By Nicole Fletcher

After a long day at the office last night, my friend and I settled in for our weekly Bachelor fix…. (did I just admit that?) During this 2 hours of awesome, we happened upon this painfully obnoxious JC Penny Commercial  that literally had my pal covering her ears. I of course, took one look at the call to action – “2.1 facebook.com/jcp” and had to rewind and photograph. She looked at me and said, “good god Nicole.. at least mute it first“…that’s how bad it is.

Now mind you, I’ll never get that 60 seconds of my life back… and my ears are pissed about it- but I’m fairly sure we’ll know what all the hoopla is about tomorrow. I googled the concept to see what other people thought and instead of finding intrigued marketing minds… I found really really pissed consumers. Like really.

On one site, 24 comments were posted today and it’s not even 9am. One another, a whopping 240 comments were put up… none of them favorable. People are not digging this spot but it makes me wonder… does JCP have a method to their madness? Let’s hope so …. If I were to make a hopefully optimistic guess I’d say that they anticipated a boat load of intrigue following a nonsensical commercial and what they thought was a strong call to action. Turns out it wasn’t strong enough as no one … except me.. is talking about tomorrow. It’s either that or they watched the damn commercial so many times it magically became not the most annoying thing ever to them.

Either way, it will be interesting to see what they have up their sleeve on the target day- Feb 1… it better be good. Maybe it’ll be a big Banana Republic esque Facebook sale (the 50% off for facebook fans one they did a few months back) or something totally new and innovative. Including a social call to action to what is probably a more traditional demographic is a bold move. In this first phase of this promotion, they have successfully alienated their core demographic in favor of a new, younger, tech savvy one. Let’s hope they make magic happen and win back this super obnoxious blunder.

In case you want to watch it… turn down your volume first…

A few Friday’s ago the entire Jacob Tyler team met at the top floor of Symphony Towers, at San Diego’s University Club for our annual agency retreat.

As we grow and evolve, we want to ensure our commitment to client service remains front and center. A client of ours, New Brain for Business led a rousing workshop focusing on how we can make sure the crux of what we do falls in line with this goal. We want you, our clients, to feel an unparalleled level of customer service, in addition to experiencing our pristine suite of creative and communications services, 100% of the time.

Some of you may remember the personality testing that was common in the workplace in the the 1970’s. Then, it was intended more for weeding out who employers might consider “problem employees.” Interestingly enough, in terms of accuracy and what perspective it can offer business owners, corporate personality testing is on a different plane today. Each employee took a personal evaluation, allowing us to see our agency’s unique personality prototype, based on the collective results. What a shocker- we had an overwhelming number of creative, left-handed, right-brained oriented professionals!

We each brainstormed in small groups and focused on what we want Jacob Tyler to be in the years to come. Each group agreed that customer service and client relationships are without a doubt, the most important objective. Armed with all of this information, we have returned to our work bonded as a team, and more committed than ever to make sure we make you happy.

And then… we went to happy hour

By Nicole Fletcher

What will they think of next? New age vending machines from Wall literally measure your smile (15 times per second mind you) and if you’re really and truly happy, they reward you with a free ice cream of your choice. FURTHER, you can even share it to your facebook so all your friends know you’re happy too!
Watch the Share Happy Video

By Nicole Fletcher
I’m not totally in the holiday spirit and I’ve been kind of upset about it. It’s December 15th and I’ve yet to bake a cookie, set foot in a mall or drink a warm alcoholic beverage. I’ve been busy and excitedly working on a million things not related to the Christmas season…and then I came across this. This video demonstrates perfectly the synergy between my work and my holiday spirit, or lack thereof. My world is consumed by social media and I love it, but it took this video to put the twinkle in my tweets and the flurry in my facebook updates. In honor of the holiday season, I’d like to share this video with you. Sit back, relax and enjoy the story of Christmas with a fabulously modern media spin.