Why I Can't Stand "A Case Of The Mondays"

If you’ve ever worked one single Monday in your life, it’s possible (and probable) that you’ve heard – or used – the expression “a case of the Mondays” to explain a bad mood on a Monday morning.

I can’t stand that.

Call me crazy, call me closed-minded, call me unsympathetic (or just call me reasonable), but it drives me insane to think that people let something as completely intangible as a certain day of the week determine their mood and attitude for 24 hours.

I’ll admit there’s a difference between having a bad day that is coincidentally on a Monday and an actual “case of the Mondays.” That’s understandable. But am I the only person that goes crazy when a conversation with a person on Monday morning transpires like this? –

Me: “Hey, how’s it going today?”

Person: “Eh, it’s Monday…”

Me: (While internally shaking my head and repressing near-violent anger) “Alright, well…I hope it gets better for you.”

Person: “Oh, it’s just a case of the Mondays. Things should be better tomorrow.”

Wait, what?!

You’re going to spend an entire day being in a bad mood based on the logic that it’s the first day to your work week? Seriously? Is EVERY weekend you spend that magnificent that it makes you dread your entire first day back to work? You’re going to let one day bring a depressing and dreary attitude into the workplace, to infect everyone with your negative, “my environment controls my attitude” outlook on life?

Uh-uh. No way. Leave that garbage at home. That’s what I say. You have a chance to make every Monday an exciting and opportunistic day for you if you choose to make it happen. Mondays are a fresh chance to kick off a great week and spread an “I plan to enjoy my day (and make it productive)” approach to everyone in your office. Why pass up that opportunity only to replace it with negativity? If you can give me one good reason, I just might retract this post and apologize for my errors. And maybe shave my head or something crazy.

Bottom line: This post was inspired by a Twitter offer from a coffee shop in Sioux Falls (which has been very, very good to the Deep Bench crew) called Coffea: “50% off drinks today for anyone with a ‘case of the Mondays.’” the tweet read. I love their approach. I love that they are using Twitter to create a tribal experience (Seth Godin-style) of insider information. Like a secret password or handshake that actually provides value to customers. I love that.

But I don’t love “cases of the Mondays.” So I walked in, and asked if I "could still have a discount, even if I consider a case of the Mondays to be a good thing." The response? “You know, if you think Mondays are a good thing, then I think you definitely deserve a 50% discount.”

I’ll say this: I respect and appreciate Coffea’s attempt to make everybody’s Monday a little bit better with a 50% discount (and I respect them even more for doing it with a social media approach). In fact, I’d even say that falls into Deep Bench’s “Do Good” aspect of our organization’s “Work. Play. Do Good.” mantra.

I just wish the rest of the world would try to approach Monday’s with a slightly more optimistic outlook. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I think wishful thinking is the small push that helps start turning the gears of change. So, from now on, I’m going to try to spread my “Positive Case of the Mondays” approach by sharing some positive thoughts, concepts, and probably music on Mondays just to add a little optimism to the mix and maybe create a little change.

Because really, why would you want to let an outside force like the day of the week affect your chance to enjoy an entire day’s worth of opportunities for success?

It’s that kind of attitude that almost…almost gives me a case of the Mondays.

If you agree or disagree with my mindset or analysis on cases of the Mondays, let me know in the comments below or drop me a line on Twitter at @mikebilleter. Although it’s unlikely, it’s possible I'm wrong, so please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts with me.

[Editor's Note: This post was originally written for and posted on my work blog at Deep Bench.]

How Would You Spend Time With Your Idol?

If I haven't mentioned it on here before, I fell in love with The Gaslight Anthem about 10 months ago when Marvel Comics' Ryan Penagos (@Agent_M on Twitter) tweeted about their awesomeness and inspired me to pick up their (at the time) new album, "The '59 Sound." I then proceeded to listen to said album a few times a week for about 7 months straight. In fact, it hasn't left my car's 6-disc changer since I loaded it in there last August.

Beyond the obvious reasons that I enjoy them, such as their talent, their passion, and their overall sound, I also love the fact that I had frequently compared them to "Bruce Springsteen if he sang for a somewhat punk-rock band" only to later discover that he is, in reality, probably their biggest influence, that they actually grew up within a half hour of his hometown, and that they've mentioned their admiration and respect for him in numerous interviews and spotlights.

So I can't even begin to imagine how awesome this must've been for them:


the 59 sound - bruce springsteen & gaslight anthem( glasto )
by runawaydream

I mean...wow... The video came my way, unsurprisingly, courtesy of Agent M, and according to their website, "The Gaslight Anthem were also honored to have Bruce Springsteen ask to perform "The '59 Sound" with them during their set at Glastonbury too." I'd be shocked to hear that their response was anything other than "YES YES SWEET JESUS YES!"

My question is this: If you could spend one day doing whatever you wanted to do with someone you consider to be an "idol" or "influence" in your life, who would you spend that time with and how would you spend it? I'm not saying my official answer would be spending some time with Stan Lee talking comics - I'd like to spend a bit more time thinking about it before I make an official decision - but it's hard for me to think of a better choice off the top of my head.

So...who would be your "Do something with your idol" choice? Share your thoughts in the comments below or hit me up on Twitter at @mikebilleter. Look forward to seeing your guys' answers.

The Shaq Effect: Just how influential is the Big Cactus?

So…the Oprah Effect. You’ve heard of it. How much she - and other celebrities - are affecting the social media realm. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing can be discussed in other places, but one thing’s for sure…it’s definitely a “thing” and it should not be ignored.

Take, for example, “The Shaq Effect.” The argument could be made, in fact, that the Shaq Effect served as the precursor to the Oprah Effect. His engagement with fans via Twitter and his Facebook Fan Page led to all kinds of buzz and excitement as his follower numbers skyrocketed and he enjoyed interacting with his adoring public.

But how can you really measure something like The Shaq Effect? Sure you could use detailed metrics of Twitter number increases and Fan Page fan statistics, but that’s way too boring and scientific. We’re going to go with something way cooler and more fun: screen shots and videos. Hooray!

Here’s the situation: At 10:40 p.m. CT, on the night of Tuesday, June 23^rd, Shaq tweeted this:

The video he’s tweeting about can be seen below. As the screen shot shows, it had about 340 views at the time of the tweet. That’s not bad. (Screenshot first, then video below that)

(Here's the video itself...)

Being the studious and curious thinker I am, I made a point to check back in at exactly 10:40 this morning. Here’s the number of views, exactly 12 hours after Shaq’s tweet:

And now, as of the time that this post was created, the view numbers are almost 35,000.

So…did the numbers spike so rapidly due to the video itself simply being awesome, or is it the fact that Shaq’s network of 1,372,200 people (at the time) rushed to view a video that inspired Shaq to want to play a guy in a game of horse for $1,000 (many of whom probably then shared it with THEIR networks)? Bearing in mind that the video had been posted since June 11 and only had 340 views in almost 2 weeks, I’m guessing Shaq had a bit to do with the view number increase of over 5,000% in a 12-hour span. Obviously there's more to this equation than page view numbers in the bottom corner of a YouTube screen, but this was simply meant to be an observation that happened to morph into a blog post.

Our question is this - Could any Twitter celebrity have made that happen or is it the sheer numbers behind the army of Shaq Twitter followers that made it happen? If Gary Vaynerchuk had thrown it out there to his 566,000+ followers, would the video views still have jumped to 20,000? If Chris Brogan had shared it with his almost 80,000 followers would his followers (and their networks) have gotten the video 20,000 views? On the flip side, would Ellen DeGeneres’s network of 2,100,000+ followers have taken the video to 40,000 views?

Or would simply landing on the front page of Digg have been all it needed to get there? Are you at all surprised that Shaq’s network didn’t get the video MORE than 20,000 views?

All of these many questions are questions that we’re currently debating in the office, so we figured we'd see what you have to say. We’d love to hear your thoughts, so fill us in on your views in the comments section below or on Twitter at @deepbench.

P.S. - We'd love to hear your favorite Shaqalicious nickname while you're at it, so let us know. Big Cactus, Big Diesel, Big Jabberwocky, Big Aristotle (my personal favorite) or one of the dozens of others?

UPDATE: As of a few hours after we posted this highly detailed analysis (around 6:00 on June 24th), it appears Shaq has been traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers. According to TechCrunch, it's possible he found out about this trade via Twitter. On a side note, it is this writer's fear that, when Shaq gets to Cleveland, the potential combination of his HUGE personality combined with LeBron James' equally outgoing personality could cause the entire city of Cleveland to explode from a fun, passion, and excitement overload. Things could get crazy, folks.

Editor's note - This content was originally posted (by me) on my work blog at http://www.thedeepbench.com/.

Auto-Tune the News #5 (Trust me...it's brilliant...)

This makes me so glad that I was able to hang out with this crew (The Gregory Brothers) for a weekend. Because they are absolutely awesome.

Watch it. Love it. Share it. You know you want to. And while we're at it, watch my all-time favorite below.

Also, here's their website: www.thegregorybrothers.com

Real Life Street Fighter Car Destruction Bonus Round

Because, really...who didn't want to at least try this in real life after playing Super Street Fighter II?



Sorry if the embed doesn't show all the way. Just click the video and watch it on YouTube if that's the case. Hat tip to @RichGinter for the find on this one...

Are YouTube videos the website of the future?

As firm believers in an innovation-focused approach when it comes to projects and campaigns, we were thoroughly impressed when we stumbled across the new BooneOakley website. Why? Because they are clearly bold enough to take a game-changing approach as far as corporate websites go. For the record, by website, we mean, YouTube video...website…thing. If you want to see what we’re talking about, take a look at the embedded video below and then read up on what this means for the future of websites and interactively engaging your audience.

It’s not easy to be one of the first to embrace a new effort. But based on some of their ad campaigns, it’s obvious that BooneOakley lives in the realm of telling stories through video. So why not embrace that medium with a website dedicated to telling a story through video? It’s a prime example of understanding where your talents lie and taking them to the next level.

Although there will definitely be people who A) Don’t understand this “website” and B) Don’t like this “website,” we definitely expect to see more and more of this type of effort in the future from other companies and agencies.

According to our Head Coach Hugh Weber, “You can go through a hundred agency sites and see 99 of them that are exactly the same. It’s another unique approach to ‘What is a website?’ A website doesn't have to be static HTML, it’s whatever you want it to be. I love that level of interactivity.”

Our question is this: what are your thoughts? Were you impressed with this new approach to an interactive “website?” Did you find it to be confusing or too different from the norm, or did you really enjoy it the same way we did? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below or hit us up on Twitter at @deepbench.

(Editors note: This post, written by me, was originally featured on my work blog over at http://www.thedeepbench.com/. Just so you know.)

So you can execute...but what's your strategy?

A few days ago, I came across this great post from Valeria Maltoni on her blog, Conversation Agent. The post discusses the importance of execution. In fact, her intro sentence pretty much summarizes the post perfectly: “There's no amount of marketing budgets or number of social media networks you can throw at a product if what you're doing is executed poorly.” I absolutely agree with that sentiment.

But here’s my question. What if what you’re executing – the campaign itself – really isn’t that great in the first place? As PR-Squared mentioned in their recent “Uncampaigning” post, “even if you enjoyed their clever launch into the Social Media sphere, when was the last time you visited skittles.com?” Sure you can execute something and execute it well, but what if, in the long run, your lack of strategy does nothing more than create some momentary excitement.

Enter Seth Godin.

Although his post “Challenging convention” isn’t solely focused on this exact topic, an applicable assessment from him regarding the reason behind changing something just to change it is this: “Sure, you could invent a new kind of handshake or a new pricing structure. But if it catches on, do you win? Is it at the core of your business model?”

In my mind, that’s a great example of execution without strategy. Sure you can execute a plan. But what is the purpose of that plan? Why invest the hours in an attention-grabbing effort if the eventual results aren’t a part of your campaign’s core focus? If you aren’t utilizing a strategy, how do you even know what that core focus is in the first place?

To conclude, I’ll leave you with this example of execution without strategy…

In a recent Wired.com article titled “Homebrewed CPU Is a Beautiful Mess of Wires," they share the story of a man who, over an 18-month period of time, custom-designed and built his own 8-bit computer (think early Atari level capabilities) by meticulously connecting 1,253 pieces of wire to a wire-wrap board. It makes for a fun story and his creation will be featured at a “do-it-yourself technology” expo, but after putting all that work into this project (think "campaign" if it makes more sense), this is his closing thought:

“Why did I do all this?” he says. “I don’t know. But it has been a lot of fun.”

Although it may be ok for a guy working on a fun project in his spare time, it’s not ok to take that approach with clients who are paying you to execute with a strategy in mind (maybe along the lines of that aforementioned Skittles.com 2-day campaign). So make sure that when your next big idea or concept pops into your head, you take some time to plan a strategy around it before you execute. Your clients will thank you.

What do you think? Is execution the key to success? Is strategy the only way to make sure things are done right? If you think it’s a combination of the two, which brands or companies do you feel have done a good job of making both of them work in conjunction? Share your thoughts in the comments section below (preferably with a strategy behind them) or hit me up on Twitter at @mikebilleter.

(Editors note: This post, written by me, was originally featured on my work blog over at http://www.thedeepbench.com/. Just so you know.)