I just looove the 1’st day of March in which we Romanians celebrate Martisor, the beginning of spring. If you are not familiar with this celebration have a peak here or here.

The “ritual” goes like this: boys and men offer girls, women, moms a small medallion ( here is a very good illustration of the forms this little gift can take ) tied to a red and white string, often accompanied by a flower.  The women are supposed to pin the medallion onto their clothes and wear it for 1 to 2 weeks thus celebrating the arrival of spring. It’s just lovely to walk on the street and see the little symbol at every corner, small, discrete, joyful.

Red and white stand for peace and love.

Unfortunately the tradition has been losing ground lately in the face of more commercial, imported holidays such as Valentine’s Day. Like good quality music to Justin Timberlake.

Why I believe Martisor rules:

It simply does not put any pressure on anybody. V-day pressures those in a relationship to be interesting and do something special (this is the part where if the boy forgot to plan the day he will never hear the end of it in most cases) if they feel like it or not and makes those not in a relationship feel lonely and sad (like Vivi very smartly mentioned)

Martisor is crystal clear, everyone knows exactly what to do: men give they’re loved ones that special little gift (which you can find in many different forms on every corner on every street that particular week) and women childishly accept it.

Thus men don’t compete on who did the coolest stuff on V-day and women boost their ego with every Martisor received, usually the more you get the better you feel even if girls don’t admit it

I strongly believe we should try to export it as Americans exported Valentine’s Day. But may springs will have past until then, taking into consideration that Romania can barely “export” her own country brand, let alone any customs.

It’s a bit late now but maybe next year we bloggers should start an early thought out campaign and show that we are proud of this tradition. This year I join Andressa in her SOS Martisor campaign with this post.

… or Digital Marketing Forum in just a few hours. Hope to meet a few people I admire from a distance

After a lot of exams the final score is in my favor (Dee:9 - Universities:2), the two losses were settled long before the match, “at the green table”. Bygone! A brand new semester with brand new possibilities and brand new stuff to work on. But FIRST I thought I’d start with a little vacation so my friends and I are going on a long weekend in Straja, Romania. So excited!

(A stranger’s photos of Straja.)

In case you’re also in an adventurous mood, I, or better said, Men’s Health has a little something for the modern Indiana Jones in you: a giftbox originally named Aventura.

It’s actually a contest of Men’s Health Magazine, Ro version , where you might have very good chances of winning a voucher (there, spoiled the giftbox surprise) which may get you to perform a cool sporty activity: rafting, flying, paintball etc.

Now I understand this prize is very manly and healthy, what I’m disappointed of is the contest itself.

All you have to do in order to enter the contest is to give them your personal details from email address to your position in your workplace. That’s all?! Why couldn’t you make me do a little something which may get me the cool prize? why don’t you want to interact with me? don’t you (by You I mean Men’s Health in case you thought I started to lose it ) want me to get to know you if I don’t already?

maybe I’ll like you and then YOU’ll get to know me…

And if I already know you, why do you want to know me so intimately and not reveal anything new and exciting? Show me yours and I’ll show you mine. I believe you have devious intentions my friend and I don’t think I like you anymore. (Read “devious” as FUTURE SPAM => I believe you have future spamming intentions .)

Translation of the above “analysis”: I don’t know who will want to enter Men’s Health contest in it’s current form.

Maybe spamlovers or naive net users… and loyal readers… it may not be intention of spam but that’s what it sounds like since I found out in the first place about the contest from a spam message to one of my Yahoo groups. Best of luck !

… in RO. Marketing related jobs are on every corner around here. I’m not joking. Companies of all sizes are scouting under ground and rock for that consultant, manager, specialist… all related to marketing.

If interested, here are some tips:

jobinmarketing.ro — a very user-friendly platform which provides strictly marketing-related job openings to all interested. it’s free, the offers are nicely structured: sales, advertising, PR, design etc. I also give it a big plus for the RSS feed. It’s good to have

Bogdana just opened a section in her blog’s sidebar with job openings in the industry after many recommendation requests for good people. The current opening is for a Senior Strategist for “amazing branding consultancy “.

Stefan Liute, Strategy Director at Grapefruit states in a recent post that he has been looking to hire Brand Strategist since December. Are the good people so hard to find? Guess so..

Maybe the last two openings are related, but anyway… case and point.

Being good at it is the tricky part.

source of pic.

update: Bogdana is keeping her promise and putting on the table two more apparently exciting job openings in “The Industry”.

just take a glimpse at the creation of the designer Zero Maria Cornejo. who wouldn’t feel special in one of these ?

if interested check out her online store here. there are AMAZING SALES at her fall/winter ‘07 collection. i believe it’s truly worth a peek.

i found this little jewel on a cute fashion blog i read. i read it because i was seriously considering at some point to start such a blog with a fashion-victim-in-a-good-way close friend. maybe we will one day, ’till then i’m happy with modette.ro

i wonder if the male version has a little tail … that was an obvious cliche i know

Short story to learn from:

My sister’s computer crashed. The obvious solution was formatting, but first you gotta save all the data, right? Since I’m a proud Computer Science student she turned to me for advice. I turned to my boyfriend

Anyway… I was trying to explain to her, on YM , how to take the hard, put it in another computer and thus making it like another big folder from where she could copy-paste her needed info.

‘ So sis? Do you understand?’

‘ Well… I thought of making it a slave on mom’s comp but I’m not sure I have the jumper anymore and it’s not a Seagate’

She’s 16. When I was 16… better not open that closet.

My point is that all the talking, market searches and trend spotting in advertising seems to give the advertisers a glimps on the generation they so desperately want to target. But do they really know who they’re talking to? This (RO) and this (RO) (in this last case I’m only talking about the naming originality of net division) seem to prove the contrary. Creativity is a tough cookie.

To creativly ilustrate the obvious trend, High tech teens on Freshome: