Have you ever gotten an annoying song stuck in your head? You know, where it just keeps repeating over and over again. No matter what you do to cleanse it from your mind, it relentlessly echoes. I had such an experience recently. It happened innocently one morning before work when I was packing my children’s lunch. I was singing a song from the 70’s (yes, I’m that old) and the only part I could remember was “Saturday, dunt, dunt, dunt, Saturday…” when my oldest son walked in to the kitchen.  He had a stinging remark about my musical talents, to which I replied, “I can’t help it…I got this stupid song stuck in my head.”

He said he could help me out and started singing “Friday, Friday, oh yah it’s Friday…” and then went on to school leaving me in the urban legend that is Rebecca Black. Her original, truly irritating “Friday” song is an ominous lesson for all of us in self-indulgent, do-it-yourself endeavors.

As I understand Rebecca Black’s story, she was gifted $2,000 as a present and she decided she would take the money and produce her infamous song. Now the irony is that she is famous in an Andy Warhol/YouTube way for her accomplishment. As my 17-year old son pointed out, “the song sucks and the video is totally random—everyone just watches and laughs”.

In this weeks episode of “Glee”, they performed a much more polished version of the song. I still think the song is annoying, but it was much better than the original Rebecca Black version. Why? Because they are professionals, they have talent and know what they are doing.

I think the big lesson in this that we can all learn, is that just because you have the means, doesn’t mean you have the talent. My old copywriting partner from years ago used to have a poster in his office that read, “Just because you have an Exacto knife, doesn’t make you’re a surgeon.”

Learn your lesson and get annoyed, watch the video for yourself:

On Tuesday April 12th the nominees for the 15th Annual Webby Awards were announced, with the Old Spice Guy, Fruit Ninja and Justin Bieber among the list of nominees.

What is a webby you ask? Well, that depends entirely on who you ask. Around these parts a “webby” would be either Ed or I, but to the general online community a Webby is defined as: “an international award presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for excellence on the Internet with categories in websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile” – thank you Wiki!

Each category has two winners, one selected by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, and one selected by the public. So what are you waiting for? Go vote for your favorite, and then on June 14th you can come over to our web cave and we can watch the awards show live on the web…I’ll bring the popcorn.

May the best video remixes/mashups viral video win!

One Athlete. 30 Sports. 30 Days. 30 Cities. The first time I saw the commercial for the Unstoppable Tour I was on my own tour to nowhere.  I was atop the stair climber in my gym. Perhaps the commercial captured my attention because I was searching for a reason not to abort my 30-minute challenge to climb plastic steps.  Whatever the reason, I wanted to know more.

A quick search on Google revealed that EAS has devised a one-of-a-kind challenge to see how sports nutrition can help make an athlete unstoppable.  Lieutenant Commander Sam Tickle, who served for more than a decade in the United States Navy, is the “One Athlete” on a 30-day journey that has him participating in 30 different sports in 30 different cities.

EAS and Myoplex sports nutrition are positioned as a team of scientists, researchers and all-around fitness fanatics passionate about getting the most out of the human body. The Unstoppable Tour is designed to show consumers how much more they can do: how much faster they can run, higher they can jump, how many more plastic stairs they can climb….you get the picture. More important, The Unstoppable Tour has been introduced as a viral campaign; in hopes that EAS’s work to advertise Myoplex products is done for them, by consumers.  Why? Because research has indicated that there is a growing environment of distrust among consumers. When it comes to building awareness (an important phase in the consumer’s decision to purchase) recommendations by family members and friends, even those “friends” in our social networks, are influential.  Our endorsement, as consumers, is valuable to marketers.

The Unstoppable Tour launched on March 1.  Eight days in, EAS has 65,098 likes on Facebook and @EASBrand has 2,154 followers on Twitter.  Their first video, the trailer, had over 12,000 views in one week.  With 22 days left it remains to be seen if the campaign’s message is compelling and interesting enough that consumers who view it will want to share with their friends.  I’ll be watching each day to see if it is unstoppable.

Willow Wednesday: To outsiders, it’s our monthly staff-wide business meeting. The highlight for me is lunch.  We have divided up into 3 teams who rotate making the meal for everyone. “Dishin’ Out the Love” was the timely theme for this month. The ambiance included some groovy tunes, Valentine’s Day decor, with red and pink drinks.  Today’s menu included, but was not limited to: hash-brown casserole, corn casserole, cheesy ravioli casserole, sausage casserole, fruit salad, and chocolate chip cookies. Our special ingredients that had to be included were butter and sausage (you can check that off the list).  We’re all trying to watch our figure around these parts so this is one day when we reward ourselves for being good…errrr kind of good…errrr not eating McDonalds every day.

Check out this video to get a brief glimpse of the fun that we had yesterday as our fellow Shrubs dished out the love!