WEEK 3: Ground Work

• Humour me
• June 9, 2018

Most people think my job is always exciting. They think I’m constantly working on new, interesting projects without a dull moment in between. But the truth is that before execution of any project begins, there is a lot of ground work that needs to be done first. Although significantly less glamorous, this work is essential and cannot be avoided.

Ground work was the predominant theme this week. The whole team was engaged in creating presentation after presentation about potential future ideas to send to various brands .

There was one thing, however, that managed to break the monotony. On a whim, our CEO re-visited an animated film we created for Paper Boat called ‘Hope, the Boat’ on YouTube. He was shocked to see that we had gained a million more organic views. This means that without any paid promotion whatsoever, our film had been seen by a million more people!

On scrolling though the comments, we saw that ‘Hope, the Boat’ had somehow hijacked search traffic for a recent horror film called IT. That film has a scene with a paper boat in it and somehow when people searched for that, they ended up seeing our film!

It became apparent to us that no amount of digital promotion strategy will ever beat sheer dumb luck.  

But what really made us happy was that even though people did not find the result they were searching for, they still watched our film – and what’s more, they enjoyed it. Take a look at some of the comments:

(Since I composed the music, of course I had to add a comment that addressed it. Excuse the shameless self-promotion)

The week ended with us bandaging a stray dog’s leg. This may sound bizarre, but let me give you a little context first. During my time at Humour Me, I have befriended a beautiful little stray dog named Bob (she has dreadlocks, so I named her after Bob Marley). And before I start getting frantic messages from my family – yes, she is properly vaccinated. I saw to that myself.

Bob recently got into some kind of accident. I came to work one morning to find that someone had put a makeshift bandage on her leg. I took her to the vet and it turns out she’s been injured pretty badly. After getting her bandage changed multiple times at the vet, they told me I could do it myself from now on.

Bob occasionally drops by the office and the rest of the team is quite fond of her. So this week, we got all the necessary equipment and changed her bandage together. It took about seven of us to get it done, but we finally succeeded (our Account Manager was sympathetic to the cause but gets queasy around wounds, so she chose to lend moral support from a safe distance)

For the dog lovers out there, Bob is healing well. Here’s a picture of her:

Before I conclude, here’s a quick update – I’m leaving town tomorrow to take a week-long vacation with my family, so I won’t be posting next week.

See you week after next!