KIND Bars

Around campus these last two weeks, I have heard time and time again about the new "KIND" bars. Last week I made a post talking about if the goal and mission of KIND was realistic or if it was just a poorly set up idea to make money and sell granola bars. I truly believe that it has a good mission behind it and that it has the potential to make a real difference in the ONU community. After making
the post, I was keeping an eye out to actually see KIND bars people acting on their goals. Sure enough, a day later I was perusing through my Instagram timeline and found a post by Megan Cottongim. Megan is a PR major here on campus and is on the team for KIND bars. In the video, there is a woman standing in front of the entire football team and she is leading them through what appears to be a stretching exercise. All of the big, tough, sweaty football players were following the actions of a thin, petite woman and the funny part was the football players were feeling a workout from the stretching and bending. The caption of the video was:

Teaching Ohio Northern University's football team some #KINDbears exercises to be KIND to their bodies. Thank you, KIND snacks for putting together a national campaign for my team and I to help build awareness among students that KIND snacks are the perfect snack for both health and taste. Want to join our team's mission to bring healthy living into ONU's campus community? Post a selfie or a brief description on Twitter and Instagram about how you live a healthy life, both in exercise and in appetite. Also include the brand's social handle (@KINDSnacks) and hashtag (#KINDbears) Thank you! (@smileitsmegannn/Instagram).

Why do we fall?

"Why do we fall, sir?" The million-dollar question asked by Michael Cain in the film, Batman Begins, has always stuck with me. Failure is something in our nature as human beings. We fail all the time and it is our failures that magnify our success'. The best thing we can do we when we fail is to realize our failures. So many time, people will just find excuses to make or find someone to blame it on. Now with all these failures, there is room for triumph. In my past few weeks I have fallen. I think to myself, "Casey, there is something wrong in life. We need to step back and get a fresh take." So I went to SubWay. I'm kidding, but seriously, I needed to refresh my thoughts and think in basic, bigger picture terms. I was falling, but after I fell I just stayed on the ground. I have now realized, it is the way of man, to get up off the ground and rise again like the sun. The fall I have been going through right now will eventually be a thing of the past and I will be a better man for enduring the storm, instead of running and hiding. I will be a stronger man because I got up off the ground instead of being fossilized into the ground. I know this post is a little more ethos and not as much logos right now, but when I think about a post for my life at ONU or life in general, these were my thoughts this weekend following my surgery. Sitting there all day on the couch really forces you to think about things deeper than the surface of the scars and stitches. I drove myself crazy thinking about the pain and how I would ever be able to do what I could do before, ever again. Then I took that step back and realized that this is a fall. This is a test of my will and that is one test I never plan of failing. Will power can seem empty and bleak at some time in life for all of us, but it is that little voice in the back of my mind saying "you can't afford to lose. There is gonna be something worth fighting for". The first time I blogged I didn't really have the confidence to put these deeper thoughts on the blog, but the more I have blogged and read blogs, I have found the niche for it and how blogging can help me get things off my chest and into the light (of your screen) haha! So as I fight back through recovery, I remember that the cause of our falls may be different, but the reason we fall is to pick ourselves back up.

KIND bars: Can they do their job?

Whenever I see a company or organization try to make a global difference through a campaign, I always try to "dumb down" their mission statement and see if it is believable or not. For example, some people thought that the campaign by McDonald's of "Pay with lovin'" was a good idea, but I can personally rebut that campaign. Every time I went to the McDonald's in Ada, I was never once greeted with "lovin'".  I understand; Ada isn't always the most loving town when it comes to employees at McDonald's, but they still represent the brand of McDonald's and their mission statement. In my opinion, McDonald's missing statement was faulty and was not put into action at all of their locations. Now, on campus here at ONU, there is a new campaign being put into action by some students. It is called "KIND bars". When I first heard about the campaign, I thought I would be going to the Regal Beagle and seeing everyone in there being kind and appreciative of each other. Then after looking into the campaign of the KIND bars, I found out it was granola bar and the bars came in different flavors. According to the team behind KIND bars, "KIND is a brand that not only makes wholesome and  delicious foods, but is focused on making the world a little kinder- one act and one snack at a time." The ingredients in the bars are said to be gluten-free and non GMO (Genetically modified organisms). The healthy and organic image of KIND bars gives me a good notion of their actions and "work behind the scenes" if you will. The only thing that concerns me  with their campaign is how do they plan to get these bars to actually get results. Make the world a little kinder- one act and one snack at a time. The campaign information says there is a foundation named KIND Causes. The program helps people grant their socially impactful ideas to life through $10,000 grants monthly. The KIND bar campaign does have some serious points that make them legitimate, but getting a granola bar to make people happy and spread the kindness just seems a little far fetched. Even still, I see promise in this campaign and just because something is far fetched, doesn't mean it is impossible. 

College Football Podcast

This weekend after going home, I had the chance to sit down with my best friend Brandon Kohl. Although Brandon is not a professional, I chose Brandon to be in my podcast because of how good he is at arguing and proving his point. Also me and Brandon watched college football all weekend long and we've played football along side each other since we were 8 years old, so we have a pretty firm grasp on football in general. In this podcast, Brandon and I were originally going to be doing one topic in college football. Instead, Brandon made a good point to just do a college football segment, and in that segment, cover all of the points that were going to chose from. Attached is the link to the podcast. Making the podcast in itself was pretty easy to us because it is just us talking like normal guys about something we are passionate about. The hard part of editing out all of the long pauses or speech miscues. Luckily my editing class in the past and my experience working with convergent media helped me find my way to the finished product. I also have given a link to my podcast on my Facebook and Twitter pages. The bond me and Brandon share is unique and he is someone who relates to my problems better than anyone else, so when I thought of who could I get to do this podcast with me, BK was the first one to come to mind. Enjoy the podcast and if you like what you heard, come get some "moe".

Can Snapchat take the Crown?

In the timeline of social media apps to come out, none of have been as personal, hot and trending as much as snapchat. The app is owned by a variety of age groups and even some professional organizations have a snapchat profile to show their everyday business and to give the audience a more personal look at what their day-to-day agenda looks like. For example, the Pittsburgh Steelers have a snapchat account and as a fan, I follow the account to see what is always happening in Steeler nation. Whether it be the videos of practice drills, players talking to the camera or just plays captured in action, the account gives its fans and audiences the chance to see content that most other news outlets and journalists couldn't capture. The app also has the ability now to chart and track events all around the globe and bring them to the tips of your fingers. I may not know what is going on in the Presidential campaign right now, but if I look at Snapchat, I can find the Story feed for the Presidential campaign and what the candidates are doing to win our votes. Even other stories are shared, such as a story for Paris or Rome or any city for that matter. Snapchat is starting to take over the social media turf and it's major competitors are still the "big 4", but the little ghost we all love is making its way to the top. When someone snaps me, my first thought almost every time is, "how can I respond?" The app really forces us to carry on a conversation because when we send a snap to someone, we can see when they opened and when they opened it. I also think that because Snapchat is so instantaneous and real-time that we want to send back an immediate reply to carry on the conversation. Although Snapchat is popular, it does have it's downfalls and is a reason why it has yet to take that extra step and separate itself from the other younger and less popular apps. Snapchat has no trending ability for SEO. There are no keywords we can look up to find content, but that is because the content we see in a snapchat is gone after the snap is over. Granted, the story is up for 24 hours, but after that, there is no way to track your click-rate, your content and how long it was viewed. There is a feature on snapchat that allows you to see how many people viewed your snap and who viewed it, but you can't see how long they viewed it and how often they viewed your snap. The room for improvement is there, but the app is progressing at a rapid pace. Snapchat is here for the long run and could spook out the competition in years to come. 

Brand as a Media: Share This

This week in our class reading for the book, "Share This" we covered the topic of brands becoming their own media and how that can be an advantage for public relations professionals and journalists around the world. It is happening in many magazines, newspapers and publications and has created something called "brand journalism". Brand Journalism is simply promoting your type of journalism through your brand. An example of this can be used as sports journalism is brand journalism because it is predominantly fed through ESPN the magazine or Sports Illustrated. The brand almost owns the media because when people pick it up, they are not only reading what the magazine represents, but what the brand as a company or corporation represents as well. When people see the ESPN body issue, it can be a toss up. I am sure there are plenty of people out there that are opposed to seeing the 350 pound nude body of Texas Rangers baseball player, Prince Fielder. An argument to that would be that these players are having the courage and comfort to show their bodies to the whole world because their body and their sport is their craft, respectively. When I read an article online once about the ESPN body issue, I saw a different, more artistic side about how the athletes approach the offer and how the photographers really capture the elegance in these athletes' bodies. The brand that ESPN is giving off to some is an appropriate way to get athletes to show their sexy side and is too vulgar for some audiences. The brand that ESPN is giving off in my opinion (and I'm sure I'm not the only one), is a brand that isn't afraid to push the envelope in our day and age and takes something that could be seen as sinful and graphic, and turn it into something beautiful and strong. The journalism of sports is something that has more content to it than just pictures of naked athletes and washboard abs, but this little inkling of sports journalism belongs to ESPN the magazine now, because no other sports magazine will be able to take the body issue that ESPN has created and mimic it in a better way. The brand of ESPN transcended with the body issue and will only get better with all of the highly tuned athletes still come in the future.

A Weekend Much Needed

This weekend I found my happy place. Fall Break was setting in, my birthday was still on my heels and my bets friends birthdays were still to come. My 3 other best friends have birthdays on October 9th and October 12th. All 3 of us were turning 21 this weekend so one can assume that we would celebrate appropriately. I have been having a rough time the last few weeks and in case the reader is not a dedicated follower to this blog, my post last week caught some people's attention. I come to you all in a much better place than before. On Friday night I had the chance to go out with some friends and get my mind off of things. When we are with people instead of being alone, it makes us feel alive. We're human and we yearn for the company of others to make us feel wanted and loved. Loneliness can be a sickness and the best medicine for loneliness is friends to lean on. I was well medicated this weekend. I got the chance to see some close friends from high school that have gone far away since graduation. We all rendezvoused in Columbus for the Ohio State game. Columbus is always a great atmosphere as it is, but if the 64 degree fall weather of Ohio is in the air, it is a no brainer for me to head southwest. One of the best friends I was most excited to see was Cory Wilder, who is a pitcher for the NC State baseball team. Cory's family moved to Georgia last fall and it isn't as easy to see him anymore. Luckily, Cory is a great guy and hasn't changed in the big division 1 spotlight. He said he loves when he has the chance to come to Ohio to see all of us because we all just love having Cory around in general and his younger brother Chase is now a freshman at OSU, so visits are mandatory ;). Being a pitcher, Cory gave me some advice on how to bounce back from my knee injury and even though I am five days older than him, I have always looked up to him. As we sat down and just had a good private talk, I came to the realization that no matter how many bad things happen, there are always gonna be good people there for me that love me and will do whatever they can to help. I have thought for a long time that just keeping my problems to myself is what is best for me, but when I use the friends and family that I have been blessed with and keep them close to me, nothing can bring me down for long. Having Cory and the rest of my friends around really helped my morale and how I am looking at this stage in my life. Today is Cory's birthday, so it is only fitting that a post be dedicated to the one and only Cory Wilder.