╠ AniBlog - Gruen brought Sexy Back╣

This aniblog recognizes the performance of the Greun Transfer TV show in being able to spark further interest in marketing as a career, however also comments on the possible downsides when you consider the economic climate they will all be entering into.

As usual comments are always appreciated on these things as they do take a while so I like to get them right. Anyway here's what may be a slightly inaccurate script

Media has had a history of turning specific careers into what we call sexy careers. CSI did it for forensics, Scrubs for doctors and Dragonball Z for bleaching your hair, flying around and trying to blow up planets with your energy balls!

The Gruen Transfer seems to be the next installment for this as it has made Marketing into a much more appealing job. Unfortunately when I say The Gruen Transfer though I mean the ABC television show as oposed to this blog

sigh

Unfortunately the only relation the blog share to the show is the name which is simply the moment where when you go shopping all of the stimuli such as advertisements makes you buy items you weren't planning on usually followed not soon after by the statement 'Why did I buy all this crap?'

Universities have seen as much as a 30% increase in students wishing to do marketing since the show started. However as a current marketing student I can't help but imagine that this may be bad news for me. As soon as these kids come out I'll be losing on the experience front to those who have been sacked and on the youth side to these new kiddies.

So this is my call out to the Gruen Transfer. Please stop being so damn sexy! At the moment out of ten you're bottled Jelly from a particularly spirited jelly wrestle fight. If you could tone it down to perhaps a pair of ladies underpants bought from a japanese vending machine, not my thing but I'm sure there's some sex appeal to it. But if you could do that it would be much appreciated.

╠ AniBlog - Skittles are my BFF - A reply to Gen Y Podcast ╣

Finally another AniBlog has been prepared. This one is a reply to the Gen Y Marketing Podcast. The particular one I am replying too is Number 44 I think, there's a bit of confusion with the numbering. Also I've included Skittles in all my examples as they are actually a brand that does seem to be more active with the trying to be a friend, or at least that's how I perceive what I've seen of them on facebook. Anyway for those of you who struggle to understand my horrible voice here's the script. (May not be 100% accurate.)

Apologies for the going awol but over the holiday period I got this thing called a life that everyone else seems so fond of and as you with lives would know when you have one you do more stuff, however this means you do less things. Unfortunately animated blogs falls into the things collumn like the unloved children that they are.

In my absence I discovered the Gen Y podcast. Unforunately I don't know to just who I'm replaying because I've yet to grasp just who and how many people there are at Gen Y. There could be ten or just one guy who's good at putting on voices. In fact that sounds like a bit of fun I may try that.

I concur

What one of them brought up was that he did not want to interract or communicate with a brand,

which is something brands have actually been pushing as of late.

Instead he believes more that he's only their for value, he's only going to interract with a brand if there is something in it for him. Now I'm trying to be careful to not get this wrong but I think it's because he doesn't want brands as friends, he doen't want them to be part of a conversation.

He wants to use them for their value and tell them to piss off.

This really got me thinking because I found it to be a valid point. Brands aren't our friends, they aren't part of friends circles, yet some of us do allow them to technically be part of the conversation. Here's my conclusion

I was thinking of the value added as a tangible element but this is not what brands are offering in these situations. It's their social value. The value added by you being associated with that brand.

Basically it's the value added on things like facebook where you become a fan of a product.

You may not consciously know why you're so eager to be a fan, but it's because you're aligning yourself with a brand that you like. You can learn a lot about a person by what they like so therefore there is value added by sometimes communicating with a brand in the mix.

╠ AniBlog - The Talk of Techxperts ╣

With the previous semi success of my previous AniBlog I decided to try again and in this second try improve the faults of the previous. The main fault of the first was the sound quality which for the most parts I have improved on. There are a few faults in my reading the script but thats a minor think to fix for the future.

This installment is on Dick Smith's rebranding and their new slogan 'Talk to the techxperts' which I have some insight as a personal worker of theirs. Anyway if you have any comments at all let me know and I'll try and fix it should I do any more of these.




Script for the video: (Not 100% accurate due to adlibs)


A competitive advantage is something that one organization does that gives it an edge on it's opposition. To dumb it down it's usually the reason you purchase one item over another, this can be but isn't limited to being the cheapest, the best or simply has a particular feature you're after.

Something I'd like to bring attention to is claiming a competitive advantage that may not actually exist. As most of you probably don't know Dick Smith is currently going through a rebranding excersize. One part of this was their new slogan 'Talk to the Techsperts'. Basically claiming they have allpowerfully knowledge of anything techological.

Now I am unfortunately as a worker of theirs meant to be a so called techspert. Although when it comes to certain technology I'm as knowledgeable as a cave dwellers pet goldfish and therefore feel it necessary to poke at the flaws in this apparent advantage of ours.

It all stems from the hiring process. Basically us and all our competitors hire from what is majoritvely a pool of uni students looking for a part time job to fund their school supplies. So first of all we're no better, but wait it gets worse. Take JB Hifi as the main competitor. They offer better commission, better discount and aren't required to know stuff or even approach customers...although it may just be me they don't approach thanks to the countless hours I spent in their stores making use of their free guitar hero. But overall the point is that it is a better deal to work there and therefore they should have their pick of applicants first putting the Dick Smith hires at the bottom of the barrel.

This would all be fine and well if we received special training...however we don't. There's usually one optional far from exhaustive online training for one specific program about every month which is relatively useless when you consider the amount of stock we have.

So to summarize...we aren't techsperts, we're workers, just like those you'll find anywhere else yet somehow we're able to claim a competitive advantage about this. In fact it seems little more than a trick at consumers expense..

However for their own sake hope consumers are becoming smart enough to see through ortherwise they will face my techspert way of responding to hard questions with a blank stare!

╠ Gruen Vs Zero Punc ╣

My animblog appeared to be a rather large success. People seemed to like it and I think I shall continue on. However one change I may try is to shorten the videos to about 1 minute length shots. Here's hoping it still is spiffiriffic.

However it has become apparent that with a lot of people all they see is a Zero Punctuation Clone. When deciding how to do this I thought about what style to use. chose to work on a previous style I had developed in that of a simple character with just balls for hands.

On the right is my earlier work in this style in 3D. Since I had done this before I perceived it to simply be a style as opposed to something there was a monopoly on.
I was hoping people would simply consider the Zero Punc videos to be a style and therefore not a negative when it is utilized inside a different field. However reading responses it appears I am wrong.

Personally since this is the style I first got into 3D with and now am branching into using it for my blog I'm quite attached. I'm confident with it and believe this is the way I can make the aniblog work best.

However the problem I am facing is that I do not want to be perceived as stealing views via unofficial association. I already seem to have that via the Gruen title so I don't want it more.

So I suppose the question I am posing is that does Zero Punctuation have a monopoly on this style and therefore should I change in order to follow my own path or can I continue on as I want to without risking enraging a fanbase? Any insight is welcome so let me know how you feel.

╠ AniBlog - Of Downloadable Content and Stock Limitations ╣

In my previous post I said I was going to trial animating a blog post and well I suceeded. I wasn't expecting it to be done so quickly but turns out when you know what you're doing the whole process is quite quick and for the most part was completed over the weekend.



Any insight on how you think I did is really wanted. One thing I have noticed is that I should probably get into it a bit more because my voice is a bit dry. I may also have to invest in a microphone and not just use the computer. So yeah any opinion is good ^^

╠ Augmenting a blog ╣

As I continue writing this blog I am ever in search of something to make it better, to make it stand out. In all my thinking of this I have come upon two ideas. If any of you could tell me what you think of either or even if you have any recommendations on how to do either that would be great.

Idea the first: Twitter post leading to blog

A lot of successful blogs I've seen do so by simply having a few lines of insight and then leaving it to you to fill in the gaps and it works because this encourages discussion. However I can't do this because I always have more to say and can't really hold myself back.

So my idea here is to have two posts for every post. One would be a short post, maybe five lines tops introducing and heavily summarizing what I was trying to get across. The second would be a longwinded post like my normal variety. THe smaller one would be the one to show up and the latter would simply be something you could click 'read on' to get to my full thoughts on the matter.

Now I personally have no idea if there is a way to do this without being sort of fiddly with my posts so if anyone knows how to do it that would be great.

Idea the Second: AniBlog

Recently I have discovered people posting videos of themselves saying what they wish to get across and because you are simply listening instead of reading it's easier to get more across. Personally I think there is a lot in this however I have no interest of putting my mug on youtube...more than it may already be at least. I believe while watching someone talk is a sort of visual benefit on previous options. However I think if I were instead to make simple animations it may be overall more stimulating.

This will obviously take a bit of effort on my part but I wish to at least test it out. So I'm going to trial it with making a video of the blog I did previously on downloadable content. It may be good...or it may crash and burn. The important thing when it comes to these sort of things is to take risks and especially at this time in my blog there's not exactly a world of things to lose.

The animation style will be very simple and will be using the spiffy version of Tannie as can be viewed above.

In conclusion

So this is what I'm looking into at the moment so let me know what you think of it and also if you have any other recommendations for blogging let me know because I would like to get this thing to be a bit successful.