andydidyk.com

The great community at iStockphoto just let me know that two of my photos are being used in printed publications. The first, “Photoshop CS2 Killer Tips” contains an image of mine in the “Killer Web Tips” section, and the second is a biology textbook that contains one of my shots of a lion from a safari in Keyna, which you can see here. I’ve been selling stock photography through iStockphoto.com for about 3 years now, and it’s always gratifying to know where your images end up.

It’s also nice to have an outlet for creativity that pays for itself =).

Didyk is an uncommon last name. The 64,574th most popular last name (surname) in the United States, according to this site. And it’s a name that I proudly share with the roughly 120 other Didyks (mostly no relation) in the US and Canada. One of them is also named Andy Didyk (no relation), and he’s a prominent Biologist in Canada. He’s a nice guy, but as a communications professional I don’t appreciate having articles on the reproductive habits of shorebirds showing up in a search engine when someone is looking for me.

At my previous job at a small marketing communications firm, I had the opportunity to hire several new customer-facing staff. Everyone who’s been through this process knows that the typical “resume, then phone call, then on-site interview, then second interview, then contract negotiation” process is riddled with problems in terms of actually knowing who you are hiring. In many ways, it’s the business equivalent of marrying someone that you’ve been on 5 dates with because they happened to be more articulate than the other people in the pool. In an attempt to break through the facade, I decided to take an extra step and, after selecting resumes that were promising, searched for the candidates on Google, Myspace, Linkedin, and other social networking sites. The results? Most searches turned up nothing. For a select and unfortunate few, I struck HR gold by finding their personal websites that made it very clear at a glance that they would not be moving further in the interview process.

Here’s the point: if you are looking to make an impact in the new economy, and haven’t yet achieved mega-superstar status, you need to be proactive in managing your own brand online. Granted, if your name is already famous, like “Brad Pitt”, you’re going to have a harder time than if you’ve got a name that hasn’t been hijacked.

Hopefully andydidyk.com will rise above the shorebirds in a few months. I’ll let you know when it does.

Maybe I’m from a different school of thought than most people, but I think that warning labels that are just that, warnings, do little to deter consumers unless accompanied by a logical explanation. For instance, the warning label on my son’s can of powdered formula states, “WARNING- DO NOT HEAT BOTTLE WITH NIPPLE ATTACHED.” No explanation. I must confess, as a result of either urgency or laziness I have often disregarded that warning, to no ill effect. Positively nothing wrong has happened as a result.

Now consider that level of communication vs. this that of a warning label on the back of a bottle of drain cleaner, or other poisonous chemical. Phrases such as, “will cause severe burns”, “may cause blindness”, and of course “contents extremely flammable” clearly demonstrate the risk of misusing the product. However, so many other products contain warning labels such as those on a bottle of shampoo, “for external use only”, that have no rational explanation as to why downing a refreshing bottle of Head & Shoulders after a hard day’s work may be a bad idea.

Okay, so that last example was a bit silly. But the point is this: in the Information Age, consumers expect to know why, and in as conversational as a tone as possible. If my son’s formula said, “Do not heat bottle with nipple attached, because it might reduce the nutritional content of the formula” (I’m making this consequence up here) I’d be a lot more apt to follow it.

Just for fun, here’s a website that lets you create your own warning label:

http://www.warninglabelgenerator.com/

Enjoy!