I figured I may as well declare it to the blogosphere: I’m finished with school!

I graduate this coming Monday. Starting on June 1st, I’ll begin a summer internship at the Yale Case Research Team where I’ll be contributing to Web-based business cases. This is a killer internship because I not only get paid and get experience working on business cases, but I also get to look around for a full-time job. I can take days off to interview and if I land something, I can give my notice and leave the internship. Since I’ll be in New Haven, I’ll be hanging out with some of my fellow classmates and playing as much golf as possible!

If anyone would like to play a round on the #1 college golf course in the country, please come and visit.

I was thrilled to read that Tropicana will be reverting to its old package design. Last year, Tropicana replaced one of the most effective package designs I’ve ever seen with a lame, generic, difficult-to-read design that nobody particularly liked. People all over the Internet were complaining about it and I never heard one positive comment regarding the new design. Amazingly, Tropicana listened and is reverting to their original design with the easy to read color coding. Bravo Tropicana for listening to your customers!

NYTimes article here.

A lot of folks like to talk to me about their ideas for solving the US financial crisis after I tell them that I’m in business school. Since I’m not much of a “finance guy” I don’t really have any of my own brilliant ideas to solve the crisis, but I just read a great couple of articles in the NY Times which sounded pretty convincing to me.

One of the more interesting points that the authors suggest is that instead of bailing out the big banks, we try to rescue the homeowners who are unable to pay off their mortgages. This suggestion seems both liberal and conservative at the same time! I don’t know if I completely agree with the idea, since what good is owning a home if you don’t have a job? I am no expert, so draw your own conclusions from these excellent articles: Criticisms of the financial system and suggestions as to how to fix the system

Woo hoo! 1 year down, 1 to go. I truly feel like a different person than I was just 9 months ago. I’ll be back in NYC in mid-late May and I’ll be living in midtown west. I’m very excited for this summer.

I pretty much went into hiding since January because I was devoting 99% of my free time to finding a summer internship. I applied to 18 companies, and I had seven interviews (some were two-part interviews). I decided this week to accept my offer from Unilever to assist their marketing efforts this summer in their Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey office.

If you aren’t familiar with the company, they are the firm behind personal care brands such as: All, Axe, Caress, Dove, Degree, Q-Tips, Slim-Fast, Snuggle, Suave, and Vaseline… and they are also behind food brands such as: Ben & Jerry’s, Bertolli, Breyer’s, Country Crock, Good Humor, Hellman’s, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Klondike, Lipton, Popsicle, Skippy, and Wishbone. I do not yet know which brand I will be working on, but I’m excited just to have the chance.

Frankly, I’m amazed that they gave me the offer. As a former software developer, it is not easy to convince an interviewer that I want to go into consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketing. Thanks in part to the conversational format of the Unilever interview, I think I was able to get across my genuine interest in working for them, so I’m extremely glad it worked out. I will not disappoint them this summer!

One of my professors had a funny comment regarding antitrust and politics:

“The Democrats think that every move a big corporation makes is anticompetitive, and the Republicans think that if a big corporation does it, it must be good for America! Neither view is correct.”

India, now an expert on outsourcing, has figured out that it makes sense for it to outsource work that has been outsourced to itself! Here is the NY Times article.

It makes perfect sense since the data/work is already in the perfect form to be outsourced from the target firm… what’s the difference where it’s actually made? So Indian firms have it done in even cheaper places than India.

Warren Buffett gave a great speech at U Florida in the recent past (not sure exactly when). His advice is solid common sense and well worth listening to. You might want to grab a soda, this is a long video:

If you’ve read an earlier post of mine, you already know I think SecondLife (SL) is, for most purposes, a huge waste of time and money. Blogger Randolph Harrison has written several negative articles regarding the financial and economic troubles inherent in the business model of SL. I could not say it any better than he has, so go ahead and read his comments on why he believes Linden Labs will probably end up offering SL for sale (then be bought for far more money than it’s worth by Fox, and then get transformed into something completely different).

Why do I dislike SecondLife?

For the participant, I believe it is a waste of time to establish a virtual life unless there is some valuable takeaway. People may become very much attached to their virtual persona and I simply don’t believe that’s a healthy dependency. First and foremost because I believe there are better ways to have a good time, and secondly because Linden Labs is effectively a God of their virtual universe and can do whatever they please with your virtual life. This wouldn’t be an issue if I didn’t honestly believe they were going to sell out in the next few years. If you want to have a good time, play a video game, read a book, see a movie, chill with friends, etc.

For the investor, I think it’s a waste of money and time to expect any benefits (either in terms of money or reputation) from your dealings in SL. Like Randolph said, the easy money has already been had. You’re too late to make it big. On the other hand, if you are looking to extend your brand into the virtual world, you’re too early (i.e. it’s too risky for big-name brands). It’s natural psychology to associate things which appear together, and you might have some very unwelcome visitors at your virtual store. Would you like to make the decision of whether to hire people to actively supervise your store and ban the people you don’t want (risking backlash from those you banned)… or to allow everyone inside and risk the possibility of naked furries having sex in your unsupervised virtual store and then having an article about it sent all over the Internet? Currently SL is mostly populated by people who would rather create their own merchandise than buy yours and my sense is that they passionately hate marketers and salespeople anyhow.

When I posted a YouTube deathwatch I was absolutely dead wrong… they got bought for a ton of money and are stronger than ever. I never said I disliked YouTube, I only said it couldn’t exist without breaking the law and that it can’t make money. I still can’t believe Google will ever profit off of YouTube until bandwidth costs plummet. I am going to agree with Randolph on this one and predict that SL gets bought by a major media company. I doubt SL can remain in a “pure” form and sustain its costs of operation. It will have to sell out eventually (unless it gets bought by Google )

I just found a Q&A with the president of the ad team behind the Ray Ban viral video I blogged about earlier. He talks mostly about their strategies and concerns.

A great book about communicating, negotiating, or mediating negotiation. Not an entertaining read, but highly practical. Probably useful for anyone anywhere 5/5 stars.

I was just listening to a Stanford linguistics lecture on iTunes U. The lecturer described the cable news political debates as a “Crips versus Bloods” style of discussion. In other words, each side is entirely focused on standing up for their gang and winning the war. I don’t usually watch those shows but when I do, I am shocked at how one-sided each person is. Nobody ever admits weakness, admits that they might be wrong, or agrees with anything the other side says. They are so focused on “winning” that all they do is try to differentiate themselves from their opponent, make themselves look good, and make their opponent look bad.

If there is anything I’ve learned from all these business books I’m reading, it’s that seeking agreement is a great goal to have with you at all times. Our political landscape is extremely polarized and I believe that it is a result of the gang-like debates we see all around us: in the media, or at the lunch table. People want to “win” rather than agree. Winning is always nice, but it’s not as great a victory as agreement. When you agree, there is no loser and everyone wins.

Accepted.com recently held a B-School photo contest and I decided I’d take some pictures of Yale SOM and enter them. I got a lot of advice about applying to MBA programs from that site, so I figured I would contribute something in return and maybe win an Amazon gift certificate.

I didn’t win a gift certificate, but I won an honorable mention! I took all three photos of Yale SOM that appear on Accepted.com’s Yale SOM page. Watson Hall is not an ugly building but it is certainly not beautiful (from the outside). It looks more like a stealth fighter jet than anything else. The irony is that inside the building it’s really nice!

Here is a quick and excellent article about how to learn from anti-mentors. An excerpt:

So the next time you get frustrated with that sleazy politician down the hall, that slippery vendor, or that manipulative customer, take a deep breath and ask yourself what lesson this person is likely to teach you. Anti-mentors may represent the most important opportunity for learning we’re given in life. The key is being willing to learn from them.

Seeing this immediately evokes the “is it fake” meme which is guaranteed to get people arguing about your video all over the Internet. A parallel discussion is almost sure to occur: “how did they do it?” this will also get lots of people talking and asking for opinions. The “stunt” is super-cool because something in you wants to believe that if you tried it, it just might work! It’s a great production and a lot of fun to watch. The characters are both likable in a goofy kind of way. The music and editing are paced perfectly. I think it’s a fantastic video.

Of course, this is an ad for Ray-Ban. The glasses are the object of attention the entire film and are shown over and over again from all angles and distances. Their slogan “Never Hide” is shown written in the dusty window of the car at the end, but the words “Ray Ban” are never on screen. The ad does not tell you to buy the glasses. The characters never comment on the glasses. The glasses are a supporting role and at the same time the star of the show. This is what makes the video such a perfect ad: the product placement is overt because the product is the star, yet covert because they never tell you the name of the product, nobody tells you to buy it, and it’s never shown out of context.

I think people tend to doubt the effectiveness or value of a product when a salesman tries to sell it to you. Nobody trusts salesmen. If a product looks great, costs a lot, and nobody is pushing it, something tells you it must be really good because nobody needs to push it on anyone! This is one of those cases where they are placing the product in a highly attractive context and letting you check it out for yourself without a salesman present. I say give the ad people responsible for this video an award. They totally nailed the YouTube look and feel and they designed a highly contagious viral video around their product. Kudos!