Coping with life without summer holidays

My school career is almost over. I have a little less than a month left of classes, and then I will pass through the invisible protection of school and into the real world... which is terrifying. As students, I think we get so used to the protective bubble that university and college provide. We don't have to determine what career we want to enter or pay off our student loans quite yet.. it's a fantastic place to be! But all things great must come to an end, and that's why I'm writing this blog post now.

This is an ode to the 4 months of summer that I used to have free from school or any major responsibilities... a reflection of the days that ended at 1pm because classes ended early that day... a ballad to the professors that would give project extensions so our weekends could be relaxing and fun.

I've never surfed in my life, but it seemed fitting.

The thing about school is that those four months after classes finished served as a reset button. You finished those eight months of hard-work, and maybe you'll try some new courses next semester, or even change your major!! (lord knows, I have). The thing is.. you knew that school was in the near future, but you could worry about it later. Now, those days are over. There's no such thing as 'summer holidays' or 'march break' or even 'christmas break' because this is real life now, kid.

By no means is this blog post a complaint about not having as many vacation days as I did as a student.. it just means that things are changing, and it's time to step up and rise with the challenge of the real world. What does that challenge entail exactly? No idea.

What I do know is this: these past few months have been the most exciting of my life, but also the most stressful. The phrase 'so what are you going to do when you're done school' is almost a daily question you have to answer, and the panic you feel when you can't answer is quite palpable. Thankfully, I've been able to find a career in a field that I love, and have actually landed a position at an agency that I respect and am excited to be a part of. But still... I have been preparing to enter the 'real world' for 5 years now, and it still seems like something just out of reach. I guess in a couple of months I feel finally know what all the hubbub is all about.

Check out the Advertising: Account Management program at Sheridan College.

'Like' us on Facebook for more information here.

What Brands Can Learn From Bands

I am currently in the process of interviewing for internship positions so that I can get my foot into the door of the advertising industry. One common question the interviewer may ask is to give them your own unique thoughts about the industry (ie. where it's been, where it's going), which can be really tricky for a post-graduate student without years of experience. So, as I practice for my interviews, I try to come up with that one insightful opinion that will show the interviewer that I can think critically about the field (which is actually really hard). I really didn't want to come up with something that is already well known (ie. the growth of digital) or beat around the bush for 5 minutes and hope that they lose interest and ask me a new question. So, I tried to relate my answer to my own experience and how I perceive the advertising out there today. Since I'm pretty much obsessed with music and music culture, I thought this would be my natural starting point.

I started really paying attention to my favourite band's social media pages and the content they are posting, and it dawned on me-- brands and advertising agencies can learn so much from bands. Have you seen the levels of engagement and interaction between a band and its fans?! It's ridiculous... people don't think of it, and maybe bands don't mean it intentionally, but they are advertising! They're posting content about their tour dates, or new merch they have in store and people eat it up because they are genuinely interested in supporting the band. A band's music is their product, and this product is intertwined so naturally with the band's image and personality that we don't see it as such. A band is a perfect example of a 'pull' strategy, and it happens so naturally that people don't realize that a band is a business.

It's true...

I think that bands are so successful in their interaction with fans because, for example, their social media pages have such an authentic and humanistic quality to them. They are just a group of people playing music for a living, playing wicked shows and having great experiences that we all want to be a part of. Their posts don't sound like a business.. they sound like a person, which is something all brands can take advantage of. We can all recognize when a company makes a post that sounds like Microsoft Sam and Siri's child, and it creates this wall between the company and consumer. If brands want to really reflect a genuine quality, and create content that is meaningful and relatable, they need to look no further than their favourite bands.