Today I bought a pair of sunglasses from a slim-hipped teenager and his shaggy blonde cohort. The store was slow. While I tried on different shades, these two talked, and made a lot of personal phone calls.

“Hey. Yeah. I know. Did you know that Felisha’s working at Banana now? I thought you’d want to know.”

The blonde was configuring ring tones for his friend. I asked why he was doing that.

“Oh, he just bought this phone and can’t figure out how to work it.”

I looked at the phone, one with Blackberry functionality included.

“You bought a Blackberry?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you IM with it?”

He looks at me like I’ve got a hunk of broccoli stuck between my front teeth. “Of course.”

“What else do you do with it?”

“Talk.”

“That’s an expensive piece of technology for talking. It’s not like you need it for business purposes.”

At which point Shaggy nonchalantly remarks, “Oh, we do use them for business. We’re in DECA. And I just organized an anti-drunk driving program for my school. My advisor’s trying to get funding to take it regional. Besides, my phone cost $600.”

Trying to not appear the lame thirtysomething that I really am, I swallowed the “$600?!?” that wanted to erupt from my gut. These kids work at Sunglass Hut and apparently spend their entire paycheck on a cell phone.

“So, do you guys have a MySpace page?”

They look at each other. Shaggy rolls his eyes and says, “I can’t believe he doesn’t have one.”

Fresh off of listening to a kick-ass KEXP streaming archive of my recent crush band, Ghostland Observatory, I decide to act age inappropriate.

“So, have you heard of the band Ghostland Observatory?”

“Nope. Are they cool?”

“Check them out. They’ve got a MySpace page. Or you can go to KEXP and check out a streaming archive of a live performance.”

They knew neither about KEXP nor the term “streaming.”

“What do they sound like?”

“Danceable 80s-style synth rock. Totally different from anything you’ve heard, though.”

I know, I’m totally dating myself. But they seemed to grasp the concept, and that it was different from anything their peers might have heard of, so therefore it would make them cool if they were to “discover” it for themselves.

“Cool. Cool. Gotta write that down. How do you spell it?”

I’m sure they rolled their eyes and laughed at me when I left the store, but this exchange fascinated me from a marketing perspective. I’ve been listening to a lot of indie bands (and some not so indie) with MySpace pages, and a couple of my clients are dabbling in social network marketing. There’s something pure and democratizing going on in our culture that should be on the radar of every marketing exec.

Does saying that make me un-pure?

Guten tag. This blog begins with a rationale for why I dislike overwrought bios. I hate to write about myself in the third person. I’d rather show you how I write and let you decide if we’re a suitable match. Nevertheless, you need to understand that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to copywriting. So here’s my story.

I’m a classic A-type, Taurus go-getter. When I was three, my mom came to pick me up from day care. When she walked in the room, she saw all the other little people sitting in a circle around me. I was reading to them.

When I was 17, I started working at Dahlin Smith White Advertising (which is now EuroRSCG 4D) as a runner and receptionist. I worked there through college, often full time, while still managing to graduate in three years with a 3.7 GPA in English Literature. I opportunistically crammed in a summer abroad in Germany, under the hopes that I could eventually learn to speak the language so well that I could get a job there in publishing. Alas, I spent too much time in the beer gardens perfecting my hand-to-bier-stein hoist rather than my umlaut inflections. Although my pronunciation improved with the number of steins partook, I did not become fluent in the language. This was a momentary weakness in my otherwise go-getter-ness.

While at DSW, I soaked up the beginning of the mass computer revolution. I witnessed the development and unveiling of the Intel Inside campaign, and worked under the brains who branded Intel. I knew all the media reps. I read every InfoWorld, Business Week and Forbes for two years searching and marking Intel ads. I ran the media library like an Aryan schoolmarm, scolding anyone who did not return materials in a timely manner. I wrote competitive analysis after competitive analysis about various companies and industries.

Then I quit to work at a mortgage company. In hindsight I can see that this not a wise career path, but I was young and naive. I don’t normally talk about this time period because I took this job for love, a very ill conceived move. My boyfriend at the time convinced me that I would make a good mortgage broker and we could cash in on the refinancing boom. What was I thinking?!? I got an A on a college paper entitled, “The Phantasmagoria of Allusion and Illusion in James Joyce’s Ulysses”. Did I really think that mortgage banking would do it for me? I quit four months later and decided to go to grad school.

Meanwhile I applied to work at the library. I didn’t get the job because when asked about how I would handle the tedium of re-shelving books I replied, “I have an active fantasy life.” So I studied for the GRE, read a lot of books and watched bad TV.

Then Jon White called. I am incredibly grateful to Jon White, DSW Creative Director. I remember vividly where I was when he called and asked me to come and write for DSW. I was sitting on my couch watching Beverly Hills 90210 re-runs. I had no clue what I was going to do with my life after yet another dismal experience with standardized tests.

So I started writing. Eleven years later, here I am.