Aquent Blog: Tim Donnelly Archives

Commonly Uncommon

Sep 1, 2010 @ 2:09 PM · Tim Donnelly

I'm not a big shopper. In fact, malls still give me the heebie-jeebies, even many years after I was subjected to them by my parents who wanted me to get jeans, shirts, shoes, etc. for the new school year. Oh, and around Christmas, to buy gifts. Each week I recycle countless catalogs at home and wonder how my name could be on so many marketer's lists. And, true enough, I can only be talked into a shopping trip if there's a promise of a good cup of coffee in the mix.

Now how does a guy like me open, consistently, every single email that Uncommon Goods sends me?

One, is that they've got me pegged. They know I like:

Eco stuff
Clever write ups for items
Product artist bios that feel genuine
User reviews of items
Useless lore such as, "What is the origin of happy hour?"
Products with a sense of humor that are not singing fish

And just when I thought there was no more to love, they started a YouGoods product design challenge, opening the door to inventors and Designers who believe they're sitting on The Next Big Thing. The pitches had to have a clear ide of the end product, tell a good story, and be unique, eco-friendly, and economical to produce. The winner gets a $1,500 prize and a chance to showcase their design at Makerfaire NYC.

You've got to love a company that gives background info on (and sells) ingenious inventions such as a tire that helps kids learn to ride a bike, kitchen tools that don't need a spoon rest, and a filter that fits right inside your water bottle.

If Designer-name dropping companies like Ikea and Target are any indicators, it looks like we may just be living in The Decade of the Designer.

(Photo by uzbeckistan)

Commonly Uncommon

Aug 31, 2010 @ 6:08 PM · Tim Donnelly

I'm not a big shopper. In fact, malls still give me the heebie-jeebies, even many years after I was subjected to them by my parents who wanted me to get jeans, shirts, shoes, etc. for the new school year. Oh, and around Christmas, to buy gifts. Each week I recycle countless catalogs at home and wonder how my name could be on so many marketer's lists. And, true enough, I can only be talked into a shopping trip if there's a promise of a good cup of coffee in the mix.

Now how does a guy like me open, consistently, every single email that Uncommon Goods sends me?

One, is that they've got me pegged. They know I like:

Eco stuff
Clever write ups for items
Product artist bios that feel genuine
User reviews of items
Useless lore such as, "What is the origin of happy hour?"
Products with a sense of humor that are not singing fish

And just when I thought there was no more to love, they started a YouGoods product design challenge, opening the door to inventors and Designers who believe they're sitting on The Next Big Thing. The pitches had to have a clear ide of the end product, tell a good story, and be unique, eco-friendly, and economical to produce. The winner gets a $1,500 prize and a chance to showcase their design at Makerfaire NYC.

You've got to love a company that gives background info on (and sells) ingenious inventions such as a tire that helps kids learn to ride a bike, kitchen tools that don't need a spoon rest, and a filter that fits right inside your water bottle.

If Designer-name dropping companies like Ikea and Target are any indicators, it looks like we may just be living in The Decade of the Designer.

(Photo by uzbeckistan)

"Prescription for Fun"

Aug 25, 2010 @ 3:08 PM · Tim Donnelly

We're glad that you and your doctor have chosen Zotov to help you lower your blood pressure and improve your lifestyle.

Zotov, plus a controlled diet and a regular exercise program have been shown to be an important part of controlling high blood pressure.

This drug works best when taken before meals (three times a day) and should be swallowed with water.

The benefits of Zotov are great, but we'd like to share with you some possible side effects before you begin your course of this very remarkable drug.

Ingesting 500mg of Zotov on a daily basis for a period of over 60 days may produce the following side effects:

Dry mouth

Redness around cornea

Blotchy skin

Nervous tics and/or facial spasms

Tremors

Uncontrollable shouting of expletives

Dizziness

Itchy feet

Whimpering

Flatulence

Heart palpitations

Euphoria

Feelings of omnipotence (i.e., impenetrable to bullets)

Uncontrolled spending

Stuttering

Distaste for foods starting with the letter "C"

Barking

Puffy eyes and/or swollen tongue

Unexpected tax levies

Attraction to velour clothing

Bad Feng Shui

Narcolepsy

Sickening auditory hallucinations

Forgetfulness

Loss of coordination

In some cases patients using Zotov have experienced the following:

Enlargement of Adam's apple

Unexplained attendance at Renaissance fairs

Bloating

Separation of left and right brain hemispheres

Unnecessary candor

Emission of sparks while speaking

Rickets

Agoraphobia

A longing for "that good old-timey music"

Magnetism

Increased gasoline prices

Giddiness

Luminosity at high altitudes

Molting

Loss of interest in TiVo

Carbon build up around the throttle plate

Protohuman hominid behavior

Villainous scheming

Assumptions that you are in fact Don Rickles

Shingles

Blogging

Spontaneous combustion

Strong personal stances on woodchucks

Pica (i.e., eating chalk, dirt)

Carpal Tunnel

Shape Shifting

Sporadic ordering of "Market Price" menu items

Tinnitus

Global warming

You may also experience slightly higher cholesterol levels.

We hope you find your experience with Zotov to be an extremely positive one.

Store this medication at room temperature away from sunlight. Keep out of the reach of children and do not give your medication to anyone, even out of revenge.

When Life Gives You Catalogs

Aug 9, 2010 @ 8:08 PM · Tim Donnelly

Here's a two-birds-with-one-stone approach that I like:

Catalog Choice, an organization that seeks to reduce paper waste by helping consumers get off catalog lists, has teamed with The Overbrook Foundation to sponsor a $20,000 Paperless Choice Challenge to help non-profits move into the digital age and away from paper.

What I like about Catalog Choice is that they aren't just a naysayer... they're actively giving merchants a way to achieve a goal of reducing their use of paper. And, of course, now they're helping out non-profits by giving them access to successful campaigns that use digital fundraising instead of paper fundraising. (Interestingly, I found out why: Individual donations currently make up 75% of U.S. philanthropy, according to the Idealist.)

It's a cause I'm down with. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the more non-profs you give money to, the more fundraising envelopes you get from non-profs you've never heard of.

Meals on Whales? Girls Gone Wildlife Fund? Habitrail for Humanity?

You can just go too far, I tell you.

(Photo by dfulmer)

It Came From the Swamp!

Aug 4, 2010 @ 6:08 PM · Tim Donnelly

Hello.

Back here.

Yes, it's the orchid you left to die in this back room.

Hey, little missy, did you REALLY ever think that you were going to remember to come back here and water me? Seriously?

Like the way you remembered your sister's birthday? Or that it was Election Day until you sat down and turned on the nightly news?

Have you even started on your taxes for 2009?

Then you can imagine why I'm hardly surprised.

Or thirsty.

Very, very thirsty.

Can we go back down memory lane a moment?

Remember the day I arrived at your desk with those three beautiful blooms? How everyone came by and admired me, asked who gave me to you? Wasn't that nice? Didn't that make your day?

Do you remember a little while later when the petals started falling off and you started asking around to see when an orchid would bloom again?

I can tell you that answer is "never" if you stick it in a back conference room and don't water it.

Do you sense anger? Rage?

Good!

You can count me as one angry cymbidium nagifolium!

And though the cleaning crew comes in every night to dust me, they never think to water me. Perhaps they think someone is watering me weekly. Perhaps they are afraid I'll be over watered.

Fat chance!

I am an orchid! My ancestors lived in the Okefenokee!

Would someone just throw the day old coffee on me? Please?

Do you know what it's like to see a bunch of people laughing and drinking their own 32-ounce containers of Pellegrino and be drying out and expiring from sunstroke?

Not that I blame you it all on you, as most of this responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of those florists.

How those people can raise us in the ideal humidity, get us to bloom, then knowingly send us off to our deaths on the desk of some clodpoll who doesn't know a forsythia from a hole in the ground, is beyond me.

Oh perfidy, thy name is Enchanted Florist!

But back to you. Dearie, when you visit other desks and see a warm, happy philodendron, spiky marginata, or leafy golden pothos, don't you ever stop to think, "Say, that's funny, plants are supposed to be green?"

Or even begin to wonder what's become of me?

I've even stopped photosynthesizing.

It's like plant menopause.

No wonder you don't have pets!

You are a nuisance to all living things who step in your wake.

Step carefully. The day will come, madam, when the plants will exact their revenge on you. Perhaps you will find yourself alone in the woods and wonder what that odd creaking sound is. And you may find out too late when an elder Sequoia falls with the force of ten thousand men, crushing you under its blood red bark!

Hah!

Take that, bush butcher!

In the meantime...

Water me. Please.

I'm not just kidding around here.

Hellooooo.....?

Anybody????

Little help?

If You Go To San Francisco, Be Sure to Wear Your Printer's Apron

Aug 2, 2010 @ 6:08 PM · Tim Donnelly

If you've been barraged as I have with Levi's (and Wieden+Kennedy's) "Go Forth" campaign, I say to you: wait, there's more.

Levi's launched a workshop in San Francisco last month (to be followed by one in NYC this fall) with a focus on printmaking. From their workshops site:

"During July and August we'll be hard at work teaching classes on classic letterpress machinery, screenprinting designs, setting type, and getting our hands dirty... The Levi's® Workshops have mapped out a series of collaborations with local businesses and community groups to create original artwork and inspired designs that honor their respective passions and ideals."

Those last folks include Alice Waters and The Women's Building.

You know, part of me wants to align with the guys at AdPulp and say this is a strange campaign,:one that started out focusing on Braddock, PA, a town devastated by the steel mills closing, when Levi's is in fact a company that closed its last American factory in 2003, looking (I'm guessing) for more inexpensive labor overseas.

But then again, part of me wants to just say, "Shut up, put on the printer's apron, and have some fun."

Out of Office Reply

Jul 28, 2010 @ 6:07 PM · Tim Donnelly

We won't be running this week's Bit at the End because our columnist is vacationing.

In Reseda.

We think that he must have family there because, although Reseda is nice this time of year, we'd never really thought of it as a vacation spot.

Though they have an excellent Applebee's up there.

So we thought we'd pull out one the old columns and just run one of those.

Wow, were we in for a surprise.

Turns out none of us at HQ had actually read any of them. Quite frankly, they're not really what we expected at all.

We had told him the column should take a humorous look at office life. For example, how obsessed people are with "So You Think You Can Dance?" and why old so-and-so's desk is sooooo dang messy!

Funny stuff like that.

We never told him to impersonate Satan or write about hemp.

Hemp?

In fact, we had quite an extensive list of topics he was positively not to write about.

And it seems he's taken this as sort of a To Do List for his column.

He's hit every one of them except the incumbent president.

(Which was the unfinished column we found on his desk just a few short hours ago.)

We'd like to take this time to apologize to all of you for any misunderstanding caused by the column's falsified news stories, fake products, and phony events. Also for any hurt feelings experienced by harassed plumbers, lambasted anesthetists, and the management company for Carrot Top.

For the record, we tried (in vain) to track down his supervisor, but that person, it seems, no longer works in our Los Angeles office.

Turns out we don't even have a personnel file for a U. R. Sodumb. (Even more curious, Mr. Sodumb was being paid in cash from 2005 to 2009.)

So, we're not sure our columnist is returning from Reseda.

In the meantime, please enjoy our own humorous column that our committee here at HQ has put together for you.

We look forward to tickling your funny bone in the weeks to come!

The Fun Zone!

-----------------------

Isn't it comical when someone comes back from vacation and forgets to change the message on their office voice mail?

You call them and get their voice mail and say to yourself, "What is this? It isn't July 5th anymore! Ridiculous! You know what I'm going to do? Leave a message urging this person to change this message straight away."

That's really funny.

But NOT when it stops business from happening!

What if an important client called and became confused about what date it actually was?

Suppose that client said, "July 5th, oh my gosh, I'm supposed to be in Miami!" and then takes the first flight out of town?

She could probably sue someone. Maybe your company.

And legal fees are no laughing matter.

No sirree.

-----------------------

You know, on second thought, maybe poking fun at foibles around the office isn't such a great idea after all.

Why play up something that essentially affects our bottom line?

Wouldn't we be undoing all the good that's come from those expensive trainings and seminars?

Which is why we'd like to now introduce you to our new column:

"Your Personal Workspace: Passport To Efficiency!!!"

With articles like "How to Color Code your Calendar", "Disinfecting Your Phone to Avoid Unnecessary Sick Days", and "Preventing Stapler Jams", what's not to love?

Anyone needing a "humorous" columnist with a general lack of respect for office decorum and procedures, please contact Byron in our HR department.

MAKE IT A FANTASTIC DAY!

But Wait, There's More... Pantone Launches a Magazine

Jul 26, 2010 @ 8:07 PM · Tim Donnelly

If you thought Pantone was done doing unPantone things, like opening up a hotel, then you may be pleased that they are doing something you'd might expect more from them, like launching a quarterly newsletter devoted to color.

If you wanted to figure out why turquoise is color of the year, packaging design trends, or bolder choices for 2010 bridesmaids, then you should pop over to Tones.

If you, like me, always put too many colors whenever your given them and have Designers yell at you, then you should join me over at the Remedial Color Wheel. I'm the guy scratching his head.

Calling all Marketers! The 2010 Aquent/AMA Salary Survey is Here!

Jul 16, 2010 @ 3:07 PM · Tim Donnelly

It's that time of year again - when we teamup with the American Marketing Association to produce our salary survey of over 5,000 Marketers from all over the country.

The news is good, but "guarded".

It's not just me (and thanks for saying I'm a naysayer), even the press release says so....

"There is guarded optimism that things are improving in marketing, since marketers are seeing a slight increase in compensation and budgets in 2010."

See?

"More than half of the respondents (53%) saw their salary increase in 2010 compared to the previous year, and 76% of those said their organizations did not initiate a salary freeze in 2010, compared to 47% in 2009."

Intrigued?

Pop over to the site to see the stats.

And if you're interested in what everyone is taking away from the results, we're going to have a free panel discussion on the Web later this month wiht speakers from the AMA, Aquent, and the market research firm, Inavero.

Details here.

"The Revolution Will Not Be TiVo'd"

Jul 14, 2010 @ 6:07 PM · Tim Donnelly

Okay, I turned off my TV.

After hearing so many people bad-mouth it for so long, my wife decided, "What the heck!" and on New Year's Day 2010, she stuck our TV set out in the garage, right between several dusty pieces of workout equipment.

"You'll have loads of extra time," my wife said, handing me a SAY NO TO TV pamphlet. "Just think of what you can accomplish," she said.

Wrong.

I am here to tell you that we have done bupkus in 2010. Which is exactly the same output we had in 2009.

If you're anxiously awaiting our Nobel Peace Prize announcement, then you are just going to have to keep waiting.

The SAY NO TO TV folks are very gung ho on all that extra time you get when you give up TV. Which is true enough. We've plenty of time now that HGTV isn't on 24/7 telling us how to redo our kitchen backsplash in under an hour (we never got around to any of those projects they were always telling us about, either, but it was sure fun to live vicariously). But what those SAY NO TO TV people fail to tell you is exactly what to do with that extra time once you get rid of your TV.

Was I supposed to use it to become a nuclear physicist? Plan for dramatic self-improvement? Learn Tagalog? Well, none of that happened. I joined a gym, which I quickly forgot about and I took up 13 incredibly boring hobbies.

Turns out most stamps aren't just extraordinarily small they are also unbearably dull. In fact, the only thing I found to be more uninspiring than collecting stamps was speaking to anyone who collects them. I discovered there are lots of philatelists with PLENTY to say on the subject.

Racquetball stinks, and so does home beer brewing, hydroponics, bowling, ham radio, juggling, pottery, billiards, paint-by-numbers, solitaire, model railroading, woodcarving, and sitting at the local bar with a bunch of old guys knocking politicians and downing boilermakers.

Ever been to an indoor firing range? No? Well, you aren't missing much.

I found out the hard way why television is so popular.

Because from fishing to golf to gardening, every GOOD hobby takes place while the sun is shining.

Which is why I tell you that if you are considering going without TV, don't bother.

Just think, you get home at 6 and then you make dinner. You could be at the table by 6:30 and possibly done eating a little after 7. And then what are you going to do? Huh? You've got at least THREE FULL HOURS of time before you go to bed!

Those SAY NO TO TV people are chomping at the bit to tell you that getting rid of your TV could bring your family closer together.

What if you don't want to be any closer to your family?

I was fine not talking to mine while we were watching any of the plethora of CSIs, and the thought of sitting around with that lot playing Yahtzee frankly gives me the willies.

Turning off my TV for more than a half a year has not made me any smarter, better looking, or more outgoing. In fact, it's done the opposite. I have no idea what anyone's talking about around the office water cooler and can't participate in the discussions at parties. (What's happening on Dancing with the Stars? What does the kid look like now on Two and a Half Men?)

If you can imagine what it's like trying to scan the radio dial to find a station broadcasting an Eagles' game, then you can imagine what kind of hell my life has become.

And I do really miss that pretty traffic lady every morning on Channel 4.

I don't know what the heck people did before there was TV, but I am incredibly surprised that they all didn't die of boredom. My grandparents' top accomplishment was bringing the bathroom into the house. Something they were still talking about it well into their eighties. It was big news to the pre-TV crowd.

So don't give up your TV.

Relish your time together with it. Enjoy it while you can.

And if you're not doing anything this week, feel free to invite me over to help you appreciate it.

I'm begging you.

Recently by Tim Donnelly

Commonly Uncommon

Commonly Uncommon

"Prescription for Fun"

When Life Gives You Catalogs

It Came From the Swamp!

If You Go To San Francisco, Be Sure to Wear Your Printer's Apron

Out of Office Reply

But Wait, There's More... Pantone Launches a Magazine

Calling all Marketers! The 2010 Aquent/AMA Salary Survey is Here!

"The Revolution Will Not Be TiVo'd"

Authors

Events

AMA Identity Imperative: Boston

The WAA Seattle Web Analytics Symposium

AIA/LA Design Awards 2010

Communications Arts: Typography Competition

DMA: Customer Relationship Management & Database Marketing Certification

Categories RSS Feed