Viral Marketing

Warner Bros., who is releasing the new Batman movie, sent their marketing team to Mizzou last Thursday for a little viral marketing. Patrick told us all about this. Basically, instead of the production company spending a lot of money on TV ads that people ignore, they send a van with free t-shirts and a couple charismatic 20-somethings to a college campus and let the college students do the rest of the work.

Viral Marketing (by my definition) is when a company does one major act that startles people into talking about the company or what the company is promoting (like a movie). So we end up doing all the work for them (yes - like blogging about it. Sorry) Wikipedia: 'Viral Marketing'

So, this is what happened. Allie and Jake were in town from St. Louis because Jake is going to go to Mizzou next year. So we were taking him around campus, showing him stuff, etc. We met up with Patrick and he told us about viral marketing and that the van promoting the new Batman movie was outside of Memorial. So, like the pawns we were, we went and saw what was going on. Jenna was there too.

The people with Warner Bros. (who wouldn't tell us that they were from Warner Bros.) told us that if we stood outside their van with posters saying "I Believe in Harvey Dent" for 20 min. we would get free t-shirts. Yes, we are that easy.

I felt like I was in a cult, I got all excited about Harvey Dent and started making up cheers and marching around Lowry Mall with everyone and encouraging everyone that Harvey Dent really was the one who was going to turn around Gotham, etc.

So there were all these Mizzou Facilities trucks driving by all the time and I told Jake (the high school senior) that it would be funny if he ran up to one and slapped a bumper sticker onto the bumper while it was driving by. So he did. AND THEN A BIKE COP CAME OUT OF NOWHERE and came up to Jake and said "I'll give you two options, either you chase down that truck and take the sticker off or I charge you with vandalism." Poor Jake.

So Jake borrows Jenna's bike and takes off after this truck (down a road in a campus he's never been to before) and the bike cop follows him. After about 10 minutes of waiting and laughing we start walking in the direction that Jake went and can't find him anywhere. Eventually we see Jake riding triumphantly down Hitt St. with a crumpled bumper sticker in his raised high-schooler fist.

We saw the same van later on that night out in front of the Methodist church downtown and finally realized how obnoxious we had been. Another table at Shakespeare's pizza were making comments about how all of the Harvey Dent people should be demonstrating for something that actually matters instead of the Gotham DA who would become Two-Face. It's true.

Something Else I'll Miss From College: Passive-Aggressive White Boards

Actually, come to think of it, I'll still have roommates once I move back to STL (woo, Sharon and Allie!) - So, hopefully we'll have a white board to blame each other with.

L'Brizzle

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A massive amount of people from my college youth group - Veritas - are going to the L'Abri Conference in Rochester, Minnesota (my mom's home town!) this weekend. We're packing my tiny Volvo S40 up with two large men and three normal-sized girls. It'll be a tight fit. Here are the lectures I'm excited about going to (full list):

"How John Cusack Ruined My Life: How Movies Shape Our Expected Relationships" by David Richter

"Grace at the Table: Lessons from Little Miss Sunshine and Other Unlikely Characters" by Margie Haack

"Between the Bible and Brain Scans: Understanding Depression" by Richard Winter

"Men and Women: Can We Be Friends?" by Sue Morrell

"Modern Day Piracy and the Ethics of File Sharing" by David Richter

"Flowers, Beauty and Truth" by Jane Winter (I love her, she's the kind of woman I want to be)

"Hospitality: A Renewwed Vision for Counter-cultural Christianity in our Times" by Andrew Fellows (He is a worker at English L'Abri and a great speaker)

"The Shapes of our cities and how we live in them" by Alen Jensen

"Sex: Agony and Ecstasy" by Richard Winter

"Alienation, Utopias and the Cry for the Whole Gospel in the Brazilian Culture" by Rodolfo Souza (this would be awesome - I'm very excited about the L'Abri in Brazil. In my Global Perspectives and Realities class, we each have to pick a sojourn country to study and to make a travel proposal for and mine is Brazil).


This'll be my third year at the conference, and I'm pretty stoked. The hotel that the conference is at - the Kahler Grand - has a shady pool at the top of the building that no one ever goes in except me and Allie and a bunch of 11 year old boys there for a basketball tournament. Whatever.

MU-KU game

This is the best that Mizzou football has done in a very long time. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Mizzou (where I go) is playing Kansas right now. Mizzou is ranked #4 in the country and Kansas is at #2.

My friend Allie's brother is at the game right now at the Chiefs Stadium in Kansas City. It's kind of funny how he got the ticket. He bought it online, paying $30 for the ticket and $120 for a rally towel that went with it. So, basically, this is how scalpers are getting around the anti-scalping laws.

In a silly yet descriptive article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (here) about Missouri state laws on scalping: "Missouri law doesn't outlaw ticket scalping for nonsports events. The law against scalping sports tickets is repealed effective Nov. 28. Anti-scalping ordinances in St. Louis and Kansas also will be abolished, a spokesman for Nixon has said."

I guess this is the same argument that says illegal drugs would be safer and more regulated if they were legal. Well, we'll see.

Last Semester Countdown

Well, I signed up for my last semester of classes at Mizzou yesterday. Kind of weird. I feel like I've taken the majority of classes that I've wanted to take but more keep on popping up in conversations. Like, I didn't know that there was a class just on Chinua Achebe offered here by a guy who knew him personally. Apparently it's terrific. Oh well.

Biological Sciences: Basic Environmental Science + Lab
- well, (surprise!) I had to take a Science with a lab as a requirement for my major, so this looked like the most interesting one.

Human Development and Family Studies: Adolescence and Young Adulthood
- I've been trying to take this class since I was a sophomore and it was either full or not offered the semesters I could take it. I'm pumped. Allie and Claire were both HDFS majors and liked it a lot.

Plant Sciences: Home Horticulture
- YES, so excited that I'm taking this. I am almost positive that it won't be as cool as I think it will be, but whatever. I just hope that I will be able to name some plants. My Grandmama (Dad's mom) could always tell you which plant was which and had a sweet backyard. I just want to have a garden at some point in my life. When I was at L'Abri I loved going outside and picking something off of a plant for people to eat that night. When I got there I couldn't pick out a lettuce plant in the garden and one of the workers asked if I was a city girl.

Rural Sociology: Global Perspectives and Realities
- this is being taught by a professor that I have right now for 'Culture, Change, and Trends' He's a really interesting guy who has been to basically every country. He has an economics background which makes any discussion interesting. He said this class was basically a guide on how to live overseas. Sweet.

Next Tuesday I meet with a dude to sign up for graduation. It hasn't really hit me yet.