Random Crap | Finch Sells

Mad Men: Glorious Sleaze From The Sixties

Dec 23 2011

The last TV series that had me hooked was The Wire, which is widely regarded as one of the most badass pieces of entertainment ever committed to tape. It’s three years since I finished watching that show, and it’s taken until now for another to come along that would impress me in the same way.

Joan Holloway That show is Mad Men; a sickly stylish throwback to the sleaze of Madison Avenue in the 1960s.

Mad Men centers around an advertising agency, Sterling & Cooper, in an era where smoking, drinking and public displays of chauvinism come as par for the course.

Don Draper is the man at the center of it all. He’s a creative genius, father of two and betrayer of many. Draper is the sort of fucked up anti-hero that our generation of young affiliates aspire to become. He bedazzles clients with the perfect blend of smooth talk and marketing intellect.

When we announce that we’re affiliate marketers to the world, he is the projected image in all of our heads. The figure of quiet authority who could sell a man his own moustache. Draper is painted in various shades of grey; a multi-layered character for the show to orbit around. He’s backed by an awesome and versatile supporting cast, including some of the sexiest women on television. I can’t deny it, there’s just something about the sixties.

Mad Men is a tour de force in persuasion tactics from an era gone-by, but it’s also much more. It’s an excellent cultural reference to the sixties – where sexism, racism and prejudice cast a decidedly negative light on the decade we now glorify for its hard partying and pop legacy.

The show starts with Draper in a headspin, trying to find a way to re-brand cigarettes. Recent revelations have linked smoking to cancer, and the FTC has its boot on the throat of any tobacco seller who begs to differ. I’m sure many affiliates will be sympathetic of the predicament, as will anybody who has ever had to deal with a stuck-in-the-old-ways client.

Here’s a great taster of the show. It should strike a chord with many in our industry:

Every scene is beautifully shot and the storylines are brought to the boil slowly in a manner that rewards attentive viewing. The story is often told through subtle nods rather than blowout cliffhangers. It’s certainly no Prison Break in that sense.

I loved The Wire for its glorification of the ordinary and the richness of the characters. No good was without fault, and no bad was totally irredeemable. The characters in Mad Men are portrayed in the same light; the detail hidden in brief flashes of dialogue that most shows simply wouldn’t trust the viewer to digest.

Admittedly, the show has a polarizing effect. I’ve spoken to people who couldn’t get in to it, despite working in advertising for much of their careers. I would call it a slow burner, but I think the writing is comfortably strong enough to justify the leisurely pacing. You’ll either love it… or you won’t.

Here’s a final shove. Watch the trailer, get your 60s on, and grab a slice of Mad Men. I highly recommend it!

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Wanderfly, A Very Cool Trip Planner

Oct 14 2011

If you love to travel, you’re probably somewhat snobbish about the gazillions of trip planning tools. I’ve always been hesitant to use them. Where is the fun in automating your entire trip? It’s nice to get creative beyond whatever Expedia is recommending as a bestseller.

Wanderfly is a trip planning tool with a difference. It’s quite unlike anything I’ve used before, and for once, it shows the unique appeal of the destinations on offer.

You simply select where you’re leaving from and define what you’re interested in (art vs extreme sports, adventure vs nightlife)

Choose a budget per person, a time for traveling, and the intended duration of the trip. Once you’re done, hit the search button and lo and behold – Wanderfly churns out a huge variety of destinations, each presented with a rich illustrated background to give you a flavour of what to expect.

It’s the visual presentation that makes Wanderfly so addictive to use.

Instead of just listing out hotel prices and the things to do – which are only a click away if you need them – each destination is themed in such a way that you can probably tell just by looking if it’s a viable travel option.

My only complaint with the service is the heavy American bias.

There are American cities listed that must surely only be desirable to travel to if you’re actually living in America and on a very tight budget.

It skews the results somewhat, in the same way that a UK based service would seem very out of touch if it recommended Skegness to anybody outside Skegness.

No offence, Skegness. I’m sure you’re beautiful inside.

The occasional dodgy recommendation aside, Wanderfly is well worth a look if you’re feeling the travel bug on your Friday afternoon.

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One Website That Launched My Career

Oct 07 2011

A common trait you will find in many online professionals is the background of being self-taught. It’s something we seem to be very proud of, a sort of retrospective fuck you to academia.

Perhaps the single greatest appeal, and challenge, of making a living online, is the ease of which you can get started. There’s no degree necessary, no interview process, and each individual takes on full responsibility for his or her self.

We should consider ourselves lucky that money can be made with just a modem and a little common sense.

Unfortunately, modems are in heavy supply. And so is the number of would-be entrepreneurs who think they have what it takes to make a living online. It appears that some people are better at self-teaching than others.

I made the decision when I was just 16 years old that I wanted to run my own business. It didn’t happen overnight, and thank god it didn’t. I was a trainwreck through the mid 2000s. After dropping out from school, I spent the next 18 months lurching from one disasterous idea to the next – both in my personal life, and professionally.

When Facebook Timeline is released, don’t be surprised if 2004-2007 is obliterated from my records. It already has been in my head.

My only other job to that point was a 3 month stint at Wickes in Hayes. If God decided to stick the vacuum in the arse end of society, he would probably start with Hayes. It’s a genuinely ugly place.

I wanted my own business, and I wanted to work online. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my days surfing double decker buses straight out of a stabbing scene on the Uxbridge Road.

There aren’t many IT companies that would take on an 18 year old who dropped out of school, and the IT industry was where I saw my future. So I had to develop experience and knowledge on my lonesome.

Private classes were expensive (Baker Street, London…ouch) and they still left me short on opportunities. I went to a couple of job interviews but was finding myself squeezed out of the reckoning. Too young, not enough drive, bad haircut, whatever. I think the most I had going for myself was a strange immunity to taking it personally.

That’s when I stumbled across VTC, a plain looking site that may have just saved my career when it was threatening to flatline.

If you’re going to get a headstart on the kids attending university, you really need information and training materials for your chosen profession. And lots of them.

Back then, when I discovered VTC, it was like hitting the jackpot.

VTC has over 98000 tutorials covering almost every programming language, application or software you’re ever likely to use. For anybody with web development tingling their taste buds, it’s an excellent one stop resource where you can learn as many basics as you can put your mind to.

Eventually my crazy self-teaching binge paid off and I was able to capture a junior web developer job on the back of my portfolio (and probably my desire to learn).

Two years later and I was hired by an agency in Central London, again as the youngest employee in the company. I stayed there for 15 months before quitting to go full-time with my affiliate business. It wasn’t a particularly researched decision. I woke up one morning, checked my affiliate stats, saw my first day of £1000 profit and that was that. Au revoir, mon petit 9 to 5.

I was 21 when I made that jump, right in the middle of the recession. While many of my friends were still labouring through University, I felt an enormous weight of gratitude towards that one site – VTC – which gave me the tools to burst in to an industry that I was a complete virgin to.

If you have the right attitude, the Internet typically has the right resources to launch your career. Remember though, self-teaching is only an option if you have the discipline to execute a kick to your own balls when you deserve one.

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