Beauty March 20, 2014

Pantene Pro-V Product Launch- Hair is what happened..

Let’s face it, we all love our hair and have tried Pantene Pro-V products at least once before.

I’ve tried many brands of hair products, from the high end to the low end and honestly, I believe in changing up your hair products anywhere from 3-6 months. Whether it is a whole new brand or within the brand.

Just like our face and every other part of our body and lives, everything changes over time. I remember about 8 years ago I had really curly wavy hair. I would wash my hair, air dry and POOF! curls and waves galore! Now it’s different. Air drying gets me minimal volume and waves. Just the natural evolution of hair.

Feb 13th, a day before Valentine’s Day, I was invited to the Pantene Pro-V product launch on King street, downtown Toronto to be pampered. If you’re familiar with Toronto you’ll know this venue. Right across from Shoppers Drug Mart at King & Peter and was used for marketing TIFF, Toronto International Film Festival.

Upon entering, I was approached to have my coat taken and my information. Everyone invited, had registered ahead for an allotted time to be treated to their ‘Pantene Beautiful Hair Bar’ services. The venue had a pristine ambiance. Furniture, tables, counters, make-up station and the waiting lounge were all white, to fit the salon look and feel.

Here’s a vine I made on the day of:

While you wait in the lounge, you’re welcomed to do your nails at the nail bar, help yourself to treats and Starbucks hot drinks; all complimentary.

The lounge:

The blow dry bar was set up with 6 stations and had a featured chalkboard wall, where guests left positive, uplifting notes of their beautiful hair experience.

My hairstylist, talented Matthew Lill from Shagg salon in Yorkville styled my hair.
First, he went through a questionnaire to find out what hair solutions I was looking for and then matched my needs to Pantene products. We both agreed that the Ultimate 10 all in one Pantene line was perfect.

My finished look thanks to Matthew was wavy, bouncy curls, all done with a straightener. I loved the result!

The products I went home with:

I’ve been using these products for about a month now to write an honest review and love them!
Here’s a list of the Ultimate 10‘s solutions:

• Repair for Rough Hair
• Strength Against Damage
• Silky Softness
• Brilliant Shine
• Smoothing
• Moisture
• Frizz Control
• Gentle Cleaning
• Manageability
• Detangling

The only solution I’m unsure about is Frizz Control. However, because of our unforgiving cold weather this winter, I suspect nothing would be able to battle the frizz I had to deal with.

Overall, great event and excellent products.

TOP 7 FRAGRANCE FOR MEN AND WOMEN

Friday Faves March 15, 2014

Happy Friday! – Friday Faves

Happy Friday everyone! What a productive week! If you took a minute to just quickly look back at your week, what would the highlights be?

Here are some uplifting faves from this week. Enjoy!

Fave Song: This song is hilarious and I love the beat. Don’t lie, you’ve listened to this song more than once!

Fave Dessert Pin:

Fave Tweet: Had a documentary marathon this week. All of which were about eating healthy and the benefits of eating your greens. This is a quote from one of the documentaries we watched.

The doctor of the future will no longer treat men w/ drugs, but rather will cure & prevent disease with #nutrition. – Thomas Edison

— Humara Kausar (@HumaraKausar) March 11, 2014

Fave Quote: Be brave and take that leap of faith and do what you have to do. Take that opportunity and make it your future.

Fave Funny Video: As Ellen DeGeneres would say, “You never know what funny can do”. She gave him a shout out and wants him to come on to her show. Well done kiddo.

Happy Friday :”)

Marketing March 7, 2014

Women: Social Media Leaders – Why are they on top of the Social industry?

Is it a big surprise that women are social media leaders today?

(P.S Happy International Women’s Day!)

Let me just dive right in. Historically it is proven that women understand emotions and are more nurturing than men. Women are known to have a higher emotional intelligence.

is regarded as a far stronger predictor of success – in work, love and life – than traditional measures of intelligence, with 90% of leadership success being attributed to a high EQ.*

I believe emotional intelligence plays a key role in social interactions. A huge aspect of social media is interacting and engaging with your audience. Emotionally captivating them to continue to follow you on which ever social platform it may be. Women love to nurture relationships and create a strong foundation for a long term relationship. Don’t get me wrong, there are men out there who can do exactly the same thing. But a higher percentage of women can do it better and it comes naturally.

Take a look at the below infographic and tell me what you see from an overall perspective. Do women spend more time leading the social media world than men do?:

Could it be that women love their smartphones and social platforms more than men? The answer is YES. According to research compiled by FinanceOnline, which was taken from PEW, Nielsen, and Burst Media, women run the show when it comes to social media.

The big concern now, is desktop usage is migrating to mobile use. Will men adopt to this change? Well, only time will tell. My solution, as social marketers we should be focused on how we can get men more excited about social. We need to see more studies on what captures their attention and then evolve.

Friday Faves February 28, 2014

TGIF – Friday Faves!

FINALLY! Friday is here! It has been a long week catching up to work that I missed while I was away in New York for Social Media Week. Again, thank you so much Nokia for having me. I put together some things that made me happy, smile & LOL this week. Enjoy!

Fave Video: I haven’t had a girls night with my besties in a long time due to our busy schedules. When I saw this video it made me feel all warm and cuddly inside.

Fave Motivation: The time when I contemplated whether I should get up for a yoga session, and then I saw this. Done deal. Up and ready to go!

Fave Hairstyle: I come across some pretty cool hairstyles everyday and I save them on Pinterest or in my phone. Thinking, one of these days I’ll take some extra time to try it. My goal is to try one every week. Okay maybe every month. Hehe.

Fave Recipe: I’m always on the hunt for inspirational recipes. I bake and cook almost everyday and I love it! I’m in love with this recipe for nerdy brownies and subscribed to see more of her videos!

Fave Office Decor: Kind of late to the Valentine Share party, but I have some of these in my office and every time I see them, without fail. I giggle. :”) Good ol’ Rob Ford.

Happy Friday :”)

Events February 28, 2014

Wearable Tech in Fashion

Wearable technology has come a long way. There was that brief time in history when some people either didn’t understand bluetooth ear pieces or just simply hated them. I reckon mostly because they thought they were being talked too, but in reality the person was talking into their ear piece. Now technology has evolved into being a part of us.

Now we’ve been seeing technology hit the runways! DVF (Diane von Furstenberg) used the Google glasses to capture the DVF creative process from a different perspective, which was accomplished by having the people involved with the entire process of making the show happen, by wearing Google glasses.

DVF created a short film to show her Fashion Show through the model, stylist and designers eyes via Google glass:

Then there’s the new dress that changes colour depending on a woman’s mood. The Bubelle Dress is made up of two layers, the inner layer contains biometric sensors that pick up a person’s emotions and projects them in colours onto the second layer, the outer textile.

Following the trend that only continues to grow, Social Media Week in New York had Tech In Motion host a Wearable Tech Fashion Show.

To mention a few of the contributors of the show:

Atlas Wearables (Austin): Presenting fitness tracker
Augmate (NYC): Presenting Google Glass and Vuzix m100
BrickSimple (Philly): Presenting Google Glass
Continuum Fashion (NYC): Presenting 3D printed shoes
Everpurse (Chicago): Presenting chargeable clutches
Sensoree (San Fran): Presenting mood clothing

If you missed the Fashion Show you can watch it below via livestream:

The health and fitness market brought out many products that look great when worn. Bands that measure how much you’ve run, check your heart beat or measure your health in various categories.

What will be the next best thing when Fashion and Technology collide? 3D printed clothes, clothes that change based on weather automatically? With imagination and determination, anything is possible.

Check out this infographic for more info about current day wearable tech:

Marketing February 25, 2014

Facebook+Whatsapp sitting in a tree…

Have you heard? Facebook and Whatsapp are getting married

When I first heard about this I wasn’t surprised. I was attending Social Media Week in New York as the SMW Reporter and had been in a seminar with BuzzFeed’s CEO & Founder Jonah Peretti. He was being interviewed by Toby Daniels Founder & Executive Director of Social Media Week.

When Toby asked Jonah about the future of sharing, that was when my ears perked up. Jonah went on to explain that he was starting to notice that their very popular BuzzFeed articles and quizzes were being dark shared and that people were starting to share less on Facebook and more across messaging platforms. Now, when he said this I got excited. It’s so very true. I have numerous amounts of Whatsapp chat groups and know that almost each group has a few shares a day with me. As a matter of fact, I’ve received BuzzFeed quizzes from friends in groups on Whatsapp too. There’s a steady shift between people wanting to share with articles, images etc with the masses to personalized and grouped sharing. Maybe Google was onto something with their Google+ selective group sharing capabilities.

It was all coming together in my head. When Jonah mentioned dark sharing. Many people in the audience at Social Media Week were boggled by the term. Had no idea what it meant. Thank you Toby! He jumped on it and asked Jonah to explain it further.

Dark sharing is a referral source that you see but has no exact source of where that traffic came from. So people who share via Whatsapp, BBM or other messaging services – their shares are not shown to BuzzFeeds analytics team. Right now BuzzFeed see’s that 20% of traffic is dark.

Marketers, advertisers and social media people of the world are thinking the acquisition will bring ads, change the platform, increase the cost of using the service, but no one has thought about behind the scenes benefits for Facebook. It’s the information of sharing that really matters to digital companies right now. That is where the future is.

Did Jonah know something before everyone else? Does he have a crystal ball that showed him the future Facebook acquisition? Or was it possibly an intelligent guess?

Let me know what you think with your comments below.

Events February 20, 2014

SMW NYC Official VIP Opening Party – Hosted by Nokia

To kick off Social Media Week (SMW) in NYC all insiders were invited to attend the opening party. The SMW reporters and I picked up our insider passes ahead of time and had the privilege of getting a glimpse of the venue, Highline Stages. The venue is so fitting for SMW NYC. It has this loft like layout, with exposed brick and wood features. (The interior designer in me wants to elaborate but I’ll stay on topic.)

7pm and the line-up of people to get into the opening party were already getting antsy. So glad the weather wasn’t too bad. I can’t say the same for the reporters who came all the way from Singapore, India and even New Mexico which at this time is 16°! I have way too many -30° wind chill warnings to compare too.

The SMW NYC Reporters & I:

As soon as you enter Highline Stages you’re welcomed by SMW representatives to sign in and then have your picture taken, emailed, shared to social platforms via 3 available tablets and printed! Picture taking couldn’t have been any more interactive.

Okay, where should I start?! There was an abundance of food everywhere. Vendors like Chipotle had tortilla chips with guacamole, other stations had pretzels, Whole Foods had bread with different spreads, candy and Kyotofu Bakery had lots of gluten free desserts. My favourite was the rich and smooth Miso Brownie. It was an open bar for those who wanted to drink. As some of you know I do own a turn table and enjoy mixing beats here and there. Not to brag or anything, but I can definitely recognize a great DJ. We had DJ Mick turning beats for us.

Poppin’ stationary had set up booth there and were giving away bright colored notebooks a long with pens. They set up a colorful photo booth area with some pretty awesome props! Additionally they had a twitter contest for those who tweeted an image of the freebies a long with their hashtag #Workhappypink (depending on which color of stationary you wanted you’d change pink for blue in the hashtag etc) The winner received a full desktop set from poppin’. Then there was Yelp giving out red sunglasses and sweat bands to spread the social cheer along with other brands that gave out freebies as well.

One of my favourites were the #NokiaPods! Brilliant idea of creating these hideaways from noise to charge your phone or take notes from the events. They worked great as working stations during the week.

If you haven’t checked out SMW NYC, you should make your way there tomorrow and catch the last day!

Events February 15, 2014

Social Media Week: SMW Reporter Competition

I’ve been following social media week ever since I attended my first Social Media Week (SMW) event in Toronto at the Windsor Arms Hotel in Yorkville. If you attend the seminars that can benefit you or the company you work for, than you really leave the event with great ideas and with a fresh outlook of what social media can do for you and where it’s going right now.

If you think about it, it’s a brilliant idea! Everyday there’s something new coming out. There’s so much social noise and no one to set the rules and help you understand it all. People new to social media are either looking the other way or just stunned, like a deer caught in the headlights. SMW brings it altogether in informative seminars, interactive workshops and live feeds.

Roughly 2 weeks ago SMW posted on their site and tweeted an opportunity for Social Media fanatics of the world for a chance to win a week-long adventure. They wanted to see how much you can do with only a few seconds of video on Vine, Instagram or YouTube. Three winners would have a chance to be a #SMWReporter in New York City! Even better, since Nokia is sponsoring SMW NYC, we’ll be bringing you the news with the awesome Nokia 1020. 41MP *drool*

Competing against the whole world I didn’t think I had a chance, but I did it because I enjoyed the challenge. After all, Vine, Instagram and YouTube are supposed to be fun. And that’s it. I had a lot of fun coming up with the story and compiling it together for one submission.

My take was that Social Media is EVERYWHERE. I found it everywhere I went. In the few days that I had, I tweeted different Vines of where I was finding SMW and on the last day put them together to tell the whole story on YouTube. Here’s the story:

UPDATE: I won the competition and I can’t wait to attend SMW NYC!
Check out Nicky Yates post about the SMW Reporter winners: here.

Follow the hashtag #SMWReporter on Twitter, Vine & Instagram to keep up with our live updates from the event. Those of you who are attending, see you there!

Follow up video of SMW 2014:

Beauty January 30, 2014

How to Prevent The First Signs of Aging

Wouldn’t you love to just walk out the door sans make up? Let your skin breath, touch your face without make up coming off…ah the possibilities. And there you have it! The first step to preventing the first signs of aging is giving your skin a break. Toss your make up for a day and just give your skin a treat.

I remember the day I started giving my skin a break schedule. My cosmetics manager at the time had told me about a story she read.There was a lady in her 40’s who went for plastic surgery and the surgeon found foundation under her skin. Whether it’s true or not- UGH! Gross. You know all those days where you were too tired to take off your make up before bed? Thought it transferred to your pillow only? It didn’t. It lives under your skin and stops oxygen from getting to your skin cells. Click here for some more information about sleeping with make-up and how it can speed up the skin aging process.

Sunglasses aren’t only for fashion statements. They protect your eyes from harsh UVA/UVB rays. Also, prevent you from squinting, which causes wrinkles around the eyes. Do you wear prescription glasses? Try wearing them more often or get contact lenses. Because squinting is often done to see better as well. I’m guilty of this. Rubbing your eyes is also another damaging culprit. I would always tell my clients, the skin around your eyes is about as thin as a tissue paper. Handle with care.

Changing your diet and incorporating exercise into your life makes a wonder of a difference in how you feel and the way you look. Eat healthy and try your best to work up a sweat, at least for 30 mins each day. I find the 30 day challenges are motivating and work great as a quick workout for someone with a busy schedule.

I love skin care products! Reading about them, learning the technologies behind each product and packaging sells to me. Yes, even marketers get caught up with packaging. Your skin care routine is going to be your ninja fighting against those first signs of aging. I started a skin care routine when I was 16 and I only started to see results in my early 20’s. So that goes to show, that it does take time to see major results. Same goes for seeing damage in your skin, when you lack in caring for it. Sun damage, age spots, wrinkles, pigmentation. You see most of these signs over time. We all tend to forget that the damage is happening now, you just can’t see it yet. Start with your basics: Cleanser and moisturizer.

Lastly, prevent aging by being young at heart. Smile, laugh and just have fun.
Life is beautiful, enjoy it!

Desserts January 26, 2014

Sweet & Salty Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

I have been a HUGE fan of Dad’s chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies for as long as I can remember. Recently I found them in the chewy kind and I just fell deeper in love. With a cold glass of milk, you can easily eat a half a box. Or at least I can.

Then one day my…

“I wanna bake something with chocolate from scratch”

feeling kicked in and my husband suggested I take a shot at baking these yummy creations. After two bakes, we have mastered the very best chocolate chip and oatmeal cookie recipe.

I know I’ve said this before in my previous recipes. I mind as well make a motto of it.

Taste it, tweak it & make it yours.

Everyone likes a different amount of salt or chocolate or whatever it may be in their food. So choose accordingly. Take risks, baking should be fun!

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 3/4 all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon of baking soda
3 1/2 cups of quick cooking oats
1 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips OR milk chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Don’t over mix. Cream for about 4-5 mins by hand. This ensures your cookies don’t fall flat. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture until just blended.

Mix in the quick oats, walnuts, and chocolate chips. Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto un-greased baking sheets.
Bake for 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

TIP: Chill the mix for 2 hours prior to baking and the cookies won’t spread.

Hum

Let’s face it, we all love our hair and have tried Pantene Pro-V products at least once before.

The blow dry bar was set up with 6 stations and had a featured chalkboard wall, where guests left positive, uplifting notes of their beautiful hair experience.

Happy Friday everyone! What a productive week! If you took a minute to just quickly look back at your week, what would the highlights be? Here are some uplifting faves from this week. Enjoy!

Happy Friday :”)

Is it a big surprise that women are social media leaders today?

FINALLY! Friday is here! It has been a long week catching up to work that I missed while I was away in New York for Social Media Week. Again, thank you so much Nokia for having me. I put together some things that made me happy, smile & LOL this week. Enjoy!

Happy Friday :”)

If you missed the Fashion Show you can watch it below via livestream:

Have you heard? Facebook and Whatsapp are getting married

The SMW NYC Reporters & I:

“I wanna bake something with chocolate from scratch”

Taste it, tweak it & make it yours.

Happy Friday everyone! What a productive week! If you took a minute to just quickly look back at your week, what would the highlights be?

Here are some uplifting faves from this week. Enjoy!