Web writers have to adopt appropriate voice and tone while remaining pithy. Fake celebrity Tweeters have to adopt appropriate voice and tone while remaining super pithy—and telling pudding jokes. It’s a hard job.
“Even though he looked like a wax figure, Mr. Jackson could do a strange backward jig, the likes of which I’ve never seen. He will be missed!” @HalfPintIngalls
“zippity hippity dop! zooba shawow! with the people, and the places, and the ohhh try some jello pudding. it’s such a good snack SHEBOP!” @JelloPudding
We just scored some sleek new business cards at Brain Traffic. They are totally awesome, or as I like to say, "tawes."
Here’s the thing, though …
We have a ton of old cards. And I simply cannot stomach the idea of throwing them into the recycling bin. So I’m trying to think of creative ways to use them.
At Brain Traffic, we’re serious about fun. And coordinating outfits. That’s why we couldn’t pass up competing in Popular Front’s Foosfire tournament last month.
Office politics and a couple naysayers couldn’t stop the Brain Traffic team from representin’ – so what if we lost in the first round. So what, we say!
We got it all on video thanks to our good friend Nate Kadlac.
Prepare to laugh. Also cry. And perhaps appear dumbfounded and confused:
At Brain Traffic we care about content
When it’s bad, we so often lament
If you let us write
Like a thief in the night
We’ll rock it and you’ll say we’re god-sent. – Meghan Casey
Oh crap. Our content is a mess!
It’s causing us pain, strife, and stress
If our content is shabby
Our boss will be crabby
It’s time to call BT, oh yes. – Melissa Rach
We bought ourselves just one more whiteboard
For our schemas and plans to record
I left a quick note
My ideas to promote
But as usual, I was ignored. -Kristina Halvorson
There once was a lass called Kristin-er
At conferences, you might have seen her
Now she’s on the hook
To write a big book
And, after that she should take a breather. – Melissa Rach
Here’s what a good schedule can do
It should stick to your project like glue
So when things might fall apart
Don’t take it to heart
Just point and say, “Hey, buddy: It’s Due!" - Angie (1.0) Halama
A Brain Traffic web writer
Is a trained word and grammar fighter
Who defends user needs
Until her pencil bleeds
On a quest to make the internets brighter. - Angie (2.0) King
Control + Alt + Delete
Boy, you sure are neat
You lock my machine
So my Microsoft screen goes aquamarine
Which prohibits my crafty co-workers from hijacking my machine to send a prank email or tweet. - Julie Vollenweider
Limerick-Off
Elizabeth is a girl I know
She has black hair like a crow
She’s fun to tease
And when I please
I respond to her stories with, “So.” - Meghan Casey
Meghan is a white devil lady
Her stories are always very shady
She swears like a man
And smells like fake tan
And one day I’m going to put hot pizza in her shoes so it burns her feet off. - Elizabeth Saloka
Bonus Limerick!
I dated a girl in high school
Sometimes I thought she was cruel.
She’d put up a fight
At the end of the night
She wasn’t from Nantucket, I’ll tell you that. – Josh Foldy
2. Our favorite lunch spot is the Bulldog NE. But we doubt we’re their favorite customers. (Maybe if we called ahead before all 15 of us stomped through their doors …)
3. We’re really, really happy about our new dishwasher. Magically clean dishes.
4. We’ve had a TV for 6 months that we haven’t taken out of the box.
5. All meetings involve snarky comments. It’s why we have meetings.
6. Hilarity is one of our core values. For real.
7. Our fridge is stocked with string cheese, English muffins, sparkling water, Diet Coke and V8.
8. Kristina thinks V8 is gross. David, Julie and Elizabeth strongly disagree.
9. We love the fake grass in our conference room table.
10. Meghan and Elizabeth hate each other. Elizabeth says Meghan eats kittens. True story.
11. We’re almost out of beer for Disco Friday.
12. For Amy and Angie 1.0′s birthdays, we ordered a Pride & Pegasus birthday cake (e.g., Jane Austen on a pegasus). Best birthday cake ever.
13. Our receptionist team includes Liberace, T Rex, and a cow. We had to fire Buffy the Vampire Slayer because she was dressed inappropriately.
14. Erin and Meghan are in a fight.
15. We really, really, really want to hire more guys. We love dudes. And equal opportunity.
16. We love it when dogs visit the office. Our favorites: Molly, Wahoo, and Sam.
17. Chunks of things fall from our ceiling.
18. Delivery dudes, please pay attention: No one named Brian Traffic works here.
19. But if you are named Brian, and you’d like to work here, please let us know.
20. We have very loud shoes. We are the loudest walkers in the history of anyone who walked.
21. Favorite shoes around here: Danskos (particularly favored by IAs), MBT shoes (the anti-shoes), and Fluevogs.
22. We made our own Christmas stockings.
23. We work in the old Banks building. Many clients and visitors remember shopping here before it was turned into office space.
24. We’re within spitting distance of the Otter, Popular Front, and White Castle. But we do not spit on any of them.
Having recently been dubbed by some of my more outspoken coworkers as the Rose Nylund of Brain Traffic, I feel it’s incumbent upon me to dispel some long-standing myths about White Anglo-Saxon Protestant-raised Midwestern web writers:
We don’t carry around a copy of Strunk & White and/or a pocket thesaurus in our satchels. (We don’t carry satchels at all—ha!)
IMHO, we’re perfectly capable of txtng. w00t!
We’re not a bunch of failed librarians and/or poets and/or designers.
We don’t speak in bullet points. (But we are working on a top-secret technology that will one day allow us to hyperlink live conversations.)
We won’t correct your grammar . . . at least not to your face.
I’m totally kidding about number five. Because we will correct your grammar! But we’ll be super nice about it. And we’ll absolutely do it to your face. Better yet, we’ll leave a note. Because that’s a super thoughtful thing to do!
For a taste of just how thoughtful we are around here, take a gander at my desk. This homage to passiveaggressivenotes.com was masterminded by a couple of our particularly “creative” (read: smart-alecky) writers. That was soooooo nice of them!
This week’s installment of “Around the Office” concerns rapper and pop culture phenomenon MC Hammer. Or is he just Hammer now? Not sure anymore.
In any case, everyone at Brain Traffic is now five degrees from MCH. Here’s how the Baconian tree works:
1. My husband William, owns an Etsy shop.
2. He had the idea last week to create a poster pantomiming the lyrics to "2 Legit 2 Quit." Just for fun.
3. Two days later, Hammer TWITTERED about it.
4. William found out through a fellow Etsian, who must have been following Hammer (which raises its own questions).
5. We have established, with some surety, that it’s the real Hammer*.
* He has not responded to requests for information as to how he found the poster. But William experienced quite the surge to his shop from said Tweet, so we’re all very thankful. Aahhh, the wide world made much smaller by the internet.
Around 3 p.m., Brain Traffic takes a break (coordinated by Angie 1.0). It doesn’t happen every day. And not everyone can always participate. But those of us without pressing deadlines step away from our desks, often to pick up miniature containers of Play-Doh. (Thoughtfully supplied by Katie.)
Not many of us are expert sculptors. (Except Christine, who’s good at everything artistic and crafty. She’s our resident Martha Stewart, and she makes delicious toffee, too.) But creating works of art is beside the point.
The main goals of Play-Doh time are simple:
Relax. Taking time away from our desks to recharge, breathe, and de-stress.
Chat. We happen to enjoy each other’s company, and chatting often leads to laughter, and laughter is contagious—especially for Katie.
Play. Mashing colored clay in our hands gets our creative juices flowing. Play-Doh’s tagline states it best: “Imagination Taking Shape.”
Play-Doh time usually only lasts around 15 minutes. It’s not a huge investment of our time. But it is a creative investment in our quality of work.
A little playtime gets those brain cells moving again, energizing our creative process. And once they’re moving, there’s no stopping them. After our Play-Doh break, we knock out more great work. And just a couple hours later, we go home with a feeling of satisfied accomplishment, and some fun memories.
From left: Italian Dinner by Elizabeth (including a bottle of Chianti and spaghetti with meatballs), BT Skull by Angie 1.0, and Frog-Man with Bow Tie by Angie 2.0.
What’s it like at Brain Traffic, you ask? I believe my feelings would best be expressed in song.
No, I'm not going to sing. I'm going to reference.
What we do Believe it or not, there aren’t a whole lot of tunes with “content strategy” or “IA” or “web writing” in the title. But let’s face it, even if there were songs like that – who would listen to them? (I mean, except us.) There are, however, lots of great numbers that talk about what we do and how we think.
"It Takes Time to Build" – The Beastie Boys
“The Architect” – dEUS
“Oxford Comma” – Vampire Weekend
“The Writer” – The Drawing Board
Rhett & Link “Internet Overdose”
Who(m) we love Seriously. Like, these are BT spouse projects.
Where we live and work Oh, sure. There are the staples from Minneapolis – Prince, Soul Asylum, The Replacements – but there aren’t a whole heck of a lot of songs that talk about our town. These do …
That Dog "Minneapolis"
Vic Volare “I’m Gonna Miss Minneapolis”
How we roll Every Friday, we celebrate Disco Friday at the office. This event can include, but is not limited to: Disco tunes, a couple of beers, and an intercom session with Rick Astley piped through the entire office. (That's right, we RickRoll OURSELVES.)
