I Know Kung Fu

HooHOOhoo! (Say it with us). That’s the word of the week because two of PG’s graphic designers attended the 2011 Graphics of the Americas in Orange County (Orlando). A lot of freshies pouring into the industry, dinosaurs getting de-fossilized, curious eyes poking around (more like voyeurs... actually), new solutions to age old creative problems and technology that is so alien it will blow your mind! HooHOOhoo!

There were classes too. The inDesign classes rocked, but what wowed us the most is the "Secrets of Creative Professionals" session, by Greg Heald. It’s like seeing the Holy Grail shining in front of you for the first time! Meh, actually, it feels like we got a super cool OS update plugged into our brains... I know kung-fu! Bahaha.

So expect more tricks up our Creative Team’s sleeves. Though our teammates missed Epcot® night, they were rubbing elbows with industry leaders and making friends *insert flirtatious wink here* from all around the world and networking especially with that “supplier” behind the big 4-color Heidelberg printer you know? >;-)

Now our designers are home with fresh eyes and new ideas. Ready for action! Running on an updated OS with new features, such as better inDesign layout handling and new Photoshop techniques. Maybe now they could even magically make Photoshop run faster than a speeding coffee mug! More good stuff to come! The more you see the more ideas you have! HooHOOhoo

#gettngslizzerd: Red Cross Recovery

We know, what happened to the Red Cross is soooo last week, right? Wrong. It is a lifelong lesson that anyone in marketing or PR should learn and recite daily.

Don’t know about it? Let us enlighten you. Well, this is how it goes:

On February 15th 2011, Ryan (a @RedCross community manager's friend, perhaps?) found some beer. The CM then accidentally tweeted something they say was meant to be broadcasted from a personal account. Oops! Check out the tweet below:

OMG! What would you do now? All hell has broken loose! Right? Again, wrong. We’re pretty sure that their arses were on fire for five seconds. Heck, their @RedCross humanitarian coworkers here in Haiti might have even be bonking their heads with Prestige beer bottles at Quartier Latin saying "holy s#@t" while setting fire to their own arses! Haha.

The Red Cross did admirably. They truly handled this as the pros that they are, with fun and humor. We mean, we’re all human and we all make mistakes. A quote from their slightly apologetic blog entry: “We realized our honest mistake (the Tweeter was not drunk) and deleted the above Tweet. We all know that it’s impossible to really delete a tweet like this, so we acknowledged our mistake.”

They deleted the tweet, and replaced it with the below one:

We sure learned a few lessons from the Red Cross on this, as a community manager, I’ll keep away from Twitter when thinking of getting slizzered. But PR lesson 101 boys and girls… handle life with humor. It’s all about love, and happiness. A smile is the curve that sets everything straight ☺

Love What You Do

Today is fly-me-to-the-moon day =) more commercially known as Valentine’s Day (Saint Valentine's day for you purists out there). The day when, worldwide, people express their love towards each other - and usually have to buy either chocolate, a card or a diamond in doing so. Some here at the agency feel it's more Single Awareness Day. But that’s another story.

On this February 14th, no chocolate or roses required (although welcomed)... Coupled-up or not, we are celebrating! Celebrating our LOVE for work. LOVE WHAT YOU DO, and everything else will fall into place. You see, if someone started working at 21 and retired at 65 (working a full-time schedule) that person would have worked close to 100,000 hours!

These 100,000 hours can either be pure punishment, or with a little bit of LOVE, they can be your time-to-shine, working your magic in this great field of infinite possibilities. Take a daily dose of LOVE WHAT YOU DO, and see how little miracles happen here and there; Try it…See how the whole world and events will seem to conjugate to get you closer to your dreams; Even unfortunate events will start to look like life lessons urging you to do more, better.

See, as advertisers, it's up to us to shape how people perceive brands, ideas, events...and ultimately we create the imagery of what an idyllic life is - or should be.

So to everyone out there, LOVE WHAT YOU DO. Only then will you be of value to society (you might even start loving Mondays).

Happy Valentine’s Day! We love you too.

Brand Bowl

We're keeping today's post short and simple.

Who cares who won Superbowl XLV! Right?

After all, what could possibly be the true hidden raison-d'être of it all...if not for the ads. Agreed?

Here are some great links, to view it all, to talk about it all, and to see what others thought of it all...

AdAge

Brand Bowl

Hashtag on Twitter

Here are a few of our favorites...