I'm a marketing student, which means I have more opinions about how a brand should present itself than the brand does. That's not a confession, just the truth. Every essay in this journal came from somewhere: a class discussion, an ad campaign that got under my skin, or hearing every commercial on the radio at least a hundred times during my morning commute.

I'm not pretending to run an agency out of a dorm room. What I am doing is paying close attention, the kind most people reserve for a full-time job, and writing down what I notice before I lose the thread. If that sounds like something you'd want in your corner eventually, I'm taking notes on your brand too.