Are you looking to acquire new technical skills to help land your dream job?

Perhaps you’re just looking to freshen up skills in your current position?

Whatever your case may be, stop by the Century College Open House on Tuesday, February 21 from 5PM – 8PM to find out about our programs and award offerings.  Representatives from almost every academic program will be on hand to answer your questions, and if you apply for enrollment at Century College that evening a $20 registration fee will be waived.  There will also be some prize giveaways and special presentations from Century alumni (see poster below).

The Open House is free and open to the public.  We look forward to seeing you there!

Event Flyer .pdf

Not a chance.

The morning after Twitter went online the world gave birth to 10,000 social media “experts” and their “best practices.”  (There are probably now something like 15.3 million experts)  Some of these people are really good at what they do, and I mean that in the best way possible.  They’re smart, experienced, and they share genuinely useful insights.  (See Brian Solis and Chris Brogan, among others)

Unfortunately these folks are the exception, and they are sometimes drowned out by the masses of self-proclaimed “experts” who are likewise really good at something.  They’re smart, but inexperienced and disingenuous; and getting you to look at and purchase their content is what they really excel at.

Admittedly – they’re doing something right, just not what we’re looking for.

The marketer in me always feels inclined to bring it back to the consumer.  Get a group of folks (the consumers) to look at something, share their thoughts, and organize the results into some consumable format that lends itself well to the creation of a better product.  I do a lot of work like this through focus groups.

Disclaimer: My students aren’t a focus group, and I’d never consciously set up an in class exercise for the purpose of gathering data for use outside my academic institution.  However, I was so impressed with the results of a blog critique exercise we did two weeks ago that I now feel compelled to share what we came up with.

Eighteen students were asked to visit a selection of blogs from the Technorati Top100 and to come up with a list of reasons why, based purely upon the objective features of their websites, why these blogs had become so successful.  The following 9 prevailing statements came out of the conversation, and I named these the Hallmarks of a Great Blog.

Here they are in no particular order of authority.

1. A great blog has unique subject matter

2. A great blog has a consistent interface that is easy to navigate from page to page

3. A great blog has visually appealing content

4. A great blog has well-formatted articles

5. A great blog has thought-provoking subject matter (it makes you think about what you read days afterward)

6. A great blog is self-promotional, but in a tasteful way that does not detract from the reading experience (share buttons are good, pop ups are bad)

7. A great blog has up-to-date content and is regularly updated

8. A great blog has deep and meaningful conversations occurring in its comment sections

What do you think are hallmarks of a great blog?

Who: Branding specialist David Brier
What: A guest lecture at Century College
When: Friday, February 3, 2012
Where: East Campus in Lincoln Mall

Click to view the Official Event Flyer.

Recently Wheat Thins did just that by hitching a ride on the popular Family Guy “Hweat “meme.  Here is what the company got by mashing up the two.

So, was this a good mashup, and was it a good idea for Nabisco to tap into Family Guy with this ad?  You decide.

Have you ever wondered how the people who get voted off the island end up on the island in the first place?  In a recent interview with Nicole Foster, we explored reality show casting.

Question:  You are a student in the Marketing program at Century but you also work as a reality-casting producer.  What an interesting job.  Can you tell us what you do as a reality-casting producer?

Nicole:  It is my role to interview candidates, on camera, who made it through initial screening.  I sit down with a person for approximately 20-45 minutes (depending on how in depth the casting is) and encourage them to be as raw as possible.  I also try to obtain some quality sound bytes.  An interview is considered successful, if I can get a range of emotion from the interviewee during that time.  I then select my favorite people, decide how I want to pitch them, and then paint that picture by editing the interview down to 4-5 minutes of my selected content.  I then “sell” them to my casting director who selects her favorites to pitch to the network.  The executive producers ultimately decide on the final cast.  Then I eagerly wait for the show to air to see how “my people” turned out as characters.

Question:  I would image a reality-casting producer living in the heart of Los Angeles. How does someone living in Minnesota end up with such a job?

Nicole: Since the age of 15, I have worked in restaurants and have continued working in this industry for about ten years. Just like other Hollywood success stories, I was in the right place at the right time.  While living in West Hollywood, CA I managed a restaurant called the Bungalow Club on Santa Monica Blvd. Hell’s Kitchen 2 held their wrap party (final celebration after production of the show is complete) at the Bungalow Club.  I started a conversation with the casting director, who interestingly enough went to high school here in MN.  She was looking for someone to join the casting team who had some knowledge of food. Her casting team was great at finding characters, but didn’t have a clue about the actual inner workings of a kitchen.  Ultimately I was hired to work on Hell’s Kitchen 3 as a casting assistant.  I loved my job, was enthusiastic and passionate about my work and moved up very quickly- from casting assistant, to associate, to coordinator, to producer.  This was my full time job until I moved back to Minnesota.  Now, when reality-casting agencies that I worked for in the past cast here in the Twin Cities, I get a phone call.  I consider myself very lucky.

Question:  When casting, what do you look for in a candidate?

Nicole (or Nikki?): This can vary from show to show, but I always need people with confidence and assertion in whatever it is they are saying.  I look for someone I would want to watch on the show: someone who has energy and speaks with fluidity.  I personally love someone who talks with their hands, they appear more animated and that is more watchable then someone who simply sits still.  I also seek someone who is opinionated and passionate about their views.  If it is a challenge show EXAMPLE?, I look for someone competitive and willing to do what it takes to win.  Or someone I think could potentially be overly emotional on the show.  Someone that I think America would root for or against. Ultimately the cast is a puzzle, but we, as a casting team, don’t know what pieces we are working with until we have finished combing of the country and the casting is complete.

Question:  What is the most challenging part of your job?

Nikki:  For me, it has been very hard to not get personally invested in “my people.”  Casting and production are very different.  I get to know the cast as people; while production sees the cast they are working with as simply characters.  It is their job to make an entertaining show regardless of how the cast feels.  I understand it completely, but I grow attached to my candidates.

Question:  If I were selected as a potential candidate, what could I expect?

Nicole:  We interview someone going through the casting process multiple times.  We really begin by digging into who they are and what makes them tick.  When the top 20 to 40 candidates are selected, we fly them to LA for a final screening.  The final screening involves not only an hour-long interview with a room full of executives and cameras, but also a full background check, psychological evaluation, and blood tests.  We get to KNOW our cast.  It is important to keep a wall between you and your candidates, but this is something I will always struggle with.  What is best for them is not best for making an audience tune in.  The sound bytes that are caught during the interviews, usually the ones where they think, “I really shouldn’t have said that!  I don’t know why I did,” are the ones that will inevitably air.  This is why I do not continue with shows through production, it is too hard for me to watch!

Thank you Nikki for a really insightful and interesting interview!

There is a new vintage pop-up shop in Saint Paul, MN called Junk Love. Junk Love is the brainchild of Malia Schroeder, a marketing student at Century College. Malia takes salvaged item and turns them into something special.  She sells found items such as vintage, antique, retro, repurposed and up-cycled items.  Innovator and entrepreneur Malia Schroder also takes plain newer items and make appear old. Some would consider this the “shabby chic” look.

They threw their first weekend-long sale in May of 2011 and have had three other sales since then. For being such a new shop, it has certainly received a lot of buzz around town. They were recognized in Metro Magazine as best of the Twin Cities in 2011 along with a follow-up personal interview with Malia Schroeder who came up with the concept, blogged about in many personal blogs, participated in the first annual Urban Flea Market at the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis and the facebook page has over 300 “likes”…all of this happening in six months time sounds like quite a promising venture.

More recently, Junk Love threw a holiday sale on Black Friday. They had guest vendors at all of the previous sales but they wanted this one to be more of a holiday shopping experience so their thinking behind it was “the more, the merrier.” More vendors mean more advertising, more traffic, and more sales. This experimental sale turned out to be a pretty successful experiment and maybe next year’s Black Friday Sale will be bigger and better and even more successful.

Some things that are in store for Junk Love include possible permanent set-up at a vintage boutique in NE Minneapolis and use of a new venue for weekend sales that they still plan on doing along with the boutique space. The next weekend sale will be sometime between late February and early March of 2012 and will take place at The Lyric at Carleton Place in the “Johnny Lounge” room. It has easier access to a newly accessible parking lot that can be used for Junk Love sales and an entry that does not require the “junk lover” to be buzzed in to check out the sale.

Junk Love is moving up in the world of occasional sales and their goal is to stand out from similar shops; they are well on their way!

I’ll let it do the talking.

Thoughts?

Inverted Cup of Noodles

If you have instant cup of noodle soups in your house, please take care. Take a look at the bottom of the soup packaging. If the bottom of the cup is narrow, the cup could potentially tip and cause a serious burn.

According to Dr. Warren Garner, director of the burn unit at the University of Southern California’s Country Hospital in Los Angeles, he sees at least two to three patients a week who have been injured by these soup products.  His most common patients are small children who accidentally tip the hot soup onto themselves.  These soups can cause serious burns because the noodles tend to cling to the skin causing deeper burns.

Dr. David Greehalgh, burn unit chief at Shriner’s Hospital and author of a study titled “Instant Cup of Soup: Design Flaws Increase Risk of Burns” states there is an elegant and potentially low-cost solution to the problem.  A safer design can be achieved by simply inverting the cup or flipping it over.

Until the design is changed, parents should make sure the soup is served at a safe temperature and poured into a bowl.

Do you think the manufacturers of these products have a responsibility to make certain the packaging is safe? Can you think of other examples of packaging designed with safety in mind?

Listen to the full story, Why Burn Doctors Hate Instant Soup, on NPR.

Born to Succeed

Think of people you consider successful.  Do you think they were born to succeed?  You might be surprised to know that research suggests that success has more to do with what you do than who you are. In a recent Harvard Business Review Network post, Heidi Grant Halvorson states that successful people do the following:

Get specific.  If you know what you want to achieve, set as specific a goal as possible by using action verbs and words.  For example, I will meet with my advisor to review my academic plan this month.

Seize the moment to act on your goals.  Again, be specific. Identify when and where each action will be achieved.  For example, I will spend one hour every weekday morning from 10am to 11am in the computer lab completing assignments.

Know exactly how far you have left to go.  Depending on your goal, monitor your progress frequently so you can adjust your plan.

Be a realistic optimist. Every marathon begins with the first step. Successful people understand that things don’t always come easily and most endeavors require a lot of patience, hard work, careful planning and persistence. Knowing this, successful people maintain a high level of optimism, keep the finish line in mind and believe they will achieve their goal.

Focus on getting better, rather than being good. There is always room for improvement. We are all capable of further developing our talents, knowledge, beliefs, aptitudes and attitudes.  Rather than simply proving yourself, focus on improving current skills and reaching your true potential.

Have grit.  If you’ve got true grit, persist.  If you don’t, simply believe you do because you can develop it through planning, effort and persistence.

Build your willpower muscle. To build willpower the author suggests taking on a challenge that requires you to do something you really would rather avoid.  For example, if you get the urge to watch television instead of reading a chapter, resist the temptation and hit the books. Practice this frequently to build your willpower.

Don’t tempt fate. Resist taking on too many challenges all at one time.  Measure risk and know your limitations.

Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do.  Instead of dwelling on what you perceive as negative, focus on what you believe is positive.  For example, rather than claiming you will no longer procrastinate on projects, proclaim you will schedule an earlier deadline date.

For more good information on the science of success, visit Heidi Grant Halvorson on her personal blog, The Science of Success at www.heidigranthalvorson.com. Follow her on Twitter 

Perhaps Zygi Wilf and Co. have had enough of political spokespersons.  The Vikings media machine may now be moving more unilaterally than in months past, but not without its detracting movements.  The first of two videos below comes out of the Vikings organization and is a compelling appeal to the historical, cultural and identifying senses of Minnesota’s citizens.  The second video is from 5 Eyewitness News and showcases the work of Minneapolis land and business owners as they attempt to make a case for a stadium deal near Target Field.  5 Eyewitness News was provided this exclusive, so although it may not be a formal advertisement, it still represents a concerted effort on the part of a group to take their message to the masses.

It’s worth noting that at last I heard The Vikings were still lending their full support to an Arden Hills stadium deal.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Where do you stand on the stadium issues, and do you find either of these videos to be compelling marketing or public relations efforts?

I personally like the prospect of the Minneapolis deal.