Why must learning be so expensive!?

I love reading, well, I love the idea of reading. I try to read, I really do. I'm probably in the middle of about 5 different books right now, and I keep buying more. Though, within the last year, I've hit the trade publications hard. Subscribing to AdAge, Creativity, and Communication Arts. These are really cool and should be required reading if you are a student of advertising. Throughout my college career though, we've been given books to read, great books, like Al Reis and Jack Trout's "Positioning" and "Hey Whipple, Squeeze This!" by Luke Sullivan. I love reading advertising and learning more from the masters of the industry. But, I'm out of school, doing an unpaid internship, working 21 hours for free, holding down two other part time jobs just to make it to the northside and back and pay some bills. Not much left at the end of the week.

So now to the problem, learning does have a price...why are marketing books so damn expensive? 150-200 page paperback costs about 20-25 dollars! This is crazy and insane. Don't even get me started with the graphics arts and logo design books, 50-100 there, jeez. "A Tale of Two Cities," "Canterbury Tales," "Great Expectations." The greatest literary stories ever told, for a low price of $6.99. I know everyone wants to make a buck, but come on. Why must learning be so expensive!?

There are a few solutions however if you're in the same boat as me. One idea you're already doing. Blogs. Blogs are where great minds speak their minds on many topics. If there's something you're interested in, chances are, there's a blog for it. If you're an advertising person, check the links to the right for more great blogs. Another way to learn for free is newsfeeds, rss or signing up for email blasts. AdAge has them and most other publications have them. It got me through college, until I decided to drop a ton of money for the hardcopies. So, who says reading is dead? It's just expensive, so onto the internets we go! Feel free to comment if you have any other suggestions for you readers out there. Hope this helps.

Life's a pitch...and then you die

Life's a pitch...(and then you buy)

What is going on around here? Now Billy Mays died? The world of Direct Response will be forever changed. :/

Read more here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obit_billy_mays


ESPN360.com:


Billy Mays orders fast food:

Coffee Talk

This is an amazing guerilla tactic. To not only use students, but to use them in presentations? Amazing. If only they were doing it in the US. It's for a Netherland's brand called the Coffee Company. See more at http://www.freecoffee4students.nl/


Video in action:

The King of Pop, pops

(distasteful title? probably) Michael Jackson died...so sad :(

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_michael_jackson

Farrah Fawcett passed away too...

Bad food, bad dog

Check out these awesome ads from Y&R Santiago, Chile.
"Bad food, bad dog. All the vitamins, all the flavor."

Ed McMahon travels the golden road to heaven

Ed McMahon passed away. What a way to go. The last great thing he did was the Cash 4 Gold Super Bowl commercial.

Twitter Tag

Ok, so I’m an advertising guy, and, I’m just still not convinced that Twitter is as amazing as everyone says. Sorry, I just don’t get it. So, in hopes of turning to the dark side, I’ve devised a little experiment.



This will be a game of Twitter Tag.
The idea is to see how the connections through followers works and can explode among cyberspace and the Twittersphere itself.

Here’s how it’ll go down:
I will begin by sending this message to just one person.
Tag, you’re it! Join the experiment: http://insidethetoybox.blogspot.com/2009/06/twitter-tag.html
The message will hopefully be read by that person, as well as show up on his feed, then each of his friends will see it and do the same. Everyone who sees it only needs to send it to just one other person. Important note: they must also click the link, because that’s how I will be tracking its effectiveness, through the amount of hits this particular post gets. Not only that, but if it actually does work, then naturally everyone’s statuses will have the message and be tagged.

Good luck, and Tag, you’re it!

**Edit** I JUST found out this was already done, damn. Whatever, this is a learning experience for me. So, please help out anyway. I still think it’s a good idea. (Ach, and only a month ago too! http://tweetcrunch.com/2009/01/05/the-twitter-tag-project/)