eMarkLee

I think advertising is a bunch of shite (esp the CapitalOne bullshite), but sometimes an ad gets produced that I enjoy by the better talent in advertising. Here’s a print ad that I saw in Barely L…um, I mean…Maxim:

Don’t show this to your shorties unless it to get them to stop throwing stuff otherwise you will get the boogiemen on them.

I had my team offsite today for the holidays and I gotta say it is one of the more memorable ones. Here’s what my day consisted of:

1. Business Strategy. Blah Blah
2. Karting: Now we’re talking. Lewis Hamilton style. After all those years of playing Grand Turismo and Grand Theft Auto, it is cool to actually put the pedal to the medal and…well…spin out. This is supposedly one of the biggest tracks in the world where you get go-karts that go ~30-40 mph. This ain’t bumper cars, folks. There is no contact and you actually have to pay serious attention to what you’re doing. We broke up into a warm up, qualifiers, and then two 20-minute heats. At the end we got printouts with lap times and everything.

After years of playing video games where I just keep the accelerator down the whole time, it became very evident that it would not work here. If you hit the turns too quickly and try to break while turning, you’ll be arsed out. Bloody hell. I’m sure you’ve heard that you are supposed to break on the straightaways before the turn and then accelerate through the turn. It all sounds good except when actually trying to do it. One hell of an adrenaline rush, though.

3. Secret Santa: I purchased a hand-powered LED flashlight as a gift (since I am green) and ended up with How to get an ASBO. It was going smoothly until I realised that someone had actually purchased a Long Island Iced Tea and put it under the tree as an item someone would get. WTF. Talk about completely changing the game.

The premise of white elephant is pretty simple:
1. Person A is up.
2. Person A can either choose a wrapped gift or steal a gift from another person.
3. If Person A steals Person B’s gift, Person B then go to #2.

Exceptions:
1. You cannot steal back a gift
2. A gift can only be stolen 3 times.

Pretty simple game, that is until someone puts a Long Island under the tree. Without the Long Island, the element of surprise is there for all items and therefore the last person up may unwrap the last gift, thus ending the game. With the Long Island Factor, the game does not end. This completely changes the strategy of the game.

Traditional White Elephant Strategy:
1. Steal for highest valued item that has been stolen twice.
2. If none, search for highest valued item above mean.
3. If not desireable, unwrap gift.
4. If gift is not desireable…hard sell it until someone takes pity or decides they want it due to persuation. I was selling nougat and truffle filling pretty hard today.

Long Island Factor
While the general strategy is still the same, it is much stronger on getting out of the game with anything but the Long Island even if it is not the most desireable. That is how I ended up with the ASBO book. Bollocks. The game ultimately ended when someone decided to take one for the team. Good man. Bloody ASBO.

4. Pub. Like any good British event, there is always a nice evening at the pub eating pate, pigs in sausage (is there a name for that?), sliders, and some kind of a tart.

All in all a good holiday offsite with some good twists and turns (yeah, I came up with that all by myself).