Freelancer on the Job Hunt // Creative Director // Digital Producer // Social Media // Strategy Insights // Pretend 'crowdsourcer' // Trouble Maker // Jotting down notes here and there...
PORTFOLIO - Lots of different ideas, processes, projects, people, roles, shops and stories to go with them: www.keithmiks.com/portfolio
Interesting story for another time but actually tripped into this article through one of my other social media experiments and it ended up moving toward a job search angle as the CNN buzz was more entertaining and wanted to keep some of these efforts separate. If you work in the industry, I would have framed this as an Interactive Creative Director who is always willing to push pixels as oppsed to using the term out of work "ad-exec" but I suppose it helps the readers to have it in that context.
Local newspaper article that tells the story of my social experiments and recent job search efforts written by Dylan Otto Krider.
Add in a little bit of luck, timing, a strategically created animation and there I am on CNN doing a pitch for a job, it was a surreal experience. Having spent the last year heavily researching and experimenting with social media has helped gain insights into how people communicate with these tools. Building on my previous 13 years of digital experience has been a great deal of invaluable learnings as I look for the next mountain to climb in my career. As with advertising for clients we want to be disruptive and still show some form of an ROI. Aligning the Larry King animation that I did using the free site www.xtranormal.com to entertain and connect with CNN was the goal. It was very well recieved as it stood out from a crowd of emails and at the end of the day, it obviously worked. Before I knew it I had to follow through on this and be on TV.
Defining success is the tricky part of any equation as we can be our own worst critic, especially with the nature of our advertising field where we nit pick just about everything imaginable. This can be seen as we move into greater levels of exposure as social media is helping us go from a "private closed" perception to a more "open public" view and it takes some getting used to. I have never been on TV and it can be uncomfortable playing with these social tools to test out what kinds of responses happen as well as organically defining a personal brand. I will leave the explanation of my other social experiments for later posts that deal with various personas and key audiences. For now, this was a tremedous opportunity to give it a go.
Going from an email to being on TV within a couple of days is a tall order for anyone who is not in the business as a broadcast personality. With a short time frame to prepare, I simply had to shotgun through this process as best I could and try to remember things like getting a haircut before I go on. No teleprompter, everything was live and on the fly at a whole new level. Was I nervous? Simply staying balanced as I coached myself through it took a lot of energy as this was unexpected. Even from my days as an amateur stand up comic I had not felt this kind of insta-pressure. Memorizing a short script and trying not to go over my :30 seconds was critical to me as I wanted to avoid the gong show buzzer that goes off if you go over your time limit. Smile, breath, be relaxed and offer up a professional POV with a call to action which was to go to my portfolio site. All this while talking to a lone camera in a studio with bright lights and CNN talking in your ear from a remote location is not my average day, but it was a great new experience. Decidedly, I kept it short and sweet with the time I had to prepare and delivered on an email that caught the newsrooms attention.
Would I have wanted more time and resources? Hell yeah. As with any agency project, it's not always the case. There is always room for improvement as I would have loved to have redesigned my website and have a full on campaign to hype this and play out a few different pitch concepts with various presentation styles. Perhaps, fire juggling, parades and a clever interactive innovation that leaves everyone speachless going damn, that was a mind blowing :30 seconds. The reality is that the incredibly fast moving nature of the live broadcast process is one that takes time and experience to be able to flow through with ease. There is a first time for everything and my 15 minutes of fame came at the price of nauseau, worry, stress, fear, doubt, loss of sleep mixed with excitement that was all wrapped around a few seconds of my life. Just like a client pitch but different, it's all you.
My hats off to CNN for reaching out to everyone with this job summit. Mad props to all of my family, friends and to everyone who watched and have shared with words of support - it is heard and appreciated. With the new year comes new possibilities and I look forward to taking more risks and facing interesting challenges as they arise.
At the end of the day, I would do this all over again and I would just need more time for a class in fire juggling.
Watch CNN this Thursday 12/31 @ 12:12pm MST to see me do my biggest advertising pitch of my career and in record time.
Still amazed these days at how fast social media works for individuals connecting with larger brands and markets. Last week, a family member who was watching CNN had seen that they were putting together :30 second Pitch segments for people who are out of work. It was suggestd that I give it a shot and submit my information, so I did. As a digital creative I wanted to have a little fun and do more than an email. I put this Larry King animation together after seeing the new free template on the www.xtranormal.com website. Thought that this would be perfect to add to my You Tube Channel as a recommendation since Larry King is also part of the CNN network. Researched a few of his television scripts and wrote the dialog with a little improvisation and was done in about an hour with the video posted. Emailed CNN with the link and all this happened within a week as I will be going to a studio to do my live segment this Thursday 12/31 @ 12:12pm MST with anchor Kyra Phillips. Tune in if you can and I will be posting the rest of the story here at a later date.
* Posted by: Patrick James * on November 13, 2009 at 10:15 am
The true beauty of scientific and technological advancements are most evident when they reveal our humanity. Take Tony Quan, also known as street artist Tempt One. Quan is paralyzed, yet with the assistance of the EyeWriter, a custom eye-tracking software, he is still able to continue painting, simply by moving his eyes.'
(Powerful concept to know that we can bridge such gaps in the human experience)
Seth Godin on the tribes we lead. Great TED TALK! As always these little snippets of goodness are inspiring to say the least. The time to watch one is about the same as a sit-com without any commercials. Now that's an idea in itself... Like the three questions to be asking yourself:
>Tell a Story>Connecting a Tribe>Leading a Movement>Making Change>
The entertainment industry has been promoting volunteerism which is a great thing. Going to add this to the list of experiences this Month and select an opportunity.
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