Culture

The Rise of Evil Photoshop

By Anya Ow / July 30, 2019 / Comments Off on The Rise of Evil Photoshop

Photoshop isn’t always bad, I tell myself as I open CNN and notice that the latest news involve Trump appearing in front of a doctored Presidential seal featuring a Russian-styled two-headed eagle holding some golf clubs. Given it was for a conservative student summit, apparently it was all a mistake thanks to time crunch, but […]

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plastic convenience environment

Convenience and the Environment

By Anya Ow / July 27, 2019 / Comments Off on Convenience and the Environment

As the general public grows increasingly engaged in a weird mea culpa over plastic straws — nevermind that plastic straws are only a tiny part of the problem and that people with disabilities need them — in Melbourne, I can sip my overpriced orange juice at a cafe with my steel straw and pretend that […]

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Give-Back Advertising in Australia

By Anya Ow / July 26, 2019 / Comments Off on Give-Back Advertising in Australia

After recently listening to an interview with Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS Shoes, via NPR’s ‘How I Built This’ podcast, I wondered if this model of giving back to the community should extend to the world of advertising and marketing. TOMS is a shoe company that matches every pair of shoes purchased with a […]

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The Restaurant Pay Reckoning

By Anya Ow / July 24, 2019 / Comments Off on The Restaurant Pay Reckoning

“I wish I could steal $7 million dollars and only get fined $200,000,” said a friend of mine when the scandal broke. If you’ve been on the news or Aussie Twitter recently, you might have seen that George Calombaris, one of the judges on the popular reality TV cooking competition Masterchef Australia and restauranteur of […]

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Social Causes Marketing

By Anya Ow / July 13, 2019 / Comments Off on Social Causes Marketing

Perhaps confusingly, one of the biggest adland events of the year bears approximately the same abbreviated title as the biggest film event of the year. Maybe because it appeals to adland egos, maybe everyone just likes to party in Cannes, who knows. This year, there was a minor stir over Alfonso Cuarón, who was a […]

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Writing Online Dating Profiles

By Anya Ow / June 20, 2019 / Comments Off on Writing Online Dating Profiles

Apparently, there’s a sex recession going on in America. As well as a trend towards staying single in Seoul. To be honest, who’s surprised? The world’s clearly ending. Climate change is real, extreme weather events are growing normal, we’re still burning fossil fuels, nationalism is rife everywhere… there was even a Nutella shortage recently. Horrific. […]

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Limiting Your Online Footprint

By Anya Ow / June 14, 2019 / Comments Off on Limiting Your Online Footprint

After thirty-ish years living on this slow-dying planet with only a vague idea of what the stock market is or how to engage with it, I’ve finally decided to teach myself how to trade. While doing some basic research — like which online stockbroker to use, which stocks are blue chip, what ETFs are, how […]

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Zara Rebrands, And Other Scary Stories

By Anya Ow / February 23, 2019 / Comments Off on Zara Rebrands, And Other Scary Stories

If you’re mired in the particularly tiny, shiny bubble of the internet populated by designers, you might have noticed that Zara has rebranded. Rebrands aren’t unusual nowadays, particularly for fashion brands. Instead of taking the usual step of rebranding into a featureless sans-serif, Zara chose instead to move to a more beautiful, taller serif that […]

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Remix Culture and Advertising

By Anya Ow / February 16, 2019 / Comments Off on Remix Culture and Advertising

Near the Christmas break, I participated in a black market exchange. It did not involve drugs. I’d become a fan of a Chinese web novel with a multi-part animated series that had amassed a considerable following of fans. This meant fanwork being produced at fan conventions, where rows of booths sell fanart, pins, and other […]

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World Cup Finals and Marketing

By Anya Ow / July 14, 2018 / Comments Off on World Cup Finals and Marketing

The World Cup Finals are coming, and you probably know the date — unless you live in one of the few countries in the world where football isn’t a religion. The World Cup (yes, the one involving ‘soccer’, which by the way really should be just called football) is unofficially the world’s most popular sporting […]

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