Weltschmerz

Just a quick note: The word 'Weltschmerz' (German,) refers to a both a worldview and a type of depression arising from comparing the current world to an idealised one, or the anxiety etc. caused through the realisation that one's weaknesses are caused by a cruel or inappropriate world. Now that that is cleared up, I hope you enjoy the poem! 

WELTSCHMERZ

Flashing erratically between one realm and another,

The tree, at the end of the garden, flits to its dystopian brother.

They both move between seconds weaved,

epileptically moving and switching through shadows.

Darkness where nightmares reside, unable to leave,

My garden Valhalla, a lifeless meadow.

As if a mirror is wedged across my vision eternally:

One moment green, the next one black.

The tree is fertile and burnt simultaneously,

The fear grows of the different world before turning back.

That is my garden: My microcosm in lyric & word.

This world that is cruel and seemingly blurred.

The fires stalk the corridors and swallow my vision.

They shine in my eyes dead, the world is red with blood. 

Yet you may now think of that dead land a figment,

Fear manifest in trauma.

But that tree in my garden, for water to drink from a rivulet is what I yearn.

This blackened land; a mirror broken and away from it I turn.

These lines written from within the constant shade,

my microcosmic cosmos; I seek my perfect glade.

I sight it often in dreams, where I walk for miles and miles.

I walk in my garden down the paths, towards the trees where leaves fall in piles.

The sun glistens and winds blow gently as I reach to grab the orb, in which it waits.

But I can’t fit inside such a small object,

It seals my fate so cruel, full-circle I reach but fall . . .

And I find myself back at the tree,

sitting calmly and flashing constantly.

My eyes tinted with goodness to imagine greatly,

but seemingly futile as I flit back to reality.

While trapped in this world without a window,

one can always create one through which to view.

What do you see? That is for your sight to behold.

And I wait again but wish luck to you;

Escape this world and through your mirror.

Or maybe you’d prefer that the mirror be broken, to flood our land to water the tree.

Extinguish the fires and obliterate the nightmares;

I wish you luck’s best, but please tell me how you fare.

 

Marketing-Speak: Necessary or Needless?

A short while ago I tweeted a link to a site. This website featured a generator, similar to the Daily Mail headline generator or the Glen Beck conspiracy generator; this one was titled: Marketing Bullshit Generator, a simple site featuring a button that generated a random sequence of jargon to highlight the apparent meaninglessness and pretentiousness of corporate-/marketing-speak.The only reason that I found myself aware of this was due to a viral video from Adobe that you may have seen, where marketers are placed in a gameshow-esque electric chair when told to explain strategy. Upon using the typical jargon -especially regarding digital- e.g. 'halo-effect', the marketeer caricatures are shocked into submission. The strapline of this advertisement for Adobe being 'Metrics not Myths'. I am aware of course of the different 'buzz-phrases' such as halo-effect, which has a fairly obvious connotation, these phrases making their way into certain textbooks. I would never really use them to a large extent in reality however.
 
Of course I would use them in an academic article or report of some kind to convey thought on a topic to an obviously clued-up audience. This is where I think many phrases belong, in academia to foster strategic thought and creativity regarding new research and new ideas. Some phrases of course encapsulate a whole new shift in approach e.g. the annoying phrases used by some digital folk 'Big Data', an idea that stipulates the need for as much relevant data as possible since data or information after all, is power. This is more of a media take on the idea in my opinion with mainly news outlets using the phrase to convey a current strategic idea adopted across the profession. The phrase doesn't outline how it is done, but when do phrases ever explain how to do something?

It would be laborious to trawl through all lexis used to describe every marketing phenomenon in all contexts, so what do I want you to take away from this? Are these buzz phrases necessary? Or are they just another quirk of useless marketeers? The answer- of course, is to remember who your audience is. Within employment, using phrases to convey complex ideas can save time, but, and this is important, they are not answers themselves. "Using big data" is not a very acceptable answer to the question "how can we optimise future sales from our potential e-customers on platform X?" Be relevant in the language you use, remember your audience and answer questions with solutions, not vague concepts that have little-no meaning when used alone. Don't be the guys in the Adobe advert and definitely don't use any of the phrases found in the BS Generator seen here!

    

Another Piece of 2nd-Person Flash-Fiction

The piece below was written in about an hour and focuses on an ambiguous story of someone travelling across a tundra landscape in search of something. Hope you like the imagery and please review, comment etc.

Winter's Grip in System 9

Snow whips across the plateau as you run tirelessly. The ill-fitting Elemental-Resistance Unit weighs you down. But you run all the same. You need to catch him. The snow blinds your vision pane before your face, sliding off moments after. You fire a laser into the distance, watching it travel for miles like a marathon runner at light-speed, melting snow as steam erupts in mid-air before re-freezing immediately after; the snow brought back to life.

A thin outline forms some twenty minutes later, your muscles taught as the complex comes into focus. Another five minutes. The gate appears before you, its guards long dead, but the Thief resides within its walls and you must have him!

Your hand touches the metal chain-link fencing as you push the left gate askew. The snow beats with greater ferocity as if trying to scare you away. It pummels your suit’s visor even more, the flakes hitting the screen like a Kamikaze plane, melting with the slightly-greater-but-still-below-zero heat. You make your way across the courtyard, the footsteps you make being filled in again with lightning speed; the imperium of the ice age. The gate blows shut behind you with a clang.

The buildings before you stretch behind a large dome, gunmetal grey amidst the white snow. Outposts sit scattered across the lifeless courtyard, metal Environment Emergency Bunkers. Human cocoons or incubators without inhabitants, the residents of the planet having died 200 years ago. The planet known as 6667 of System 9 was the epitome of a dead world. A planet where no species had adapted evolved or changed and as a result, the surface had no life to grace, only snow, despair and the ruins of a civilisation long left behind. But yet here he was, the Thief. You press onwards through the snow and open the main door to the ‘Centre HUB’, emblazoned upon the dome.

You enter a dark reception, the final chaos of the civilisation’s then-impending collapse frozen with upturned chairs, disabled Anti-Gravity Fields and scattered papers; all frozen like the sheet of ice that was once the Great Ocean. You feel no warmer having ventured in—doors. You press forward and across the marble floor, black and white in swirls like galaxies and nebulae across the visible Systems. Your footsteps thud as you approach a white room, stairs leading towards a basement. The room contains the final experiments of the facility’s biologists, various species now lying dead in incubation cages, their AG Fields having long-since deactivated, the creature’s bodies frozen and un-decomposed, eyes wide and frozen in death like time on the dead world.

You descend the staircase, taking your time: CLANG. . . CLANG. . . CLANG. . . CLANG; your footsteps hit the green metal with an echo. You walk for ten minutes before arriving at a white corridor at the basement; a single automatic door set at its end some fifteen metres away. You run towards it, radiating energy and warmth-so-rare as you sense your target behind a simple sheet of metal. You enter.

The room is white, circular and small. Uninspiring. The Thief lies at its centre. You smile beneath your suit as you approach. His short brown hair is hard; stiff; and cold, frozen. His eyes are wide open, their light blue shade the same colour as 6667’s sky. His lips are white, as is his skin. Deathly white. The silver case sits patiently away from his outstretched hand, calling for you, asking if we can go yet. You wipe water from your visor, as if wiping your eyes because you can’t believe what you’re seeing. He's really dead, which makes you sad in a way.

You take the case and run to leave, yearning for its contents as you leave the body behind. . . A dead man, a dead complex and a dead planet save for one exceptional life-form.     

The Need for Professional Development

My post yesterday discussed the need for work experience from a variety of sources, and evidence of skills that the job may require, citing my own experience of employment arising from my creative writing pursuits. At the end of the post, I mentioned the need to constantly develop one's progress throughout their chosen career and to reassess themselves every now and then. This post will explain the need for professional development and why not doing so could leave you behind in the profession.

So what is Professional Development? Professional development is the process through which we ensure our skill set is up-to-date and is constantly re-evaluated to meet the demands of the changing world, paraphrased from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI.) So to re-evaluate one's skills, what should be done?

Well firstly, you should examine the world in which you live and -if you are any good at your job- you will probably be aware of new technologies etc. that solve certain problems or have fostered a demographic shift on certain platforms. This means that you should learn about how to use new technologies to effectively optimise them within strategies. For example, when Internet marketing -SMM in particular- became much more popular post-2007, many marketers needed to get used to the new environment of social commerce and the ability to spread opinion far and wide through social media. There were and still are, some marketers who have not done this and as a result, their digital strategies will almost-certainly be lacklustre. This will be the same with the new Penguin Update. SEO marketers cannot keep rehashing the same old tactics from the late '90s, the playing field has moved and so should the players.

Examining the environment for new laws and technologies is a crucial step in Professional Development, but there is another important dimension that is much more personal, and that is the ability to evaluate your own progress. Identify problems with your working life, are you working too much? Not hard enough? Are you securing very high numbers in terms of whatever metric you are tasked with accumulating e.g. Click-throughs? If so, what can be done about that? These questions should lead to multiple tasks to complete long-term in order to facilitate the completion of your goal e.g. Have steps in place to aid the process and even give them time-frames if you want, such as 'by March end, organise 10 brainstorming meetings of 2 hours each',  as a goal for fostering greater campaign creativity by the end of the year.

Goals can either be very specific, or more arbitrary in terms of their tangibility. The salient point, is that you must take a step back and ask the question: What could improve my job performance? What am I missing? If the answer to these question is "Nothing" and "Nothing," then you aren't doing it right. Everyone needs to develop, whether you be a Marketing Assistant or a CMO, you all occupy the same world and it isn't going to stop for you. You have two choices: Evolve or die! In this instance 'die' refers to the deadly experience of under-performance and mediocrity, hopefully not a physical death, but you never know.

So in summary, why is PD important? Because it fosters reflective thinking on your professional life, which can -and most likely will- lead to a more insightful perception of the world around you.

LINKS:

- http://www.managers.org.uk/training-development-qualifications/personal-development/my-career/cpd CMI, on Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
- http://jbwalkerwriting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/work-experience-update-advice.html
My Post Yesterday on the Importance of Work Experience
- http://www.palgrave.com/skills4study/pdp/
Professional Development for University Students & CPD in Future Careers (I used this for my course!)

Work Experience (An Update & Advice)

Earlier this week I wrote a post on being accepted for an internship at Carat Media. Well, earlier today I received an email back from a different agency, Photolink Creative Group, informing me that I was rejected due to a lack of places available. However, they deemed me a good potential employee (as a result of the interview) and have kindly given me a contact and a recommendation to a different agency called Online Ventures Group. OVG focuses on using data to foster creative content to please customers and therefore clients and after an email enquiring about summer employment, I was offered an interview!

I will be attending this interview on Tuesday and the reason why I'm writing this post, is because it really highlights the importance of networking in practically any profession. Thanks to specialist social networks such as LinkedIn, it has become much easier to get to know employers and employees and to recommend others whom you value. If you aren't on LinkedIn then my only question is: WHY? Definitely join the site and make your profile appealing to viewers. But it doesn't stop there, you should also subscribe to job sites in your local job centre or if you're a university student, use any kind of newsletter, forum etc. that they have to try and gain experience from jobs advertised. University emails on employment opportunities was how I managed to get the Tomi Clothing in-house experience only 1-2 months after I started my course.

Suffice it to say, in a world where more and more people leave university with good degrees, experience and lots of it, various in nature, are the assets that will make you shine. And if you find it hard to land a job, visit employability workshops or even do something in your spare time that exemplifies a skill, something that very few people will have done with their time. The main reason why I got accepted at Tomi Clothing was because of my creative writing pursuits and now, thanks to that development, I am able to use my TC experience to press the main buttons of more prominent employers, having worked in the familiar roles already. Once the first foot is on the ladder, the rest is much easier as long as you continue to develop yourself. I will write a post on professional development sometime in the near future.

Thanks for reading.      

Penguin 2.0 Update: A Paradigm Shift?

This year (May 22nd) has seen Google update their much-loved and -feared Penguin software, used to govern SEO tactics on their search engine (I'll link to my previous SEO/PPC post at the end.) This update has revealed some interesting changes, which include a greater role bestowed upon the need for genuine 'earned' links, which Google prefers to come from social media opinion denotations, such as likes, re-tweets/-pins etc., in attempts to discern more about popularity. This has brought forth a new dimension of popularity, with Google now wanting "Authority" pages online that will be arbitrated through this online democracy of measuring opinion quantitatively.

Traditional metrics are being maintained such as link-building, bounce rates etc,. although now Google also wish to make even greater use of their Google Authorship Markup, in order to match content with the exact content creators, which will obviously help to identify individuals with authority and create synergy with any brands/companies etc. that they may be affiliated with or have written content for.

Personally, I think this seems to be where SEO is moving towards; digital marketing tools in general being co-dependent upon one-another to create a more three-dimensional picture, bringing together search and social to foster a more complete picture of 'popularity' on the web. Now that content is being advised more and more to be matched with creators on Google+, companies with terrible G+ pages (of which there are many e.g. Apple do not seem to have one -either that, or it's poorly optimised,) will find themselves left behind in the race to become an Authority. Let's hope SEO agents can move with the times and become more well-rounded as digital practitioners, marrying technical skills in SEO with creative skills in SMM; it seems that these flexible marketers really are the future, which is something we should all strive for.

LINKS:

- http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/62848-penguin-2-0-how-to-become-an-online-authority?utm_medium=feeds&utm_source=blog  (eConsultancy, On Becoming an Authority)
- http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-successful-google-pages-and-why-they-work/ (Interesting Page on Good G+ Pages)
- http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/62806-penguin-2-0-where-does-seo-go-from-here (eConsultancy, On Development Potential for SEO & Implications of Penguin Update)
- http://jbwalkerwriting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/search-engine-optimisation-pay-per.html (My Original Post on Common SEO/PPC Practices & How it All Works)

Thanks for Reading,
Jake

The Intern

As my frantic running around came to an end, I finally secured an internship with one of Europe's most prominent media buyers less than two hours ago: Carat Media. Carat is a subsidiary of the Aegis Group and has over 12,000 employees, operates in over 100 countries, 5 continents or 24 time zones. This experience will be a fantastic opportunity to experience marketing for bigger brands and since the scheme will most likely be rotatory, I will acquire a diverse skill set. Check out their websites if you wish and thanks for reading. Hopefully I'll be writing content, optimising search engines and helping to renovate websites with other team members as well as analysing some data. If you want to get into media buying, this is the agency to look out for considering that they deal in over £2.1B worth of media in the UK alone, making them the second-largest in London and the largest outside of London. Definitely check them out and I hope all's well wherever you are in the world.

http://www.carat.com

http://www.aegismedia.com

The Novel & Future Plans

As my novel hits the 100,000 word mark I will most likely have a first draft finished during the summer. From here, the fun begins with editing the work but from what I've been told by experienced authors is that upon finishing a book, one should leave it to 'stew' for a fortnight or so before retuning to it, so that you can look upon it with different eyes to spot things that you didn't see before.

This is why I will reveal what I will be doing in the meantime: continuing my work on a different novel and hopefully trying to tie together the chapbook Myths to Believe In. I've written a total of 54 poems at present, 10 of which are featured in my first chapbook Distant Lands. I will be trying to create a chapbook that, rather than links a story between poems a la Distant Lands -very loosely at that- I will be trying to create a much more conceptual work. By this I mean a book that links together multiple stories that focus on third-person characters as opposed to a first-person narrative. The poem Ballad of the Dreamweaver is only the first in a trilogy of poems that will be spread across the work to form the epitomising 'myth' with what is hopefully a poignant message. I look forward to honing all of these works at present and I will announce when SKYSCARR sees a finished first draft!

As for my other novel, the story will focus on a near-furture conspiracy involving a health science company. I will try to explain in more detail in a later post and may even post a segment of the beginning so far at some point.

Bye for now and have a pleasant time!

Jake