And the Ocean Crashes (Part II)

I wrote the second part to my short thriller/horror piece "And the Ocean Crashes" tonight. It was easier to write the second half than I thought it would be to be honest. In any case, if you haven't read the first half, here's the link: http://jbwalkerwriting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/and-ocean-crashes.html
   If you have then here's the conclusion. I hope that you enjoy it and I'm glad that you enjoyed the other half, if you did.

And the Ocean Crashes (Part II)

The door was a worn old thing, the dark pine chipped in places and the muddy paint flaking off, shards blowing in the light breeze that was beginning to accelerate. Yellow light escaped through the jarred door in a thin line that crossed one of his shoes. The breeze was slowly beginning to feel like a wind tunnel of force, whistling past his head in every direction, as the crash of the waves grew louder like a car bearing down on him on a busy road. He tensed his arms, placing his hands into his pocket to find his fingers caressing the warmth of his mobile phone. Without thinking he pulled it from his pocket, the fear of danger momentarily forgotten as the familiar sight greeted his eyes. The cyan pattern swirled along the smart phone’s screen like a soothing lava lamp against the dark background of a child’s bedroom. His safety dissipated as he saw the reception bar: Nothing.

His heart sank as if a chair was pulled from under his feet. He shoved the device back into his pocket, the breeze seeping through his shirt and into his bones like ice. His muscles began to twitch and his testicles began to shrink. His pupils grew like black holes as he fixed them upon the light seeping through the door; that warm, inviting light. His hand reached forward as thoughts literally grabbed the limb, the fingers twitching hesitantly in mid-air as his fearful ambivalence took hold, his train of thought derailed for a time.

He breathed in and out slowly as his hand became steady again, the fingers becoming still, lifeless. Without any further delay he pushed with all his might, as if the pine thing was a stone barrier. It swung with a short but loud creak as the wood thudded lightly against the interior of the shack, the light shining all over his body like a spotlight that had finally found him.

A man stood silhouetted before a blank wall, rats scurried around on the floor with light scratches as their claws dug into the wood. The man breathed horribly outwards as if his lungs were drowning in phlegm. The man turned around as the breeze intensified once more; sand was whipped into his face, blinding him as he lurched downwards, shielding his eyes as darkness took hold, a loud, oncoming thud clanked on the wood and just as he raised his head the man was before him: His teeth were yellowed and disgusting, his clothes even more so; soiled with months or years worth of dirt, the skin beneath blemished with a decaying pox that had pervaded the skin on his face. Buboes grouped around his lips with dried pus coating them; they looked like they’d burst all over him any moment. But the man’s hand was what took him; stretched out behind him as if in preparation for throwing a ball, the hand lurched towards his chest; the nails dirtied yet sharp and seemingly manufactured, cracked his chest with a dull thud. He screamed and gurgled as warm blood rushed towards his lips and trickled down his chin, his eyes filled with tears, blurring the inhuman face before him with its disgusting teeth smiling at him. His knees buckled as the fingers dug through him, draining his dignity as they searched for his heart that still beat faintly. He heaved as blood and vomit poured from his mouth and splattered on the floor. A second hand slipped it’s way between his legs as the thing’s teeth clasped around his neck and, just before the life slipped from his eyes and mind, a faintest crunch echoed in his head as the flame of life was extinguished.

And as the moon rises to it’s greatest height, the breeze continues to rip and tear mightily through the sea of sand across the far reaches of the archipelagos; the sand sits cold and black, while the thing drags the corpse in a bloody trail through its lazy clutches. He throws the remains into the embrace of the waters, the splash rising above the sound of the waves momentarily as the ocean crashes.     

The Nescafe Facebook Page: A Content Review

In a spur of the moment decision, I've decided to put my thoughts out there on a Facebook page that I absolutely love. The Nescafe page with upwards of 12 million Likes.

In recent years as social media has taken off, companies have tried tirelessly to create engaging social pages that humanise their brands and products as much as possible. After all, brands aren't just products anymore, but lifestyles; a symbiosis of life between us just bubbling away at the surface of society and seeping through to its very roots, sitting all around us every day, wanting to tell us their story, their origins; (our friends at Carat published a similar blog post a while ago on the subject of 'Brand Narratives' and I would recommend that you check that out.) To many this is a permissible phenomenon whilst others have voiced disapproval. I reviewed the book No Logo by Naomi Klein some time ago now, just in case you want more on that particular perspective. But this is merely the background as to why companies try to be as innovative as they can, to attract the most social commerce.

And it is that point that leads me to this review of Nescafe. Why do I like it? Well, aside from being a routine buyer of their coffee, I've kept them in my timeline because of a few salient reasons: Firstly, they publish content regularly, unlike some other coffee companies such as Costa Coffee, who I also liked through Facebook (yes I'm a coffee addict!) This is crucial for any business trying to establish a firm base on a social media outlet, you need to keep it updated; it's like a blog, a tracker of your life and if it's neglected or under-updated overtime, consumers will begin to lose interest.

But with the baby steps of having the basic commitment out of the way, we can get down to the nitty gritty: Why is their content so special? Well that's for multiple reasons: The main one is that it's just plain funny, constantly playing upon people's general tiredness and need for constant energy, or more often just uploading cool pics with innovative ideas! Look at some of these recent images.

 

I'm Glad Monday's My Day Off This Year!

Smile!

They also recently uploaded a series of images forming a recipe for a Nescafe Milkshake! Like I said, the content is innovative, it's fairly original and it's a brilliant addition to their communication strategy. But the best thing about this or any other Facebook page is that -largely- it's free to do! Of course there was probably a great deal of cash that went into producing those images; the equipment, the staff etc. but even when that is considered, it's so much cheaper than filming an advert and spending vast sums on a national campaign. But in a final note, to revert back to the Carat article in particular, they have used the Facebook timeline -like many other companies- to detail their history in the world, their origins, their landmark coffees and their participation in key world events, (I didn't know they'd been on the moon!) and it is that common feature that so many brand pages share. They want to tell us their story, and the Story of Nescafe is one that I thoroughly enjoyed!

The only real criticism that I have of Nescafe's Facebook page is that they focus a little too much I feel on their Original blend or their general brand. Looking at the content produced, I feel it would be fairly easy to incorporate their other blends into something artistic that could raise awareness of their other coffees and product lines. An interesting dynamic can be seen between both the Nescafe page and their Nespresso page, both tackling different arms of Nestle's coffee ventures.

But in all, I find the Nescafe page a particularly good example of a brand making good use of a social platform to spread it's message, and it is for that reason that I thought I should share it!

Please, feed back to me about this. Do you have any Facebook pages of brands that you enjoy, whose content you like? Let me know, I'd love to hear about them!

Carat Media internship Journal: Entry #2

And so the adventure continues at Carat Media in my first full work day. Yesterday was much more straight forward in terms of the agenda, with more spreadsheets being analysed for larger companies! I organised the data as I did last week only with less help and in similar or greater numbers. The data was promising for the most part, which was a good thing to write although this week I tackled a different perspective in my reports. This time I examined the best data set for both Reach and CPC/CTR. Using FaceBook's advert management tools I was able to reveal the actual advert used and -in my report- began to compare their respective characteristics in terms of language use and image type, in an attempt to determine what was motivating consumers psychologically, both in the highly-reaching "Company 1" market and the high-click low-cost "Company 2" market. Using some simple logic and research along with the data, I formulated an explanation for why each was successful with their target audiences e.g. one being less upmarket than the other and therefore encouraging potential customers through a first-time buyers 20% discount, due to income segmentation, or the latter appealing to consumers through the strapline specifying a new product collection, and therefore appealing to curiosity.

Interestingly I then worked alongside another employee who demonstrated the ability to use Google Maps to geo-target customers with Facebook display ads within the country. The client was currently opening a series of new stores. Carat's job was to target those within an effective radius to ensure that they would have a strong possibility of attendance. I recall a similar award-winning campaign reported in eConsultancy a few months ago for Vodafone, also conducted by Carat! The technology behind the management of these profiles is so seamless and simple once you've gotten used to it. And spending seven or eight hours in an office getting practice is truly a great way to speed up the process I've found already! 

I've been let off the leash!- 

Some tasks to complete (Above)

The newest task that I performed yesterday however was analysing a Facebook campaign and then re-allocating budgets for it. Through Facebook it's very easy to change the budget during a live advert, which is why at Carat we sometimes -in order to test potential, unknown markets etc- set up several different adverts with small budgets and see how they perform. This was set up several days ago and it was up to me to find the adverts that had performed well regarding CPCs/CTRs and put more money into them and for other, under-performing adverts, to pull the funding from them completely and hit the pause button. In the few hours that I've spent using the Facebook advert manager, I've come to think of it as akin to a mixing desk or music sequencer in a recording studio when recording live audio, having to change controls, lift the gain, add EQ etc. and if -in this case- something isn't working, the figures not dancing to the tune, then pause it and either alter or delete!

Finally, aside from beginning a report on one company's performance in June and October, I used the Facebook Ad Planner to discover the statistics for gender and age in aid of the campaign for an event. I took twelve screenshots showing men and women in the UK in the age ranges of 18-25; 26-35 & 35+ and for each of those gender-age demographics, I selected the niches who liked the event, the figures obviously growing smaller as I became more specific. Hopefully they'll become more useful over the next week!

Looking back at what I've just written it's hard to believe I did so much in about eight hours. The tasks were fun to complete and the atmosphere was vibrant enough to work in for an extended period of time. There were no weird or awkward silences, everyone was always either talking to a colleague (about something work-related usually!) or on the phone to someone in another office. It's been so much more exciting than previous jobs so far, and the work that I'm completing is something that I can say I am truly interested in! Without anything else to say, all I can say is long may it continue!

See you next week . . .   

In case you missed Week 1

Week 3

And the Ocean Crashes

Here's a short piece of fiction (thriller) that I've just written. I've decided to leave it on a cliff-hanger but if you want to, you can contribute ideas as to how you'd like me to end it! It's written mostly in the present-tense and focuses on a third-person perspective. Enjoy!

And the Ocean Crashes

Waves break and form rhythmically against the sand-dusted grass. The dying sun glimmers as the shade it created begins fades away, moulding into the twilight and swallowing up the beach in a long black veil. The coastline glistens as it sweeps violently into shore, crashing like a thousand vehicles, epically spraying his face with water droplets as the sand dampens. Pebbles scatter like marbles on tile, snatched by the sea’s grip like a predator pouncing upon its prey.

  

A shack sits abandoned across to one of the smaller archipelagos; a light sits uncannily upon a table through a window. At least he thinks it’s a table, at 600 feet away he isn’t too sure. The wood hut looks local, pine and holding it’s own against the occasional violence of the tides in the area. It was still quite warm outside, even at night. But that light . . .

  

He ushered himself forward; he’d have to find out somehow. He ran across the beach, the sand sinking and rising in tiny dunes, like suction cups lazily grabbing his feet in place for a split second with every step. He passed under trees and their shadows, their giant leaves like fingers waiting to grab whoever dared pass under them. He made his way around the circular path of the beach, progressing around the archipelago at a modest pace. He felt that he needed the energy. He reached the edge of the first beach; the shack was around 350 feet away now, where the beach broke away into a small area of the sea, separating the two landmasses into their own little islands. It was barely a rivulet at his feet; waves so tiny, like those he’d seen in diagrams about sound frequencies; they entranced him for a second. He raised his head up and kept his eye firmly fixed upon the shack. A bird called out somewhere from the forest of palm trees behind him and crickets buzzed in the salty air. The eeriness that had dawned on him slowly, descending like a spider on one’s neck, took hold of him and shook him as if he were rolling down a hill; he began to sweat coldly as he felt his confidence begin to drain like air escaping it’s confinement. He quickly shrugged it off, quivering as he did so: He splashed his way the couple of feet, uncaring of what was or was not there and made a point in doing so as the splashes rang out dramatically. He stepped on the shack’s beach, and the sun began to set.

It didn’t take long for darkness to descend. It was as though it had been expecting him. The beach stretched around some mounds of rock jutting from the surface like crude, multi-bladed knives. He progressed around them as best he could, occasionally stumbling over an insidious stump in the ground at which point, he’d turn, thinking it was a trap set by whoever was going to kill him. The fear took over in those moments and caused him to sprint a short way towards that light in the shack, which was slowly becoming a beacon in the encroaching darkness.

Five minutes passed. He eventually made it . . . 

How NOT to Write a Novel (Book Review)

As regular readers will know, I am currently editing a SF/F novel and have numerous other projects in the pipeline presently. Last year I bought a book entitled "How NOT to Write a Novel" by Harold Mittelmark and Sandra Newman, both published writers -and good ones- as this book evidences!

The title is obviously a no-brainer, it's a guide to writing well. But the structure is what makes it particularly compelling as well as the motivational, conversational language. The book is split into seven main parts tackling specific aspects from beginnings to endings to character formations, to dialogue and monologue. Within each of these is a small series of the most common pitfalls, presented in humorous fashion with an example, poking fun at bad writing in the process. The sub-sections are hilariously-titled with such comical headlines as: "The Clone Entourage . . . Where friend characters proliferate into an indistinguishable mass." Within this particular example, numerous names are added rapidly and ridiculously without any further explanation whatsoever, to highlight the importance of ensuring characters are all relatable in some way.

Although the guide can be a little heavy on the obvious stuff, please don't let this dissuade you because the bad examples can provide a guiding light in some respect when contrasting your own work. But more than that, it really does serve as a motivator because you'll realise that despite how terrible you thought your writing was, it aint that bad! Not that it should foster complacency with bad writing, only remind you that it's all fixable.

A particularly helpful section was the final one detailing how (not) to write application letters to potential publishers, focusing on the long-winded life-storyesque essay, to the wise-crack-laden comedian's request. Like I said, the examples are so brilliantly constructed it felt in some cases that there was a real person who wrote it, then remembered that the book was non-fiction and despaired that it probably happened on a regular-enough basis! 

So maybe you're an aspiring writer who's after advice, and maybe you've read some pretty awful fiction in your life and want to laugh in the face of that £10.99 receipt that you can't take back to the bookstore. If you are either of these or even if you're just someone who likes a good laugh, I recommend that you buy this book. It was so engaging for me that it was one of those books that -upon completing- I just read through again! Even the front cover is enough to make you chuckle!

Poor cat, he's trapped in a bad novel!

An Update & More on Myths to Believe In

Hi everyone, it's been a weird few days since I uploaded the Carat journal entry. When I promoted the post on Twitter and Google+ it got noticed pretty quickly by both university lecturers as well as some Carat managers. It just seemed to snowball from there and as a result I was asked by http://diginnmmu.com to write an opinion piece for them! The article I wrote tackled a similar subject to that seen in two previous posts I wrote back in June I think, on work experience and professional development; the new article will argue for the importance of digital skills alongside getting valuable work experience and taking the initiative to demonstrate commitment by doing something original and creative -like starting a blog for example! It should see publication sometime next week.

In any case I am very pleased with the result and if anyone who supported the previous post in any way is reading this, thank you very much, I hope I can return the favour in some way! The next Carat entry should hopefully be uploaded by this coming Friday or Saturday at the latest, because I've moved my internship day from Wednesday to Thursday. But regardless, I hope that you stay tuned and thank you for continuing to support this blog if you do check it regularly; I appreciate it.

But the brunt of this post is dedicated to something else and that is the second collection of poems entitled Myths to Believe In, which currently stands at over 65% completion I'd say, although it may take longer. A good deal of the poems to be featured you will most likely have already seen on this blog however, most of them have undergone drastic changes to make them more effective as part of a whole body of work, some of them only share a title and perhaps a couple of lines with their original drafts so hopefully if you found them initially disappointing, you'll change your mind! (I hope.)

What I will upload today for you however is the front cover of the book, which has been on FB/Twitter for a month or so, and which I hope you find aesthetically pleasing enough to look at!

And without further ado, please welcome Myths to Believe In!

Once again, I'm really grateful for all the views I've been getting recently, the Carat post is currently my all-time most-viewed at present! And if it wasn't for the re-tweets and shares, I probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere near that amount, so thanks.

http://jbwalkerwriting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/work-experience-update-advice.html 

(Work Experience post)

http://jbwalkerwriting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-need-for-professional-development.html 

(Professional Development post)

Carat Media Internship Journal: Entry #1

Yesterday I attended my first shift at Carat Media as a marketing intern, assigned to the subsidiary AMNET, a division based around analytics and one of Carat's smaller, more embryonic companies currently in a transitional phase of rapid expansion. The induction was interesting, being given a who's who talk on staff teams and their specialisations, the fire exits, where we could go for free food & drink! It was pretty much what I expected, sitting around one of the boardroom tables alongside fellow students, some of whom I knew, others maybe not so much. The vibrant atmosphere pulsed in every brilliantly-coloured room, with the occupying full-time staff members barely out of university themselves!

Awesome social areas with free coffee (above) and projector in the lobby showing the website (left.)

                                               

                                                                                        Very artistic walls!

But after the induction came a lecture on search, with the obvious search engine metrics covered in detail as well as an interesting insight into Carat's strategy in how they interpret and use the data, their rules of thumb and quality standards in SEM and the development of the industry as they have experienced it in recent times. I didn't attend the second half of the lecture and instead met with my manager and had a discussion with him and two other Agency Life students about display marketing, the metrics associated and their uses, the types of targeting that Carat specialise in, as well as a brief insight into how publishing works in terms of buying and selling ad space! Like the other members of staff, he was friendly and outgoing, relaxed yet paradoxically hardworking. 

After all the intros and tours I got some real work done. Arriving at the second floor, we were lead into one of the large open-plan offices filled with communal desks sitting in clusters amidst a white-walled room with cyan graffiti illustrating a catalogue of logos, from Twitter to the BBC. I worked from laptop, shown by a fellow employee how to access the Facebook Advertising account and how to download the data in Excel format. From here I noted data figures with disappointing Click Through Rates compared to their Cost per Click (and good stats too, of which there were several.) After ravaging three spreadsheets I wrote a report on one of them (around half a page,) in the time I had left detailing a general overview (the data was good overall with low CPC & average-above average CTR,) of the data before me. I examined a gender perspective by assorting the data (with a little help in using Excel's more complicated tools!) on the spreadsheet into the two categories, with overall spend and CPC, CTR etc. metrics. It felt like a productive day, I'd only been there working for around 2.5 hours yet I'd already gotten to grips with so much, like getting the pivot tables up in Excel, getting used to the correct formulas and calculations with repetition (Spend/Clicks= CPC; Clicks/Impressions= CTR!)

So how was my first day as an intern at Carat Media? Well, to be honest I can't really fault it so far, I'm genuinely hard-pressed to find anything that I disliked (apart from my misinterpretation of "smart-casual" leading to me being over-dressed!) I liked everything, the people, the environment, my manager, even the work! And it is for these reasons that I say that yesterday was was one of the best working days of my life and I hope you've found what I had to say positive? Inspiring? Or if you've experienced working with/at Carat before, just truthful? Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear it! Thanks for reading and sorry about the images, I had to use my phone but I'll improve the quality of the shots week.

Week 2