Paradox Of Structure

Garth Beyer

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Imagine two playgrounds filled with kids. One playground has a fence around it. The other doesn’t.

Mentally predicting, the children at the playground without the fence would use all the space available to play.

In reality, the children in that context are closer to one another, staying close to the playground, as if there’s an even smaller invisible fence in place. All the while the children in the playground with the fence are playing in all the area up to the fence.

This is the paradox of structure and why I love borders so much.

Borders, or in the paradox of structure, fences, function with two purposes.

The first purpose is that it sets the parameter for you to go beyond. It gives you a goal to broaden your experience and bias and to explore past what feels comfortable. The second purpose is that it signifies that you already know the space leading up to the fence is “safe.”

As noticed in the paradox of structure, the kids had more fear of the outside area of the playground when there was no fence than when there was.

The fence never signifies that going past it is bad or dangerous. It is simply a reminder that this is how far you have gone before.

You have every ability to pick the fence up and move it further back.

 

Stay Positive & In Fact, Go Do That

Garth E. Beyer

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Reach Out

Garth Beyer

There’s a time to reach out for help.

There’s a time to reach out to get what you really want.

And then there’s a time to reach out with your eyes closed.

 

You’ll always be surprised with what is waiting to place itself in your hands.

 

Stay Positive & You’ve Worked Hard, Now Let The World Work A Bit

Garth E. Beyer

Where You Start: Up For The Challenge

Garth Beyer

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In a previous story, I noted that where you start really matters.

I used marketing to five year-olds for McDonald’s as an example of a poor place to start if you are actually passionate about the elderly being active.

I missed the opportunity to mention that poor places to start are often excellent places to excel, so long as you are adamant enough to withstand resistance and up to challenge of creating cultural change. For example, there is a push for McDonald’s to become a more healthy option – and to advertise as such.

I’ve mentioned a million times before that there is always room for improvement. You can decrease inequality, you can lower the number of obese people in the country, you can create cultural change from the bottom up.

It starts with saying no.

No to advertising unhealthy McDonald’s products to five year-olds.

It grows by saying “here’s a better idea.”

And having a plan to turn the idea into reality.

 

Stay Positive & Let Your Passion Fuel You, Not Your Food

Garth E. Beyer

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High Road Low Road

Garth Beyer

Those on the low road tell others to take the high road so that the low road is not as congested.

Those on the high road tell others to take the low road so that the high road is not as congested.

Those on the low road tell others to take the low road so that the high road does not become the new low road.

Those on the high road tell others to take the high road so that the high road becomes the new low road.

Every person can be put into one of these categories. The category with the most is what paves our future. The rest are pot holes.

 

Stay Positive & Take The High Road, But Know Why

Garth E. Beyer

Why Where You Start Matters

Garth Beyer

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As much as I would love to say that just starting is all that matters, it’s not.

Where you start matters a lot.

Where you first gain experience solidifies your future path of experience and work.

If you began working at an ad agency and your campaign focused on advertising McDonald’s to five year-olds, it will be a lot easier to then work for Arby’s and Dairy Queen targeting a similar age group.

If you passionately support this advertising campaign, wonderful. But, if you’re like me and don’t quite approve of five year-olds eating that type of food, it’s more difficult to get an advertising job targeting the elderly for the fitness industry afterward. They are complete opposites!

Your first client will be your first real branding experience. Ad agencies looking for someone to target the elderly for the fitness industry (what you really want to do) is going to have a difficult time being convinced that you can use similar strategies on getting five year-olds to nag their parents to buy McDonald’s on the elderly and the fitness industry.

Figuring out where you want to start requires two things from you:

  1. You need to self-reflect until you’re certain you know what you want to do. No, it’s not seriously difficult to alter your path once you start, but it’s much easier to start down the right one to begin with. Backtracking only helps those who have lost something, not those who want to discover something new.
  2. Never settle with where you start. It’s easy to take what you can get when you’re first starting out, but I urge you to keep going after the position you want.

This isn’t just for those looking to go into advertising, it applies to anyone that wants to start something.

 

Stay Positive & Now, Seriously, Go Start Something

Garth E. Beyer

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Forget False Equivalency

Garth Beyer

I’ve never been one for fallacious reasoning. I find it to be like filling a cupcake with a substance that tastes just like a cupcake. Pointless.

One fallacy in particular is just that. Pointless.

The false equivalence fallacy is one of the worst tasting cupcakes there are.

Fortunately, there are two ways to resolve or avoid the false equivalence fallacy.

  1. Either state both facts apart from each other or
  2. Don’t state the one that provides little to no support.

Yes, journalists are entitled to tell the whole truth, but in many cases, I believe the public and those arguing that a journalist didn’t tell the whole truth do a better job of covering the small factual disparity than what a journalist can do when they are already covering the larger and supported fact.

Yes, journalists have a responsibility to clarify and spell out inconsistencies and discrepancies in what sources are telling them. If they get handed that dreadful false equivalence cupcake, they have a right to cut it open and let the public taste it.

In addition to these reasons for breaking down the false equivalency fallacy, journalists cannot equally cover both sides of a story because there are almost always more sides than “both.”

On top of that, a focus of the journalist is to connect with his or her audience through informing them. You would never find anyone in the general public saying, “Hey, let’s actually compare apples to oranges.” No.

Compare apples to apples.

Compare oranges to oranges.

Let the public decide what it’s like when you put both into a fruit basket, a cup cake or whatever the hell the food of the week is.

Farts And Twerking (not what you think)

Garth Beyer

1379386_724120447601795_1411583815_nI took a picture of this, not knowing how I would use it, but that someday I would. Today is that day.

I’ve always been interested in product placement. I’m that person that looks at what labels are on water bottles during taped interviews (for example), or in movies (lots of examples), or basically any video or photograph.

I believe this picture represents a vacant area of product placement.

  • Putting objects in places one wouldn’t expect to find them.

Businesses basically pay to be recognized, that’s the point of product placement. I would argue that business should be paying to arouse curiosity. This invites people who may not know the product to discover what it is, and for those who already know the product to, at least in the case above, have a laugh.

The decision makers of product placement are a bit behind on the idea that people buy into how products make them feel.

If you can position a product in a place that makes people laugh, smile, smirk, or giggle over placing it where they merely see it in it’s most used place, you should place it in the former.

A more wild idea in support of this: twerking.

Which excites (positively or negatively…) people more: when they see someone twerking in a music video or twerking in a bedroom…alone… and failing at it.

And yes, that video was set-up. Just like product placement should be.

 

Stay Positive & Who Knew We Could Learn Something From Farts And Twerking

Garth E. Beyer