHT.  (If you know me, you can only image the worry and panic that I endured waiting for them to return.  If you don't know me, thanks for reading my blog and making me feel important.)

FINALLY, they arrived with a PESKE truck at 5PM and we were on the road (only forgetting one item after all of that) by 7PM paying about $100 more than was expected.  Oh, and this truck only had TWO seats so I was LUCKY enough to sit on a pile of seat cushions for the whole trek.    BUT, we were grateful for our truck and thought nothing could possibly go wrong after that DRAMA.  

Boy were we WRONG.

About 15 miles (MAYBE) into the drive, approaching the FIRST rest-stop of many on our 3-4 hour drive from Boston to NY, our rear tire POPPED.  Yep, that's right, we were forced to take a bathroom break before even opening our water bottles.  That's when we stopped at McDonald's for 3 hours and witnessed the paper shredding lady and killed time playing dollar lotto tickets.  The lotto tickets taught us that Ted is lucky and Sean and I are not.  Apparently it's one of our faults all of this was happening.  (The broken mirror I found in one of my boxes three days later landed the blame solely on me.)  When our truck was fixed, we set out AGAIN.        

We got to Ted's parents' house that night at 1:30AM to sleep in a place the truck could rest for free (a highlight in the process).  The next morning we drove into Manhattan without much traffic and got to the Upper East side to unload Ted and I.  We have about 3 times the amount of stuff as Sean and Zeny and were dreading the unpacking and walking up 5 flights of stairs for every item.  Thanks for Zeny's brother Zach, who helped out, we had everything in in under three hours.  Impressive and sweaty.

We then drove to Midtown (with two in the cargo and three crammed up front down narrow one-way streets) to get Zeny's FULL-SIZE fridge she bought from some weirdo living in a four story brownstone.  That was going to be the next challenge of the day, for sure.  

Once we arrived at Zeny's Lower East Side digs, we discovered that her 'four-story walk-up' was indeed a five story that she lived on the top floor of.  Lucky us, not.  The boys tackled the fridge first thinking it would be the BEAST of the day.  It was up a half-hour later and after taking a break on the ROOF DECK, we carried many heavy boxes (Sean doesn't know how to pack a card-board box very efficiently- :P )  Then, the mattress got up their square-ish spiral staircase.  Next was the box spring.  We thought it would be easy-as-pie considering Zach and I carried mine up, but we were oh so wrong!  After an hour up the first flight of stairs only to find out the second set was a new shape, they had two options: 1. Saw it in half and reassemble at the top. 2. Go up the fire-escape (not so smart for people without health insurance).  

Three hours passed.  The photo above was taken.  The result was blocking the sidewalk long enough to throw the box spring off the second floor into the trash.

It is at this point that a few hundred dollars paid to MOVERS would be completely worth it.  Is there a secret website that tells you the tricks of moving normal size items into Manhattan sized homes?  I should make one, make millions, and move into a normal size home.

Exhausted, Ted and I had to drive the truck back to Sleepy Hollow to unload extra items at his home.  After paying an 11 dollar toll to leave the city, we discovered that Sean had the keys to the back of the truck.  We drove from 125th street to 9th again.  Then, went back to Sleepy Hollow only to discover that the truck was now an hour too late to return.  Another night NOT slept in our apartment.

Finally, on Sept.2nd, I moved into my apartment.  (This is, of course, after loosing my wallet walking from the truck return station and getting it back just as the gas station man was taking my cash out of it. AND coming back to realize our bike tires had been stolen because we didn't get to come back as planned to put them inside.)

My luck can ONLY get better and has.  Welcome to NYC Gabrielle.         

Excuse me?

So, I moved last week from Boston to NYC (yay) and had to stop at a rest-stop on the way.  This is what I saw:

There are so many things wrong with this picture:

1. I witnessed this mess and realized that humans are the weirdest, most nonsensical living organisms on earth.
2. There is a woman shredding paper at a rest-stop (notice the McDonald's cup).
3. It was 11PM.
4. She was shredding many pieces of paper that come from the part of a notebook between the spirals and the sheet you tear out.

Basically, this just confuses me.  How am I going into a business that requires understanding how people think and behave when oddballs like this exist to throw off the curve?    

Oh and just an extra pic of things that confuse me....

There are no words... 

Actually this behavior is completely inexcusable.  What would Stacey and Clinton say?  Someone today actually told me CLOGS (no, he is not Dutch) are comfortable and therefor acceptable.  Does that mean socks and sandals are allowed?  The obvious answer is NO.  Maybe the solution to world peace is FASHION POLICE.  There is individuality and there is ugly.  

So, please weirdoes, sort yourselves out.