When I heard the news that Heath Ledger was found dead yesterday, I couldn’t help being a little skeptical. Not to be disrespectful of the dead, but I thought in the first minutes of the reports that it might all be a clever ruse by a very risky marketing team.

Let me take you back in my experience leading up to his death.

I had been researching the viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight in preparation of doing a post about the numerous things they were doing right to get fans involved. Not having even participated in any of the ARG–or alternate reality game–action, I was still excited to read about all of the various games put together for fans of the movie.

The campaign is being done by famed 42 Entertainment, known for the Halo 2 ARG ILoveBees. It has created a deep reality spanning both the Web and real world for the fans. You can read all about the various elements of the viral marketing efforts in the “Marketing” section of the Wikipedia entry for The Dark Knight.

Recently, clues from the viral marketing campaign led fans to various bakeries in cities around the country where they received cakes containing hidden evidence bags with a real cell phone inside. After following the given instructions and calling a phone number from the cake, fans were left waiting for the Joker to call.

The second factor in my skepticism came from a podcast by Revision3 called The Totally Rad Show. In a recent episode, co-host Alex Albrecht mentioned how he felt Christopher Nolan was really taking up the idea that the Joker was “undead” since he is killed before coming back to life as one of Batman’s greatest villains. Many reports online were citing the many surprises awaiting moviegoers in Nolan’s imagining of the Joker.

Now that we are up to speed, enter the news of Heath Ledger dying just weeks later. The idea crept into my head that this news might be part of the campaign as well.

Obviously, this theory was blown out of the water after numerous official, confirmed reports of Ledger’s body being found and the reactions of his family. For those few minutes before more information was known, I theorized that 42 Entertainment might have blown the ARG open.

Can you imagine how insane that level of depth and immersion would have been? People were rushing to CNN.com to see the breaking news headline that Heath Ledger was found unresponsive and possibly dead. In that moment, what if, as the Joker himself says, “It’s all part of the plan.”

Of course, they would have had to retract the staged death quickly and made sure that the correct information was known. It would have been controversial.

If Ledger had prepped his family and close friends for the news and the ARG team was ready to go with the next stage–a Joker call from the beyond perhaps–that would have been an epic ARG event. If they had staged the faking of his death in a few months, just before the movie’s release, the stunt might have made a huge impact with fans and the mainstream public as well without breaking fans out of the ARG state of mind.

Despite how impossible it seems, part of me almost wishes that this theory was the truth. We wouldn’t have lost a talented actor so young in his career, and the move would have completely blown any ARG to date out of the water by bringing participants down to reality with the idea of death before pulling them deeper back to the game with the reveal.

What a great way to re-introduce the character of the Joker for longtime fans looking for new life in the Batman saga. It would have been interesting.

I work two jobs. My first job is a day job that pays me enough to be full-time where I get to practice public relations, and my second job is blogging on my three current sites, ugachaka.net, Fantasy Football Fools and here at wannabeMogul.com, which doesn’t exactly pay me full-time but one can always dream.

Both jobs allow me to exercise my passions. Blogging lets me explore my passion for writing, sharing and interacting while experimenting with online marketing. Working in public relations helps me grow my PR, networking and business skills. In both of these roles, I have fun.

After reading what Seth had to say today about workaholics and passionate workers, I think it’s safe to say that I am a passionate worker but NOT a workaholic.

The passionate worker doesn’t show up because she’s afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it’s a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation… because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it’s a lot more fun than watching TV.

I come home from one job to jump into the next because it IS a lot more fun than watching TV. Maybe more post-college workers will start to be this kind of workaholic now that the Internet allows you to easily enjoy a two-job lifestyle.

The best advice I can give to any college grad is to look for a job that you are passionate about. If you can, at least when your friends acuse you of being a workaholic, you can tell them that you are just a passionate worker.

A guest post I wrote for Business Pundit this week went live today. I have to thank Rob for presenting me to a new audience of business moguls and young leaders. If you haven’t seen the post, check it out and become a regular of Business Pundit like me. The post discusses a new breed of employee that may or may not define the generations coming out of college today. I hope you enjoy it.

For those of you here for the first time, consider subscribing to my RSS feed and perusing the recent posts. Here’s a few you might find of interest:

• Syncing Social: Using Twitter with Facebook and Pownce Syncing
• American youth want to live the dream
• Branding: Do it or someone else will do it for you

I read a great article over at MarketingDeviant.com discussing the effect of bad chief officers.

I can’t emphasize enough how important I think it is to surround yourself with quality, motivated people–especially in a startup situation where your few employees are led by that strong support of the chief officers. CEOs cannot make any calls based upon personal relationships. They must pick the people who will create the best environment for success to help them lead the company. Keeping the bad ones only makes it worse.

The presence and influence of bad chief officers’ makes the employees under them revolt and despair. From such corruption lies perversion. All the good employees will be gone and the rest of the workforce will adapt to the changes and become just as corrupted as their superior. How can a company survive if everyone is only thinking about profiting themselves? What is worse is when these officers start to work with the enemy.

The blame for failure in leadership always falls on the CEO whether it is their own leadership or the leadership of those close officers around them. Make sure you select the best, inspiring people who get the job done, and don’t be afraid to quickly replace those individuals who don’t fit the needs of the job.

A recent post on Young Entrepreneur quoted a survey showing that young entrepreneurs prefer using email in business.

It was found that when going after clients the rate of phone use drops by 30% for entrepreneurs in their 20’s compared to their counterparts in their 40’s.

Are we hiding behind our email or is it simply an evolution in the way our generation prefers to do business?

Growing up in a pure Internet social network, many young people getting out of college today probably consider it the norm to communicate through Web 2.0 tech and instant messages rather than an in-person meetings or phone calls. We all grew up socializing on instant messenger clients outside of our regular school day. We ran Xangas and blogs for our friends to keep up with our daily actions. We even got the benefit of Facebook and Twitter just before graduating, so that even when we were busy finishing up classes and getting a job, there was always a social network online for us.

Whether it is this upbringing or not, I realize in business that I prefer to email first and call later. In an email, I feel like I can fully introduce myself and establish a rapport without interrupting someone’s day or badgering them. Once intros are aside, I can move on to the phone.It would seem like our first instinct would be emailing others. In that way, I don’t fully rely on email as my only form of communication.

Does our Internet-first nature make us bad business people?

The study points out that face-to-face meetings are more successful in business and that email is slightly less effective–20 percent less–than these face-to-face meetings.

I don’t personally believe that preferring to communicate through email is that detrimental to business. In sales, one might argue that phone time is the best way to close a deal, but in other business functions, email can certainly be more productive because of the multitasking and less intrusive approach. Email has caught on the primary communication tool for business, so barring getting caught in the spam filter, I feel like it is the most effective way to communicate with business associates and clients throughout my day.

I can email seven people in the time it might take me to make one phone call, so by using email, I manage my time better and get more messages across to others. When a matter is urgent or a relationship is there, I can also jump on the line and use the phone.

If you are about to break into the world of business, think about your own use of email over the phone. If you are a completely email-centric person and use it as a crutch, you should make an effort to build up your skills on the phone. Even if you do think email is a more effective way of communicating–as I do–you have to keep in mind that your bosses and superiors will most likely be of the generation that prefers to go to the phones more often. They will want to see that you are able and willing to handle the phone side of business in addition to your tidy inbox.

In the Texas Startup Blog’s top 5 things that startups need and what to avoid, I noticed a similarity relating to my post about seeking an office.

When you are young and not so full of cash, the best thing to do for a a business is to make the office a comfortable place to function. You might even go off the deep end providing comforts like extra plush chairs. All five of the top 5 items mentioned by the Texas Startup Blog are related to making the office comfortable. Money is better spent on these comforts than intense spending in advertising or over-the-top software.

• Comfortable chairs.
• Creature comforts such as ergonomic keyboards (if they are requested).
• Bigger monitors.
• Free soft drinks.
• White boards.

The benefit of this investment may not be immediately obvious, but by making it more comfortable to be there, you not only breed goodwill and morale by making the office nice for the workers, but you also get a higher production out of these morale-boosted and comfy workers who can stay at the office longer.

With free caffeine, nice viewing monitors and plenty of white board space to dream–or plot–tons of work can get done no matter how many hours of the week it takes. I know I do.

Of course, these tips are mainly geared at tech startups who need the large screen real estate for coding and engineering projects, not necessarily every small business that you have in mind. Free soft drinks and white boards can be fairly universal, but chairs/monitors/keyboards might not matter to a company where employees are constantly on a computer.

It’s hard to know what to look for when you are seeking your first office complex–moving on from the nice atmosphere of your single apartment or mother’s basement. Xobni recently talked through the factors that helped them decide on their new office in San Francisco in a blog post.

The top things tips they give:

• Go for the heart of the city. New hires for start ups are there already and want to be there.
• Scope out the food joints nearby. You’ll need some carbo-loading location open and close no matter what time of day so that you can keep your project on track. Nearby stores are also a plus.
• Don’t go all Donald Trump. You don’t need fancy marble accents to impress clients–just do good work. Get an office that will serve its purpose and make you look good without going over-priced and extravagant.
• Use your space well. Don’t cram people together in too small of a space, or they won’t get anything done. Room teams together and leave plenty of extra space for break rooms and nice luxuries like nap rooms.
• Get creative. Let your employees express themselves with decorations in their workspace and make the office your own by putting a little money into paint and company memorabilia.
• Last, add comfort as much as you can with the desks, computers and chairs. In tech/programming start ups especially, employees will spend a majority of their day on the property at all times so nice furniture and extra monitors go a long way to boosting morale and preventing employees from noticing how long they have been concentrating on a project.

Oh, and if you don’t know who Xobni is, check out their introduction video. They hope to revolutionize an old tech known as email.