For Spring Break, my friends and I decided to do something different; we wanted to avoid the craziness of the beach and the inevitable sunburn. So, we decided to take a week-long trip to Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The drive to the Cape was 18 hours total, but combined with stops in D.C., an overnight stay in Baltimore, one day trip to New York, and several bathroom breaks, the entire trip up to where we were staying took two whole days (both ways).
I have a lot of passions in this life, two of them being traveling and visual arts (whether it be drawing or videography). This trip, I wanted to dip my toes back into making videos, as I hope to get involved with making videos for companies throughout my digital marketing career.
My inspiration for this trip video derives from a lot of "vlog-style" YouTube videos. I eliminated text and narration, choosing to let the footage speak for itself. Additionally, I tried to keep it as short as possible (hitting the 5-6 minute range), which was tough to do considering the number of places we got to visit.
Watch the video here: Spring Break 2017
Included in this video is footage from: the long car rides, each state sign we passed, clips from basically every meal, an unsettling amount of footage from every Dunkin Donuts we went to, D.C., New Jersey, New York, our house in Chatham, MA, various destinations on the Cape, Plymouth, Boston, and some snow (which, unfortunately, cut our trip short due to our unpreparedness for 10+ inches of snow).
I hope to continue to make videos like this and expand my horizons with making videos as a marketer. Video advertising/content is currently on the rise on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, and I can really see myself enjoying this as a full time career.

As an art minor student, the beginnings of my semesters consist of dropping $100+ on art supplies for the upcoming class. While Athens is a town abundant in many stores of many varieties, I often find the art supply scene to be lacking. However, if you're interested in where you can find the best supplies, hopefully this article can help.
1. Michael's. This is probably the most obvious, as it is located by Target (a high traffic area). This is where I usually go to get supplies, while they only have 2 aisles of actual drawing and painting supplies. This is the place to get sketchbooks (Canson Mixed Media sketchbooks are the best for a variety of supplies) and Copic Markers, my medium of choice. They do have a lot of color variants as well as cheaper brands of brush markers (such as Prismacolor markers and Promarkers). However, Michael's hardly ever keeps the stock of their markers consistent. From 2015 until a few months ago, they hadn't added any more markers, so there were about 5 left of random colors. Once they restocked, they were gone again almost instantly. So, you have to get the timing right.
2. The Loft on Baxter Street. This is another obvious option, as most teachers at the art school not only encourage students to go there, but they also can make class packs where students come in with the CRN number of their class and can then purchase a kit of everything they need for the class. However, I have only personally been to this store thrice. Once I was looking for Copic markers, which they don't have. The staff was a little unfriendly and I felt very intimidated to go back. The second time, I just needed a "white pencil" (the words of my teacher). I asked the employee, and she laughed in my face and told me all I needed was a white colored pencil. Again, felt very uncomfortable going there. The third time, I needed to purchase a specific large-scale size and type of paper for a class. This experience was a lot better. The employees were helpful and kind. However, I found the supplies to be a lot more expensive, and I don't have much desire to return based on my first two visits.
3. K.A. Artist Shop located Downtown. This is a newer store that I have only just recently been exposed to.

Over this past week, I really wanted to come up with a post about a group/band that I felt did a really good job with marketing their album on social media before it came out. While there are many artists that do a good job of this, the one that stands out to me the most (and, the one that I had the most exposure to) is 5 Seconds of Summer. Their most recent album, Sounds Good Feels Good, came out in September of 2015.
Leading up to the release of the album, they released a teaser clips on Instagram to a new single, getting the fans excited. After the single was released, the name of the album was released as well as an official date that the fans could expect it. This is a pretty standard format for how musical artists get hype generated around their upcoming works.
However, 5 Seconds of Summer (or known as "5SOS" by fans), took it to another level. When introducing the new single, they spent the 3 weeks before the release ominously tweeting a hashtag, #5OnTheWall, and a link to a website. The website had nothing but six blank spaces where a password was to be typed. Additionally, the website had a countdown timer to a date in the future. There was no context given, leaving fans wondering what would happen when the timer ran out.
At the end of the timer, the band tweeted out the password (which happened to be "hotdog") and the website was redirected to a livestream. This livestream lasted three hours, and it was real-time footage of a masked man painting a brick wall with graffiti. At the time, I tuned in for the first 5 minutes then turned it off.
When I checked back later, the mysterious marks that the painter had been making had come together to form the album artwork for the new Single, She's Kinda Hot.

This week, I did a lot of research about the Ikea effect for another school project. The Ikea effect is defined as a cognitive bias in which consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created. The name derives from the Swedish manufacturer and furniture retailer IKEA, which sells many furniture products that require assembly. As I worked on this group project for my consumer behavior class, I began to contemplate the possessions I have that I feel this effect towards. 
I often picture my art as being simple, specifically because I gravitate towards cartoon drawings and focus less on realism. Exhibit A:
This is an old drawing from April-ish, which is very clearly no realistic (namely, the lanky limbs and dots for eyes). While I do see my art as simple, I do have a totally irrational and unfathomable love for what I create. Some people might see it and think, "Nice" while I print out three copies to hang on my wall and wonder if Leonardo diVinci would be proud of me. 
But the IKEA effect doesn't specifically apply to my art. Once, my friend and I completely assembled and L-shaped couch from IKEA. Every time someone besides us sits on it, we feel the need to remind the room that we  made it and look how cool and cozy this couch is. Not only that, but every time I go to Menchie's I feel a strong sense of pride for the cup of sprinkles and chocolate with a little bit of yogurt somewhere in there. Another example is Lego's. Remember making those sets and then placing it way out of reach and never playing with it as to protect its perfection?
As researchers realize the pertinence of the IKEA effect, marketers start to understand what makes products appealing to customers. Now, everything is "some assembly required" and customizable, because the results of a lot of research show that consumers adore things that they build way more than pre-assembled things. It comes from a sense of pride and completion. I think this is also why the DIY/Pintrest culture is so pertinent today. If consumers can find a way to make it customizable, they have a winner. 
I think this is why being a content creator is so tricky sometimes. As a creator, you will inherently value your work way more than the average viewer is going to value it. There's always the exception of people who are very self-critical, but generally speaking, a lot of people feel very passionately about what they create. It's tough to come back to a post of a drawing or video you made, only to find it has a fraction of the views/likes you wanted valued it at. It's discouraging, and it's awful that our culture has reverted to a state of likes-equaling-success.
Even after doing the project on this effect, I am reminding myself to love and appreciate what I make. It's unique, and sometimes people out there like it almost as much as I do. Remember everyone, you're worth more than the likes you get. 

As summer slowly approaches, so do various concerts and festivals. Bonnaroo is no exception, a yearly festival held in Manchester, Tennessee. On the way home yesterday, I heard an ad for a contest being held by the local Athens radio station, Power 100.1. The ad states that, you and your band (assuming you are all over 21) can submit an mp3 of an original song. If chosen, the winning band will get to have their very own set at Bonnaroo.

This week, I did a lot of thinking about about celebrities and internet stars endorsing products. In particular, the product I see the most on Instagram is a product called SugarBear Hair, a brand of gummy vitamins that is advertised to make your hair shinier and healthier. Most of the Kardashian/Jenner family have expressed their support of this company, as well as a lot of other influential celebrities such as Vanessa Hudgens and Emily Ratajkowski. Additionally, a few people that I know personally (who, admittedly, have a larger following than I do by far) have advertised them as well.
From a consumer standpoint, its quite obvious that SugarBear Hair has completely blown me away by their marketing reach. They were seemingly a small, unknown company until they started to get the support of celebrities with 20+ million followers. Now, they have a hefty 1.3 Million Instagram followers. Not only that, but upon reading the comments of these posts, people claim to be placing orders or intending to place orders after viewing the post, even on posts of way smaller accounts.
So, naturally, after reading more about all of this buzz, I wanted to know if these vitamins actually work. Unfortunately, the friends of mine who endorsed them or received them as a gift didn't take them regularly or long enough to notice any difference. So instead, I read about it in the news. As a disclaimer, the only sites that did trials of the vitamins were news sites such as E! and Marie Claire, so I can't say for sure whether or not they were endorsed by SugarBear Hair. In all honesty, articles that end in "...and here's what happened!" don't merit a lot of trust from me, but the results seem generally the same across the board. On the three sites that I read, the participants who took the vitamins twice a day (as the instructions state) and for 30 days or more actually noticed their hair growing faster and shinier. In one example that didn't show good results, the participant ate two bottles of the vitamins in a week and a half (more than you're supposed to, and subsequently she ran out before the 30 days) because "they tasted so good" and didn't see any results.
Generally, when seeing posts about the vitamins, the caption generally always says something about how they taste like candy. In one of the articles I read, a participant mentioned how they lack that "chemical aftertaste" that other chewable vitamins have. This is what makes me the most skeptical, that something that tastes so good could have actual real results. So, I found an article (Buzzfeed) where a lab broke down the gummies and found what was in them.
According to the lab, the gummies received an A-grade rating for having the right amount of vitamins and nutrients to compensate for nutrient deficiencies for hair growth. However, they also found that the amount of  7 of the 11 ingredients were off by 20%. Presently, it's allowed for them to have these off numbers (even though many consumers want the FDA to crack down on this). Another finding from this lab is that the vitamins have high levels of lead. A double dosage per day (the instructed dosage) has 0.38 micrograms of lead, and the daily allowance, which is on the high side, is 0.5 micrograms. If someone takes more than two per day, they automatically go over the amount. It won't have any horrible effects unless someone consumes 3+ every day for years, but this still raises a red flag for me.
All in all, from a marketing standpoint, SugarBear Hair has it all figured out. They have reached out to the Kardashians (often considered the "ultimate celebrities") while they are still such a young company. Not only them, they have also reached the ranks of Disney Channel stars, models, YouTubers, Instagram stars (male and female alike). To me, it sounds like they have reached just about every demographic of females aged 13-29, and even a few males in this age range (such as Zachary Domingo, a makeup artist made popular by Instagram). Not only do they have that large reach, but they also seem to have a product that really works when taken correctly. After doing all of this research, my skepticism has declined a little towards celebrities endorsing this product. While I won't buy it myself (three bottles is $84), I won't feel so bad for the people who will buy it.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to make posts about my experience as a fairly popular artist on Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, and Twitter and how it relates to digital marketing and current events in the digital marketing universe. When I tell people about my popularity on the internet, it's often confusing. Lately, most "popular" users on social media seem to be considered popular due to the way they look, the body they have, or the previous fame they've been introduced to. But, not many people consider other sides of social media; the small circles of artists and creators. I fall into one of those small circles; I draw comics/graphics and animate for various bands that I listen to. It started off as a hobby, but over the years I have gained popularity and later, I have been commissioned by some of these musical groups. Additionally, I have drawn several graphics for MTV and have been published on their Instagram, all because my work had been boosted so much by my followers in the music world that an employee reached out to me personally.
All in all, internet popularity seems like a glamorous lifestyle. Companies send you free products to try out and review, in some cases, you can get paid per post, and people look up to you. I've never been paid per post, but I have been sent a few clothing items to post pictures in and a few art supplies to try out, and I've had people come up to me at concerts and ask for pictures. But, there are a lot of ugly sides to social media popularity.
The obvious ugly side to social media influence is the harsh opinions of people. Obviously, that's a huge negative. However, I personally don't feel as impacted by hate as I do by art theft. Art theft is a term for people who copy/trace drawings, re-post drawings and claim it as their own, or (in the absolute worst case) take an artist's work and re-sell it, with or without modifying it. This has happened to me more times than I can count. Sometimes I'll be looking through sites such as Redbubble, which allow artists to sell their work on various merchandise, and see my own artwork on someone else's account. The process of getting it taking down is strenuous, and by then, the person who is selling it could have already made a sufficient amount of money off my designs.
A very large perpetrator of art theft is Zara. I came across a movement called "Shop Art Theft" through Instagram, as I follow artists almost exclusively. A lot of popular artists and graphic designers have found their work being sold by Zara, a clothing company that prides themselves on "fast fashion." In summation, Zara almost completely empties and then refills their stores every 3 weeks. However, they typically create their clothes based on previously existing clothes and fashion. It's good for some consumers, as they can get high end looking fashion for cheaper prices. However, Zara is very looked down-upon by many artists and designers for tweaking designs slightly and reselling them as their own. Their highest offense is with enamel pins.
This picture is from shoparttheft.com, a site created by the frequent victims of Zara's art theft. In some of the stolen designs, it seems like a very small deal and something that isn't worth fighting for. But in some cases the theft is so blatantly obvious that it's unfair (see the website, more artists than just Tuesday Bassen are featured). Zara's popularity is growing, so the amount of money that Zara is making (and thus these artists are not making) is growing. I personally don't rely on my art as a source of income, but many of these artists do.
According to the artists featured on this site, Zara has yet to remove the designs, but have responded by saying there is "a lack of similarity." Situations like this often go ignored because most people don't typically think or know about artists on social media. For ways to shop for and support these artists, visit shoparttheft.com