He asked, “why would I want to spend the day on a website that opens up the lines of communication between regular people and celebrities?”

Naturally, I went into pitch mode and explained why Twitter is as popular as is it is now and how a small business owner, like himself, can benefit from the tool.

He’s not the first person I speak to who doesn’t understand the greater concept of Twitter. I’ve met others who think it’s just another chat room.

After discussing this with Ulises Orozco, we realized that while Twitter is an important, valuable and effective tool for spreading news, it’s ironic that Twitter, the company, isn’t using itself to better educate its potential users on Twitters’ purpose.

By the way, I found a cute cartoon:

There’s one offer that I would be especially interested in and wonder why it hasn’t already been proposed.

I leased my very first car two years ago and when I reviewed my contract, I noticed that I have to a pay about 15 cents per mile if I exceeded my 36,000 mile limit for three years. I asked what would happen if I return the car with less than 36,000 miles. Would I get paid 15 cents per mile that I don’t exceed?

The answer was no.

Why don’t car dealerships offer their customers, with the hopes of keeping them for another lease, money back or some sort of credit for not exceeding their mileage?

Am I crazy to think this?

Well, after reading my introduction to Blaine Zuver’s ArcticTropic blog a few weeks ago, Ulises Orozco tweeted about my being the “female Dos Equis” and it felt pretty good. I’m more than happy with the life I’ve had thus far and am grateful for having the parents I have; the kind that taught me to travel the world and actually exerience life to its fullest. I’ve had all sorts of adventures and love the fact that I still have so many more year ahead of me to add to my list.

The author of the article, Karlene Lukovitz, mentions how upset the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) is about the commercial.

One of the quotes from the article reads: “It’s bad enough when companies use a beloved media character like SpongeBob to promote junk food to children, but it’s utterly reprehensible when that character simultaneously promotes objectified, sexualized images of women,” said CCFC director Susan Linn, a psychologist at the Judge Baker Children’s Center.”

I absolutely LOVE that quote!I couldn’t agree more than companies are really pushing the boundaries or already stepping over them.

Lukovitz goes on to say: “BK points out that the Kids Meal is a ‘value-based offer aimed at adults’ and requires an adult BK Value Meal purchase. The commercial is intended to appeal to adults who take their kids to BK, and as with all BK adult advertising campaigns, it is being shown ‘only during shows targeting adult audiences,’ the company states. The commercial ‘is intended to show that even adults can have fun, laugh and be silly with entertainment genres — such as rap and pop culture icons — that have become part of everyday life.”‘

OK, question… if the meal is intended for adults, why in the world does BK refer to it as a “Kids Meal” and why would they use a children’s icon to allure people who are clearly not in the SpongeBob viewer demographic?

Karlene Lukovitz, great minds think alike

At first I thought that companies wouldn’t cut their funding towards advertisement (primarily TV advertisement) because that’s their biggest form of exposure, but by the same token, isn’t it very pricey?

In advertising, I’ve heard that “sex sells;” but when times get tough and advertisers are competing even more, when does sexy advertisement go too far?

Two examples of tasteless commercials:

1. Joe’s Crab Shack: two men and a woman are sitting at a table, the woman gets her food in a covered steamer and one of the men says, “Take your top off.” The woman looks confused and says, “What?” The man repeats, “Take your top off.” You can’t help but find this man to be a pervert until the other man at the table lifts the top off the woman’s steamer to reveal steam-cooked lobster. The first man clearly meant to the take the top off the steamer, not for the woman to take her top off.

I think the commercial could’ve been executed in a more tasteful manner, one that doesn’t imply a man ordering a woman to take off her shirt.

2. Quiznos: this one was actually pretty disturbing. Their latest commercial starts with an oven telling an employee that it wants the young man to tell the audience about their new Torpedo sub. It hints that the oven and the employee have had a previous encounter which they “both enjoyed,” one which the employee doesn’t dispute. The oven tells the employee to tell watchers that the Torpedo is only $4; it tells the employee to repeat it two more times with more and more passion behind his message.

An oven and a human seeming to have had an affair? An oven ordering a man to be sexier? Kind of creepy.

An example of a great, and sexy, commercial that I don’t think I’ll ever forget is Kate Walsh driving a Cadillac CTS. In trying to sell the car to viewers, she describes the cars’ features and then says, “The real question is, when you turn your car on, does it return the favor?” Her words are followed by a shot of her stiletto pressing down on the accelerator.

Now, that commercial is sexy, not raunchy like the others.