Samford


14
Mar 12

A random assemblage of stuff and things

My favorite meme of all time has become a campus group’s poster:

DuCreux

That, of course, is Joseph Ducreux, who was a French portrait painter at the court of Louis XVI and after the French Revolution. He liked physiognomy, assessing one’s personality by their facial expressions, hence his unorthodox portraiture, like this self-portait and, of course, the very famous Internet joke. You can’t even find the original set anymore, so buried are they amongst everyone’s contribution.

Two students showed this video in class today during a demonstration about advertising. The gasps from the rest of the class were great. See if you can figure out where this is going:

Happy birthday to The Birmingham News, which turned 124 today. This is the June 20, 1900, front page:

BirminghamNews

So the paper was 12 years old at the time. I haven’t seen any of the first volume’s front pages.

Things to read: Ad execs bullish on digital, marketers on social: Data reveals ‘disconnect’ with agencies:

Advertising executives -– both marketers and their agency representatives -– continue to increase their optimism toward digital media options, and are beginning to swing toward it as more of a “branding” than a performance “option,” but there are some significant disconnects between the way they look at various digital media silos. While agency executives tend to be far more bullish on the overall use of digital media, marketers are much more optimistic about budgeting for social media.

The findings, which are part of new, detailed analysis coming out of Advertiser Perceptions’ Fall 2011 survey on ad executive attitudes and optimism about media, show the overall index for digital -– including online display, search and video advertising –- trending upward, but the sentiment appears to be driven primarily by agencies. That insight is interesting, because the bottom line of big agencies appears to be benefitting from their continuing shift toward a greater reliance on digital media, according to a Pivotal Research analysis released Monday (OMD, March 13).

“But there is a discrepancy in the way marketers and agencies are seeing it,” says Randy Cohen, a partner in AP — which produces an ongoing series of ad industry tracking studies under its Advertiser Intelligence Reports banner, including this one. “It’s a disconnect,” he says, adding, “But agencies tend to do what marketers want them to.”

If that’s the case, social media should be the primary beneficiary, according to Cohen, because marketer sentiment is building much more favorably toward social networks versus the rest of the digital mix.

Things to read from my Samford blog:


13
Mar 12

Among the reasons to love Samford

President Andy Westmoreland sends out a weekly message to students and faculty. In this week’s installment he wrote of a senior who’s father was struggling with terminal cancer. This is part of the note, from the student’s mother, that Westmoreland shared in his email:

“On January 10 of this year, we were told that it did not appear that my husband would survive until May for the graduation ceremony. He had been asking prayer for his situation in his Sunday School class. On Tuesday, January 17, his Sunday School teacher contacted Samford University and asked for help in arranging a surprise ceremony at our church so that my husband could see Taylor graduate college.

“Three days later, on January 20, Dean Finch and Professor Carson from the Brock School of Business were in our church with a certificate attesting to Taylor’s planned graduation, and a cap and gown. This was a complete surprise to my husband. Professor Carson spoke very personalized words of high praise for my daughter and Dean Finch addressed my husband personally with uplifting words of encouragement with regard to how my husband had prepared and equipped Taylor to succeed in life. Many of our family, friends and church family were able to attend. Several of Taylor’s friends from Samford were also there. This was the last time my husband left the house and he passed away eight days later on January 28. If the ceremony had been put off even until the next Monday, he would not have been able to attend. The sensitivity and sense of urgency that was given to this request could not have been more appropriate.

“My family received a precious gift that day that can never be measured. Even if the Lord had allowed my husband to live until May, he would never have heard such specific personalized words at a traditional ceremony. The decision to send our daughter to Samford was a costly one that met with most of our friends and family questioning the wisdom of such a decision with regard to the costs and our personal financial circumstances. Over the years, this decision has been reaffirmed several times but never more than on January 20. Yes it was a costly decision to send our daughter to Samford University, but that day, it became a ‘priceless’ one.”

Westmoreland ends his notes with a message like this, “The world is better because our people live out the core value of “service to God, to family, to one another, and to the community.”

Also, today was omelet day:

Omelets


12
Mar 12

Two videos

Sometimes the thing that goes bump in the night can’t be seen. And usually because you are looking in the wrong place. Finally we find out where the cat is frolicking.

For the second consecutive year Samford’s women’s basketball team is going to the big dance. The repeat Southern Conference champions are traveling to Nashville to face …

Last year the Samford ladies made their first tournament appearance, falling to Florida State. This year the Bulldogs (20-12, 12-8) are the 15th-seed taking on second-seeded Duke (24-5, 15-1).


7
Mar 12

Where I brag on CBS-42

I like to poke fun at television news, but it is all in good fun. I have a great respect for the hard work they do and the service they can provide. And I’m not just saying that because my wife is a former (Emmy-nominated) producer. Birmingham, despite its relative small size, is a great television market. This is the place for sports, the hardest weather market in the country and has as much, and more, news as the next place. (And as of this year and the county’s bankruptcy — the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the country — they’ll have plenty of stories for a long, long time.) Because of all of that they pull in great talent.

And that talent is very gracious, across the local industry really, but specifically I must point out the nice folks at WIAT CBS-42.

CBS

Here’s why. One of our classes takes field trips to learn about the various aspects of the media industry, and between the four (or five) sections of that class we hit all the stations in town. I visit WIAT when I teach the class and we went there today. Today also happened to be the day that the bingo trial, the biggest criminal trial of the year where defends were accused of using campaign contributions to buy and sell votes on state gambling legislation, came down with their verdicts: not guilty.

So it was a busy day in their newsroom, but we had a great tour. The students enjoyed themselves, learned about the business first hand and met some of the local experts, talking with reporters furiously working in their edit bays, meeting people like the assignment editor in the newsroom, watching the producer make his sausage in his booth and talking with nice, engaging and talented people like meteorologist Mark Prater:

CBS

It was a great tour. They all are. The local media is very kind to our program at Samford.


2
Mar 12

In like a lion

Things are fine here, weatherwise, but everyone else had it rough. That is one impressive map.

Samford, and a lot schools across the state, closed early. That means more time on the bike for me. I felt defeated by headwinds, probably the latent energy that couldn’t make it up into the storms. There were 10 miles out on familiar roads, one of our base routes, and then 10 brand new miles, mostly uphill. On the first half of the return, downhill through those 10 new miles, I was actually moving slower than the ride out. Headwinds are tough like that. Especially when there aren’t any tailwinds.

So I perfected the art of steering at an angle to aim through crosswinds and tried in vain, like every other cyclist, to make myself as small as possible to keep my cross section low. I hit breezes that would drop me four miles per hour instantly. And this wasn’t really even a windy day.

And since we have the informal Where Were You When You Heard Party in the U.S.A. rule around here:

field

Hey, it is a catchy tune and I needed something to round out the 11 hours on my iPod. Every five or six rides it rolls back around and I stop and take this picture. I have no idea why, really, but it always seems to come along at a time when I need the break.

A blooming tree nearby:

trees

The church at today’s turnaround point:

Salem

That place will show up again on the site next week as part of the new Lee County Historic Markers section of the site.

Caught most of the baseball game — they’d moved up the first pitch to avoid the evening’s rain — Purdue and Auburn see-sawed back and forth, but the Boilermakers held on 9-8 after fighting off a late rally. Auburn stranded eight in the game, which seems a fairly low number for the team so far this year.

Hit the grocery store, bought things, boiled pasta and grilled chicken. I’d intended to make some to leave for tomorrow but, what do you know, it all looked appetizing, it all had to be eaten. Hey, I’d burned several thousand calories today. Headwinds.