Call me self-absorbed, self-centered if you want but there are very few things in life I find more boring that watching wedding videos.
I was recently submitted to one of such ordeals and all I wanted was for earth to swallow me.
I then remembered my brother’s wedding pictures… that was a great event, and an even better party but then again… watching the pics and video nearly put me to sleep. I had to something, I didn’t know what..
It’s incredible what you can do today with computers… Here is how Spanish Weddings look nowadays…
Last night (whilst searching for Dr. Doom, our missing cat) I had to keep my mind busy and ended up reflecting about the troubles of the publishing industry.
It seems that every friend of mine that is somehow involved in the publishing business is struggling to cope with the new environment. Is the same story across the board, rising cost, less readers, less advertisers, people seem to have run out of ideas and businesses are going down the drain.
The fact that nobody reads seems to be a common complain.
The truth is, people read, a lot, more than ever before. They just don’t consume information in the old, traditional way, hence the business model has become obsolete and doomed to fail.
Nobody is going to come save the publishing industry as we know it.
Some of us (Seth too) believe the future could lie in micro-publishing. The creation of online magazines that cater to specific areas of interest and that zoom into an audience specific enough to be of interest to advertisers.
The advantages to the publisher? Many. Paper costs are reduced to zero, distribution is easy, fast, and, in theory, limited only by how good is the idea and its expression.
The logic is overwhelming.
Adapt or die.
Here is the last edition of Maeshelle West- Davies So Social Club. This is an evolving experiment, put together entirely by a community of contributors. I suggest you check it out…
It happened yesterday on a discussion on LinkedIn TED. The subject: Are you doing what you are passionate about, or is your job simply how you support your lifestyle? Join the discussion.
Great people are commenting on this post. An interesting community is emerging.
Then, out of the blue we receive the following comment:
As much as I love the concept of giving back to society and following a compassionate lifestyle I could not avoid feeling I was being exposed to some sort of campaign put together by an advertising company with the intention of increasing exposure and buzz.
I see nothing wrong when individuals use their creative talents to create a cause and at the same time raise awareness towards their companies and business, this is at the core of the concept of corporate sponsorship and much good has been achieved this way in the last century. However, nothing annoys me more that seeing marketeers and advertising types trying to exploit people’s goodwill.
Luckily, the public is not a brainless mass any longer. When this happens such campaigns tend to backfire, people spot a genuine lack of sincerity and the whole thing turns into a very embarrassing “social media blunder”.
Any company trying to follow this route should be aware of one very important rule: Be real, sincerity matters!
I am interested in your point of view. Please have a look at this link and write your impressions on the blog.
Most brands are new, they have products (at time brilliant) but they lack a story. Most of their advertising budget goes towards creating one. The results? well.. switch on the TV.
And then you have those brands who have a story, a great story, but for whatever reason they fail to link that story with the brand itself.
This used to be the case of Anadolu Sigorta, a Turkish insurance company.
The recent unveiling of their new advertising campaign shows how to turn things around.
In a masterfully produced ad, Anadolu Sigorta brings us to the very moment of decision that led the founder of the country, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, to the creation of a national insurance company.
The ad is in Turkish but it speaks an universal language. Speaks of honor and willingness to turn things around, speaks of reconstruction and national pride.
Turkey is a very proud country (too proud at times), so this campaign speaks to each and every single Turkish citizen. Very few people knew the story of this insurance company. Now we all do.
This is brilliant work, done by people who obviously cared and took pride in their craft. This could have been done in a cheesy and mercenary way, instead it is done with great style and dignity, matching the dignity of the moment.
Of all my teachers I specially remember my mathematics teacher. He was a wiry guy, glasses, beard.
He was a teacher, but he shouldn’t have been. The only thing he taught me was to hate mathematics and science.
Of all my teachers I remember only a few. Very few, and most of them for the very wrong reasons.
Very few of them truly inspired me.
I can safely say that most of what I have learned I did motivated by my own curiosity and possibly a “genetic” predisposition to reject accepted systems and try to build new ones.
Today, regardless whether you have finished your formal education, or are about to start university, or a Masters, Phd.. if you are in the process of choosing a school for your kid or any of your friends is in that position right now. Today I would love you to listen to this great talk by Ken Robinson.
If you are trying to use social media to promote your cause, your skills, your brand or your company this post is for you.
Most of us are selling something on the net. We are trying to get supporters to whatever cause we believe is worth fighting for, we are trying to sell our services as independent professionals, we are trying to build brands that we believe will contribute to the world in a positive way.
I am assuming we are all seling something of value right?
The traditional advertising methods don’t really work in this new environment, and this is specially true when it comes to personal brands.
I see many small businesses and consultancies trying to launch using the net as spring board. They all focus their efforts on logos and websites and fail to understand the most important part, what they should be focusing, specially at an early stage is on building their personal brands.
Your logo, your website, your company, should be a perfect reflection of who you are and what you stand for, and if it is not then scrap it all and start all over again, or even better, forget about logos and focus instead on showing the world who you really are and what you can really offer.
There are billions of people out there, millions of small business, products more or less innovative, but there is only one YOU.
Talking to a friend about intrapreneurship and whether it is possible to find it in Turkey or not.
Intrapreneurship is defined as the act of behaving like an entrepreneur, except within a larger organization.
By extension, “Intrapreneurship refers to employee initiatives in organizations to undertake something new, without being asked to do so”. The biggest obstacles for “intrapreneurs” would be the resistance and backlash from their management, probably even the risk of being ostracized and in the case of failure, fired.
A company who allows intrapreneurship would never consider firing someone because of a failed project. On the contrary. Failure is at the core of entrepreneurship, and it should be rewarded. On the other hand, nobody with an entrepreneurial spirit should remain tied to a company that threatens to fire him because of his initiatives.
I’m not entirely sure Turkish business culture allows for this. For intrapreneurship to really take place it must happen within a big organization that allows and encourage freedom and creativity. It must also be the kind of organization that places a significant amount of value and trust in its employees.
How many of those companies you know in Turkey? Do you work in an environment that foster intrapreneurs and rewards initiative?
Our post today is an homage to a wonderful woman. A larger than life character, someone who lived her life with passion and a purpose. A true animal lover.
It’s not who you are. It’s what you do (for others) that defines you.
Most people and companies don’t seem to get that simple truth (well, maybe is not so simple after all).
They see social media as an ideal tool to engage in shameless self-promotion. Community doesn’t mater to them. It’s all about them, their products and services and how to sell them.. fast!
This is one of the main reasons why most social media experiments fail.
People have flocked to new media precisely to avoid the randomness of commercial advertising and they are not about to fall for a new kind of spam, no matter how hard advertising agencies try to disguise it under the “social” label.
Another common mistake is thinking of social media as a way to mask one of life’s most painful realities, the fact that most people are completely clueless about what it is that make them special, so they try to be someone else, a different person every other week!
There are millions of blogs about animal welfare out there, but there is no blog like Let’s Adopt!. Why? because there is noone like us. The success of that blog lies in the fact that the content, and the way we express is quite simply uniquely ours.
Same for Qefal, the blog you are reading right now. This uniquely Fulya’s (the truly deep stuff) and me (the rants).
Love us or hate us nobody will ever accuse us of trying to be anyone else.
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