She has a great photo eye. And she’s great with a camera.
To boot, she just looks like the quintessential professional photographer.
Take a look at her below. She has her left arm tucked into her body to properly hold the camera steady and has her hand cradling the lens barrel so she can focus with accuracy. And she has her right hand holding the camera so that her index finger can properly push the trigger button without shaking the camera.
This is how to hold a camera. Not with your elbows out to your sides. For Godsake, not with both of your elbows out to your side.
We’re proud to announce at Claxton Creative the launching of our latest book promotion project, Latisha Y Brown of Houston’s, Get Up You Big Fat Procrastinator.
The book is filled with testimonials and wonderful stories about overcoming the weight of procrastination and really is an inspiring piece of work.
The prices on everything are going through the roof. Gas prices are nuts. Inflation is beginning to be talked about regularly on the news. Add to that the devastation to the Japanese through the 8.9 Richter Scale earthquake, the deadly tsunami that even affected the coastline of the United States, and now this whole nuclear reactor meltdown business.
We have a national debt that’s rising at a rate I’ll probably never make in my life with every tick of the clock.
We have people in Wisconsin angry because their elected leaders are trying to trim back the costs of their state government because what’s going out, isn’t pacing what’s coming in.
Life in the United States
In Washington, we have gridlock unparalleled by what Admiral Stockdale blurted out in the 1992 presidential debates.
There are millions of people in the US who can’t find work.
Just as many and more do not have health care.
And the list goes on.
Like our previous generations, when duty called, they stepped forward.
Today, more than ever, we need to do several things to do our part.
The first, pray.
It was 364 days ago that a situation in my own home crushed my dreams then of a happily ever after.
Today, with a client meeting in two hours and the prospect of being a part of an incredible change they are developing in the healthcare industry, life feels much better.
God led me on a journey this past year that if I’d not endured, I’d not be having this meeting today.
Dads, our children are losing their way in this world.
Liberals are destroying society’s moral compass.
As dads, we can not allow this madness to continue.
Focus on your family.
Yes, stress levels everywhere are rising.
But we’ve got to ensure we leave a legacy going forward that can also rise up to their challenges when the day comes for them.
And third, get involved.
Find someone in your life who you can assist. Whether it’s a phone call, words of encouragement/support, a card, an unexpected check, or whatever.
Right now is the time to help your fellow man, woman, and child.
We must stay strong in this time.
We must apply common sense solutions and stop not thinking about tomorrow.
That kind of thinking has led to the kind of mess we’re in today.
Please, join hands, dads, and let’s take positive action for our families and countries.
We can make a difference. We can prosper. We can overcome. And we can leave the world a better place for our children, no matter what gets thrown in our ways.
For us dads, it’s really time to step up our games.
We’ve read several of the former Apple evangelist and business guru Guy Kawasaki’s books through the years. Usually, they require the addition of an ink pen in order to mark up the brilliant insights and ideas that come from reading them.
At 189 pages, it’s a good read, a good mix of photos, abbreviated notes and bullet points, and and anecdotal references to be, well, enchanting.
Why and What is Enchantment?
We will not play spoiler here on Kawasaki’s perspectives, (that’s what the book is for) but the essence of his writings fall back on some of the most ancient and proven means of doing business or living since the beginning of time–the inclusion of an enchanting story to move others into your corner, to as Kawasaki says, “transform(s) situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility. It reshapes civility into affinity. It changes skeptics and cynics into believers.”
There are a host of books that play on the themes expressed by Kawasaki: Story, by Robert McKee, The Dragonfly Effect by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith, The New Rules of Marketing & Pr by David Meerman Scott, All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin, and the 1999 book, Rules for Revolutionaries, by Mr. Kawasaki himself, but Enchantment takes a reader through the entire process, identifies how to launch it, how to overcome resistance to change, and quite beneficially, “How to use push technology,” like email and Twitter, (Please give us a follow) and “How to use pull technology,” like Websites, blogs, Facebook, (Please like our FB page while you’re here) LinkedIn, (Connect with us here) YouTube (Subscribe to us while you’re here) and cleverly, how to “Think Japanese.” (This goes beyond the Vipers’ song.)
Enchanting Stories We Can Tell
Terry Abbott
Terry Abbott, now the president of Drive West Communications in Houston, is doing quite well on his own in the school public relations business nationwide. He’s constantly on the road meeting with superintendents and communications departments suggesting ways to stay in the good fight with the local press each day to tell positive and enchanting stories about their respective districts.
We’ve worked with Abbott since June of 1988. In those days, the Governor’s Press Office in Alabama had just purchased a fax machine. It was a thermal paper machine and one had to pick up the headset to dial the number and then ask the person on the other line to “Switch me to their fax machine.” In those days, Abbott, who formerly had been a UPI reporter, understood the need to get news releases, (Not press releases) out to the news media as fast as possible. He called the fax machine, “Our own little wire service.” And that’s how it was used. And when an announcement was coming down that say the former U.S. Senator Howell Heflin likely was trying to announce at the same time, we really got into wire service mode because we wanted our release on reporters’ desks first before the senator could get his there.
A few years later after reading in the Birmingham Post-Heraldabout how the rap singer Ice T had released his album Body Count with the horrid song “Cop Killer,” our owner made a recommendation to Abbott saying, “We should ask every record store in the state to stop selling this.” The next day, Gov. Guy Hunt made national news for taking a stand and by the end of the day, the big record store chains in Alabama were removing it from their shelves. (We did this two weeks before Vice President Dan Quayle and President George W. Bush jumped in.) By the end of a month’s time, the record company was taking it off the record/disc. At the end of that day, we were quite pleased at the success of our effort to do the right thing. Abbott said, “It’s nice to so something good for a change.” That month, Gov. Hunt was on the front page of Billboard magazine. But that wasn’t why we did it. We believed then and still do, that selling a record that enchants others to think about killing police officers has no place in our world.
Veronica Galaviz
One of our most enchanting clients to date is Veronica Galaviz. Her Website and budding charity is called Living To Share.
The venture is appropriately named. After going through the proper legal channels beginning in Nov. 2009 and on into April of 2010, Galaviz was trying to divorce her husband. She was in an abusive relationship and had even filed court documents that restrained his presence around her. He violated the court’s orders multiple times and Galaviz reported the matters to her local police department. But each time they said they didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest. Even with surveillance video from in front of her house showing him slash the rear right tires of a car in her driveway, the Rowlett, Texas Police Department failed to act.
On the night of April 21, 2010 about about 1:30 a.m., her husband broke into her home, tried to shoot her with a shotgun, and after she had escaped the house, he set it on fire and then shot himself.
She’s now on a mission to help others dealing with abusive relationships and trying to bring about changes in the laws of Texas. The rest of America is next.
Galaviz is operating on one single enchanting premise: She’s Living To Share because she firmly believes God kept her alive to carry out her mission of raising awareness about the problems of enforcement of protective orders and domestic violence.
Enchantment
It’s these types of stories that make a difference, not only in marketing terms, but in real, practical ways of life.
This is why our company is different from any other PR firm here in Dallas and in many other cities across America. At age 21, our owner was still in college and through a still unnamed police officer, was given a list of 17 people living in Montgomery, AL in Sept 1987 who were said to be “Known AIDS Victims.” No other news outlet in media market 112 ever was able to obtain the same information and it became a national news story. The point then was that everyone should be treated alike, and two, the list allegedly maintained by the Montgomery Police Department, wasn’t as well secured as they thought it was.
We understand the importance of not just putting out a press release and sending it out on PR Newswire and letting our clients bask in the glow of a 8-pound clip book at year’s end and use that as a measure of our success. That’s neither enchanting nor accurate.
Summary
Kawasaki’s book Enchantment now is on sale. We strongly recommend you buy a copy and read it cover to cover. Mark it up as you go along. Then re-read it. Write notes in the margins, write notes to yourself in your daily journal of the things you want to come back to. That’s what we’ve done. We seek to be enchanting as well. Otherwise we’d just be like the other PR Firms in Dallas and there are enough of those already.
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