Yet another great post from Thinking Aloud, a thoughtful and interesting blog by Inaki Escudero. So good in face that we're not only linking to it, but we're straight-up copying it here. (Although obviously, we're giving him full-throttle credit.)

On personal branding ...

6 great questions to ask yourself. And you should be prepared to answer.

I interview a lot of creative professionals: Art directors, designers, copywriters, interactive designers, developers, planners and strategists, producers and I even get to talk to account people.

In most cases I don't follow the "resume-driven" script. I much rather look for non scripted answers. I look for the real drivers, the human needs not just needing a job.

I honestly love interviewing candidates, but most of the times I'm left with a dissapointed feeling. I think people for the most part don't prepare well for an interview.

This is more tragic when we think that in advertising, branding is the most important concept one must understand.

Personal branding, just like corporate branding is mostly about differentiation and to be substantially different is about knowing yourself.

I thought that I could help potential candidates by providing a list of questions, which answers could help you during the process of branding yourself:

• What value are you working on?
• What do you do to build, manage and maintain your network?
• If I Google you, what will I find?
• What is the last thing you created?
• What do you do to expose yourself to new ideas and new thinking on a regular basis?
• What keeps you awake at night? 
• What's your goal?

Your brand has a lot of competitors out there, make sure that your stand for something else than money, titles and ego driven awards.

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This is a great little sarcastic twist from Twitter on all of those terribly over-scripted, over-thought recruitment videos out there on the market. It's fun to poke fun.

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OK, even if you conceded that a large portion of these stats are people watching other people eat sandwiches or pull off Jackass-like stunts, the leftover is still enough to convince you that you've got to have some presence on YouTube.

Without further delay, here are the high points, thanks to searchenginewatch.com.

• 4 billion videos are watched worldwide on YouTube daily.
• Every second, one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube.
• 24 hours of video is uploaded every 24 seconds.
• 9 months of video is uploaded every two hours.
• A decade’s worth of video is uploaded every day.
• Every 10 days, a century of video is uploaded.

Absolutely mind-boggling, although with content like this, it's hard not to believe that the stats wouldn't be higher. OK, we have a personal connection to this one, but still.

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We stumbled across this while browsing the web. At first, it just seemed like a feel-good video someone had made, but we followed the dots and ended up on the website. Turns out they sell some pretty cool stuff. Can't describe what it is, but it's pretty cool.

Check it out here.

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Retail has become so competitive that even their own packaging is a battle ground. The rise of containers-as-storefront is something that is hard to miss.

It's good to see them taking a turn at moving out of the dreaded mall. And they look a little more protected from smash-and-grab criminals, too.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Ali. 70? Wow. Too bad he didn't go into advertising. Could have been a good copywriter. Guess the boxing thing turned out alright.

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For all of you 'classic' David Ogilvy-esque copywriters out there, you may be running into today's challenges of form vs. function. Here's a great article about how a balance of fluff and findability is shifting the power towards search and social.

Our favorite section of the article is this below. Click below to read the full article.

At first I was skeptical, borderline insulted. But when I saw how a slight tweak to my text would make my page views skyrocket, I became a convert. Now, instead of organizing my thoughts into pithy paragraphs for readers, I engineer my words so they’re algorithmically attractive. I rewrite my headlines to make them more enticing to Google. I tag them with dozens of relevant phrases to boost my authority on specific topics. I add search terms to my text to further optimize my SEO ranking. I admit that I don’t totally understand what that last sentence even means.

Here Are The Top 5 Things That Bother Me About This:

1.    It has changed the way I write. If a bulleted listicle is proven to perform better than a well-crafted essay, I’m going to write the listicle.

2.   My headlines are noticeably less interesting than they used to be. But, as an editor once told me, clever headlines are dead, unless you’re The New York Post.

3.   After I publish a story, I spend an hour feeding it to social networks and aggregators when I should be writing the next piece. That doesn’t even count the hours spent composing the perfect social media haikus that serve as the lead-ins to my links. It’s reducing my per-word rate to pennies.

4.    I stay up at night worrying about how many people will tweet my as-yet-unpublished story. Add to that the endless perusing of other people’s Twitter streams to see what they’re reading and writing about and where my work can fit into the conversation.

5.    I wonder if I’m still a writer, or if I’m a content creator.

Read full article here: The Top 5 Things That Bother Me About This Headline, by Alissa Walker from Good Magazine.

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When your company is owned by an Irishman, you hear about rugby all the time. If you've watched the French beat down a few teams, you can't help but notice the beast on the field known as l'Homme des Cavernes— the Caveman.

Here he is cashing in on fame and cards in a French spot from Pokerstars.

How do you know when a guy like Chabal is bluffing? He tells you. Then you quietly keep playing and let him win. That's how.

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Uh, been there. Done that.

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Awesome stuff as usual from 1201 alum Matt Altmix with his wife Kate and their best buddy.

Matt left us to tap into his photographic talents. Seems like he's figured it out. If you're getting married - or anything like that, don't make a move until you reach out to them. You'll get stuff like this.

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Mercury. Now in convenient portable size.

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So consistently good, it's getting to be boring. If boring was great.

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Amen.

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via thisisindexed.com

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This must have been a lot of fun to film. Doritos seems to be resurrecting this one after its initial Super Bowl run. Great stuff from a user-submitted Crash the Superbowl campaign.

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Sprite spit-take when this one came on. Hilarious.

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Must be something about summer. Our posts are trending to the alcohol and guys-standing-by-the-road-flashing people level of humor. Anyway, here's another great pair of spots from Heineken and Heineken Light. 

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We love this effort by these guys in Sunday's stage of the Tour. Unfortunately, we can't tell who the sponsor is, or we'd give them all kinds of props. Nevertheless, inspired work.

There's a joke in here about a bigger sign, but we won't go there.

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A) Pretty much ANYTHING with Run DMC in it is awesome.
B) Roof parties are about the best kind of parties around, even if they're in LA instead of New York.

Mix the two, add a whole lot of Coronas and you get a pretty great commercial.

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