╠ Brand Loyalty at its best ╣

Apologies for the reduced posting as of late however I got a little tied down because I had a formal to attend as well as a birthday to organize, amongst all of my normal activities.

Just wanted to take a quick moment to show this cake though. This was a cake that was designed for me without me knowing. It's covered in Nintendo's core mascots which could be considered promotion however I didn't care about that aspect. I loved it, as did everyone else at the party.

How many of you can name brands that you could place their material all over your birthday cake without a single person at your party raising an eyebrow? In fact how many brands could even pull something like that at an office party?

╠ Currency is so analogue ╣

So today I faced the horrible endeavor of leaving the house without my handy credit card. I'd grown so used to the convenient that it was an eye opener.

Now as a commerce student my dealing with money is pretty organized, so the loss of the core of my structure threw me off.

The two problems I faced today were first of all being short changed. The second was that I ran out of money because like all other scared people of the world I don't like the idea of carrying excessive amounts of cash. All of which solved by cards. The other thing I however I perhaps wish I could have facedis that cash causes an issue with is as an untraceable transaction, most commonly used to evade centrelink. Unfortunately Woolworths is one of those follow the rule type organizations.

Cash clearly seems to be the inferior product, however due to those hard bent on sticking to the old ways it continues on and will continue on into the far future.

You can tell people to upgrade their TV, their radio, their whatever else you've improved by adding a clock to it. However the more popular the original item, the longer it will take to be phased out. So by that measure does cash currency have a future date of discontinuity? WHat do you all think?

╠ Achievements ╣

One of the additions to video games in the current generation is the inclusion of achievements and trophies. These are awarded for finishing particular tasks. For PS3 the trophies you achieve are ranked by difficulty, from bronze to gold and then a bonus platinum trophy for if you collect every other trophy in the game.

The reason why I find this so good is that it increases the playability of a game but also ensures that you've completed everything that a game has to offer, rather than just the story. It also tells you when enough is enough and it's time to move on.

I believe it's important to give yourself something similar in life. Every company you work for should have it's own goals, from simple bronze ones to the overruling 'platinum' goal. On top of this you should also have your own goals, including those individualized for jobs. Most of the time you have a specific goal in mind when applying for a job and it's good to keep that in mind else you may find yourself dwindling longer than you would perhaps like in an area that may not further your overall goals.

It's also good to keep your individual goals separate because unless you really, really love work, then you should have other interests. Even those that don't further your career are worth including, be it to one day do that Star Wars Marathon or play through every one of the ironically named 'Final Fantasy' games released. If you don't set yourself the challenge you may just keep pushing these side goals off and do you really want to live the kind of life where you didn't take the time to do these life defining achievements that make life worth living.

It's up to you whether you achieve the goals, and you always have the option to reassess the ones that you lose interest with. What's important is keeping your goals in mind so that you don't let yourself stray from what you truly want.

╠ Sponsored Mobility at its best ╣

Now as most of you may know in this semester just gone I took a subject I loathed called Career Management. A course that if you were to follow the lecturer you would misconstrue as a class about how to analyze careers after you've had them...conveniently enough with examples from her career. Useful I know. Now through this all there was one sole lesson of value. Obvious without the class but I want to give it some credit. The term I'm referring to is sponsored mobility.

Sponsorship in a career sense is where someone, usually further along their career path than you helps you along or takes you under their wing. It's meant to be a must do and something that it doesn't matter who it is because everyone has something to teach.

Now not wanting to shoot myself in the foot I remained open to this concept. However after experiencing it I believe there are some areas where it may appear less than useful. Recently I went on a trip to Brisbane with my father to experience the entrepreneurial lifestyle. I've listed below the activities and what I've learned.

Super Happy Fun Trip To Brisbane

• Trip to Airport in Taxi - Entrepreneurs don't pay bills, fines etc. They believe in the par 10 (sp?) principle. So not paying what you owe 'the man' is good...
• Airplane Trip to Brisbane - Entrepreneurs prefer to talk to any female that sits down to them and reveal their secret business plans to them rather than talk to their own son
• Taxi Ride from airport - Taxi drivers in Brisbane are as bad as Melbourne and asks interstate tourists where x street is
• Meeting 1 - We are vultures, ravenous, ravenous vultures, benefiting from the corpses of failed entities
• Meeting 2 - Basic usage of a computer to make presentations is still super impressive for some things. Pixelated images FTW
• Lunch - Father left to go to a meeting alone. I suspect fornication. Discovered I fail at social interaction...doubly so for people not of my age
• Meeting 3 - Entrepreneurs never disclose everything. People will line up left right and center for a good sounding idea
• Bar - The best bars are the ones that allow you to stare at 'eye candy'. Also Asahi apparently means Heinekin
• Hotel - Apparently booking a two bedroom room each is the way entrepreneurs do it.
• Dinner - Restaurants are also rated based on their proximity to eye-candy. iPhone app Urban spoon has room for improvements. Apparently Asahi decided it no longer wanted to be heinekin and turned back into Asahi beer.
• Casino - While wife takes care of child alone, entrepreneurs will play. Including initialization of flirting, drink buying and number getting
• Hotel - True entrepreneurs fly off to other states whilst leaving their family to find their own way to their flight much later.
• Airplane ride - People should have to pay more to bring a baby along with them...and they should have to have their own special booth or something
• Ride Home - Apparently Toorak means South Yarra station

Overall, what it seems I can learn from my father is that marriage means nothing and noone is more important than yourself and your interests. not sure about all of your views on this but I think a certain note should be added to chosing a sponsor...choose them wisely.

╠ Vodafone Mess with your head! ╣

Those of you who read and enjoyed my previous adventures in procuring an iPhone may be happy to hear that the story did not end there. The last story was apparently so riveting that it made it all the way to mumbrella. I believe I owe thanks to the Tim fellow who collects the content. Now you may notice that it is a Virgin ad that I have placed above and there is quite good reasoning for this, reasoning that may make the Mumbrella line 'Michael Lanyon explains why Clemenger BBDO’s helped sell him an iPhone' a little bit less than true.

So the way the story goes is that I went down to the Vodafone stores with intent of getting one of those fancy 32gb 3gs' and when I got there this all started going quite smoothly until one road block. Some how my age had been put into the system incorrectly. Normally no biggie but seems with vodafone it is. Now I have a pretty good number as you can see on the right, so I was kind of interested in keeping it. The only way it was possible was to purchase a sim from another carrier, port the number and come back.

Now remember I also had an exam this day so time wasn't on my side but I humoured them anyway. I went down to Dick Smith, bought a virgin Sim, started porting the number and went back to find that Virgin wasn't actually a group that this problem would be fixed by. Now by this point I'd basically given up but I opted to run a credit check to ensure I was actually ok for this considering $74 a month is a bit for a uni student, but that went fine. So it really was just this clerical error at the start that stopped me. I do consider myself a bit brand loyal, and I do like vodafone ads, especially the fold it one as referenced by Mumbrella and also the current one inclusive of voice twittering. However when they can't simply convert a prepaid sim of theirs to a plan sim then well that starts to wear thin. The final option was to call them up and wait for all the people inquiring about the new iPhone.

Which I did start doing however by this point the damage was done. By sending me out of their store to a Dick Smith they had sent me straight past a Virgin store which had a much more appealing deal available for the old 16gb. I inquired about it and the process there ran smooth from start to finish. So as much as I hate to admit it...I'm on Virgin now.

So that's how I go from aiming to be with a group whose ads I love, to a group whose sexist ads I hate with a fiery passion. Goes to show that no matter how good your ads are in the end it does come down to the individual service or product and Vodafone's lack of simplicity in correction of errors cost them revenue of $2,000 from me.

Now lets see if this story can make the news too :P

╠ Marketing Messes with your head! ╣

First off I'd just like to take a small moment to say it's my 100th post here and boy what a ride it's been. Kudo's to anyone who read them all...you may want to...uh...reexamine your life or something.

In order to celebrate I want to tell you a story of how Marketing is really starting to mess with my head.

At the moment I have a pitifully poor phone, the battery dies within five minutes of talk so I've been keeping up to date on all the iphone developments. My final decision is to go with Vodafone because when I went into their store they acknowledged my existence, I've been with them before and the clencher was simply that their advertising doesn't suck(Yes I am that shallow). I've never locked myself into such a big contract, so last night being the night before the release I was tossing and turning in bed because I couldn't sleep.

However when I did get to sleep I dreampt about getting the iPhone and being in a car driving around for a vodafone shop in the outer suburbs with hilarious results. Now what I found the most amusing about the dream was when I finally found the store I discovered their advertisement of the iphone and it was the 'You've got to be tossing possums!' health insurance lady. I had no option but to listen as she spoke, knowing that one of her stupid phrases could come out at any second, luckily however after about a minute of listening in fear I woke from my sleep.

I don't know what to think, my dream purposefully attacked my reasoning for picking vodafone on the grounds of their not sucky advertising by putting in sucky advertising...Does my subconscious not want me to get an iPhone? None the less I thought I'd share with you just how doing marketing can mess with your head.

The second curious thing about the dream was not the single mention of the exam that I have in about 5 hours...perhaps I'm showing a bit too strongly where my priorities lie...

╠ I wish...Death of University ╣

This weekend just past I had a curious meeting where the organization I volunteer for had to talk down to a sub-organization because of their lackluster results. Promotion was a huge issue for them and what I found interesting was that our head said that him and myself were the people on committee to approach because I had been formally trained and he had experience.

This made me realize how little University does for you. This year I've been stumbling through the brand manager position learning everything I have to just before I have to do it. None of which was covered in Uni.

One of the questions raised during the meeting was how do you advertise on twitter. Any marketer would know twitter and how to utilize it, however it has not been mentioned in a single class of mine. I've been at Uni for almost 3 years now and I honestly feel like this one year of experience volunteering as well as blogging has taught me more than what Uni can.

The curious thing though is that in my career management class which contained two parts, one presentation (Which my group rigged so we all got full marks), and then the plan itself I scored 6/10 meaning the plan itself got 1/5. Seems volunteering in the role you actually want to do, blogging about your area of interest and building network contacts is a horrible career plan.

University isn't what it promises to be. It's simply teaching you the core outdated elements of broad career interests. If I had just volunteered for 3 years as the branding coordinator for my organization and used the money I spent on uni to feed myself better and maybe invest in an online journal or two then I would be in a better state than what I am now.

Personally I think what University is should be shrunk down instead of being extended. They should teach you all the basic elements in a year like TAFE and then it's up to you to find experience, or you can come back for another year to be taught more advanced stuff, the latter being the 'if all else fails' option.

So overall this is me once again saying, if you're in Uni and doing nothing else to help you towards your desired career, I worry for you.