Author: Brian Lee

Austin Rocks

Posted on by Brian Lee

The American Advertising Federation (AAF) – District 10 invited me to speak at its winter conference, which took place Jan. 27-29 in Austin, Texas and was called “Austin Rocks.” My break-out session presentation on Day 2 was about how to recruit and work with young professionals in local AAF clubs.

My qualifications for being asked to speak were based on my current role on the executive board for Ad 2 National, the young professionals (18-32) version of AAF, and that I was the past president of Ad 2 Madison. For an hour I discussed the YP demographic, branding strategies, messaging, outreach, encouraging participation, programming, mentorship and retention ideas.

However, what I really wanted to talk about in this blog post was how well organized the conference was. The AAF – Austin and Ad 2 Austin folks did a great job securing sponsorships (including tons of raffle prizes), booking great speakers (including the founder of Gowalla), planning social events (e.g. hospitality suites each night and a bar crawl on Saturday) and handling logistics (e.g. they picked up speakers from the airport).

Plus, the program and website they created were AMAZING! I really enjoyed meeting so many great professionals from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, even though we couldn’t understand each other through our regional accents (j/k). I look forward to re-acquainting with them at the AAF national conference in June.

One last thought: despite an emphasis on social media topics, I was surprised that hardly anyone from the conference tweeted using the hashtags #AustinRocks or #AustinRocks2011.

When I grow up

Posted on by Brian Lee

Monster.com created some really funny videos under the theme, “When I Grow Up,” followed by a particular profession. This video has begun to circulate amongst the advertising/PR community in town, and everyone I know that watched it thought it was hilarious (like I did).

It’s funny because it pokes fun at the long hours, the personalities, the terminology and the awards of our profession. Have I encountered some of the people or situations mentioned in the video? You bet.

Obviously, there are two sides to every coin. The video purposely doesn’t mention the comraderie with your colleagues and clients, the triumphant feeling of achieving success in your project or campaign, the fast-paced work environment, the no-two-days-are-alike theme and the continuing education you need to stay abreast of all the new trends and technology of the industry. I think those elements really make the advertising/PR world fun, not funny.

No place for MySpace

Posted on by Brian Lee

Back in 2004ish, I remember joining MySpace to see what all the fuss was about (I wasn’t yet on Facebook because it was meant for students only at the time). A lot of my friends were on MySpace, and it was a nice way to share photos and write comments on each other’s pages.

However, I soon began to dislike the service, especially after signing up for Facebook. MySpace’s user-view was cluttered, as I preferred viewing your page as others see it, like on Facebook; I got a lot of spam; and eventually MySpace just stole all the features of Facebook, e.g. feeds, tagging, etc., making it lose its uniqueness.

That’s why it doesn’t surprise me that MySpace is in a lot of trouble financially, as reported in today’s New York Times. I’ve always described MySpace as hanging out at a virtual bar; for example, you can meet new people (a bit better than you can on Facebook) and you can listen to some music (bands can set up decent pages pretty easily, plus other artists’ songs are available for free).

But that’s about it. I can’t imagine a scenario in which I would recommend setting up a MySpace account for a client, other than a band. See, bands can upload their songs, post their tour dates and interact with their fans. Even still, I would probably lean toward using Bandcamp instead.

Did you have/do you still have a MySpace account? I just have one to squat on a particular URL.