Client Happenings

This innovative health ingredient company has several communication initiatives under way. The focal point is research and product development supporting balanced immune health. Stay tuned as these efforts evolve.

Planning & Writing is assisting this group with their Fund Raising University training for non-profit managers.

Legosys, founded by banking technology and operations black belts, is building a new business model for high-volume transaction management and lending systems. Planning & Writing is involved in helping build this brand within the financial services field.

Tip of the Moment 

I'll call you when I need you

New York Times opinionator Maureen Dowd wrote how Hillary Clinton started answering questions from the press and the voters at campaign events only after she lost Iowa.

Any good reporter will tell you they size up a potential story on the facts of an episode or development, not on the behavioral history of a public figure or organization. Modern journalists will also tell you they are as human as anyone else, and total objectivity and lack of bias is impossible.

In my roles as corporate media relations manager, I can attest to the value of getting the boss out in the news stream regularly. The journalist who has a decent in-person familiarity with a business leader and his/her organization is the journalist I want covering my company, especially during a critical restructuring or crisis. Not because the reporter's been pampered or sucked up to (I don't know any reporters who would allow that to happen, anyway).

It's because the reporter better understands what all needs to be considered, weighed, and reconsidered when crafting the story. It's much preferred to relying on a total reportorial stranger who may have little understanding of the history, the character, the industry dynamics and the general fiber of your enterprise. 

During one critical business cycle, the editor of a highly influential business trade publication told me flat out: "Your CEO has been available to us throughout his tenure. That has always been noticed and appreciated around here."  That was all I needed to convince myself that an accessible boss is a preferred boss. In more ways than one.

PowerPoint Pointer

Here's a great piece of advice from "How Starbucks Saved My Life," by Michael Gates Gill, a former bigwig at J. Walter Thompson advertising in New York. He found salvation by working as a barista at Starbucks. He coached his boss, a store manager, on how to make a good PowerPoint presentation to the home office folks.

"Studies show the best presentations are simple and short. Have you ever wished a presentation were longer or more complicated? "

For his boss's presentation, Gill recommended no more than three sections: People, Products and Profits. "No one, after hundreds of years, can remember more than three of the Ten Commandments." 

The Red Scare

Is there anything that raises passion (and voices) more than the question, "what color should our brand be?"

And how many times have thoughtful contributors--usually in a committee--put up red flags against red because:

• It connotes negative financial status; "in the red;"
• It's loud, bold and offensive;
• Red means blood, violence.

If these were truly market-driven reasons not to use red, Toyota, Coca-Cola, Target Stores, and many other brand titans would be in a heap of trouble.

Similar pop psychology has surely been used against purple (non-conforming, rebellious), yellow (passive, too gentle) and brown (don't go there).

For these color choices, Yahoo, Best Buy and UPS are surely glad they took the risk.

Bottom line: If a color can project  a brand's uniqueness and do so in a visually arresting, lasting way, it's a good color.