Branding, storytelling and TURD

First week of a new school course called "Digital business course" started and we got our first assignment. "You need to blog". Why? I asked myself, but then I found the answer pretty quickly after the shock. Writing a blog will help you remember stuff you have learnt during the day. It is like repeating your school work and it helps to memorize everything.


The reason why I am already interested in blogging is branding. As some of my friends know already I like the idea of branding. "You cannot polish turd" is an old saying. But actually it is not true! Mythbusters have actually shown that it is just a myth ;) (Mythbusters polishing turd) Since you CAN polish turd, you can also make your service, product etc. look or sound better than it is. A good example could be expensive brand clothes. Usually you pay the extra 50€ because the shoes say "Nike" or "Adidas". Same quality but higher price for the customer=more money to the company. I don´t judge any company because of branding, since I also am interested in doing the same.

Ronja lecturing

During the first lesson of the course Ronja Salmi gave as a presentation about her career, storytelling and courage. Ronja was a solid speaker and I enjoyed the whole presentation. If you want to read her columns check the link (Ronja's columns and articles) She said that saying yes to every new opportunity helps you a lot if you want to get your dream job. That is actually really simple. Sitting alone at home won´t help you getting a better job or finding new friends. Going out to play sports helps finding new friends a lot and getting to know your co-workers may help you get new jobs in the future. Many of the jobs are filled with people who know the person in charge of hiring. Also getting recommended for a job helps a lot. It is so much easier to get the job when your friend recommends you to his/her boss and the firm won´t even have to bother search the right person from thousands of applicators.This system where you´re recommended by a friend or mutual friend is a two bladed sword. If the person who is recommended isn't that good as he/she should, the person recommending might loose a lot of respect. Would you recommend somebody who is lazy or always late? What would your boss think of you if your friend turns out being openly racist and bad at work? I guess you know what I mean. 


Ronja also told us about storytelling. She said that everything involves storytelling. Nothing is interesting without it. When you think about it, branding is basically just storytelling. Branding means not only sharing the information with consumer but also trying to tell the consumer why your product or service is so great. Commercials are full of stories. But when you know the dirty facts about big companies, you don´t even care what their story is. They´re just polishing the turd. Sorry about vulgar language, but that is true.


The week ended with a rugby match. I started playing rugby during spring and I love playing already. 15 players against 15 players means a lot of action in the pitch, and might look like a chaos if you have never seen rugby game before. In Rugby union game you need really good communication skills to play well as a team. Solid team effort is THE key in rugby. This game was the last one of the season and it was a great game from our team. Even though our team is full of new players, we played really well. Game ended as a 19-41 loss. I scored my first try ever and it felt great. Scoring for the first time is a good way to end the season. If you´re interested to know more about rugby, check our team's facebook site Ice Bears.

The Ice Bears family

I had some hard time to write an ending for this blog post because there was a document about Ritchie Blackmore from Yle Teema. He is one of my favorite guitarists. One can always learn something new by just watching best ones in the world. Have a great week :)