Hey, remember that time I said, “Seriously, the DVR has completely revolutionized the way the populace watches TV, which is a fact advertisers need to recognize and adapt to.”?
You don’t?
Then you haven’t been reading our blog on a regular basis. Shame on you.
Anyway, someone listened to my suggestion, and that someone was Honda. Well, more accurately, whoever’s in charge of making the ads over there at Honda thought of a way to do what I was suggesting before I suggested it… but whatever, it’s pretty much the same thing.
I was watching a DVR recording of the season premiere of NBC’s super awesome pseudo-spy comedy Chuck (which you should totally be watching if you aren’t already), and during the first commercial break I actually watched a commercial – and I didn’t mean to. They tricked me into watching it. Those wily Honda ad-men beat me and my superhuman DVR commercial avoidance powers (seriously, I can stop that thing on a dime; like, at the precise instance of the fade in from a break).
Check this out: it’s the ad for the new Honda Crosstour that ran during the episode’s first commercial break. It was probably the third commercial in the break, and if you watch Chuck, you’ll instantly recognize three of the show’s major characters: Ellie, Chuck’s sister; Devon, her strapping boyfriend (“Mr. Awesome” to Chuck’s friends); and Morgan, Chuck’s lovably loserish and bearded companion. Thing is, none of the characters had been re-introduced in the first fifteen minutes of the premiere, so as I was mowing through the ad set in x3 light speed fast-forward, I recognized their faces and instantly mashed the play button on my remote. I remember thinking something along the lines of: “Wow that commercial break was way short! Sweet! And Morgan’s back!”
But it wasn’t the show. It was a commercial – a commercial disguised as the show. Like 99.9% of the other viewers watching Chuck on Sunday, I watched almost the whole ad before I realized that I had been duped – duped by what I’ll be calling a “chameleon commercial” from now on… mainly because I think alliteration is super cool. Well done, Honda. You win this round.
On a serious note though, this is a great example of advertisers adapting to new obstacles in visual entertainment media. We should all be taking notes.
For the past several decades, Hollywood blockbusters have been the primary venue for video-based product placement advertising – and with good reason: product placement, as we’ve mentioned before, can be extremely effective when done properly. When the “next generation” of video gaming began its rise to massive popularity five years ago with the introduction of consoles like the XBOX 360, the Playstation 3, and the Nintendo Wii, forward thinking advertisers began dreaming up fresh and innovative ways to contact target markets through new channels, reaching a steadily growing populace of gamers by placing products and virtual ads right into the games they play every day at home. Suddenly, covert-ops agent Sam Fisher, protagonist of the tactical espionage-based video game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, no longer received his clandestine messages from headquarters via nonspecific “com-link” technology, but on a Sony Ericsson mobile phone. Similarly, video game characters in professional sports simulators got the upgrade from generic athletic equipment to brand name gloves, shoes, and golf clubs. Gamers playing in free roaming “reality-based” action games saw billboards and posters promoting real products pop up throughout their virtual environments. The marketing potential seemed so immense that even political campaign promoters for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama gave in-game ads a shot, footing the bill for virtual voting reminders in titles like the XBOX 360’s Burnout Paradise. The next-gen video game market seemed set on an inevitable collision course with shrewd advertisers poised to connect in a very personal way with a very large target audience.
Obama campaign ad in Burnout Paradise, a racing title for the XBOX 360. There you have it, folks: video games can put you in the White House.
But here it is, 2010, I’m playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a title which sold nearly five millionglobal copies in its first24 hours,and for some reason I’m dodging a hail of bullets and exploding shrapnel in front of a Burgertown, reconning with alpha squad atop a Taco Shack, and chucking grenades into a room full ofKona soda vending machines and posters billing a movie entitled Porter Justice: Justice Is Served. In case you’re wondering, those are all fictitious. So what happened between the advent of next-gen gaming and now? What’s holding back the floodgates? Sure, product-based advertisement in games still occurs from time to time, but it’s not increasing at a rate proportionate to the rapid swell in the number of gamers worldwide. The already substantial popularity of next-gen gaming is doing nothing but expanding by leaps and bounds as console prices progressively drop, so why aren’t advertising execs clamoring to get their products strategically inserted into any video game with a shot at popularity? It seems strange, especially given the fact that traditional methods of televised advertising are taking a hit from the recent implementation of technology like the DVR, which often prevents standard commercials from even reaching the viewing public.
A prime example of in-game advertising gone wrong. State Farm’s ad in Wipeout HD actually made the load time for the game almost twice as long!! As you can see, this makes gamers unhappy.
The answer is simple: many ad companies still believe that video gaming is an industry solely geared toward adolescent males. So while a virtual billboard advertising Axe deodorant in a stealth-based action game like Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell makes perfect sense to most advertisers, the marketing of other products intended primarily for adult or female demographics seems best left out of the gaming world. Let me be perfectly clear: nothing could be further from the truth. According to the Daedalus Project, a website that studies demographics for online video games, the median age for players of the online role-playing game World of Warcraft is 28. In case you haven’t seen the commercials, advertising personalities for the game, which has captivated more than 10 million players since 2004, include Ozzy Ozbourne, William Shatner, and, most recently, Mr. T – not exactly an instantly recognizable trio to most 13-year-olds. What’s more, most researchers estimate that nearly 22% of the game’s North American participants are female. Nintendo is actively marketing its Wii console to parents as a system that will promote family togetherness, and its recent fitness title, Wii Fit, is aimed directly at adults who prefer exercising in the comfort and solitude of their own living room to working out in a crowded gym. All in all, it’s pretty clear that gaming isn’t just for teenage boys any more, and though males age 10 to 17 still account for a healthy portion of the video game market, the diversity of gamers worldwide is already substantial, and is growing each day. Advertisers need to realize this rapidly expanding trend, and focus on developing new and innovative ways to connect “in-game” with consumers.
My first encounter with in-game advertising: virtual billboards in the classic 1997 console RPG Final Fantasy VII promoting the album Loveless from British shoegaze rockers My Bloody Valentine, who thankfully have nothing to do with 2009’s ridiculous 3D horror film of the same title. This is awesome not only because it happened 13 years ago, but also because FFVII and Loveless were two of my favorite pieces of entertainment media in the 90’s, as they were for many other music/gaming elitists (or geeks… whatever).
But let’s not place all the blame for the currently stagnant state of in-game product marketing on the end of the promoters. Much of the difficulty in putting product-based advertising in video games lies in the hesitancy of the game developers themselves. See, developers are an eccentric lot; although the cost of game production has skyrocketed with the advent of high definition gaming graphics, many of them are extremely wary of anything that might be construed as “tampering with the authenticity” of their projects, which they tend to feel quite personally attached to. For example, the developers of a fantasy role-playing game featuring knights and dragons and quests to save princesses might feel that having their main character quaff a Five Hour Energy drink in place of the traditional “elixir of health” for a quick pick-me-up could alienate the large portion of their fan base that values immersion in a fantasy atmosphere and storyline – and I tend to agree. No developer wants to be labeled a “sell-out,” and for good reason: reputation means a lot in the game development industry. It’s up to advertisers to create strategies for product placement that not only choose appropriate virtual environments, but that mesh seamlessly with those environments to provide the most realistic gaming experience possible, and in doing so, put developers at ease. If in-game product advertisement is implemented properly, it can actually enhance the feel of a game’s realism – and if that becomes a trend, developers will be hard pressed to turn down a little ad revenue.
But why choose video gaming as a marketing arena? Why not just throw your product into a scene from the next summer blockbuster or cut a snazzy commercial? Well, repetition for one. Many gamers will invest up to 60 hours in your average console game, and if that game is of the non-linear online persuasion, often that’s an extremely low estimate. As far as commercials go, if you’re like me, you now prerecord your favorite TV shows and intentionally avoid watching them in real-time just so you can fast forward through the ads. Seriously, the DVR has completely revolutionized the way the populace watches TV, which is a fact advertisers need to recognize and adapt to. Truth be told, the entire face of entertainment media is rapidly changing on a global scale; old marketing channels are drying up and new ones are emerging. Video gaming is a fresh marketing resource that caters to an audience steadily growing in number and diversity, and it’s just waiting to be tapped into.
Did you know that learning disability accounts for 45% of all student disabilities in the USA? With over 2.6 million students suffering from learning disabilities nationwide, our education system has been working hard to implement programs that will assist children and young adults who struggle with the simple tasks of reading, writing, and assimilating new information in a class setting. Now, the UK non-profit organization Mencap is making these tasks easier for the English-speaking learning disabled and their educators with a new meticulously researched and designed font style known as FS Me.
FS Me is the world’s first font designed especially for the learning disabled. Designed to aid legibility for those whose learning disabilities make it difficult for them to read, FS Me features include larger and rounder letters, which research suggests are easier to identify. Also, the font made changes to several letters, giving the letter “v” a curved arm to differentiate it from “w,” and opening the letter “r” more to make it more legible. FS Me became available for public use in April of 2008, and was predicted to rival Arial and Helvetica as the standard accessible font. This would make reading much easier for not only the millions affected by learning disabilities, but for unaffected people as well.
The brains behind the new font include Mencap, leading font designer Jason Smith, and surprisingly, a core group of learning disabled individuals who reviewed every modification for efficacy and legibility. The result is that FS Me is truly a font designed by the learning disabled, for the learning disabled. “We took a long time deciding which [letters] were the easiest to read and the clearest to see. The results are great and will have an impact on Mencap’s future work,” stated Mencap rep Ismail Kaji. This is no mere platitude, either — true to their praise for the font, Mencap is converting all of their organization’s written and online copy to MS Me.
Mencap, as the UK’s leading charity and voice for the learning disabled strives for equal rights and government consideration for those with learning disabilities in the area of health, housing, education, and the job market, as well as social consideration and cuts for the UK’s learning disabled population. FS Me is also helping the learning disabled in another way — for every font license purchased, Mencap receives a donation.
In the communications world, we are often so caught up in what we are saying and how we are saying it that we forget there are people out there who struggle to express themselves on the most basic levels of writing, and fight to understand the simplest expressions of others through reading. Kudos to organizations like Mencap, who remember these people and are doing everything they can to bring those with learning disabilities more fully into the world of written communication that we know and love.
For many businesses, excepting retail, the holidays can be a black hole for marketing efforts. At a time when most people are focused on holiday event planning and shopping, marketing is often put on hold until a time when prospective customers are less preoccupied. However, by writing off marketing during the holiday season, your business may be missing a great opportunity to creatively connect with prospective clients. Here are six fun and innovate ways to market during the holidays.
1. Tie your work into the season.
Almost every profession can be tied to an end-of-year/new year’s theme. Take time to think about what aspects of your business are seaonal and what people need from you during the holidays. For example, if you’re in the accounting business, place emphasis on how best to handle holiday bugdeting or how to financially plan for the upcoming year.
2. Let people buy gift certificates for your product or service.
Everyone will be giving gifts – why not let them give a loved one the gift of your service? Take a clue from the packages that other similar product producers/businesses are selling, then take time to come up with an affordable bundle of solutions that you could make available this holiday season.
3. Give holiday cards and gifts
The office holiday card is a classic for a reason – cards and gifts are a fun, creative way to have your business noticed during the holidays. Come up with a unique, well-designed, and possibly humorous theme for the cards, then review your client list and choose small, meaningful gifts for key clients. Taking the time to send out a well thought-out card and/or a personally appropriate gift will mean a lot to clients, referral partners, and prospects alike.
4. Compile an end-of-year or “what’s up next” report
This is a great way not only to do a little bragging on your company’s accomplishments, but to let clients and prospects know what’s new for them in your business as well. Highlight successes of the past year, and then share information about a new product, an upcoming workshop, an added service, or a strategic new alliance you’ve made. During the holiday season, everyone is filled with expectations for the new year – let your businesses’ novelties be a part of that excitement.
5. Throw a business party
While you might not sign tons of new clients during a holiday party, it’s still a great way to network while focusing on the spirit of the season. When the holidays are over, you’ll have warm memories with new and old contacts that you can translate into a conversation about furthering that relationship.
6. Create time-sensitive offers
People notice and respond to deadlines, and the year’s end is a perfect time to build these into your service. Take the end of the year as a natural time to communicate to prospective clients that now is the time to get on board, before prices go up or because exciting new products or services are available for the first time. You can also connect this technique to the product packages you’ve created for gift certificates.
With these tips, you’ll be ready to have some creative fun with your marketing. After all, everyone is in the holiday spirit, and it is the perfect time to focus on relationships, both at home and in business. Your clients, old and new, will thank you for it. For further help with creating and championing your brand at any time of the year, contact Holy Cow Branding, the experts in internal and external communication.
Last night, I couldn’t sleep. This isn’t an uncommon experience. I leave the warmth and comfort of my bed to lay on the couch hoping the drone of the television will lull me to sleep. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much. It does, however, save me from wanting to poke my husband, who is slumbering soundly, with a blunt object.
Anyhow, last night is when I came up with the idea of climbing on my soap box. There are so many things in life that make you ask, “What are they thinking?” that I decided I would use this as an outlet. Topic of choice from last night: Late Night Television.
I ask you… who cares? They all follow the same format: cheesy band, big “look at me” introduction, live audience, interviewing the rich and famous. Where is the key differentiator? Are viewers so numb that they don’t care? What about the advertisers who are throwing millions toward supporting the programs?
Like anyone else out there, I appreciate humor; I occasionally enjoy living vicariously through the lives of the troubled actors; but I am over everything being so completely formulaic. Band? Check. Sitting duck host in a snazzy suit? Check. Famous girl in a too-short skirt? Check. Let’s roll it out. We’ll make millions.
What are your thoughts about this rant? Do you have another you’d like to share? I promise… I have more!
I had this video sent to me today, and I thought it had a profound message. What is amazing is that it was created by Harding College in 1948. I don’t know about you, but I am all for the free enterprise system.
I admit it. I am a sucker for a non-profit. I sit on boards, participate in advisory capacities, donate time and anything else I can do to support people who are in the trenches. Working with non-profits is such a great way to feel like I am using my talents to make a difference in some small way.
I see where many companies are embracing Corporate Social Responsibility, but I also see where other companies just can’t seem to wrap their mind around how to do it, especially when it comes to allocating funds that just aren’t there this year.
What these companies are missing is that it isn’t always about the money. It’s about volunteering time. Providing gifts in kind. Participating in the events. Promoting the cause. It’s easy to do, very grassroots… and fun! Here are a couple of things we have going on right now:
Light The Night
On Saturday, I’ve worked with Lea-Ann Berst from Sleddogg Marketing Management and Mary Margaret Harris from Capital Bank to pull together a team of walkers for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’sLight-the-Night walk. I am so excited about this because we have worked to increase awareness of the event, build relationships with business professionals and help fund cancer research… all in one fell swoop. I will be walking for my dad and my uncle, who both died from cancer, for my friends Becky and Suzanne who are currently battling cancer and for all of those who have lost someone dear to them, too.
On a more upbeat note, I recently joined the Assistance League of Raleigh’s Advisory Council. We are sponsoring one of their signature events, Festival of Trees. We’ve helped them put together their invitation package… Here’s a sneak peek:
Festival of Trees 2009
Don’t be afraid. Jump right in. A little bit of support goes a long way in the eyes of a non-profit!
Nearly everyone has heard the buzz about HBO’s new hit series True Blood, now in its second season. The show is based on the idea that vampires, living in secrecy until now, have “come out of the coffin” after the invention of a synthetic blood beverage makes it possible for them to live among humans peacefully. The show boasted an impressive 7.8 million viewers in its first season, and 12.1 million viewers tuned in for the start of the second season, spurring critics to project that this may just be the most-watched show on HBO since The Sopranos and Sex and the City. But how did HBO, a network that rivals such as Showtime had started referring to as “HB-Over,” manage to draw so many viewers for True Blood? The answer lies in the innovative, extensive, and bizarre advertising campaign that HBO launched to promote the show.
Beginning in May of 2008, HBO started working with six different creative agencies on a massive launch of ads across every sector of the media, making this the most extensive advertising project HBO has ever undertaken. The twist is these ads are directed not to viewers, but to vampires. Print ads from big-name brands such as Ecko, BMW’s Mini Cooper, Harley-Davidson, Gillette, Geico, and Monster feature popular “human” products marketed toward a vampire audience, such as cologne with the tagline “attract a human” or a motorcycle that claims to “outrun the sun.” Viral videos posted to YouTube and designed to look like newscasts cover current events involving vampires while a blog, BloodCopy.com, discusses the challenges and successes of the vampire/human integration via discussions, user comments, and videos all seemingly posted by vampires. HBO has also set up extremely realistic websites for the show’s conceptual anchor product, TruBlood; the American Vampire League (AVL), a national vampire organization featured on the show; and a dating site, LoveBitten.net, that matches vampires and human for dating compatibility. All three sites are interactive—web users can purchase a case of the TruBlood beverage online, click a button to add themselves to the number of AVL supporters, or fill out a dating profile replete with odd fields such as “blood type” and “nighttime availability.”
This type of highly realistic, interactive, and convincing ad campaign is what is known as an A.R.G., or Alternate Reality Game. The point of an A.R.G. is to create a fictional, but seemingly realistic scenario (in this case, the idea that vampires live among us), and then immerse the target audience into this “game” by having them follow ‘updates’, solve a ‘mystery’, or contribute and interact in some way with the advertising. The planners behind the A.R.G., by releasing a series of curiosity-piquing and meticulously plotted interactive advertising techniques, turn advertising into a form of entertainment for the audience. This particular A.R.G., engineered by the creative agency Campfire, is designed to play along “that fine line of fully disrupting someone’s experience and at the same time immersing them in your experience,” according to Zach Enterlin, the vice president of advertising and promotions for HBO. Ty Montague, the chief creative officer at WPP Group’s JWT and a many-time Campfire collaborator, says that an A.R.G. is “a very cool new way to do marketing. Any time you can make the marketing literally an entertainment experience, you’re a step ahead.”
However, there has been controversy over the extreme realism that is vital to the A.R.G. campaign. The BloodCopy blog created problems for Gawker Media, a network of commercial blogs, when the Gawker advertising and HBO contrived to make BloodCopy appear to be Gawker editorial property rather than an advertorial. Gawker rep Gabriel Snyder wrote a rather scathing article discussing the foul-up, in which he proclaimed, “What’s advertising should be called advertising and what’s edit should be called edit. It hurts both to blur the distinction.” Likewise, some posts from visitors to the BloodCopy blog express outrage at the campaign’s deception while vowing never to tune into the show. Some equate HBO’s deceptive blog and ads with Columbia Broadcasting’s infamous radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds on Halloween, 1938 (the radio show played a series of phony news broadcasts as a way of telling Wells’ story of an alien invasion).
So which is it? Is an A.R.G. a fun and innovative way to advertise a product, or a deceptive method that violates that all-important, unspoken rule of advertising to always tell the truth? HBO defends their marketing and actions by stating that vampires are not real, so people shouldn’t take the ads at face value. “Considering that it’s clearly stated that a vampire is writing this blog, the faux aspect of it really isn’t hidden,” an HBO representative stated on the matter. Clearly, such an unusual form of advertising can create controversy and confusion among the target audience. But part of the experience of the A.R.G. is the confusion between the real and the fantastic, and controversy often helps to create hype, which is the point of advertising in the first place. So as long as you observe the proper ethics, why not have a little fun with your advertising while entertaining your audience as well?
Have you ever searched for a product or service online to find more information? Have you ever found a product online, but the Web site for the product didn’t work, or the page had dead ends and no useful information?
Take a moment to try and accomplish these few tasks:
www.Amazon.com
TRY: See whether Enya has released an album recently. Supposing you then are interested in purchasing one of Enya’s albums, try to sample the tracks to find out whether you’ll like it. Finally, find out how much it would cost to purchase it.
http://www.sharonhillinternational.com TRY: See when Sharon’s next event is. Try to find a pod cast that goes over the proper etiquette for interviewing someone over a meal.
http://terraserver-usa.com/ TRY: Type in your address or current location, and see if digital images of your location will come up. How old is the image of your location? Has the site loaded quickly? Can you find background information about the site?
Keeping in mind that a usable site is one in which users can achieve their goals quickly, pleasantly and with no trouble, some useful questions to ask might be:
Did you achieve the goal, find it wasn’t possible or simply give up?
Did you find it difficult to achieve the goal?
How long did it take to complete the task?
At any point did you become frustrated, even when it worked okay?
Web Users Have Lower Tolerance If your business has a Web site, it is crucial that it is easy to understand and rewarding for visitors. Today’s more-experienced Web users have less tolerance of difficult navigation or impulsively designed Web sites. The Web makes it very easy for a frustrated user to simply go to another site to find what he or she is looking for, for example:
If a web site is difficult to use, people leave.
If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave.
If users get lost on a Web site, they leave.
If a Web site’s information is hard to read or doesn’t answer users’ key questions, they leave.
Notice a pattern here? There is nothing more frustrating than a site that is difficult to navigate or has out-of-date information. Something that is true about all online users is that they go on Web sites with an intention. Usually, they are exploring for some type of information. If customers cannot find the information they need, to them, the information does not exist. Therefore, it is essential that a Web site support visitors who are searching for information.
We’re not talking about the finicky little things that professional Web designers worry about, the minor coding issues, or the debate over whether a site should use CSS or plain HTML. We’re talking about being aware of the things that commonly agitate users. That means companies need to work with Web designers and usability experts to make sure these situations are avoided at all costs.
Online Credibility is Key Building trust and credibility is very important when trying to build a brand and grow as a company. In order to gain the trust of users and become a credible source, it is imperative that your Web site and company appear credible and reliable. Users are going to consider your company credible based on the information and design of your site.
Companies with a professional look, such as UncommonGoods.com have done just that. They have built a site for an online store that does not have a brick-and-morter store, but once users visit it’s site, the perception of UncommonGoods is as a reliable and reputible company. They offer the right information at the right time, whether related to the product, shipping, Web site security or privacy; their design is predictable and allows the users to have control of what information they are looking for.
Perception is Reality
Perception is, if a company can’t keep up with their Web site, how can we expect them to keep up with their product/service? Having users frustrated with a non-user-friendly Web site could lead to a negative reputation and image. In order to make sure your Web site is user-friendly, check out the usability checklist below. It covers topics from design to simple navigation tips that can be applied to any Web project.
Create an Active Navigation
Main navigation is easily identifiable
Links are consistent & easy to identify
Navigation labels are clear & concise
Check links to make sure they are connected to the correct source, and not broken
Content and Language
Use language to create a casual environment
Deliver the right information at the right time; sort it by priority
Make sure the language you are using on your Web site is user-friendly, and creates a comfortable environment for the users
Major headings are clear & descriptive
URLs are meaningful & user-friendly
Main copy is concise & explanatory
Design
Keep it simple
Make the structure of your website predictable
Font size/spacing is easy to read and is consistent throughout
Draw attention to key items of interest
Utilizing Space and Group Like Elements
Make sure all the information offered on your site is organized into like groups and easy to find
Take advantage of the space available, but don’t overfill it, too much information is just as bad as not enough
Be Accessible
Make sure your site load-time is reasonable
Users will get confused, lost and eventually need help; the length of time a user is confused can be the difference between a user who will come back and one who won’t
Cross-link pages to make movement throughout the site easier
When your Web site has a high degree of usability, your visitors will have a more gratifying experience and will be more inclined to do business with your company instead of with your competition. A more user-friendly site will also acquire more traffic and more repeat visitors, which transforms the company into a reliable resource with a reputable name!
Recently, I had the opportunity to give a commencement speech. Although I have spoken regularly about my industry, this was a first for me. I never really pegged myself to be a motivational speaker. And, truth be told, I’ve been more like the person who says, “Pshaw! Who needs motivational speaking?”
Shortly after agreeing to give the presentation to the 2009 graduating class at the School of Communication Arts, I received a call that went something like this:
“Lorana, we are so glad you are coming to speak to our graduates. We are so excited. We just know you’ll be wonderful.”
(Of course, my head is swelling and I’m telling everyone who will listen that I am famous).
Then… “So, I need to know what your topic is. Right now. I have to get it approved by my boss. No, you can’t have more time. Tell me now.”
Okay. I may be exaggerating. It didn’t really go like that. But I did have to come up with a topic out of thin air. That’s when I came up with “The Meaning of Life.” I figured I should be able to come up with something fun to go along with that.
I tend to be a bit of a procrastinator when it comes to doing things for myself. So, of course, I waited until the last minute to pull the final pieces of my presentation together. But, let me tell you, delivering that speech was one of the most exciting things I have ever done. I was charged! The audience was engaged. It was fun. And, more importantly, I actually delivered a message with meaning to it.
The underlying message was that it is important to bring meaning to the lives of others. To share your knowledge, your experience and your joys. And, don’t ever forget the people who helped get you to where you are. That’s something I think we all need to remember.
