Trouble in The Office

Missing Nsync, Reason # 9

posted by Elyss @ 1:39 PM 0 comments

Down and Out

I've been on SL since Monday. My doctor told me to "upgrade" my antibiotics because my body is probably immune to Amoxicillin already. Won't be reporting to work until Thursday. Maybe.

I've been scared of opening my office email. Everytime I look at my laptop, it's like a bomb waiting to explode.

Arg.

The upside is that I've been catching up with some of my writing, I've finished the seventh HP (and I can tell you right now those spoilers are not true), and I've been able to see Edu Manzano give such a laugh trip at his noon time game show.

posted by Elyss @ 11:02 AM 0 comments

IMHO: 4 Ads

4 - Radio: Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
We've heard this one on the radio - the ad where a kid annoyingly asks the driver (likely to be a parent) "Are we there yet?" a gazillion times, then hiccups to a manlier voice. It's so catchy that my dad uses it to annoy me. It's even on today's Inquirer as an editorial cartoon. The sad thing is, although the recall on the "Are we there yet?" is so high, it made me forget what the ad was selling in the first place. I couldn't remember the product name. Maybe that was the brief to the creative?

3- TVC: Kering-Keri for Rejoice Shampoo
Doesn't help that Kim Tiu (tama ba spelling?) is in this commercial doing another dance-infused production number. At the onset, the Rejoice branding could be lost because Kim's been associated with forty thousand other brands where she also dances. I guess that's the reason for the ubiquitous shades of Rejoice green and the shampoo bottles.

The 2 minute wonder makes me wonder how much budget P&G has to run ad over primetime. It's probably over three times the total advertising budget of the company I'm working for for a year. Well, if their goal was to brainwash people with the Kering Keri jingle until the day we die, they're almost there. Even my 1 y.o. nephew agrees - he stops whatever he's eating/doing whenever Kim's scooping and flipping her hands with the chorus.

In terms of overall campaign, this folds in with their other Rejoice commercials -- echoing the probinsyana/malupit na amo story from their horrendously dubbed TVC (the one with Dennis Trillo in it). But you gotta admit, it's getting quite tiring since the Jaboom version.

2 - Radio: "You Heard Me?" Globe Voice Mail
What got me here was the voice talent. And the opening line (I'm a sucker for love stories). Clear product information, but I don't know if the brand name "Globe" was repeated enough (that's because right now, I'm not sure if it were Smart or Globe. I also wasn't sure if the last thing that the demented boyfriend said was "Do you HEARD me?", which is grammatically incorrect. Then again, if it were deliberate, it seared into my brain like that Sunsilk "It's like a magic" line.

1 - TVC: Makulay ang Buhay for Knorr Cubes
You must have been living under a rock lodged in a volcano in the Pacific ocean if you haven't heard of this Blues Clues-inspired kiddie ad. This brings a whole new positioning for Knorr cubes that's coming from pretty brilliant insights:

• Vegetables are rich in nutrients, but...
• Kids don't like veggies, so...
• Here comes Knorr to make veggies so much tastier!

Appreciated the fact that everything in the ad were spot on to the target market: the veggies used (talong, sitaw, kalabasa), the hook in the jingle ("Makulaaay... ang buhay... sa sinabawang gulay!"), the choreography, the green theme, the happy family, healthy kids, etc. Okay, okay, so this could be another Kim Tiu disaster, BUT the difference here is the target market, baby. It's a whole new audience. Btw, my nephew also loves this commercial.

Also heard that the Knorr Makulay campaign was groundbreaking in the below the line activities, which I'm guessing is a kiddie dance contest using the TVC.

Labels: ads

posted by Elyss @ 4:30 PM 1 comments

But I'm A Nice Girl?!

Okay, sometimes I'm a bit of a pushover, and this is probably because of my aversion to confrontation. I hate fighting. I feel like I'm never going to win any argument, especially if the opponent has only half of his or her brain working. (The half-brained are usually narrowminded in my experience.) Fortunately, in my office, a lot of people actually use their heads and think through the problem as it should be thought through, so more often I am nice and quite diplomatic, but I do get things done my way, which I honestly think is the right business decision, just not all the time.

I came across this article from MSN, and it seems that my nice girl attitude won't get me anywhere near a promotion. Another reason why I don't want to leave this country.

posted by Elyss @ 3:07 PM 0 comments

TELECONFERENCE

The dial-in number was most especially complicated
Because aside from two codes, there were three
Plus a voice key that needed to be said at the beep
The Malaysians were early and cranky
The Thais chatted to themselves
The Chinese kept their secrets
While the Americans were groggy
(It was eleven PM, way past their bedtime)
The Filipinos buzzed in ten minutes late
The Australians haughty and didactic
Of course only some us had gone through
Culture Sensitivity Seminars as
Most of us were new to the set-up
In a moment there were a million things
Unsaid, misunderstood, restated
Needed paraphrasing or a simpler way
Of explaining why the costs were higher
Than the one dollar and twenty cents we knew
In the end, we politely said our goodbyes
And promised to email agreements
Of course even in emails, things were
Unsaid, misundersood, restated
Paraphrased
If only the Babel tower makers had a preview
Of the mess thousands of years into
The future, they would have dropped
The idea, and started building something else
Like static-free telephone lines

posted by Elyss @ 8:37 PM 0 comments

High School Memories

posted by Elyss @ 9:40 PM 3 comments