Grey Matter Extrapolation

Checke out this article

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:44:00 -0600

Dallas Cowboys New Stadium Interactive Website

Thu, 6 Dec 2007 23:19:00 -0600

Since 1971 the Dallas Cowboys have played in the venerable Texas Stadium in Irving, a suburb of Dallas. Although many Cowboys fans have become attached to the dome with a hole in the top, the stadium is clearly outdated. Construction has already begun on the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington and Jerry Jones, the Cowboys G.M. and owner has created an interactive web site to give fans a tour of the new stadium through 3d models and present possible sponsors with advertising options.

Writers On Strike

Thu, 6 Dec 2007 22:48:00 -0600

The writers strike over the last month or so has really put a damper on this seasons big shows. Lost, The Office, and other shows have had to put their current and upcoming seasons on hiatus until the strike can be resolved. I have heard rumors that this thing could last as long as a year and I wanted to get some more info on the stance of the writers and why they were striking. I visited the United Hollywood blog to get some answers to these questions. Conveniently the site has an FAQ page that proved to be extremely convenient.

More Product Placement

Thu, 6 Dec 2007 22:37:00 -0600

Here is video called A Brief History of Product Placement. I it found while doing some research for the viral video.

Viral Video Project

Thu, 6 Dec 2007 22:23:00 -0600

Here is our Groups Viral Video. It focuses on product placement highlights a parody of product placement in the film Wayne's World.

Blogging for Iowa

Thu, 6 Dec 2007 22:00:00 -0600

Recently Mitt Romney addressed the media in college station. The topic of his speech was religion, primarily the fact that he is a Mormon. The media has likened Mitt's run for president as the first Mormon candidate in American history to that of the late JFK who was our fist Catholic president. But members of the republican party are concerned that the voters in Iowa are bias against a candidate for the church of latter day saints.Mr. Romney made the speech in an effort to stifle any fears of such reaction. Conservative bloggers responded well to the blog but I don't think he will wind up as the republican presidential candidate for 2008.

Business Administration Graduate Seeking Opportunities in The Technological or Operations Fields

Mon, 3 Dec 2007 19:11:00 -0600

Cameron May (Spokesperson)
Blog: http://www.blogger.com/greymatterextrapolation

Business Administration Graduate Seeking Opportunities in The Technological or Operations Fields

I am interested in entry level management, operations, or marketing positions in the Austin or DFW metroplex.

Austin, TX -- December 4, 2007

Education

St. Edward’s University Graduation: May 2008

Bachelor’s of Business Administration

EXPERIENCE

Harte- Hanks CRM Services November 2006- January 2007

X-Box 360 Technical Support Agent

· As both a hardware and X-Box Live support agent, assisted customers resolve issues with the console itself, troubleshot connectivity and home networking issues, set up repairs and arranged service contracts and other services.

· Refined my problem resolution and soft skills while at the same time cross selling a number of products and accessories for the X-Box system.

St. Edward’s University Phonathon Fall 2005-Fall 2006

· Raised money for the St. Edward’s Fund which contributes to student scholarships, campus beatification, campus ministries, and athletic teams.

· Called thousands of alumni and parents, informed them of the nature of the St. Edwards Fund, and collected donations.

· Learned valuable public communication skills.

The Lead Dogs Database Marketing Group Summer 2006

Pre- Sales Representative

• Pprovided document management and imaging solutions for state and local government offices and insurance companies.

· Experienced the corporate environment in one of Austin’s fifty fastest growing companies.

· Gained valuable customer service and sales experience

Express Personnel Services Summer 2004

Temp employee

· Assembled worker insurances pamphlets for company

· Provided administrative support: made copies, moved boxes, organized files

· Worked for Lowe’s Home Improvement moving inventory and constructing displays.

· Worked as customer service representative for insurance company after assembling pamphlets.

Volunteer Work

Preston Hollow Presbyterian Special School 2002-2003

Volunteer

· Tutored children with learning disabilities

· Assisted teacher in grading work, copying, collating, and laminating

· Completed over 100 hours of volunteer work

MULTIMEDIA ELEMENTS:

Download
PR Podcast

Download
PR Viral Video Project

I will be graduating from St. Edward's University with my Bachelors in Business Administration this upcoming spring and I wanted to create a press release to express my interests in a particular career field. I am a dedicated and knowledgeable with experience in sales, technical support, and business to business commerce. I am a quick learner and I have often been complimented on my ability to solve problems using a different perspective. I am looking for a opportunity that best fits my skills in either the entertainment, technology, or marketing sectors.

Clue Train

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:24:00 -0600

Today in class we discussed The Cluetrain Manifesto. The theses discussed in the book lay the groundwork for todays social media and the future of PR. According to the Manifesto the new world order of social media before us is one that will take advertising and PR back to the conversation level. Marketing has become more and more demographics motivated in its mass marketing approach. The manifesto encourages advertisers to move away from mass marketing in general and web 2.0 facilitates this unlike ever before. With all the social networking, and book marking applications and sites on the net, marketers are able to communicate to individual micro markets like never before. The manifesto warns corporations that markets are becoming more informed and demanding. If a firm wants to stay in business it must keep up with these new citizens or risk obsolescence.

Podcast

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:17:00 -0500

Here is a link to my PR group's podcast. Included is my segment on the previous blog.

Drudge Dread

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:08:00 -0500

In a recent New York Times article, "Clinton Finds Way to Play Along With Drudge" the impact of alternative media on the 2008 presidential campaign is evident. The article takes an in depth look at what extremes candidates are wiling to go to in order to get positive articles posted on this extremely popular site. According to Nielsen/NetRatings the Drudge Report has clocked 3 million visitors in the course of one month. The site was founded by conservative Matt Drudge ten years ago and gained popularity during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. I believe that national politics today are closer to professional wrestling than democracy. Large news sources such as CNN, Fox News, and the BBC are all biased in their own ways. The public has come to realize this and the popularity of alternative sources has begun to rise. The Drudge report was a good example of alternative media, or at least it was before the politicians started getting all buddy buddy with Drudge. This does not overly concern me because the great thing about today's alternative media sources is that for ever one that gets so popular it's creators become corrupted there are alwasy millions of other sources that are ready to step in its place.

Bookmarking Battle

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:41:00 -0500

Recently I decided to switch my social bookmarking site from del.icio.us to Stumble Upon. Both sites have their pro's and con's and i decide to compair the two and decide on one in an effort to cut down on redundancy. Delicious is a great bookmarking site and it offers a good keyword search but after signing up for it i found myself rarely bookmaking sites with the toolbar. I found myself stuck in the past; adding bookmarks to my favorites list in my browser. But stumbleupon offers me a reason to use it. Unlike other bookmarking sites the toolbar of StumbleUpon has a button that will take you to a random site that is highly rated by the other 3.5 million users. It also allows you to rate sites you like while at the same time adding them to the favorites page of the site. The big advantage of these 2 bookmarking tools is that they allow you to view your most important or favorite sites away from your home computer.

New Media Vs. Movies

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:00:00 -0500

In today's world of new media described in our readings and lectures the impact on such forms of traditional media cannot be overlooked. One of the most important demographics for any marketing project is the notorious 18-34 year old group. This segment of the population is of great importance for any product or service but especially to the entertainment industry. I came across an interesting article today while using stumbleupon. According to David Jenkins, film and television production companies are beginning to blame their slipping ratings on the Internet and video game usage. Mr. Jenkins linked back to the original article in Advertising Age by Claude Brodesser-Akner. The articles state that many industry executives have blamed the poor box office sales of the new Ben Stiller Comedy "The Heart Break Kid" on the release of the Xbox 360 video game Halo 3. According to film industry executives the 18-34 year old demographic is being lured away from the theaters by video games. I envision two possible outcomes of this new marketing reality; more films based on video games will be produced or this completion will force the industry to produce better films. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the latter.

More On The PRX Builder

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:35:00 -0500

A few weeks ago we viewed a short sales presentation about an interesting concept, an interactive company PR template called the PRX Builder by Americas best PR firm according to the American Business Awards Shift Communications. Cameron's blog covered the template in detail and he even filed out one and made a template for our class. When PRX first started a year ago it had an exclusive distribution deal with PR Newswire for the distribution of it's press releases, but now that contract is up and PRX can be distributed by other sites. In their newest email they informed their clients that Twitter followers can now link to the PRX builder. Twitter is a social networking and microblogging site that takes an interesting approach to social networking. Twitter uses instant messaging to ask people what they are up to, what sites they are visiting then logs the responses and distributes them all over the world as in the diagram above. Its pretty cool in my opinion because it is almost instantaneous. The site can track interests, keywords, and concepts through IM and SMS and has been doing so for 2 years now. The interesting stuff they find is right at your fingertips on their blog page. The tracking of these keywords and concepts over SMS and IM is brilliant because this is the closest thing to casual conversation that people participate in on the net. PRX's clients can now track the spread of their press releases through the site and it is a great marketing tool.

Web Radio 2.0

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:14:00 -0500

One of my favorite web 2.0 concepts has always been the idea of interactive web radio that creates customized stations tailored to your musical tastes. For two years now I have been a member at one such sites called Pandora. The site is great because it is part of something called the Music Genome Project which is a collaboration between artist and programmers to provide a great place for people and music to come together. The site has hundreds of thousands of songs that are listened to by a group of music-analysts and given one of over four hundred descriptive attributes that are used to let the customer search for a song or an artist then it plays song with similar attributes and lets you rate them to make your own radio stations. The site, like many other interactive web radio sites, offers both a free membership with advertisements (visual only) and a $36 annual membership free of advertising. Along with the great music on the site, the interactivity of Web 2.0, is firmly embraced with a behind the scenes look at this site through blogs and a podcasting section. I encourage everyone to try it out and I dare you to enter the name of a song or an artist that Pandora does not have.

Web 2.0 and You

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:25:00 -0500

Web 2.0 has probably become one of the biggest buzz words or cliches of this new world of PR on the web. I have heard a lot of things about 2.0 before this class and since learning more about it since the course began. When I first heard the term web 2.0 the information I received now appears to be grossly inaccurate. One of the first interesting things I heard about Web 2.0 was the possibility of web smell-o-vision, given the number of repulsive sites out there the idea sounded both hilarious and disgusting. Yet the device actually exists and is apparently in use by some in japan. Another misconception about web 2.0 I had before this class was that the marketers would be able to watch everything you did and everywhere you went online. In reality web 2.0 is not that much different than the web as we know it, except it encourages a two way conversation instead of the one way distribution of information that characterized the early internet. One of the best sources of information on web 2.0 I have found comes from Tim O'Reilly who helped develop the idea. In reality the concept of web 2.0 is truly a liberating idea that if used properly and left uncensored can give millions of people around the world freedom of speech and the ability to have their experiences and options heard.

Wired Science and the future of televison.

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:20:00 -0500

Recently many of the traditional television broadcasters have begun circumventing the standard form of program distribution and have started airing entire episodes on their web sites. Several of the major network's such as NBC, ABC, Discovery, and ESPN now offer entire shows on the web, most with fewer commercials than their traditional counterparts. One of the best places to find free, high quality and commercial free TV on the web is PBS and a good show for everyone in this class to watch that is both entertaining and informative is wired science. This form of broadband media is more inline it the original vision of the internet, but does not have the feedback mechanisms necessary to classify it as web 2.0. This is good for the internet in general though because it is only natural that all forms of media begin to move to the fastest and largest data distribution network in the world: the internet. I myself have been without cable for two months now, I cut my bill in half by just paying for my internet connection and now I can still watch most of the programming I would have paid for before. Of course these sites have commercials and ad-space needed to make such streaming video feasible. Studies suggest that TV might one day be surpassed in viewers by the internet and this seems to be moving at an exponential rate.

Facebook For Sale

Tue, 2 Oct 2007 11:09:00 -0500

Last week news broke of Microsoft's interest in acquiring the social network Facebook. In the word of social networking sites Facebook is smaller than Myspace with about half the monthly traffic, but it is never the less very successful and popular. Facebook is not totally at a disadvantage when compared to Myspace because it has a higher growth rate and it's market is less saturated. Microsoft has made a early bid at about 10 billion dollars, two years ago News Corporation bought the site for 580 million dollars, not too bad of an investment. Facebook's Current CEO and co-creator 23 year old Mark Zuckerberg is constantly introducing new features and applications to use on the site they even have a company blog which they often use for PR purposes.
Facebook was the first social networking site that I joined back in 2004. When i first joined the site there were no photo albums, no applications, and you had be be enrolled in a high school or college to be a member. Since those prehistoric times Facebook has expanded and improved, now people do not have to be students to become members and the different forms of media and applications people can interact with are impressive.

Podland

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:04:00 -0500

In our course this semester we have been required to listen to several podcasts. I began to look around at the sites I usually visit and was amazed at the number and variety of podcasts out there. Some of the sites I visit often that have great podcasts are ESPN and NPR. These sites capitalize on their visitors that want more. Podcasting gives everyone the opportunity to be their own broadcaster and distribute their opinions world wide. I am eagerly looking forward to the upcoming podcasting assignment. There are numerous sites out there that can help you refine your podcasting skills. The number of topics that people are podcasting about are virtually innumerable. Besides the trusty iTunes podcast center another good site for finding a good podcast to listen to is The Podcast Directory. One thing I did notice about The Podcast Directory is that there are roughly 4 times as many podcasts relating to entertainment than any other topic. I attribute this to one of two possibilities, either the site is bias towards entertainment podcasts, or this just reflects the popularity of the entertainment world in our popular culture. On a related matter I did notice that in the podcasting podcast assigned in class although it was very informative the speakers appeared almost hypocritical in thier show because they had no mic for the audience questions and they did not repeat the questions for their listeners. I'm surprised no one else in class mentioned this but it was not that big of a deal and did not effect the podcast to dramatically.

Conversational Advertising

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 11:14:00 -0500

In Brian Solis newest blog post I am happy to see the comment by Stowe Boyd which cuts through all the hype of marketing and gets right to the point. Today in class we were introduced to the newest of Ikea's marketing campaigns called America At Home. This campaign is brilliant in it's consumer involvement angle. Interested web surfers or consumers as the marking industry calls them, are encouraged to actively participate in andvolunteer information. The consumer believes they are participating in a fun contest that both gives them an outlet for self expression and a chance to have your photo on the cover of a coffee table book. This is a brilliant way for Ikea to market itself to its customer because it gets them thinking about the inside of their home and encourages them to take photos and if a customer does not like their current interior and is thinking of getting some new furniture this is the perfect time to reach the customer because this social media project has the consumers really evaluate their home environment. From a Social Media PR perspective This campaign is great because it gets potential customers networking on a site that Ikea can directly market to and control the course of discussion. Hypothetically the marketing information derived from millions of photos taken of customer's living rooms and bedrooms could be valuable to a huge Swedish furniture company. If all else fails at least Ikea hopes to sell a coffee table to everyone who gets the book.
Compared to the ideals in Brian Solis's book Ikea's campaign is better than most but not the Utopian experiment in marketing described by Solis. Ikea's s campaign is not totally free form like the social media described by Solis, Ikea guides its participants with daily assignments to keep things flowing with some structure, and in the end Ikea makes the final decision as to who wins the contest.
Ikea's nest commercial strategy focuses on the slogan "Home is the most important place on earth." is pure genius. It gets customers thinking about Ikea products, 'the stuff in my house,'and gets them thinking, 'this stuff is not worthy of the most important place on earth' and finally the ad-execs hope the conversation will turn to, 'I need some new stuff!' I think the concept is great because it gets the customers focused on their home and if the customer finds a problem with their interior Ikea has the solution. In the UK Ikea is using a campaign similar to their my America at home, obviously with a different name, called Not going anywhere. Although one could argue that the similarities of UK to America outnumber the differences the fact is that the popular cultures of both are vastly different. This factors into their campaign and the UK site seems like a real grass roots movement and does not overtly mention Ikea. If i had not been told this was a marketing site I would have thought that this was some quirky site for people really into their homes.

ABC; A Blog Commandment

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:31:00 -0500

Our PR class just recently read the second chapter of Paul Gillin's book The New Influencers. One of the most interesting subjects covered in the chapter, that did not go unnoticed by a number of my classmates, was Gillin's five commandments of blogging. While researching other commandments of blogging I found this interesting article that made me question just how free our speech can be on the net. Here in the United States Of America our constitution guarantees us our right to free speech and the freedom of the press. As a novice member of the blogging community these rights are imperative to the existence of the body politic. The net provides us with a soapbox to announce our options to the world but our freedoms don't cross the sub-oceanic fiberoptic lines with our words. The article gives the example of a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign grad student that made some disparaging comments about a Singapore government official. Now when most people think about Singapore law enforcement this comes to mind. The grad student blogger was forced to apologize several times or face legal consequence. The article give a quick list of five tips to follow while blogging that everyone should follow to avoid prosecution form overseas.

Social Site Specialization

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:06:00 -0500

While browsing through my news feeds today I stumbled upon an interesting article about social networking sites for our parents demographic. In recent years networking sites such as myspace and facebook have grown exponentially and earned millions for their creators. Marketing agencies can now use these sites to gather information and test new web marketing promotional techniques. But as mentioned in Paul Gillien's The New Influencers most of these sites regular visitors are in the younger demographic. In the Times article “Teens are tire kickers — they hang around, cost you money and then leave,” said Paul Kedrosky. Entrepreneurs are now looking to get the older half of the population, soon to be the majority, on the social networking band wagon. The article mentions one of myspace's early investors VantagePoint Ventures recently invested in a site for couples who have settled down called Multiply. Were myspace leaves off helping people find someone for people to make babies with, Multiply picks up for couples interested in multiplying their numbers and networking with others interested in the same.
I have alwase been a bit apprehensive about myspace and facebook only because it seems
too good to be true. A totally free social networking site sounds wonderful but why would such a trivial thing be so huge? Well the answering is marketing and getting members to post as much information as possible on the site. Call me paranoid if you wish but the money in demographics research, lead generation and other forms of data mining is very substantial and the format of myspace, facebook, and other large social networking sites seems like a taylor made system for getting consumers to volunteer survey information. But, I digress, I may very well be wrong and even if I'm right the advantages of social networking might out way the potential loss of privacy. A good rule of thumb is don't fill that personal info out in your profile unless you don't care who reads it or how they use it. As a matter of fact that rule works for just about anything you do, say or watch on the internet because the marketing and data mining companies out there are taking notes.

Discovery

Tue, 4 Sep 2007 11:54:00 -0500

Today we endeavored to create a blog for the ages. A source of pure and virtuous knowledge to enlighten the world and bring some hope to the plight of humanity.