Shop Vintage or not?

/ L. / 3 Comments

What is up with the vintage fever? I think that some people are going crazy over it. I see it from two perspectives:

It is nice to recycle, be more sustainable, think about our planet -be “green”.

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However, some people “go vintage” just because the “looks” of it. Ok the style is nice and always, when there is a crisis, when our world is falling apart, we tend to recur to the idiom “good old days” -vintage is better.

Today I was riding my “new” bike -bought from a guy, which bought it from another guy- and I had infront of me a “vintage new” bike. Well, the seat looked uncomfortable,  I bet it had cost a small fortune, and then comes the sustainable part of the “vintage fever”. This girl did not recycle an old bike because of nostalgia, she bought it brand new because of its looks.

Is it not the main point of buying vintage to recycle, to help our planet, to reduce consumerism? Well, if you buy a “new vintage” you are destroying the whole point.

I am happy as hell with my “new” road bike, with my soft silicone seat, my 8 gears and my disc brakes, and my 11kg bike -try to ride Aarhus’ “little hills” with less than 8 gears and more weight… How much did I pay? 150€. And then, try to ride with an uncomfortable leather seat -hard as hell, 3 gears, no disc brakes, and 18kg of bike -700€ minimum.

So, what is the point of going backwards? Vintage is nice but do not be stupid. If it has the looks, the price and the comfort -go for it, if not…well, you might answer the questions yourselves.

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The unreal situation in the Spanish job market

/ L. / 6 Comments

I am a spaniard myself and sometimes I find myself looking for job offers in the Spanish job market, curiosity maybe -or maybe some deep hidden wishes to go back to the warm and sunny weather.

What I have noticed is that enterprises are even crazier than before. They ask for a master’s degree, a Phd., a minimum of 3 languages, and 5 years of experience or more, all that for 18,000 € a year. WTF? (sorry for my language).

What are they looking for? Do they want to attract the best of the best or just liars? If you have all these qualifications I am sure that you are not aiming to work for a medium enterprise –and even less for that salary. What does this say about these enterprises? A LOT. That they are just vultures.

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I mean, if you are an enterprise in a country that is going through a humongous crisis, where the unemployment is almost 30%, where young professionals can not find a decent job or even a job and you, as a powerful enterprise -or not so powerful, you are asking for insane qualifications for little money and worse working environment, you are just ruthless. And when an enterprise has these kind of “values”, well, as sure as hell I do not want to work for them. And that is a problem, certainly, because in Spain young professional talent is treated like trash. Believe me, I know about that, my friends know about that.

So, what do many Spanish companies do? They do not know anything about organisational behaviour, communication management, strategic management, et cetera. They do not nurture their employees, they only support them while they are useful, they do not know about knowledge management and mentoring. That is a big problem. That is why we are behind. And it makes me sad, so sad, because we have so much potential and is all going to waste.

These communication management problems all come from the same place. Spanish enterprises values are just wrong, are so last century. So, if an enterprise’s values are wrong, even if you get new talent -eager to change and create new opportunities– you will corrupt this talent, or that or this new talent will fly away as soon as he/she gets a better offer. And then, we are back again to the start.

So my conclusion is that if you are looking for great talent, you should take a look at yourself. Which values do you have? Which values are you trying to communicate? Which values are you looking for in an employee? And then, with the answers, try to change something. You can not change the world if you can not change yourself -or your company.

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Planned Obsolescence

/ L. / 2 Comments

Obsolescencia Programada (Comprar, Tirar, Comprar) from Benjamín Mejías on Vimeo.

This documentary is one of the most interesting programs I have seen in a while.

I know, it’s in Spanish, but it’s worth a try -some of you may understand it. I’ll try to make a little summary anyway.

Wikipedia says about it that: “the planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time. Thus, the consumer is under pressure to purchase again”.

Companies can use the least expensive components that satisfy product lifetime projections. In other words, some companies do worse products with worse quality components exclusively so we have the need to buy more as soon as the product breaks down. This fact is shown in this documentary, like a light bulb that it has been working for almost a century, within others.

Our only hope it’s to buy more responsibly and sustainable, and see if this barely legal practices come to an end.

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Os dejo con el documental de la obsolescencia programada. Muchos de vosotros habréis oído hablar de él, incluso algunos lo habréis visto. Vale la pena sentarse y ver los escasos 30 min que dura.

Nuestra única esperanza es el comprar mas conscientemente e intentar ser sostenibles. A ver si así combatimos esta práctica que roza casi la ilegalidad.

The 20 most hated things in advertising

/ L. / Leave a comment

Amazing infographic as always from Eduardo Salles’ blog. You can see the original here.

From left to right, line by line:

  1. Fake testimonials / 8 out of 10 experts in something / Info-commercials / Spam.
  2. Sponsors in sport-clubs T-Shirts / Nasty images in pharmaceuticals (ewww!) / Jingles / Flyers.
  3. Pop ups that dodged pop-up blockers / Banners with sound (isn’t that annoying?!) /  Youtube ads / Any banner…
  4. Bots / Seasonal ads / Visual contamination (?) / Plagiarism.
  5. Old clichés / Without vs. with / Same old easy idioms / Repetitive ads.