What is Marathon Monday

John Hancock hangs signs throughout the city promoting the race.
Adidas sends in news uniforms, water bottles and health packs for runners.
Health stations are set up by volunteers covering the 26.4 miles for safety.

And the college students in Boston....
Rushing to buy six packs and then getting held back by the Boston Police Force so that their stumbling drunkenness doesn't ruin the race that people travel around the world for.

What the race is promoted as and how a large portion of Boston residents treat the race are almost polar opposites. From Wellesley College through Boston College, Boston University, MIT, Northeastern and Berklee, Marathon Monday is more about drinking for no purpose whatsoever than it is focused on the runners.

But that can't be advertised, can it.

Could Consumer Created Advertising Crush the Industry

We witnessed at this year's superbowl that consumer-generated advertising is constantly rising. The commercials were funny and gave viewers a sense of pride that someone who was a regular person could come up with a funny storyline and end up with their ad on the superbowl.

But what about the industry?

There are millions of professionals who work on a daily basis to get one of the coveted superbowl advertisement spots and some twit from a North Carolina college came up with something funny and now they are out a project.

Are they going to be out of jobs next?

If consumer generated media keeps increasing and increasing, then what are we all doing paying tuition to get into an industry that is starting to favor the ideas 18 year-olds over the professionals.

Welcome to Facebook Candidates!

We all know about the Facebook phenomenon. Some smart Harvard kids came up with an online social network that has now basically turned almost all students into semi-stalkers. And our newest friends...Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

The site has transformed from a safe social network for only college students into an outlet for all companies (and individuals) to post their lives and pictures up and see what kind of wall posts they will receive.

Although it does reach a very high number of people in a convenient and low-cost manner, the personal aspect is gone.

Candidates are spending less time traveling the country that they want to run and more time surfing the world wide web.

Maybe sometimes we need to avoid certain aspects of technology.

Jet Blue gets it Right!

Want to force your product onto thousands of people a day? Talk to the guys at Jet Blue.

"Please buckle your seatbelt and start deciding whether you would like the DORITOS munchi mix or the KEEBLER cookies"

Airplane food is no longer a bag of no-name peanuts.

Jet Blue has organized contracts with several major players in the food and beverage industry to use their products on their flights.

The result...
-Happier customers who like the choices and often get the brand of their choice.
-Happy Jet Blue who is now paying less for the brand name goods than they were for the no-name.
-Happy companies who are getting great advertising without too much effort.

Job well done.

Street Entertainment

A recent Boston guerrilla advertising campaign put the horrid of the aqua teen bomb at rest showing that some campaigns can be quite fun and spread through the city just as fast.

A giant truck comes plowing up Newbury street with one entire side taken up by a TV screen. The truck stops on the corner and 4 20-something year old guys step out with guitars and start playing toward the screen.

It's the new campaign for Guitar Heroes, the video game.

Not only does the campaign catch peoples' attention, but it's interactive. Those bystanders who don't have anywhere to be fast can hang out and try out the gaming system for themselves.

I hate video games. And I don't really like guitars either, but something about this just makes you excited because you want to be part of the whole sha-nan-gans.

How Italians Do It

Spending spring break in Barcelona and Florence was a wonderful, relaxing and beautiful experience. So it wasn't surprising that leaving was the most tedious and difficult part of our trip.

Airports are always annoying and stressful and full of people who are in bad moods. But most are run in a very corporate and professional manner--I don't think that the Milan International Airport got that memo.

When you walk into the airport the first thing that you will notice has absolutely nothing to do with travel but rather a topless model sporting some new underwear from an Italian clothing line. The advertisement was probably 50 feet tall and hung in the middle of the terminal for flights to the US. Now when you are angered and stressed do you really think that we want to look at some 95 lb model telling us to leave the airport to get the knickers that she has on.

While we were stuck in the Milan airport for another 55 hours we found that she was not the only one. It seems that the airport officials will sell ad space just about anywhere they can argue. I'm kinda expecting the jetway to be a bra ad next time I'm over there.

Birthday Cards

Happy Birthday to Me!!!

The majority of my family lives far away (stretching from North Carolina into the northern noman's land in Canada) so birthday cards have become quite popular over the years.

The way that birthdays are perceived confuses me a little bit.

"Congratulations! Best wishes for your new year"

Translation...
"hey great job on staying alive for another year! hope you can keep it up this year to"

If the day is supposed to be just about you why aren't the cards just about how great (or horrible) of a person you are. They could talk about your interests, ask about your life, or tell you about their's, but instead my birthday cards all came from Hallmark's 1st store aisle where the implication of a birthday has become a litttle bit cloudy.

However, I do love cake, flowers, balloons and celebrations!