Blah Blah Blog

For my first MBM blog I'm sharing a new book that I think is pretty funny, called:

There's No I in Office: 4293 Meaningless Phrases to Keep Your Coworkers Smiling While Avoiding Actual Conversation by Jacob Lentz, Paul Koehorst

(first few pages on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Theres-Office-Meaningless-Coworkers-Conversation/dp/1569757011)

The real reason I like this is because it shows how uncomfortable people are around each other at work everyday, and really how much of our lives is spent with meaningless phrases to void the silence. We're constantly saying things to each other that don't mean anything. "How ya doin?" "Well I keep on, keepin on" or "Another day, Another dollar" or "Workin for the Weekend." Even more amusing is when people try to be creative with their nonsense, saying stuff like "De Ja Vu all over again!" C'mon, really?

The chapters include multiple responses for just about any office situation. From casual fridays, to when someone's office chair breaks. The book looks like a huge waste of time but still a great read. I guess you could just carry it around and catch up on a chapter whenever someone asks how your weekend was.

Time

We had a friend come visit this weekend who we hadn't seen in eight months. That sounds like a really long time but it didn't seem like it had been that long. Then I thought about it in terms of my son - he was only eight months old at the last visit and he's changed a lot in that time! It is really amazing how time flies.

Before we know it 2009 is going to be over. I guess it is about time to pull out the spreadsheets and start budgeting meetings. Then there is that inevitable September/October panic that's going to set in. You know the one where everyone tries to finish all the things we outlined back in January when the year seemed like it would take longer to get through than it did?

Whatever, I'm ready for it, come on fall! I can't wait to rake leaves, carve pumpkins and sing holiday songs to my son... after I get my work done, of course!

Presenting

Maggi and I are presenting web site elements and basic designs to a client tomorrow. Presenting is not one of my biggest strengths, but I'm looking forward to it because we're giving them a lot of very cool, very "them" items to look over. Even our different color swatch options make me thing of being in a candy store with lots of interesting, solid, saturated colors.

I also just realized that my last blog post was about color, so I think I'm seeing a trend. Apparently I like to muse about color... but really, I think there is nothing more exciting then colors coming together, especially when different colors and tones unexpected complement each other.

For fun, check out Adobe's kuler.

Communication

So I spent the weekend with a good friend and business associate - I'm on her company's strategic advisory committee. Turns out she's been frustrated trying to find the right marketing company and just happened to mention it in the course of casual conversation. For the 8 years we've known each other, socially and professionally, I've felt confident she knew what MBM does - turns out I was very wrong. So lessons for today are (1) Never assume someone else knows what you know and (2) just because you do a good job marketing your clients doesn't mean you do a good job marketing yourself. I'm sure there's a lesson (3), I just haven't processed it yet....

RFPs!

Wow, it has been a crazy few weeks of RFPs. If our clients are any indication of the economy, I would say things are improving. SIQ, SOQ, RFQ, RFP - you name it we've seen it.

It's definitely exciting to see things picking up and hopefully our hard work will pay off for our clients. I also find it interesting the things that we do as a marketing agency that traditional advertising firms wouldn't touch. MBM Marketing is sort of like the Army, "Be all you can be."

Now onto a PowerPoint for an RFP interview/presentation...

Color wheel

So I was looking at some potential colors for a client's website, and I realized I might be in a bit of a color rut. I love blues and greens (and of course, their combo - teal), so naturally, those are the first colors I think of for ANY project (see MBM's interior photos below). It made me wonder though - what is it that draws people to certain colors?

So I googled.

At first, I found various responses about how people who love water like blue, and people who like to feel serene like green. I'm not really buying that. I understand that there are associations with certain colors, but I'm not thinking about dirt when I see brown or sunshine when I see yellow.

What I'm looking for is more scientific information than I seem to be finding online - like, is it psychological or simply hard wiring in our brains?

Beyond that, is a website or product packaging more influential if it's in your favorite colors? Subconsciously, are you less likely to linger if it's in colors you dislike?

Strengths

Sometime back, we all took the Strengthsfinder profile. Today Kelly did a Lunch & Learn to help us better understand how we can work together in groups -- and what strengths we have in common. And she had us guess what our distinct strengths were. It was pretty funny, other than pegging Courtney on "discipline" (her photo is next to the word on wikipedia) we don't know each other as well as we thought. Which provides us with another great opportunity to learn! Yea! (yes, "positivity" is one of my strengths). Maggi