SEAN LEIGH

Digital Copywriting

Portfolio How To Start A Fire

Sean Leigh

1/29/2015

All articles are selected from the collected posts from the Canopy Brand Group blog, "How To Start A

Fire". The posts cover a variety of topics, such as technology, advertising, culture, science, design, and

trends. The information in these articles is researched and collated from a variety of sources, and

hyperlinks to cited sources are shown in red for the purposes of this print portfolio. All writing, unless

otherwise stated, is the Authors' own. All other articles written for this blog by the Author can be found

at http://howtostartafire.canopybrandgroup.com/, where the Author was sole contributor (unless otherwise

noted) from September 2013 until May 2014.

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Contents:

Page 3: The Most Frustrating Thing In The World

Page 4: The Neighborhood’s Going Downhill

Page 5: This Article Changed My Life

Page 9: Queen Bey

Page 11: Corporate Oligarchy

Page 12: The Great New York City Caverns

Page 14: On the Subject of the Alien Attack

Page 15: L Is For The Way You Look At Me

Page 17: Fire Power

Page 19: Simplify Your Nest

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The Most Frustrating Thing In The World

The most frustrating thing in the world is not your mother-in-law, or job searching, or tuition

debt. No, the most frustrating thing in the world is getting ketchup out of a glass bottle.

Seriously, it ruins my week every time. Thank god we have MIT to fix this, or I’d need to be

committed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djwahGRi5iE

The bottle in the video above has been coated with an almost frictionless substance called

LiquiGlide, that prevents even the tiniest bit of ketchup from remaining in the bottle. PhD

candidate Dave Smith states that a million of pounds of food waste could be saved if every bottle

or container was coated with this substance, meaning you could get every little last bit of

mayonnaise out of the bottle.

The biggest challenge they faced was keeping the product FDA approved, which they could only

do with a limited amount of materials, which they have patented the heck out of. But they’ve

already seen results: recently LiquiGlide came in second place in MIT’s $100k Entrepreneurship

Competition. Not bad for a ketchup bottle.

What Sparks Our Fire: Solving that ketchup bottle problem and saving my sanity.

Do you think bottles and containers coated with this substance will make life easier?

Posted February 6, 2014

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The Neighborhood’s Going Downhill

Apparently grungy is in. You have your reclaimed wood tables, exposed brick walls, and raw

metal beams, all of which add to a certain aesthetic and serve to add a certain hip-ness to the

area. Now, according to sociologist Gordon Douglas, a certain amount of graffiti can contribute

to the gentrification of a neighborhood.

Long the symptom or result of economic malaise or poverty, graffiti has a predominately

negative connotation. According to Douglas “A huge amount of social science throws [graffiti]

into a camp of being a sign of crime and disorder.” Baruch College sociologist Gregory

Snyder compared rates of violent crime versus graffiti and found that places with more tagging

had lower rates of crime. In his book Graffiti Lives, he writes that in SoHo, “residents, tourists,

and high-end boutiques, co-exist with graffiti vandalism in a relatively symbiotic fashion.” He

claims graffiti-ed neighborhoods “[attract] the type of urban ‘cool’ consumer marketers call

‘taste makers’ and advertisers and retailers so desperately want to reach.”

So that’s probably not an excuse to tag any old wall, but in a world where the works of artists

like Banksy can command prices of $100,000, this kind of organic street art may just attract the

kind of people that gradually gentrify neighborhoods.

What Sparks Our Fire: The shifting perceptions of what is art vs. vandalism and how the

public as a whole reacts to it.

Do you feel graffiti adds to the je ne sais quoi of a neighborhood?

Posted February 3, 2014

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This Article Changed My Life

Let’s talk about clickbait.

In the past few years, a certain type of internet journalism has become more and more prevalent

in certain Generation Y circles. There are numerous sub-genres of this trend, but they all fall

under a category that for simplicity’s sake I’ll refer to as “Clickbait Articles”. With titles like “22

Reasons Why Having A Quiet New Year’s Eve Is Secretly The Best“, “America Could End

Homelessness in One Year by Doing This“, and “23 Food Things Only Chinese-American Kids

Would Understand“, these articles reflect the changing nature of internet writing and the way we

share information.

The reason this kind of article is written is for the most part, internet authors are paid for the

amount of visits their article page receives. This means these articles need eye-catching,

attention-grabbing titles and shareable content, to grab and multiply visits, or clicks. This ties

into the concept of the internet as an information niche market. People want information

customized to them, to their interests and likes, and will click on and share pages they believe

suit them and their internet persona. However, since there are so many person-specific niches,

these articles tend to be broad in appeal and have minimal content, often to the point of lists: the

author makes a point in a sentence or two, adds an accompanying picture or GIF, and moves on.

As such, these articles are often short, light on content, and are in essence

disposable. Buzzfeed.com alone sees a turnover of dozens of articles a day.

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This kind of directed content sharing springs from multiple motivations and thought processes,

but there are three main thought processes that stand out: “This is so relatable/worth sharing”,

“This is something the world needs to know about”, and “This describes my niche

demographic”. This is obviously a simplification, but in essence these are the three motivations

that tend to stand out.

Articles that are relatable tend to have subject matter regarding large demographics the author

has ascribed certain common experiences to. For instance, articles relating to the experience of

being a 20-something woman in NYC are common, as well as others listing reasons why Jennifer

Lawrence is a wonderful person. These articles will often be shared with comments along the

vein of “So true” or “Too real”, which in turn lead followers and friends to click on the link to

see if they too relate. The problem with these articles is they tend to lack any real content, and

are akin to horoscope predictions or zodiac signs, which seem to be very specific to you, but in

fact are broad statements that almost anyone can apply to themselves.

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The second type of shared link are those that take up some sort of cause or social issue. This type

of article isn’t new, but rather the positioning of the internet cause article is very removed from

pre-internet articles, especially in the way they are titled. These post authors have perfected the

art of writing a title that gives away next to nothing about their content, but demands viewer

attention. Examples include, “A Fashion Designer Uses Her Mannequins To Send A Message

That Hurts” or “A Gut-Punching Ad Shows 2 Perspectives On Your Last Years. Which

Describes Where You’re Headed?“. These titles give the user a reason to click, and once they

absorb the content, they share it. While effective, a critique of these methods might show that

this positioning may lead to an alarmist tendency, as well as misleading content. One of the

articles mentioned above claims to have found the cure to homelessness if only America would

listen. However, it is simply an article on how houses can be built from plastic bottles, and

doesn’t show how those houses will be built, who will build them, or how this solves a homeless

problem on any spectrum except that of “more houses”.

The third type of article targets a niche demographic with content related specifically to the

experience of that demographic. For instance, I am an American of Chinese decent, and I grew

up in suburban New York. Therefore, the above article about experiences Chinese-American

kids share involving food was immediately applicable to me, and I shared the article with the rest

of my friends and family who also had those experiences, and the article resonated with all of

them. The drawback of this sort of article is it can marginalize the members of the audience who

don’t belong to that niche. For instance, no one outside of my demographic understands the rite

of passage that is learning how to use chopsticks, or that my Grandmothers’ jook is better than

anyone else’s and I will defend that statement to death. These are exclusive articles that can only

be written by those who have directly experienced the subject matter, and as such cannot be

applicable to large audiences.

In essence, this type of article is one of the most popular formats of current internet content, and

it’s not going anywhere for now. Like all forms of journalism, this format has its drawbacks, but

also appeals to a great number of internet users, and it will be interesting to watch Clickbait

Articles and how they evolve in the future.

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What Sparks Our Fire: Emerging forms of journalism exclusive to the internet are

extraordinarily interesting, especially to those of us in advertising, where it is our job to watch

trends.

Do you enjoy these types of articles?

Posted on December 19, 2013

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Queen Bey

On Friday, Beyonce broke the internet. Seriously, iTunes shut down due to too much traffic.

Every single social news outlet was flooded with posts, tweets, statuses, and articles that all

proclaimed “Beyonce released an unannounced album at midnight that is not only a collection of

music but also includes 17 videos and a song featuring Blue Ivy!!” There are seven posts about it

on the front page of Buzzfeed alone, and they all seem to be the authors having seizures about

how awesome Beyonce is.

However, right now we’re not going to discuss the music, or the concept of a “visual album” or

how Beyonce’s hair is “OMG SO PERF. I JUST WANT TO BE HER. UGH.” as 23,000 twitter

users have posted in the last twelve hours. No, we’re going to discuss the ramifications of how a

product can become a resounding success with literally no lead-up or advertising.

In this instance, we are referring to Beyonce as a brand, in addition to an individual. With a

single post on Facebook, this brand flexed social media muscles that most can only dream of.

They don’t need to dedicate any money to advertising this album because the rest of the world is

doing it for her. Without any critical review or coming attractions, the album has been labeled as

“good” and “worth sharing” by default. This is because, as a brand, Beyonce has released

quality, popular bodies of work. As well, Beyonce has cultivated a likeable, personable offstage

personality, accentuated by her marriage to rap star Jay-Z and birth of her daughter Blue Ivy. In

addition, she has remained in the public eye over the last decade, from her time in Destiny’s

Child, to her solo career, up until her recent “photobomb”.

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Incidentally, not a photobomb, rather a request, but you get the point. Beyonce is well-liked,

highly followable, and is a strong thought leader, which allows her the social clout and

discussability to create a media storm without the need for advertising or singles or anything else

that goes along with normal music releases. This is power on an extraordinary level, and we who

advertise are extraordinarily jealous.

What Sparks Our Fire: The biggest positive media firestorm in recent history, caused by a

quality brand suddenly releasing what is sure to be a critically acclaimed revolutionary product.

It’s what we like to see in brand management.

Why do you think Beyonce has this sort of power?

Posted December 16, 2014

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Corporate Oligarchy

These are an international few, ten mega-corporations whose multi-industry holdings create a

situation not unlike the coal and iron trusts of Industrial Revolution America: basically, a few

large entities own huge chunks of industry, and whoever can outbuy or undercut the competitors.

The fact of the matter is that this is a product of a free market economy, where the larger

corporations have the ability to diversify the industries they involve themselves in while

increasing revenue and industry influence.

While parallels might be drawn to the monopolies of the early twentieth century, the new

supercorporations don’t sell under their own names. Rather, they own, own shares of, or partner

with hundreds of thousands of brands, which leads to mass appeal based on what Reddit refers to

as “The Illusion of Choice”. This is a deceptive use of terminology because the fact is that while

these brands and companies are all associated, they are not companies within companies, like

Russian nesting dolls, as the chart leads one to believe. The reality of the situation is much more

complicated than a simple infographic can demonstrate.

What it is effective at showing, however, is that there are several very large, very influential

corporations behind the multitude of brands that many people use daily. Whether or not this is a

good or a bad thing remains to be seen. However, it’s important to know.

What Sparks Our Fire: Knowing the behind-the-scenes workings of corporate America.

Does this affect the way that you view your favorite brands?

Posted November 15th, 2013

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The Great New York City Caverns

The average New York City commuter thinks nothing of an hour-long commute to and from

work every day. Some of us at Canopy commute even longer than that. We don’t mind, but at the

same time it could always be better, and it’s hard to see any way the city is trying to improve it.

However, beneath our very feet, a massive construction project is taking place in the bedrock of

the island of Manhattan that will become the biggest public transportation infrastructure project

in the United States.

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The East Side Access Project is the tunneling endeavor taking place 160 feet below Grand

Central Terminal. The goal is to eventually connect the Long Island Railroad with Grand

Central, creating much shorter commute times for some 160,000 commuters. The project is long

from complete, expecting to see construction until sometime in 2019, and needs to overcome

some hefty obstacles before the first trains will make their way beneath the East River and into

the brand new Grand Central Terminal LIRR Platform.

The first issue facing the construction is the creation of two 1,050 foot long caverns beneath

Grand Central without disturbing the daily commute of the thousands who go through every day.

The self-described “stealth project” is endeavoring to be as unobtrusive as possible. The second

major issue is the Northern Boulevard Crossing, where the soft earth threatened to collapse, and

engineers ran coolant through the ground to freeze it in place and allow the traffic to continue

above the construction. The third issue is located at the Howard Interlocking, where rail traffic

can’t be stopped for construction purposes. Between construction and daily trains, the work is

“like a dance.”

The East Side Access Project has its roots in 1969, but it's not going to be too long before it’s

going to be ready for the multitude of commuters to make their way to the city. The newest

pictures from the MTA show soaring caverns and new support equipment, all showing that there

is steady, amazing progress being made.

What Sparks Our Fire: The dedicated and creative methods that the MTA is using to ease the

commute for thousands of New Yorkers.

Will you benefit from the completion of the East Side Access Project?

Posted November 6, 2013

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On the Subject of the Alien Attack

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs0K4ApWl4g

On this day, 75 years ago, a radio broadcast of dance music performed by Ramon Raquello was

interrupted by frantic breaking news segments, reporting meteorite impacts in New Jersey,

followed by a terrifying invasion of aliens in gigantic tripod machines. They swept aside all

resistance with heat rays and poison black fog, and crushed the army and depopulated New York

City in minutes.

All of this came over the radio in 1938, a time when the confluence of the Great Depression, the

rise of Hitler, and the multitude of upheavals that came to define the era were all reported in

breaking stories over the radio. No wonder that 1 million people believed that aliens from Mars

were invading.

This radio broadcast was the brainchild of Orson Welles, who succeeded in striking fear into the

hearts of thousands with his extraordinarily realistic retelling of the novel The War Of The

Worlds by H. G. Wells. Although disclaimers stated that the broadcast was a dramatization,

many listeners tuned in late and missed the caveat, instead only hearing the breathless breaking-

story style reports of aliens swatting the army aside like flies and black poisonous fog flooding

the streets of New York City and killing anyone who breathed it in.

According to reports, a great many people reacted with confusion and panic, with some running

from their homes holding wet cloth over their mouths. Later historians would say that about 20%

of the audience, about 1 million people, believed that what they were hearing was the truth. Even

as a minority, this is an incredibly large amount of people who were affected by this broadcast.

This is because of the unique power that radio had in the 1930′s. It was the most immediate mass

media channel that the world had ever seen, and for many it was the first, best contact with the

outside world that they had. The realistic nature of the program evoked memories of other

broadcasted breaking stories, like the “Munich Meeting” which preceded the beginning of Nazi

power, or the destruction of the Hindenburg. Orson Welles used this memory, and the

imagination possible with radio, to write, direct, and star in a program that the listeners fully and

truly believed.

What Sparks Our Fire: The power of mass media to take hold of the imagination and create

entirely believable content.

If a reputable internet news site reported an alien attack, would you believe it?

Posted on October 30, 2013

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L Is For The Way You Look At Me

Love is the driving force behind most of the things people do on a daily basis. Love is an

attribute almost unique to human beings, who are the only species to have marriages, write sappy

love poems, and stay together for years. This is a removal from other animals who, for the most

part are not monogamous, and don’t often write sonnets for each other.

The question is: what makes human beings so special, so unique, that they need to fall in love

and get married? The answer, quite simply, is bad wiring. According to neuroscientist David

Linden, the neurons that make up our brains are very similar to the original neurons that occurred

in the first living beings, and are now seen in similar forms in jellyfish and coral. We make up

for this by having large brains with a great deal of gray matter, which makes up for our lower-

performance neurons and helps us to be what Linden calls “clever us“, intelligent humans.

Since the size of the brain is related to how intelligent the being is, it is necessary that the mature

human have a large brain, about 500 billion neurons, 1200 cubic centimeters of matter. A human

baby will have about 400 cc’s of gray matter in their brain, and even a brain a third the size of

maturity is a struggles to be born. This is why human beings have a much longer adolescence

than other mammals, to allow the brain to be fully developed, ending at age 20.

In pre-modern, hunter-gatherer society, it was necessary that the adolescent human be protected

and kept alive so that it could reach adulthood. This quite simply could not be done with a single

parent at that time. Helping a child to survive for 20 years could only be accomplished by both

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parents being present. Therefore, marriage-like arrangements sprang up in nearly every culture,

with both parents understanding that it was their joint responsibility to raise a child together.

This is the neurological reason we fall in love and write ukulele songs for each other. We do it

because our brains are wired like jellyfish and take 20 years to boot up.

What Starts Our Fire: Love, and the biological needs that drive our progress as a species.

Do you think that love as a concept is weakened or strengthened because of its basis in survival?

Posted on October 18, 2013

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Fire Power

We’re always interested when new gadgets integrate modern technology with the most basic

elements in innovative ways. The FlameStower Cell Phone Charger does just that. The proposed

product is a recharger for your cutting edge modern technology that uses man’s first

technological innovation.

The charger has a USB port, a water container, and a flat panel to place over the heating element.

This is a thermoelectric process, where the temperature difference between the heated element

and water sends electricity from the higher voltage heated component to the lower voltage cooler

component. This electricity can charge small devices like phones and tablets via a USB port. The

FlameStower team contends that using the device can heighten ones experience with nature,

blending modern convenience with the more natural processes of nature.

http://youtu.be/fysBcyIhU3s

This multifunctional device can use any open flame, and provides a consistent, moderate charge

off of the grid. This is, of course, not the first fire-based portable charger, but many of the others,

such as the BioLite, lack the inherent portability and space-saving folding design that comes

standard with the FlameStower. For the camper who needs to save space and keep his devices

charged, it’s a very portable solution. The Kickstarter Campaign is well on its way to tripling its

original goal of $15,000, with plenty of time left. This is obviously a very attractive offering, and

based on the response, demand for this product will be very high.

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What Sparks Our Fire: Making the use of technology feasible when off the grid.

Will you take the FlameStower on your next camping trip?

Posted October 14, 2013

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Simplify Your Nest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8TkhHgkBsg

In this brave new world of modern technology, nothing is out of reach with a Smartphone and a

halfway decent internet connection. Forget to lock your car? There’s an app for that. Need to

know where your kids are? There’s an app for that. Want to destroy flimsy structures protecting

green pigs, using only the power of applied force physics and irate flying creatures? There is

absolutely an app for that. So the question remains, why do the two most irritating fixtures in our

houses, thermostats and smoke detectors, look like holdovers from the 80′s and are about as

intuitive as computers from that era?

Fortunately, those beige plastic eyesores will no longer be a must for every house. Nest is a

company that is creating a generation of smoke detectors and thermostats for the modern

computer age. Not only do they look clean and modern, they are intuitive to use and easy to

integrate. The thermostat learns your habits and schedule, and adjusts itself accordingly. It can

also be managed from your Smartphone when you’re away from the house, and will show if your

energy expenditure is environmentally friendly.

The Nest Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detector keeps you safe without all the annoyances of

regular smoke alarms. The color of the detector changes to warn of potential problems and you

can silence alarms by waving your hand if everything is under control. Rather than just beeping,

it speaks with a human voice and can sync with the Nest Thermostat to turn off the furnace if

there is a Carbon Monoxide leak. All in all, it is an incredible improvement over the fixtures we

are used to.

What Sparks Our Fire: The integration of these house necessities into the interface that we use

every day, in a visually appealing way.

Will you integrate this new tech into your home?

Posted October 9, 2013