Here are three stories:

• I had a dream last night that I was driving.
• I had a dream last night that I was driving, but I didn’t have any hands.
• I had a dream last night that I was driving, but I didn’t have any hands. My wife was in labor in the backseat. I steered with my teeth, weaving in and out of traffic, making it to the hospital just in time.

The first story is boring. The second story is weird. The third story is weird, but at least it’s a story, and that’s because it has conflict.

You passed middle school English class. You know that all stories are supposed to have conflict in order to qualify as stories.

Similarly, brands need some level of conflict in order to rise above the level of mere commodities and become something that people can actually care about. While storytelling and conflict can take a variety of forms within a brand, the most common way to introduce interesting, loyalty-breeding conflict into your brand is by creating an enemy.

But why would you want to harsh things up like that? Isn’t there a better way?

The good news is that no matter how nice you are and how good your brand is for you, your customers and the universe, you can absolutely find an enemy that you can define yourself against.

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If you’re wondering why there’s a sudden resurgence in your colleague’s interest in Pokémon this week, you’re probably the only one who hasn’t heard about Pokémon Go. Pokémon Go is an augmented reality app for iPhone and Android devices, released this week. Essentially, you open up the app and it combines the nostalgic world of Pokémon with our very own, leading us to wander around the world with our phones in front of our faces looking for the little creatures.

But this isn’t the only augmented reality people are using: from Google Glass to educational apps like Star Walk, augmented reality has been on the rise for several years.

Besides looking really cool while using it (see below), what does this mean for marketers?

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Mark your calendars! Luminus’ very own Tim Bouchard is scheduled to appear on the Businessology podcast on Wednesday, July 20th.

Businessology is a podcast hosted by CPA Jason Blumer, aimed at helping creatives run their businesses more effectively. Through real examples of agencies “figuring it out”, he helps agencies do better work by working better. On this episode of Businessology, Tim will discuss his recent eBook, Golden Mean Pricing.

Golden Mean Pricing provides guidance on pricing creative projects for freelancers and small business owners. Check it out here.

We won a silver AAF District 2 Addy for our work for Druthers!

We actually found that out a while ago, but we just got the award today.

What we also got was the showbook that features all of the AAF District 2 winners, and they’re awesome.

We’re proud to mentioned in the same breath as a lot of these folks and we’d like to run down the best in show for you.

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Hello!

My name is Christopher D’Amato and I am a Digital Marketing intern.

In addition, I am also an Advertising and Psychology double major at Xavier University, with a minor in Digital Media.

As an aspiring Creative Director, and hopeful owner of my own agency sometime in the future, I crave every opportunity I can to improve my knowledge on both the art and science of interpretation. Simply put, I yearn for an understanding of Advertising and Psychology on all levels.

My first task as an intern was to put these qualities into words and answer the Proust Questionnaire in order for you and a few others to understand the kind of person I am.

Grab that espresso you have been thinking about, sit back, and try to relax. Allow my answers to guide your stream of consciousness for the next few minutes.

Quit shaking! Breathe deeply.

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Hello, I’m Jaime Anna. Yes, my last name is a first name, I know. Oh, and I’m a Digital Marketing intern at LUMINUS.

Once upon a time, I was sitting at my desk on the first day of my internship. Suddenly, I was tasked with answering the Proust Questionnaire. If this guy was answering these types of questions with such eloquence at the mere age of 13, he had great things going for him. If he only lived in 2016 and saw the kinds of answers that I’ve given.

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Bad marketers are like vampires, except they’re also really bad at being vampires.

Good vampires, in the Dracula sense, or even to a degree the Edward Cullen sense, are seductive creatures. They make their victims want to be bitten, even if it’s against their own best interest.

Bad vampires show up where there’s a crowd of people, close their eyes and start swinging their fangs around. They’re lucky to get a drop of blood edgewise, and their would-be prey will high-tail it out of there. The really clever humans, the Buffys of the world, pull stakes out of their shoes and get to work.

Bless the Buffys of the world. They’re out there protecting us against bad marketers.

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“Minimal costs. No skills required. Instant results.”

That’s the value proposition from Tailor Brands, one of many automated logo makers available online. The idea is that busy, cost-averse small business owners can answer a few simple questions and get a brand new logo in about ten minutes.

According to Tailor Brands, someone makes a new logo every two seconds. But are any of those logos actually good?

We asked our award-winning logo designer, John English, to compare his work to the tool. Here’s his review of the Tailor Brands logo maker.

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This article is republished from our email newsletter. If you dig it, you should sign up for our emails!

Algorithms are, basically, processes that automated systems like computers use to make decisions. At least in the beginning, they’re created by humans to serve certain purposes, though (especially as machine learning gets better) they can start to change and refine themselves in a way that is opaque to most if not all flesh-and-blood intelligence.

The dangers of relying on algorithms, then, are obvious. The biases of the creator are encoded in the algorithm, which then acts in a way that is trusted to be unbiased, or at least reality-informed. And then self-refining algorithms have the potential to get away from us.

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Another WordCamp Buffalo conference has come and gone. Congratulations to Ron Brennan, Dominic Licata, Andy Staple, Ben Dunkle, and Michelle Ames for organizing a great event.

This year was special for me for two reasons; First, I spoke at this year’s event, so I had a completely different (and amazing) experience than year’s past. Second, the event was at UB’s Center For the Arts (CFA) where I spent mosts of my time in undergrad as a Media Study major.

I’m going to try and hang onto the inspiration and enthusiasm I felt at this WordCamp in the design/dev track since I’m gradually becoming disconnected from production the more I get into speaking/writing about and handling our own small business and pricing tasks.

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