With a 50 million dollar pot on the line, the stakes are high – no pun intended. In less than 24 hours, the post has garnered 1,351 likes and 40 comments. For those keeping score, that’s about $37,000 for each person. You’ll have to hurry though if you want to get in on the action – the  numbers are drawn today at 6pm.

But, if we can stop planning out our future fortunes and refrain from pre-selecting our favorite friends for just one second, we can talk about what a brilliant social marketing tactic this is.  Many people wonder how Facebook ‘decides’ what to display on your news feed. Well, we know from social media speaker Jay Baer , it’s not random. There is actually an algorithm that dictates whose posts you see. The probability your activity will show up on someone’s page is based on 3 things:

1. Your affinity with the other party as a whole

Are you in pictures together? Do you have mutual friends? Are you posting on each other’s wall?

2. Your previous action with similar content

Have you liked, tagged, or commented previously on similar content?

3. Time

How long ago was the content created?

Hence, the more you like a brand’s page and like/comment on their posts, the more you’ll start to see their content flow through your news feed. From a marketing perspective, this is the winning ticket. It’s why you see brands transfixed on getting likes.

I’ve written before that a blanket plea for likes just doesn’t cut it anymore. So, it’s refreshing to see some out-of-the-box thinking and content that actually warrants a click.  It’s not the first time too that Jaryd Zinkewich from Maude’s has impressed us with his marketing savvy. Check out the Pint for a Pic post.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to see a man about buying a pony.

A year later, now three weeks into my role as Art Director, I thought I’d look back at what I’ve learned since then and see if I can’t share it with the next crop of students. Having just gone into the wild – here are a few tips that worked for me and a few more I didn’t get the chance to try.

DIRECTION

Often times people would say to me “Victoria is so small that all the good design jobs are taken”. The way I see it, the smaller the town the easier it should be to stand out amongst the crowd. So before you decide to pack up and move to that neighbouring metropolis, remember: you have to ability to make a mark in your small town, too. Find out exactly what your dream job is and make it your goal. Stay optimistic and keep focused. The unfortunate reality is that as time passes your competition will slowly drop out of the race. If you manage to outlast you’ll start to move up the ladder.

GET OUT THERE

Don’t sit idle between dropping off resumes. Do something to get your work noticed. Start a design blog and post local content, re-design your school newsletter and offer to maintain it, pitch your designs to companies you admire. Take a chance and don’t be afraid to be shot down. Sure you could get rejected, and at first you probably will – but if you’re lucky you might at least gain a pro’s insight regarding your work. While these ideas might not get you paid, they’re all are great steps towards growing your portfolio with real world experience.

NETWORK

Don’t stress this one. Networking will come naturally, if you’re here reading this blog then you’re already doing it. Because most jobs aren’t advertised, networking can be your best bet to get your foot in the door. Consider a student membership to the Graphic Designers of Canada. Your local chapter has dozens of social events each year. Why not start by volunteering to check coats or take tickets at an event? These events are meant to be fun, so relax. Nobody’s there to interview you, try to have fun and enjoy yourself. Your personality should be on show, not your portfolio.

NAVIGATE

Get to know any potential employers in your area. Navigate your way through the company, introduce yourself to the staff, find out what the mood around the office is like. Now the fun part - don’t just tell potential employers that you’re creative, show them!  Go a step further by customizing a package based on what you’ve learned. Put aside the typical resume. Try a website, video or DVD portfolio.

RESOURCES

Now is the perfect time to start seeking out internships, scholarships and awards. Internships are your best bet for work right now, it’s how mostly all designers start.

Check Applied Arts, Communication Arts and Adobe for student awards. They’re a great way to get regional and even worldwide recognition for your work. Another benefit of the GDC is that they’ll do much of the work for you. A student membership gives you access to up-to-date job/internship postings, scholarships and awards info.

Get yourself a website to showcase your work but keep it simple, and remember when it comes to a portfolio it’s always quality over quantity. Be sure to replace old pieces with new ones as your skills progress. And if your web skills aren’t up to snuff yet, there’s plenty of easy-to-use portfolio sites out there. Try Behance , Carbon Made or Cargo Collective.

SOCIAL MEDIA

You’d be surprised what opportunities that might arise from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. There’s no reason why you wouldn’t want to access all three. Each one is different, so learn which to use for particular content. They’re a great way to engage with people, and give them a reason to follow you. Share unique content specific to you: your opinions, your portfolio pieces, and discussions that you’re taking part in.

Thanks for reading, I hope that helps. I’ve included my icon pack for download if you’d like them for personal use. For now you can get to know us @YourCopeland. We love students.

When ad agencies pitch for new pieces of business, they are often asked to provide what we call “spec work”, in other words speculative strategic thinking and creative ideation. Only once in my career have I seen a client offer to pay for this work as part of their agency search process. We are asked to do it for free. And fair enough, agencies are willing to do it.

This continues to be standard practice. It’s not just work you are giving away, it’s often your best work. If you’re serious about winning the business, you put your best minds on the job and you work your tail off even more than usual because it’s a competition against other agencies.

This takes you away from the business of servicing your existing clients to the best of your ability, a most unfortunate side-effect.

It also ties up your teams, plays havoc with their personal lives and costs the agency a small fortune. I have been involved in a speculative pitch that cost our agency $30,000.

Pitches of this nature are becoming more competitive all the time as the marketing world continues to fragment and specialized agencies pop up, leading businesses to engage multiple companies rather than keep it all with one shop. So the potential value of the business win is diminished. Last year we learned we had competed against 30 other companies from across Canada for a piece of work.

Some businesses even have their minds made up before the pitch, but the RFP (Request for Proposal) bid process is often corporate compliance.  Agencies can go at it with the most sincere intentions of winning pitches that have already been decided before the RFP drops.

Is it sweet when you win? Yes of course. It forces you to raise the level of your game as a business to be competitive in these pitches – that’s a good thing.

Still, Copeland has stopped responding to RFPs that  require speculative work. We want to reserve our best ideas for paying clients. We think every agency should do likewise, but all it would take is one hungry agency to break ranks and the whole show hits the fan again.

Corporate marketing departments aren’t the only fans of free work, as you will see in this brilliant Craigslist ad shared with me by Frank Ricketts of Dymarx in Halifax.

Funniest thing I’ve read in ages! Really, it’s time to stop feeding this beast.

It’s somber, eerie and in complete contrast to the gleaming white, information packed page I was expecting.  So of course, I began to read…

Wikipedia is on a 24 hour blackout to raise awareness of two bills, SOPA and PIPA, said to infringe “free expression while harming the Internet”. Regardless if you are in favour of or opposed to the bills, you have to stand back for one second and applaud the exceptional execution of this awareness campaign.

It’s a textbook implementation of what’s required for an awareness campaign set to go viral.

Strong Visual Impact

The mourning colours and the full page blowout instantly grabbed my attention and set a somber tone. No small banner message here to be easily overlooked.

Personal Relevance

Because of the blackout, I was personally affected by the cause. It’s easy to feel removed from the situation and indifferently change the channel or stop reading when you hear stories on the radio or other news outlets. But, I needed to use Wikipedia, and now I can’t! – better get to the bottom of this…

Informative

… easy. One click takes you to the Wikipedia information page (does anyone else find this a little humorous?). 13 short and direct answers later you are caught up on the issue. Have more time and want to read more? Wikipedia makes that easy too with a list of related links.

Actionable

Very clearly, it’s stated what action Wikipedia would like you to take: “we encouraging you to share your views with your representatives, and with each other on social media”. And then with a handy  representative look-up tool, they make it easy for you to take action.

Shareable

Arguably one of the most important components of making a campaign go viral, Wikipedia conveniently put hot links on their blackout page that automatically load your favourite social media profile with a supportive message. Within seconds and with very little effort, a consistent message, dictated by Wikipedia, is  spread through your social network.

Effectiveness

You’ll notice that the first content on the info page highlights the success of the campaign: 10,000 Wikipedia comments, 7,200 articles, 90 million unique visits to the blackout page, 5 million representative look-ups. It’s not a coincidence that this is the first section. People like to be part of a movement that’s working; it’s empowering. Speak to the heart then to the brain.

On the heals of the much scrutinized occupy movement, (why the occupy movement didn’t work) it’s refreshing to see such a substantial campaign which has a clear message executed to perfection. Today, let the W stand for WOW.

There are times when Vancouver Island – and Victoria in particular – doesn’t feel particularly Canadian. Especially when your mates in Whitehorse or St. John or Ottawa are griping about the winter.

We lose sight of the bigger community as we bask in 8 degree Januarys and stroll about the still-green parks in our shorts.

However this is not a post about winter, but about identity. Today we joined the rest of the country.

It's not Whitehorse, but it's cold enough. Nice winter coat Jodie.

See? Copeland IS a Canadian ad agency.

A big snow storm has proved to be the great equalizer. The schools are closed. The snow ploughs are hitting the main arteries. Vendors and home owners are hastening to their sidewalks with the shovels they haven’t used since 2010.

For a time we are Canadians again. The Canada of hockey and Tim Hortons and socks bunching up in the bottoms of your snowboots.

Here’s to the old red & white.

Particularly the white.

I don’t do this to be a jerk, but to learn something.

It’s important to know how someone handles criticism because in this business it’s as much a part of the fabric as the colour black. We traffic in ideas and everyone has an opinion: your co-workers, the clients and the audience.

It doesn’t matter how talented you are, if you view criticism as a personal attack and go all defensive – or worse, offensive – you will exhaust your welcome very quickly.

Don't view criticism as a personal attack

Learning to handle criticism well just may be the greatest positive change you can make to your skills as an advertising professional.

So how do you go from feeling under siege to benefiting from the criticism?

STOP TRYING TO CONTROL

Someone has a different opinion than you and so you want to change their mind. You want to be right. You want them to see things the way you see them. STOP.

You don’t need to change their mind. You can listen, really listen, to see their point of view. Shut up your mind and your mouth. Then take some time to process it. This is not a sign of weakness but of sagacity. Wise people are always pictured as listening and nodding their heads as they do so – ever notice that?

STOP TRYING TO PLEASE

The response I most dread is the knee-jerk agreement without due consideration. Don’t back down immediately and concede to score points.

Resist the temptation to feel you must agree in order to be well-regarded. Instead listen to the point being made and think about it. I love to hear: “That’s an interesting point. I’m going to think about it.” Rather than a rushed: “Oh I only did that because…”

When you bring an idea to the table, have the guts to stand up beside it and allow scrutiny without feeling you have to rush in to resuscitate it or revise it. There will be time for that.

REMOVE YOURSELF EMOTIONALLY

Go with the critical flow. Become a leaf on their verbal stream and don’t fight it. Imagine candles and stacked rocks and bamboo mats. Whatever powerful emotions rise up in you (possibly because you hate the guts of the person who is bringing down the criticism), what’s called for is calm and equanimity. You are not the action that is being criticized. You are not the idea.

When you can control your emotional response, you open yourself up to considering the criticism. That’s where growth kicks in. Every person I’ve ever met and every idea I’ve ever come across had room for growth. Constructive criticism is what initiates that process.

When your clients and co-workers feel you can handle their opinions well, they will offer them more freely. Opinions are not always good ones, and not all have to be heeded. But if your stance is hostile to the idea of feedback, you can be sure that you’ve made it as far as you’re going to get.

Feel good about what you bring to the table and relish the process of others helping you shape that further.

And when it’s time for you to be critical of others, a little empathy goes a long way.

You can tell me you think I’m full of crap. I can handle it. I think.

Solution: space age capsule pods complete with WiFi, TV and a pull-down privacy screen with an image of the earth.

I’m not sure how that earth image will help you get a good night’s sleep but it photographs well.

The makers of these steel and plastic, fire resistant pods claim that their model is the progeny of the cross-breeding of existing Japanese pods with astronaut cockpits.  I want to therefore call them cockpods, but I know I shouldn’t.

They will rent for about $30 a night, a fraction of what you would pay for that grotty room in Tsim Sha Tsui, where the walls have been decorated with the guts of mosquitoes and the spittle of generations of slobs.

Aside from the space-terror feel of this creative solve (I’ve seen Alien too many times), they will probably prove popular with students and tourists, and could very well solve another critical social issue in Hong Kong – the housing of the poor.

The pods are a vast upgrade on the dehumanizing steel cages, which slumlords have rented out to the disadvantaged for half a century.

(Cage apartment photo courtesy of Global Sociology. Pod photos courtesy of Galaxy Stars.)

This comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever eaten at one of these fast food joints. To say the food never looks as good as in the carefully and skillfully art directed ads would qualify as the understatement of the year.

I love the series creator’s “slightly fluffed up” comment above the Whopper.

But all fun aside, seriously. Come on. Where is the outrage that these multi-billion dollar food ramps are able to get away with these gross deceptions?

Hungry now?

Whereas some athletes dip into performance enhancing drugs on the sly to boost their results (and not to besmirch all sports here as I am thinking primarily of baseball, swimming, tennis, track and field, football, hockey, golf, cycling or any sport that requires endurance, explosive power or super-human recovery), some advertisers turn to over-claim, creative reshaping of the truth and outright lies.

No point denying it: it happens. Regulatory bodies are in place to challenge the ethics of both groups but many fouls go unchallenged.

Often the risk of detection is considered acceptable for the rewards. But being caught out soils the reputation of every other competitor and creates a cynical and distrustful public.

They also share a similar strategy if detected: deny, deny, deny.

Some athletes get caught red-handed and have no choice but to recant or do time. But you will never see an advertiser come clean. They will spin a web of innocence until the public either forgets or votes with their feet.

Disgraced American sprinter Marion Jones

The most recent advertiser to come under scrutiny is Tropicana orange juice, a subsid of PepsiCo. They are being sued, surprisingly, by a consumer for misrepresenting their product as “100% pure and natural”, when, it’s alleged, they actually add aromas and flavours. Tropicana has even used the recognizable imagery of a straw sticking into an orange to get their all-natural claim to stick in the public mind.

Reading Tropicana’s response to news of the lawsuit will give you a sense of how advertisers might manipulate the truth.

I have no idea if they are being deceitful or not. That’s for the judge – and you – to decide.

Admittedly, I was a little high-strung about my first day at Copeland, which might explain why things went the way they did.

Monday morning came and I got myself out of the house with plenty of time.

As I trotted across the street to get my bus, I wondered why the streets were so quiet, but I got distracted and the thought blew away. With plenty of time to spare I had a pleasant morning walk to get a coffee before work. Save for me and the two baristas, the café was completely deserted. I scooped up my coffee and in a way that I hoped looked casual, walked to Copeland, arriving at 8:30 sharp.

The gates were locked. The lights were out. No one (other than the Johns driving past, looking at me like I was a hooker who had wandered into the broad daylight) was around. There was nobody anywhere.

I waited by the side of the building for 10 minutes before texting a friend. The abridged version went something like “WTF?!?” I lingered outside under the surveillance camera for exactly 15 minutes until the leers and increasingly bad weather became too much.

But I couldn’t just leave. What if someone finally came right after I left and I was that person who didn’t show for their first day of work? There’s no way I’d let that happen. Back to the café to kill time.

Fifteen minutes later I was back at Copeland HQ to find that the gates were still closed. So I did what any girl would do in this situation:

I called my Mummy. Mums know.

Monday January 2^nd was a stat holiday! That’s where I went wrong.

In my defense, I have been self-employed for the last 5 years. I don’t take holidays like a normal person. Even after I figured it out I was still anxious about leaving.

Mummy talked me through it, like in Speed where Jeff Daniels talks Keanu though disarming the bomb under the speeding bus.

I did leave eventually and came back on Tuesday prepared to pretend it had never happened.

Wouldn’t you know it. I had checked in on Foursquare the morning before. Not only had I checked in on Foursquare, but I had stolen the mayorship from Asmâa. So it was clear to all that I had been there the day before.

My second-first day went much better, thank you.