Easy Peasy Development

A former colleague of mine loved to use the phrase "privileged discourse." While the utterance of such a thing would usually end in me ribbing him about going to a fancy, Ivy League school, his point was always that certain people have a skill which often amounts to nothing more than knowledge about a subject that someone else does not have.

For me personally, it's the web. I know enough about programming to take someone else's basic HTML and adapt to my own needs, but that's about it. So besides taking a few months and learning to code (something I am in the position to do and likely will attempt) how could I ever hope to create web applications that work as I am outside the realm of privileged discourse needed to understand that process.

Thanks to SubmleUpon, I just might be able to work around my deficiency by using the programs listed in this article: http://tinyurl.com/m6hj8p . Point and drag and drop and execute is what these programs are all about. Breaking down the walls of code nerdery and arduous learning curves to allow the average joe to build some pretty cool stuff. Right up my alley. While I haven't tried any of them out yet, the idea is what I am more concerned with. This ability to remove the blinders from people and give them the chance to execute their thoughts has the potential to lead to some really interesting and useful things that hadn't existed and likely would never appear on the radar of the hip advertising and web dev people in the world. So take some of these for a spin and let me know what you think.

Pax vobiscum.

Candy + Soft Serve = Amazing!

As my friend Josh was paying for his morning caffeine fix, I noticed some bright blue, yellow and red tinfoil wrappers that came out of his pocket. "Cadbury Creme Eggs," I thought to myself (fully forgetting that we are now in full Easter swing in the US). We got to talking some more and, knowing his interests, I suggested that it might be interesting to make some Cadbury Creme Egg ice cream. I believe his exact words were, "I find it hard to get excited about something I'm not excited about eating." Boo, I said. For pretty much my whole life I have always looked forward to my one Cadbury Creme Egg a year. The gritty feel of the sugar dough in globular yellow and white that oozes from the cracked shell, what a treat! While I can never bring myself to eat more than one without feeling like total crap, I do cherish that single, chocolate covered magic that the wizards at Cadbury dreamed up in their Wonka lab so many years ago.

Turns out, I'm not the only one who thinks it'd be good with ice cream. Thanks to our friends over at Buzzfeed, I stumbled across this post on McFlurrys of the world. And oh, what a wild and varied world it is. From Bluberry/Oreo in Japan to the Chips Ahoy version found in Mexico, the McFlurry has a universal appeal boosted further by McDonald's ability to tap into native desires and whip them into a delicious treat.











So what's the branding/marketing twist on this story: Know your customer. Could McD's push M&Ms and Butterfinger everywhere? They sure could. But it wouldn't be nearly as successful as tapping into the Brits' desire for Cadbury confections. Or the Japanese yearning for green tea. That's what makes this today's cool thing.

As an added bonus, I bring you the genius (IMHO) ads Cadbury ran to promote Creme Eggs in the days of your. A rabbit laying eggs and clucking like a chicken. Beautiful.