Last week, I got my desk moved to the other side of the office. While I am a little further from the coffee machine, bathrooms and that lady who always keeps a candy dish on her desk, I have upgraded to an obstructed view of central park and a community bottle of Tapatio owned by the Spanish agency I now neighbor.

As the salad days are beginning to dawn upon my new home, the sobering news I have to now adjust to is that I lost the empty neutral desk used as a storage space between the desks of one of my bosses and I. No amount of LinkedIn credentials can tell the story of my career the way the nick-knacks on my desk do.  That neutral space was the tomb, the stuff was the gold and mummified cats and I was Tutankhamun posted up like a king. Analogies aside, with the smaller location I can’t keep the items with my new space.

Since the internet is a good place to go online shopping, I wanted to offer the items for sale so you too can work like people like me.

A Michelin Man Bobble Head – Was passed down to me from my former superior who used it to prop up her Barbie doll. Head can bobble for 8 seconds at most. Made out of hard plastic that smells funny. Price $21

A Barbie Doll with a thigh tattoo – Used by my former superior to prop up her Michelin man. Head does not bobble. Price: $15

One 15 lb weight – Weighs 15 pounds or 6.80389 Kilograms if you are European. Can make your arm tired and boss intimidated if you lift it a lot. Price: £15

Giant bag of CB2 pillows – Can confirm, are soft. Much softer than my desk neighbor’s giant bag of Ikea pillows. Price: 300mg of Adderall.

1TB Hard Drive once owned by Paralympic Gold Medalist Heath Calhoun – In a shipping envelope that reads, “Please mail back to Heath Calhoun when finished.” – Price $20

Y&R branded Kippah – Features the Y&R logo surrounded by flames. Size: Medium. Price: $35

Mystery box of Fisher-Price toys – Comes with a nourished childhood followed by crippling depression over the inevitability of aging. Toys are still in their original packaging. Price: $100.

:60 Live Read Radio Copy Script – My short copywriter career features a number of accolades such as the following: coming up with the name of my pet snake, getting a B on a college paper on post-Nazi Germany and over 20 years of literacy. While the script died because it was submitted a little too late, I can safely say it would fetch a Cannes Bronze Lion. Price $69

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There is a lot of beautiful scenery across this country that goes unnoticed.

Gorgeous mountain roads, rich farmland neighborhoods and awesome radio programming are being neglected and unenjoyed by drivers trying to get from point A to B as fast as possible.

So please, take the scenic route home…and register for the Run in the Corn 5K on October 18th in Schaghticoke, New York.

Each runner…is granted entrance to a cross-country race that starts around and through the beautiful Liberty Ridge Farm in and plunges deep into one of the largest corn mazes in the U.S. for a 3.1 mile journey from start to finish.

If you register now, you will get a $5 discount to the farm experience including rides and barnyard games for the whole family. A portion of the proceeds go to support the Make A Wish Foundation North East chapter.

So…learn to love the scenic route. Because if you don’t, you will never finish.  

Go to runinthecorn dot com to sign up.

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Act now because prices will rise arbitrarily.

-Dangerous Dan

The first hardest job in advertising is effectively demonstrating your abilities in a space larger than a sheet of resume paper and a 45 minute interview. The subject of how to parlay an internship into a profession has been beaten to death by blogs everywhere. Admittedly, I have found myself dumping my “wisdom” on a worldpress document for the for those who are one step behind me in life to learn from.

But no one talks about the second hardest job in advertising. Once the glitz and glam of being the account baby living life on a wing and an “aw shucks, mister” prayer, you will find out quickly that you bear a responsibility to your generation to prove that you have your life together, and in such way that you can help other’s figure out theirs.

It’s called “Having an intern” and it combines the turmoil of parenthood, professionalism and being able to justify why the hell you do the things you do. When you think about it, it’s quite nerve racking for a job you have nothing to lose on. While nobody is going to get mad if you accidentally steer your intern into a lifetime of drug addiction and loneliness, your LinkedIn endorsements won’t be as robust as your coworkers’.

So alas, I will give you a few tidbits from my experience with having interns. While I am too young to really tell over a long timeline whether or not my experience providing has really affected people, I can tell they may have enjoyed their time by not looking too visibly bored.

At the time of writing this article, I have worked at my agency for 15 months and sired 2 interns. One was a recent college graduate who had his heart set on being a copywriter and the other was some high school kid who job shadowed at the agency for a week. I’ve also taught a class of middle schoolers for 3 months about advertising,so if the upcoming turns out to be a list bad advice, I apologize in advance.

1: Give them daily advertising challenges

“Yo (name of intern). Hypothetical situation: Let’s say you were a high profile serial killer about to be given the electric chair. While they are strapping you down, a newspaper reporter asks, ‘Your execution will be on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper. Do you have any requests on what the headline will read?’ What will you say?”

“What up, dawg? Let’s say you are the marketer for a romantic comedy film starring Nicholas Cage. Throughout the whole movie, Nicholas cage does not do any action scenes nor speak louder than a conversational manner. None of the other actors are above the D List, so the poster will only have a picture of Nick Cage looking casual in a white shirt and a smile on his face. What would you title the movie so that it doesn’t alienate the romantic comedy fans or the Nick Cage fans.”

“(name of intern), (name of intern), banana rama fo f(name of intern minus first letter). Let’s say you were in a job interview and the interviewer holds up a picture from facebook of you passed out drunk in a bath tub with vomit and sharpie over your face. How will you explain the photo and impress the interviewer at the same time?”

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The daily advertising challenge is great because it will keep even the most attention deficit disordered college kid entertained long enough for you to get your important work done while challenging them at the same time. Think of this as your own version of the Google job interview question that catches the kids off guard and gets them in the habit of thinking outside the box. I’ve heard doing stuff like “thinking out of the box” can help you be successful.

In case you were wondering, the newspaper headline for me would simply read, “Clark Sparks.”

2. Put them on a new business pitch

One of the drawbacks of most internships in advertising is that they are a little too short to really see a client ad campaign progress from a lowly marketing brief and turn into a raging, hormonal monster hell-bent on getting certain people to think differently about the way they are brushing their teeth. On a new business pitch on the other hand, the timelines are much shorter and a young person gets a chance to see all the facets of the business play out in front of their eyes. And while the learning curve is steep for people unfamiliar with the industry going in, they can easily come out telling the world they had a tangible role in making creative magic happen.

The beauty of a new business pitch is that it gives the kids something of their own to work on that’s separate from what they are learning from you. It’s called “diffusion of responsibility” and it’s a beautiful thing.

3. Give them their own projects to own

Admittedly, this should be pretty obvious. However, one of the pitfalls of a lot of internships is the work the kids are doing can’t really be taken out of the office and shown to a third party. While we should protect sensitive business information by limiting how much secrets the kid gets to take home with him, they will look like rock stars in their first job interview when they can slap the thing they did when working for you onto the table with a smug look on their face. Extra points if requires them to carry a brief case around with them to hold.

The point here is to give them an experience to take with them. If that’s too much work, make them eat weird food they haven’t eaten before

4. Try to romantically hook them up with other interns.

Alternatively, organize a World Cup tournament between the best soccer nations in the world and have the games broadcast during working hours. Works like a charm.

5. Get them actively involved with the stuff you’re working on

Because, you know, you were there too not too long before and it’s nice to have a second opinion on the work you’re doing, especially when you are still learning yourself. And in turn, both of you will combine forces and cook up summer in the winter.

Having an intern is a very Diet Coke alternative to having a kid. From what I’ve heard, one of the coolest things about having kids is that they will point things out to you that you’ve overlooked for years. Interns have the same way with the small things. Things like how you always put the logo in certain places and how the coffee machine always dispenses enough coffee into the cups to leave room for the milk will be reminded to you once again. And for a brief few minutes, you remember what you thought about the first time you got into the job you love.

The nineties were relatively easy on America’s youth. A bachelor’s degree at a university promised unlimited success. The video game industry exploded with the launch of the Nintendo 64 and the Sony PlayStation. The U.S. earned a successful victory in Operation Desert Storm. Throughout the Clinton administration, adolescents knew there was life to be lived.

Somehow, this doesn’t explain why a kid named Josh Ramsey felt the need to keep throwing the ball at my head during a 4th grade recess baseball. 

Admittedly, I threw the first punch when we confronted on the mound. My right handed hook with a fully extended elbow felt justified through my constant warnings of “stop throwing at people’s heads, Josh.” I had never fought anyone before in my life, and to this day, I had never fought anyone again. By the time I had his head clutched between my legs in a pseudo choke hold, shouts from the other kids begged us to stop. As a result, I awarded the bout to myself via disqualification as Josh paid no mind to the often spoken rules of going after the genital region. 

The fight lasted a total of 45 seconds which can tread dangerously close to the time teachers can notice and diagnose a fight occurring. As the game continued, I managed one base hit and a fly-out. However, the opposing pitching continued to land high and inside on a suspiciously frequent basis. 

Typical Josh.  

I was recently asked to contribute to a friend’s website where young college students and graduates offer their internship experiences, awkward professional encounters and how to stand out in the job market. My story was about having to step(limp) away from all the networking due to a sprained ankle and figure out who I am and what I believe in. This weekend, I cut my thumb open with a knife while trying to slice a bagel. We’ll see what kind of philosophic adventures I get into.

– Daniel

First, I would like to express my apologies for not updating the blog in the past few months. This winter has been incredibly busy with friends visiting, social networking (the face to face kind), near misses, sprained ankles, and the duality of wanting to go outside with avoiding the frigid cold. Hopefully, this annual occurrence won’t affect my ability to write in years to come.

At the present moment, I can happily say that the high temperature today is 50 degrees. In a relative sense, this equates to a nice spring day and acts as a prompt for restaurant and bar owners in the area to open their roof or patio access to patrons. It will be nice to go outside much more often and become reacquainted with the people and the world around.

Recently, I had coffee with a new friend who is a Strategic Planner at an ad agency in Chelsea. As expected, she shared her wisdom of Strategic Planning as well as how her background in Journalism gives her the unique perspective on the study of consumers. What I did not expect was that our meeting would involve her giving me an assignment. She told me to take any piece of art that I find to be absolutely spectacular and write a creative brief for it. For example, pretend that you are a music agency and your creative director was Roger Waters and you were assigned to make an album. How would you inspire him to write “The Dark Side of the Moon.” Granted, this particular brief would have nothing on it besides a healthy dose of LSD and heroin, but the point of the assignment is still a great way to think of creativity as a process and not an end result.  It has a beginning that needs to be inspired, and all the good strategists can find ways to bring it out.

That’s where I hope to take this blog in the near future. I want to explore the ways and places where creativity can come from, and I want to think retrospectively in hopes to not bastardize the term all together. Because you know, the fate of the creative world rests in the semantics of danielwantsajob.com. Hopefully, the content that you see in the near future will meander though the experience and thought processes involved in expressing truth and pain. As cliché as it sounds, the richness of life is in the journey rather than the destination.

Take care and see you soon.

-Daniel

Last night I went to bed. But it was different from the usual evenings in which I periodically wake up to the sound of semi trucks j-braking, outbound planes from JFK airport and motorcyclists using Grand Street as a drag strip. This night, the only sound that could be heard outside my window was the low humming of the wind brushing up against the aluminum siding of the building and emergency sirens off in the distance. The noise that hindered my sleep for the past 3 months was now something that I would have given my left ear to have back, at least this particular night.

Lucky for us, East Williamsburg did not receive as much damage from Hurricane Sandy as New Jersey and Manhattan. While I did not witness the real life versions of the flooding and damage that you may have seen pictures of in the media, the atmosphere of the storm and the city told its own story. Much like the smell of the fire resonated uptown on 9/11, the sudden bursts of wind that would shake our apartment followed by silence were our constant reminder of what was going on.

As I currently write this blog post, hundreds of volunteers and rescue workers are providing aid to those who were affected by the storm. Maintenance crews are busy rebuilding power lines and cell phone towers while pumping the water out of the subway system. Although normalcy will be in the distant future for some, the jobs that Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Christie did in organizing the relief efforts have set us on the right path.

I am glad to report that, this morning, the shops in my neighborhood are opening back to the public and people who do not rely on the subway are able to go back to work. I have now realized that there is a sense of comfort with the noise and crowds of people. It is the spirit of a city who thrives in adversity and I am now becoming a part of it.

A Harley-Davidson just shook my apartment as he sped by. I wonder how long it will take until that gets old again.

This weekend, my girlfriend’s mother came to visit our humble abode on our culturally dense Eastern side of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY. During her stay, I was able to revisit New York City with the perspective of a tourist as we perused Time Square, 6^th Avenue, and Broadway Shows. Before her arrival to the city, Dorothy and I had to do some serious cleaning of our apartment. Not because we had to prove that our apartment stays consistently clean all the time, but to show that we have learned basic homemaking skills acquired in our childhood and college years. In the midst of dusting, washing, vacuuming, and removing the gunk from the areas of our five room apartment where gunk tends to congregate, I was not able to watch the Presidential Debate last Wednesday. Fortunately, there is a rectangle block in my pocket that can shoot birds at pigs and check twitter. Using that, I was able to deduct that Mitt Romney did pretty good, Obama did alright, and the debate moderator Jim Lehrer fielded the brunt of frustration built by a month of NFL substitute officiating.

One of the most interesting things about the second election that I will be able to participate in as a legal voter is how far forward technology moves in four years. So the art of campaigning has to drastically change to span the new frontiers in the social world. Maybe this is all just a figment of my 23 year old’s imagination as compared to the nineteen year old’s four years before. So if I am wrong, let that be my disclaimer, but I can say that the atmosphere in which people talk about politics is changing. Stories transcend the 24 hour news cycle and Youtube unlike in 2008.

Using internet memes to paint a caricature of our political figures just like the newspaper cartoons depicting Teddy Roosevelt swinging his big stick to express the jilted journalist’s political beliefs; the social sphere is slowly becoming a friendlier confine to discuss politics. My facebook and twitter feed is much richer with somewhat intellectual political commentary. Whereas four years ago, it would be easy to feel alienated to preach how the opposing candidate has matter in his skull not colored grey. Keep in mind the disclaimer in the previous paragraph about the political literacy of a nineteen year old versus a twenty three year old, the same may apply to the facebook friends of mine of the same age. No matter if you get your news from information, misinformation, editorials, fact-checkers, polls, or comedy pundits, we are all more comfortable to discuss our healthy pessimism.

With the town hall debate next week, I will probably be too busy getting my Halloween costume together to have a chance to watch it.

I think I might go as Psy from “Gangam Style”

In my experience as an advertising student and overall decent listener, one of the most common terms in any discussion on the purpose of social media in the advertising world is “relationship” and how social media is used to build relationships between brands and consumers. Now we can all admit that this is a much better explanation than to say that it generates sales, but I can’t help but feel uneasy on the broadness of the term. Part of me does not want to believe that can have a relationship with Coca-Cola on an intimate level as their children or parents.* With that said, the industry is booming with new opportunities to log into the Facebook machine and get involved with the activities and fun that major soda, cracker and hamburger brand have going on.** But is this trend moving towards people having closer relationships to brands? I am going to ramble on a blog post and share it across all my social media accounts to figure out why.

In 2012, the Association of Consumer Research stuck their noses into people’s relationships with their brands and found that people in fact do want a relationship with a brand. There, question answered. But on the other hand, the Harvard Business Review found conflicting evidence suggesting that only 23% of people want a relationship with a brand.  The problem isn’t that the ACR or the HBR are wrong; it’s just that they are both right based on their unique definitions of what a relationship entails. The American Consumer Review defined a relationship in commercial sense as the mutual exchange in benefits and value between two parties whereas the Harvard Business Review equated the relationship between brand and people to the relationship between people and family members. Its an interesting finding by both sources because it seems to show that in the practical sense, people do share a connection with their favorite companies and this connection leads to greater involvement with the company’s happenings. Can you still call this a relationship if you keep in mind that products and services are a means to solve a problem?

In this day in age (also thanks to Apple), there is a movement towards pushing a brand’s purpose rather than its products. Defining the career of Steve Jobs and Macintosh computers was his commitment to the phones, computers, mp3 players, and tablets being a by-product of the mission statement. The concept of the mission statement surrounding how you make your products and what you make has been molded and crafted in many successful social media based advertising campaigns. It seems that the product sits behind the hashtag rather than on store shelves which makes the whole dynamic between people and companies much more compelling. Think about how Nike’s #makeitcount campaign seamlessly integrated the platforms to attain massive involvement. The campaign wasn’t directly about selling a digital wristband, but to remind people to always maintain an active lifestyle. It tied back to the company’s mission to let the world know that if you have a body, you can be an athlete. I vehemently agree with their believes which has led me to be a loyal supporter of Nike over the years even despite questionable manufacturing issues. But what does that mean to say about the relationship that I have with the company? Almost any one that  you talk to will agree in various levels of passion that everyone can be an athlete. If you think rationally about what inspires you are the people who do it best or for self-content.

Very few in the company’s target audience will disagree with Nike’s mission. Appealing to the masses by way of your company’s purpose is common practice and social media makes communicating this purpose work at a much faster and interactive pace. However, a company is only limited to discussing one mission and its following will divide if it strays from that mission. Sometimes it can lead to uproar.

With all that said, to say that the purpose of social media is to develop relationships between consumers and brands would be a little contrived without a more specific definition of what that relationship entails. While it seems to be more practical in the sense of communicating to a large group of people at once to define relationships as the connection between man and brand as the exchange of values and benefits. In reference to communication as an art form, there is a rightful tendency to look beyond the rational. In the age of the television, ads became legendary when they transcended the colorful glass box and spoke to the audience individually and there are some incredibly smart people trying to do the same with social media. However, whether it is out of romantics or practicality, always be mindful of how the word “relationship” gets used to describe people and their potato chips.

But who am I to judge.

Everyone knows about the importance that LinkedIn brings to your non-beerpong playing accomplishments. Its simple and clean format allows for you to post all of your pertinent experience online and easily link your blogs, twitters, and Facebooks as well. Its seems to me that the primary use out of most of the LinkedIn userbase are the connections being a culmination of outside relationships that are formed.  Meaning, most of the relationships are formed after a handshake has taken place. Relying on this precedent, this can short change the opportunities that LinkedIn offers to build your network internally. Instead of people meeting in the real world and connecting online, I am going to talk about how you can meet online and hopefully use that as a driving force to build a real world relationship. If you like to compare the job hunt to the dating scene and LinkedIn to OKCupid, then this blog may resonate with you better than if not. You have much more of a compelling story to convey about your aptitude as a professional through LinkedIn, and here’s how you can tell it. Your ideas can be just as good as your experience, and LI give you ways to share those to find the perfect match.

I have had many discussions with eligible bachelors and bachelorettes (employers) over the years about how a recent graduate can separate himself or herself from the clutter of the application and resume bar scene. I found that the resounding consensus was “if you have your internship experience posted, then you will stand out,” but they have given me instances on how they were intrigued about some candidates who found a way to get their ideas and perspectives in the places where employers would see them. The most important key is to drive everything back to the one place where anybody can access all your online information and contact you to arrange a real world meeting. It could be your LinkedIn page or Website, but for our purposes here, we will call this place your personal mother ship.

Much like in the movie Independence Day, your mother ship needs to travel the internet galaxy share its personal laser guided viewpoint on unsuspecting industry blogs and news articles. As I discovered the wide array of advertising related groups and articles that LinkedIn provides, I found that participating in these discussions allows me to share my personal perspective and drive people to my profile so that they can know more about me. Even though you experience my get you an interview, your personality and ideas will direct the questions you are asked.

The rule of thumb is to always update your resume ever 3 months, but that does not mean the same should apply to your professional network. From connecting your blog to your LinkedIn page to participating in the discussions on your group forums, its important to remind those around that you have a unique perspective, have an enthusiasm towards your chosen career field, and would be a fun person to work with. LinkedIn is such a powerful social media site because it offers discussions and places for you to build your network internally. Maybe with a few well-executed and authentic social personal, you could become a viral sensation among employers.

Much like a cute cat video, but for all the right reasons.