April 2008

When you think of the game Bingo, you probably don’t envision a weekly activity at PlattForm. Well for today’s fun fact of PlattForm, we’ll discuss Buzzword Bingo.

The Interactive Department has been playing weekly games of Bingo for quite some time, nearly three years in fact. It’s not the regular game of Bingo that is played though, but an alternative version entitled Buzzword Bingo.

It is set up in a similar way, but instead of playing the typical B-I-N-G-O across the top and numbers running down from the letters, the winner of the previous week’s game gets to choose the topic and make the bingo cards. This is where Buzzword Bingo comes from. Instead of playing five squares in a row or four corners, the Bingo organizer will usually come up with a letter or shape to make that has some association with the selected topic. The winner of the game will get to select the next week’s bingo subject, get to choose a candy bar, and receive a certificate.

Recent Bingo topics include:
Over-rated…
Recently Submitted Words to Webster’s Dictionary
New University of Illinois Mascots
Things I do to get my Man Card Taken Away

Visit this buzzword bingo site to build your own custom bingo game.

So the next time you are in the Interactive Department on a Thursday afternoon, if you are lucky, you may be able to join in a rousing game of Buzzword Bingo.

Additional Interesting Facts about Buzzword Bingo
Beth Neely won the first time she ever played
Keith Spisak has won 7 times
Justin McGinnis has won 6 times
Lee White has won 5 times
Erik Dahlstrom holds the record for most consecutive losses and most games played without a win – 74.

The world of advertising is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as a way to alleviate deceptive ways within the infrastructure of commerce.

Deceptive – adjective: causing one to believe what is not true or fail to believe what is true (www.dictionary.com).

These regulatory notions should be taken into effect with political advertising. However, they are not. The FTC only regulates advertising within the commercial realm. Presidential elections are not considered commercial; therefore, the details and ideals shared on a candidate’s behalf might not be all they are packaged up to be.

Take into consideration certain status quo of the products we see commercial advertising for on a day to day basis – price, branding, organizational association, expiration date, net weight, the country of origin, not just country of manufacture. Are these all notions that we consider significant in the advertising that we see for the non-commercial items or ideas as well?

Some presidential candidates will pump themselves full of fillers or display awesome packaging based on what they think the consumer will “buy.” It seems to be no different from commercial advertising efforts for other everyday items consumed by the general public. Except! What we listen for or even buy into during the election year effects how we live our daily lives – even if the surgeon general’s warning discourages it.

Some smoke, most pay sales tax, and all of us should vote. Policy-regulated advertising impacts all of is…

I guess that’s why they call it campaigning.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising)

I sit in a square room with 5 other content writers. Would it be fair to call it a writer’s block? Ooooh. Ouch. Bad pun. That one kind of hurt. But, writing like that does have the particular advantage of elucidating an ancient question that, gone unanswered, has plagued writers since the invention of the alphabet.

What does a writer do when their writing just plain sucks?

Most writers have experienced moments when they realize their attempts at witticism have not only missed the mark, but have sailed straight into the heart of Dullsville, U.S.A. But, what can you do when you don’t have time to wait for the writing gods to point you in the right direction?

Here are a few tips for writers tangling with, dare I say it, writers block:

Start with the easy parts. If you start with the parts of your project that come most easily, the rest of your piece might just follow naturally. So, don’t be afraid of starting in the middle or at the end – you may just be stuck under the pressure of writing the perfect lead.

Freewrite. Start writing anything – even if it’s miles of copy away from your goal, you may find that simply getting into the flow will help you get writing in the right direction. (That’s what I did with my pun of dullness.)

Crappy first drafts. Anne Lamott’s book on writing Bird by Bird popularized the method of writing crappy first drafts. If you start writing with the understanding that your first draft is going to be a sloppy mess, it gives you the freedom to get it down on paper and return to it later for a beautifying editing process.

Outline it. If you know the main components of what you’re trying to communicate, start with those. Then continue to sequentially add more specific details. Eventually, you’ll have a healthy outline to draw on during the development of your final piece.

Write it as a letter. Pretend you’re writing a letter to an old friend or family member explaining what you intend to write about. This will take the pressure off and help you get the words down in a conversational style that you can revisit later.

Every writer probably has tricks like these up their sleeves. Care to share your tips for the trade?

There aren’t many people who can boast Mike McHugh’s accomplishment: nine positions within nine years, consistently stepping up the corporate ladder. And you thought you were upwardly mobile! From his start as a Media Analyst back in 1999, he was promoted to Media Buyer. Then he traded into Client Services as an Account Executive and consecutively moved up to Senior Account Executive, Director of New Business Development, Director of Client Services, Director of both Client Services and New Business Development (still with me?), Vice President of Interactive Marketing, and finally Chief Interactive Officer.

McHugh’s a funny guy, the kind of guy who likes watching and playing sports and says his motto for life is, “More beer please.” It’s all very laidback, and it could be deceiving. But when you start talking to him about work, about challenges, about success, then it’s not at all hard to see how he got to his position as CIO in well under 10 years. It’s about drive and focus.

“The biggest thing is to just invest yourself into what you want to accomplish,” McHugh says. “Too many people say they want something but don’t commit themselves to it, and then wonder about why they aren’t successful when it’s their own lack of investment. If you want to grow and be successful in whatever you do, you have to make your actions match your words and really become a part of that thing.”

Which is exactly what he does – and may be why he identified a little bit with Tony Soprano from The Sopranos. Not that anyone over in Interactive is going to be sleepin’ with the fishes (at least not as far as we know), but when the pressure is on and the questions are flying in from every angle, McHugh turns that all into strength and deals with it. Just like Tony.

“We run into challenges every day from direction or the other,” says McHugh. “Sometimes it is partners we work with, systems we have, client concerns or any number of things. It is all about identifying the core problem, deciding on if it is anything we can do anything about, and then what is the best thing to do to overcome or work around the issue.”

A balanced, focused outlook, all the more important to have as the interactive sector of the advertising industry grows exponentially in importance. McHugh keeps PlattForm in the interactive game, coming up with new ways to drive revenue and grow leads and be dynamic in a fast-moving industry.

And at the end of the day, he slows it down and kicks back with a beer.

Every week, I try to pick a word I don’t normally use and add it to my daily vernacular. Last week, for instance, my word was “rife”. I peppered it in to nearly every sentence I said. Heck, I even used it in my blog. My vocabulary had become rife with the word rife. Oddly, no one ever notices my word of the week … and that’s despite the fact I use it ad nauseaum.

I suppose if I used a word like “Farfegnughen” it would stand out more. Four syllables versus just one. Hmmm, maybe my co-workers are just blatantly dismissing me … even though they all look mildly interested in what I’m saying.

This week I’ve used the word “glean” to excess. And, once again, no one has made mention of it. Frankly, the whole thing is starting to annoy me … if you hadn’t already gleaned that. What do I have to do around here to get my self-appointed word of the week out to the masses? Yell it?

I’m notorious for whistling, humming and singing songs under my breath. Inevitably, someone within earshot will be whistling, humming or singing that same tune within two minutes. It’s called an Ear Worm … and it can cause sheer madness. I like it because it’s simultaneously infuriating and whimsical. If given the opportunity, I could have the whole place chanting “Y-M-C-A” by my use of subliminal Ear Worming.

I have no such luck, however, with my word of the week. Oh sure, I can have the oh-so hyper-masculine company president singing “Fly, Robin, Fly” under his breath in two seconds. But try to get him to use the word “rife” in a sentence? Forget it.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, though. I’m actually considering handing him a green banana and a yellow banana … and asking him to describe them. Inevitably, he’ll say one is “ripe” … which, in my book, is close enough to “rife”. Thus, I win.

Next week’s word, you ask? It’s “pedestrian”. As in … could my pedestrian co-workers be any more pedestrian when it comes to using my lexicon of love?

And, for the love of God, stop singing “YMCA”, will ya’? You’re driving me nuts.