As I continue to learn more about communications, and how it’s bettered the world, I have now come to the part of the lecture of having advertising tell a story to consumers. This is true, there’s lots of great examples to prove this, but then I started dangerously thinking that there are other forms of communication that uses storytelling to others too.

Thinking… Thinking… MUSIC!

Of course it does! Music has defiantly told us far more stories than any car commercial ever has. Going deeper into thought (POINT OF NO RETURN), music tells general stories about being happy, being sad, or being in love. Yeah that’s cool (yawn), but what about the telling of story that music plays when someone has a passionate request?

*HINT: starts with a S- ends with an X-*

Have you ever noticed that many of the songs that we love to sing at parties, concerts, and weddings give a very vivid description of the “Mommy and Daddy dance.” Deny if you want, it’s true.

Examples:

R&B: 

Obviously, the entire genre talks about sex, but a few lyrics that everybody knows and loves are:

• “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gay

Don’t you know how sweet and wonderful life can be?

I’m asking you baby, to get it on with me.”

• “If I Was Your Girlfriend” by Prince [I know lots to choose from]

Would you let me kiss you there

You know, down there, where it counts?

I’ll do it so good

I swear I’ll drink every ounce.”

Hip Hop:

• “Shoop” by Salt-N-Pepa

If looks could kill you would be an Uzi

Or a shotgun: bang!

What’s up with that thang?

I wanna know, how does it hang?

Straight up, wait up, hold up, Mr. Lover

Like Prince said you’re a sexy mother…”

Rock:

• “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails

I want to F*@$% you like an animal

I want to feel you from the inside

Country: 

Yeah, cowboys get freaky too!

• “I wanna make you close your eyes” by Dierks Bentley

You can make me work for it girl if you want to

Just leave a trail for me to follow you into the bedroom.

• “Need You Now” by Lady Antebellum

It’s a quarter after one

I’m a little drunk and I need you now”

 

So those are  just a few of tons of examples to chose from, but honestly I’m starting to blush 😉

Other than the very obvious, they all have something in common. Each lyric gave a great description of the storyteller’s wants and desires.  If that you didn’t pick up with that in any of the lyrics, I will point you in the direction of the nearest convent.

 

 

 

When I was much younger, I use to write everyday! It was more than just essays and book reports, I first started with writing in journals and then progressed to writing in a more journalistic style while falling in love with news writing.

When I was unable to do get a job in the field of my desires, I moved back home, staring working in the family business again, and had little to no time for writing anymore.  My passion got buried below and life continued as a “grown up.”

June 3, 2015 floats in as being the worst day of my life. The most horrible day of the year will always be the day my Daddy, Albert Joyner, left this earth, and went home to the Lord.

I was his shadow and he was my superhero. Nothing became the same anymore, and I fell into a deep depression that  was very well hidden behind a smile for all to see. Several days later, I experienced that with great loss comes great discovery.

In preparation for my Daddy’s funerals (and yes I said funerals with a “S”), my cousin who was helping with the programs told me to write a reflection about my relationship I had with him. As much as I resisted, I painfully did it. Believe me it was hard, but when I saw it published in the programs,it gave me comfort that I express how much I loved and appreciated my Daddy.

Since you didn’t get a chance to read it, here it is:

To my Dearest Father:

The time will never come that I accept that you are not around. I’ve gone from my hearing your voice everyday, to not hearing your voice at all, almost overnight. Every time we were together, I always learned something from you (I may not have wanted you to know it, but I did). I’m so thankful that you and Mom chose to be your daughter. Thank you for allowing me to be the Allison that you see today. 

Thank you for attending all of my plays, games, and concerts that I participated in. Especially those times when I didn’t have the lead, didn’t hit a home run, or didn’t get to sing the solo.

Thank you for being a constant example of what a positive role model is supposed to be, and what I strive for every day in my life. 

Thank you for giving me the gift of mentorship, and what I attempt to do with the young people I am involved with at work and in my spear time. 

Thank you for exposing me to my culture, and helping me be a proud African American woman. I will always appreciate the early Saturday morning that you woke Danielle and I up to see Nelson Mandela being released form prison in South Africa.

Thank you for teaching me the words to every Earth, Wind, & Fire song.

Thank you for teaching me how to run a business.

But especially, thank you for being my Daddy! 

After that excerpt of honesty, requests for me writing started to trickle in. Several months later, my Uncle asked me to write a blog about a weekend adventure we had, then I had another request for writing another blog for my women’s service group, Links Inc., and my love for writing regrew from there!

I wanted to keep going, but I knew I was really rusty, so that’s why I decided to enroll in the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications for journalism innovation. Ever since I’ve had to start this blog site as one of my first assignments, I feel like a professional writer!

As the second anniversary of my Daddy’s death is approaching, I feel that my new life of writing came because of the ending of his life. Even in his death, he is still teaching me things that were inside of me that have been long forgotten.

I miss him so much, but now I feel more comfortable to live my life to the fullest. He knew that I will always be his daughter, always be his shadow, but I know he knew that I would always be a writer too.

I was very young when my Mamma and Daddy instilled in me to “treat everyone the way you would like to be treated,” and that is still the case today. But as for others in this world…

Plenty of businesses try to include this in their internal training procedures today, and yet one disgruntle employee or one hungry customer later, and the niceness goes right out the window. So how can this be recovered? The digital gods have come up with the concept of Big Data.

So what is Big Data(glad you ask because I was gonna tell you anyway)? The Statistical Analysis System Institute, located in Cary, North Carolina, came up with “a term that describes the large volume of data- both structured and unstructured- that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis.” Data, not referring to the lovable android in Star Trek: The Next Generation, is being accumulated everyday, all day, and every second of the day. My computer is collecting data right now as I write this eye opening post, wondering “what did she eat for dinner tonight?” [Pizza to answer that question. But don’t tell my boot camp instructor. He will probably make me do 20 more burpees if he knew this] When this data is collected, it is sold to your advertisers, local businesses and national corporations to find out what makes their customers tick.

A way that this happens, and you have no idea how, is by those surveys you are asked to complete after every visit. If you are that person who immediately throws away their receipt after you receive it, you would not know that there is a kind request for you to fill out  one of their surveys located on the top or bottom. As I dig down the bottom of my Michael Kors pocketbook, I find tons of receipts asking me for the same task of answering a few questions in their survey.

There are several ways to take a consumer survey: the telephone survey, the online survey, and the social media rating survey. These surveys helps businesses in several different ways:

1. Improving Customer Engagement and Increasing Customer Loyalty: Contrary to belief, these surveys are very helpful to businesses and retailers in an effort to see why you like or dislike them so much. With retailers having to see their favorite consumers going to those web based superstores instead, or your favor burger joint being less appealing because of the newest niche foodie concept opening in their neighborhood, competition is getting fierce and farce. Surveys and other forms of data collecting tools help your old favorites to be your returning favorites. If well established businesses  do not work with data companies, then you and all of their customers will go to their competitors, and local patrons will have little to no way of getting them back.
2. Personalizing the Customer Experience: The way data is collected is through your convergent devices (smartphones, laptops, tablets, and even your video gaming consuls). Your IP addresses installed in all of your high tech inventory is the portal to all of your dreams, fantasies, and desires, and you had no idea this was happening. An example of this are those annoying ads that pop up on all of your search engines. You can not see what is on the entire page until the sponsored advertising finish downloading. It’s not by coincidence, the data that has been collected by you tells the website you might have interested in one of their sponsors. Personalizing the customer experience helps businesses generate customer based offers on each individual’s buying habits.
3. Return on Investments: Data collection agencies provide a service. They are in the business of keeping promises. These promises try to guarantee that their potential clients will see an increase in sales volume and customer traffic in any given period of time. This will trickle down to more money coming into your communities and stimulating an economy that is increasing work force and employee moral in you local neighborhoods. But this information doesn’t come cheap, it could end up being a large majority for their marketing budgets for their fiscal year. With that said, this has to work. Small local companies need this. They need to make sure that these agencies that are promising them the moon and the stars see a return of their investments, or we could come to the reality that we will look up and our favorite childhood shopping destination is no more.

 

So next time you get a polite request to give a service company your input, do it! FILL OUT THAT SURVEY! GIVE THAT FIVE STAR RATING! and most importantly LEAVE THAT POSITIVE RESPONSE WHEN AN EMPLOYEE GOES OUT OF THEIR WAY TO MAKE YOU HAPPY!

 

 

 

The current headliners of the social media love fest (Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook) have made our newest medium very appealing to the several generations that uses them. As I’m thinking of that, I wonder “why?” I know there are several reasons but the ones that come to mind are:

• The age old cliché, “Keeping up with the Jones:” Social media, with the help of the Internet, has made it much easier to follow up with the latest trends, slangs, and catch phrases. Take for example Twitter. The race for fan immortality  probably started with Ashton Kutcher with his campaign to be the first person to gain 1 million Twitter follows. Now he has been over shadowed by the person who has the most Twitter followers, Lady Gaga (20 million by the way). Also, having even more access to the ones who birth these trends, slangs, and catch phrases helps the everyday, awkward tween get more cool points with their peers at school. Hell, I’ve even gotten accolades from my 10 year old baby cousin for knowing the “Ju Ju on That Beat” dance.
• Improvements to technology: Thanks to the brainiacs of Silicon Valley, having access to social media has made it as much a necessity as breathing. In the beginning of this digital age, it was very difficult and expensive to purchase a computer to surf the web. Now with the fierce competition tech companies have, we have advanced by not just having a personal computer in every home’s living room, but to everyone either having a laptop, tablet, smartphone, or all three. Also, giving access to the less fortunate has impacted the appeal too. The recent demand of “Pre-Paid Cell Phones” has made it very affordable to folks who do not have the means to purchase the next Apple iPhone that comes out every fall.
• Value-added access: Now that people have the means of getting the vessel to follow their celebrity heartthrobs on Snapchat, getting to the front door of that person has to be at a low cost or no cost at all. Example, free apps; just because people want know what color lip gloss Kylie Jenner is wearing today, does not mean that they want to spend an arm and a leg to find out. Instead of app companies getting revenue from people like ourselves, they cuddle up to other businesses to purchase advertising from them. This forces us to have to go through all those boring commercials in an attempted effort to heal the scratching of the itch of spending money. Oh, did I also mention that free apps are FREE? I could not even tell you the last time I shelled out cash for an app, more or less admit to you that I do that either.

Now that we have opened the package of social media in the present, what will social media look like in the future? In my opinion, the sky is the limit. In the 20th Century, pop culture favorites like the Jetsons, and 2001: A Space Odyssey said that we were going to be in flying cars and running on treadmills in space (but that movie was accurate about video conferencing though). Well, what ever happens, I am ready to “Boldly go” where the next thinkers and trailblazers take us. Just as long as nothing bad happens to mankind, like apes taking over the world or robots holding us prisoners:)