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I’m a shopaholic, and pretty much everyone knows it. The one person who knows this better than anyone in my life is my concierge who checks in all my packages. I knew I had a problem when one day I had ordered so much online that it all came at once and I needed to make two trips downstairs to get it all. He gave me a look, you know – a little disgusted, a little worried but mostly incredulous that one girl could do so much damage. Well, thanks to Instagram it’s become far too easy to do far too much damage. CONTINUE READING

Uber & The Myth of “Any Press is Good Press”

I started my career at a PR agency, and spent several years managing press outreach for a startup. And I always believed in the old adage “any press is good press” – especially when you’re a startup, getting your name in the media can only help, right? Well, as we’ve seen lately with some notable celebrities – Jian Ghomeshi, Bill Cosby, the dad from 7th Heaven, Mama June from Honey Boo Boo – that certainly isn’t the case, and your reputation can be dashed with a few headlines (and some bad behaviour). CONTINUE READING

My Life As a Conversion

As marketers, we’ve all done it. We’ve thrown the “social conversion” idea out there to our clients. OOOH sparkly. What is a social conversion? It’s the purest form of the social sales funnel – someone likes a promoted page, interacts with their content, and makes a purchase decision either in-store or through an e-commerce site.

Inspiring Design from Barcelona

Last month I went to The ADCC conference about design in Barcelona. The ADCC (Advertising and Design Club of Canada) is a non-profit club dedicated to inspiring creativity, providing a forum for the exchange of ideas, and forging a sense of design community. Barcelona precisely embodies that spirit. Here are a few relevant, inspiring examples of design from the city where I lived for 2 years.

(Header image via Hey studio in Barcelona)

How a BuzzFeed quiz landed us on the front page of the Toronto Star

Over Thanksgiving weekend, my ever diligent co-worker Danielle spotted an email from Buzzfeed that stated they were opening up the ability to create quizzes as a community post. Previously a sponsored quiz on Buzzfeed would run you about $20,000. Yikes. CONTINUE READING

We’re participating in Startup Open House Toronto!

So as it turns out, both us and our office mates at BuzzBuzzHome happen to be startups. Which is perfect because we just signed up to host an open house as part of Startup Open House Toronto 2014. CONTINUE READING

#TOpoli: What’s in it for us?

Confession: Twitter is my #1 news source. It’s instant and gives me just enough information so I know which issues are in the news, but I skip out on all of those boring details and facts (bleh!). And I might even get a clever quip from someone I follow about those newsworthy topics, unlike anything on CNN which just gets me all depressed then shows me commercials that try to sell me prescription pills to cure my depression just to get me depressed all over again. (Who buys those drugs anyways? You know the ones that have one minute and 28 seconds of disclaimers in their one minute, thirty second commercials?)

The Branding Illusion & the Cult of Mac

When it comes to choosing sides for your tech gadgets, you’re either a Mac or a PC person. Just like whether you use an iPhone or Samsung Android phone tells me a lot about your personality, the laptop you carry shows me whether you’re a hip startup guy (Macbook), or old-school professional (Thinkpad – and probably a BlackBerry). CONTINUE READING

How To Make A Good Hyperlapse

Do you know what’s cooler than boring old video? Super fast ultra sped-up video. Last week, Instagram unveiled its latest offering, Hyperlapse. It’s a really intuitive app to complement Instagram and provide users with a different way of filming things on their phones. CONTINUE READING