When you see magazines filled with ads with beautiful women with flawless skin, how much do you think all of that is “natural”?

In 2011 Lancôme ad that featured Julia Roberts, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned the distribution of the ad and stated that it “must not appear in its current form again“. In an article that addresses this topic, they compare the faces of “real” Julia Roberts and photoshopped Julia Roberts and address that it is indeed misleading for the image to be so unreal:

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I don’t think there’s anything in the world that can make our skin look that immaculate…

This ban does bring up how beauty ads are often overemphasized, but ethics also plays a large role in this. It’s evident that beauty ads have given themselves a negative role for portraying beauty as being “perfect”. We are constantly being guided into a misconception that beauty in media and magazines are only acceptable. Society is persistently getting attacked with self-esteem issues and these ads are not helping.

I know that the overall goal of advertising companies are to not support natural beauty in society, but to generate revenue by selling false insight on what beauty should look like. Perhaps they should consider removing their socially harmful ways and start using respectful ethics to promote the truth.

NOTE: I have nothing against Julia Roberts. She’s awesome.

A recent iClicker question stumped me.

What motivates you the most? a) Money? b) Power? c) Other?

You would think that as an amateur business student, I’d click money or power. Yes I do want a stable job in the future with good money, but for some odd reason – I didn’t hesitate to press “other”. I know the other two options are not my priorities, but at that moment I didn’t know what my “other” was…

Money, in some sense, is a contributing factor to finding a job, but it’s definitely not EVERYTHING. Happiness is part of it. Making just the right amount of money would give me opportunities to play a charitable and supportive part to society, rediscover and rekindle passions of mine, and experience cultures through travel. In my opinion, I hold happiness at a much higher importance than money or power. I would not leave a happy job for a job that would give me more pay. Success is not necessarily defined through wealth or title advancements, there’s something more to it.

An article on the top 10 jobs that make people happy made me realize that money is not the only factor.

Maybe this has sparked a little reflection in you. Take time and think about it. 🙂

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What do you think of this?
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There’s no doubt that Facebook is currently one of the leading social media sites and they’re constantly trying to discover ways to keep their users connected and engaged.

In a recent TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Mark Zuckerburg revealed that Facebook may implement a search engine based on their 1 billion daily search queries (1/3 of daily Google searches). Does Google face a possible threat coming their way? I mean, Facebook does carry the tools to recreate the social network scene. As Facebook is linked to a person’s social life, the possible searches could be like “What movie should I see tonight?” and the recommendations would be based on friends’ recent posts and location check-in’s. Even though I feel weird at the thought of Facebook becoming a search engine, I would personally go to a movie that my friend recommended than some movie review site.

With Google trying to enter Facebook’s domain with Google+, I think the lack of success was due to firm establishment that Facebook already has. You can even call it an obsession for Facebook, people are comfortable with it. Even though users may lean towards their friends’ opinions from Facebook search than Google+, I don’t think anyone could ever replace the rather infamous “Google it!” tagline.

Article: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-13/watch-out-google-facebook-s-social-search-is-coming

Social Entrepreneur? If you asked me what this term meant a week ago, I would’ve thought it had to do with being social and talkative to become an entrepreneur. Well in some sense… it incorporates the act of being social, but it’s far more than that.

A classic definition would be: a person who uses creative business practice to start a social services organization. It is someone who acknowledges a social issue and uses entrepreneurial fundamentals to create and manage a venture to make a social change. These are people who are ambitious, results-oriented and mission driven. They really want to seek out societal change. A typical entrepreneur would base their success off of profit and return, but for a social entrepreneur – they base their successful impact on positive returns to society.

I think these individuals are extremely respectable because not only do they carry the leadership characteristics of an entrepreneur, but they represent a vision and purpose to their goal – a goal that’s not to maximize profits.

I may be dreaming too big, but with the experience and education I get here at Sauder, I hope to make a social impact for some people around me, if not our generation.

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