Over the years, my continuing obsession with rap music has been described as  “almost indescribably boring” (by a series of tolerant girlfriends) and “kind of weird for a copy editor in his late 20s who likes French novels as much as you do” (by most of my friends).
 
Fortunately, as an employee of a brand communications and marketing agency, my rap-nerd lifestyle is so much more important than anyone ever believed: it’s actually important job research. As record sales decline around the country, labels and bands are trying to find new ways to stay profitable and sell albums. Hip-hop, the most sales-conscious music in the world right now, is leading the charge. And with every innovative technique, the marketing world at large can learn valuable lessons.
 
Earlier this year, Kanye West and 50 Cent generated a lot of headlines by setting up a rivalry: they both released their latest albums on the same (very classy) date, September 11. All over the media and the Internet, fans chose sides, arguing passionately for the virtues of one artist or another. And even if Kanye’s Graduation ended up the clear winner in sales, both artists managed to sell a lot more albums than recent trends would have predicted. The lesson: give your audience a stake in your success, even if it’s a symbolic one. (For the record, I voted for Kanye, but 50's "I Get Money" is my jam.)
 
More recently, Jay-Z has been the one developing new marketing moves. While he remains maybe the best-known rapper in the world, the mogul/rapper/coolest guy alive hasn’t been focusing the prerelease marketing for his latest album, American Gangster, on pop fans and teeny-boppers. Instead, he’s been using rap blogs and magazines to target people like me — people who wake up every morning humming 20-year-old De la Soul songs.
 
Usually, big-name hip-hop albums are scheduled months and months in advance, with lavish videos and endless singles released to build up audience hysteria. American Gangster, on the other hand, was offhandedly announced less than two months before its release; the first single, a piece of minimalist, old school-referencing menace called “Blue Magic,” was almost the only hint we had of what the album would sound like.
 
The strategy has worked brilliantly. By promoting the album through something like a whisper campaign, Jay-Z has a nation of fans more than willing to spend money on new product. The lesson: a die-hard audience is more reliable than trying to resell yourself to a fickle general public every time you try and sell a new record.
 
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to call my mom. I’m sure these professional insights will make her feel completely different about all those albums I still have sitting in a closet back home. — Sam, Content Manager

In our work neighborhood, there are a lot of panhandlers. A lot of these people are apparently in a bad way. Many are, I presume, homeless. I get hit on for money a lot and it bothers me. More specifically: it wracks me: I want to help; I am annoyed; I am a Good Samaritan with pocket change; I am a chump and a soft touch.  Which is it?

I have tried all kinds of ways to get myself past what has become my personal guilt trip. Lots of times I blow past the person, looking away. Other times, I’ll cough up what I have in my pocket. I have experimented: sometimes it’s five bucks a week, divvied out one dollar at a time to whichever five people approach me first. Sometimes its five bucks a day. I’ve given people 20 dollars. I’ve bought them a coffee or sandwich. Then there are those other days I turn away growling, suspicious of the person’s motive.  The only thing for sure is that it never feels totally right.

My wife and I donate to charities and try to be generous in donating clothing, sending checks, pledging time. Meanwhile, city commissions and social workers advise the public that giving money only enables the phony panhandlers and druggies out there. But it all never seems to matter when there’s someone staring you down, hand out and hungry.  

I need a new way to think about this. I would guess many people do what I do — and feel like I feel. Is there a way to feel responsible and stressless and smart and human about dealing with people looking for spare-change help? — Mark, Creative Director – Voice

I love to read, and I’m a great fan of Netflix. But my favorite form of entertainment is television. To me, the connection you form with a TV show is a little like having a relationship.

Flirting stage: Maybe you decide to check out a show based on the way it looks. You may like the first episode, but you aren’t ready to settle down with it yet. So you’ll watch it if you happen to be home, but you haven’t formed a strong attachment.

Honeymoon stage: You’ve decided to commit to the new show. Now even when you’re not home, you’ll record it to watch later. You’re excited to introduce it to all your friends. You may even become a bit stalkerish and go to the show’s Web site or read episode recaps on entertainment Web sites.

Old-marrieds stage: After a few years, the magic may be gone. Your show’s not as good as it used to be. You start to watch out of a sense of duty more than joy.

Break-up stage: Sometimes your show has gotten so bad you have to break up with it. Either it’s let itself go over the years or it presents a deal breaker of a storyline (Izzie killing Denny and not getting in trouble?!?). At this point, the only thing to do is say goodbye and hope you’ll meet another show that you can settle down with. — Erica, Copywriter

I had a “Seinfeld moment” while vacationing in Europe a month ago and, despite being rather annoyed at the time, I had to laugh at the utter ridiculousness of the situation. It goes like this: A friend and I were visiting another friend in Germany and had made numerous plans in advance, one of them being securing a rental car for a road trip down to Florence, up to Munich for Oktoberfest, and then back to Wurzburg. Now many of you may be aware that driving an automatic car in Europe is not so much the norm — manual transmission is by far more common. So knowing this, and knowing all three of us were not confident in our stick shift skills, we knew we needed to find a rental car service that offered an automatic car. We eventually found a place, and our friend in Germany went in person to reserve the car about a month and a half prior to our visit. Great. Perfect. Can’t wait.

After much anticipation we arrive in Germany, and are soon on our way to pick up our lovely little automatic car. We present our confirmation and immediately it’s trouble. “Hmm, an automatic car? We don’t have that here, sorry.” This was around the time I found out reservations apparently mean squat at this establishment. Excuse me, what? “I can check but I don’t think we have one on these premises.” What? This piece of paper says you will have one here for us today. We are paying you money so that an automatic car will be here today. “We could upgrade you to a Mercedes C-Class automatic, but since you’re driving to Italy we can’t permit it.” Say what? “But we can rent you a car with manual transmission.” Right, but we reserved an automatic car for a reason. We can’t drive stick. (Now, I’d like to point out that if an emergency was to develop in my presence, and the only conceivable way to extinguish said emergency was for me to drive a stick-shift car from Point A to Point B, I could do it, OK?) But since this was clearly not the case, I was not about to test my abilities on the Autobahn where there is virtually no speed limit and driving 90 mph through the mountains is considered slow. Call me crazy. My friends felt the same, and so the only solution (if you can even call it that) was to rent the automatic car … that we reserved … over a month ago.

Judging from her body language, it was no secret that we were quickly becoming a complete pain in the neck for our rental agent. This progressed into a lot of hemming and hawing, frantic typing and many loud sighs of frustration on her part. Let me just remind everyone again that my friends and I did not roll in off the street and demand that an automatic car be available that day to rent. We reserved the car! And it was at this moment that I found myself reciting the words of Jerry Seinfeld in my head:

Agent: I'm sorry, we have no mid-size available at the moment.



Jerry: I don't understand. I made a reservation; do you have my reservation?



Agent: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.



Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the
 reservation.



Agent: I know why we have reservations.



Jerry: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to 
take the reservation, you just don't know how to hold the reservation, and 
that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody
 can just take them.

After several minutes she finally locates two automatic cars. One is smaller, but has GPS. The other is larger, but lacks a navigational system. Since my friends and I assume we’re bound to get lost (which we most certainly did, but that’s another story), we opt for the smaller, GPS-equipped vehicle. She tells us someone has to drive it down from up north and it should be here in about two hours. Ugh. Fine. Fantastic. A couple hours, later we return to the rental agency only to find that they have driven down the larger, GPS-less car, AKA the one we so did not request. This place is bananas. Whatever, we’ll take it. Just get us out of here!

I’ve worked in customer service before and, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from it (no, not that one about the customer always being right because everyone can be wrong sometimes), it’s that you should never, under any circumstances, express disdain to the client for having to fulfill the duties of your job. I guess this will just go down as another demonstration of the disconnect that can exist between the customer service expected and the customer service provided.

In the end, there was one good thing that came of our encounter with this particular business — with absolutely no explanation given (of course), the cost of renting the car was about 150 euros less than we were originally quoted. If the price adjustment had anything to do with what we went through to get the car, we’ll never know. But whatever, we’ll take it. — Julie, Traffic Coordinator