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.
Out of no where over the weekend I received a tweet from @KloutPerks saying that because of my Klout score, which depressingly has dropped from a 63 lately down to a 57, I was going to enjoy the benefits of a reward–a free screening last night of The Adjustment Bureauwith Matt Damon, Emily Bluntand Mad Men‘s John Slattery. When I arrived at Northpark Mall’s AMC Theater in Dallas, I was ushered off to a long line of people waiting to also see the film. But when one of the event promoters asked me for my ticket and I showed her my Klout invitation she said, “Honey, you’re not supposed to be in a line. Go straight to the table at the door for a wrist band and they’ll show you to your reserved seat.” And so, past the other 200-plus people in line I went!
After watching some entertaining displays of six people giving their impersonations of Matt Damon and learning about GordonAndTheWhale.com, a movie review and premiere event company here in Dallas and Austin, Tx, they started the movie. I mean, they literally started the movie. None of that turn your phone off video, no other Coming Soons “In A World….” stuff. Boom. Movie begins.
The Adjustment Bureau
Now I’m not going to do a spoiler review. I’ll wait till Friday to post the intricate details of the movie. But here’s what you should know going in.
Go to this movie to have fun and to enjoy the feelings of falling in love and doing everything in your being to be with the person you know is “The One.” Damon is good, but he’s not doing marshal arts and grabbing guns out of people’s hands before they can blink. He finds a woman who he was only supposed to see once and never see again in the streets of New York City and it’s crowd of nine million other people. The rest you’ll have to wait for.
Fidoras
If you want to go to the movie in character, this is your chance to pull out your Mad Men clothes a few months early and wear them to the film. John Slattery, aka, Roger Sterling, turns in a John Slattery performance and at times you just think you’re going to see him bum a cigarette off someone or pull a bottle out of somewhere. But then, after four years of Mad Men, how can you not just see Slattery and get a grin on your face knowing there’s probably no way of knowing what he’s going to say next.
Essential point–if you want to have fun–wear a Fidora to the movie. You’ll feel like you’re even closer to the film.
The critics are being a little rough on the film. Criticizing it for not being as dark or hard-hitting or something Bourne-ish. It’s not meant to be. At the heart of this film is a love story. One that will take you back into your younger years and remind you what it felt like to find someone who you knew was the right person, and then adds a twist, tries to keep you and the person from ever seeing each other again.
Go see this movie. Go and have fun with it. And if you’re taking a date, make sure you have extra tissue with for her. She won’t boo hoo, but she’ll be doing the happy tears thing.
Apology accepted and they’ve made an overture to make up for the trouble this has caused.
So if you keep reading, please keep in mind, that while it took them 26 hours to get back to us, they did reply and have tried to make things right. Hopefully in 3-4 months we’ll be able to report back here that we’ve been using their product and that it’s been an effective tool in growing our business. While she was selling InfoUSA.com, we also were reminding her that ClaxtonCreative.com is in the crisis management business and there are somethings they need to be working on as well in case this ever happens again. Maybe, just maybe, they’d consider working with us, too.
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On Saturday, trying to develop a way to create new business leads, we registered with InfoUSA.com and narrowed down a selection of options we’d consider in a direct mailing campaign. We are a Dallas public relations firm and trying to grow our business by helping clients with PR, book publicity, social media strategies, and school district public relations.
Within two minutes of hitting submit on the InfoUSA.com Website, our office phones were ringing. If we had wanted to talk to them, we would have called them in the first place. We didn’t answer.
Then yesterday, we received another call. Within two minutes of that call, we also received an email from Account Manager Jeff Gunther. We let him know that when/if we need them, we’ll let them know.
This morning at 8:22 a.m. CST, we received an email from Orlando Vera. His email was sent to us and 736 other recent businesses or people who have apparently registered in the InfoUSA.com system. How do we know it went to 737 people? Simple. Orlando Vera sent it out CC instead of BCC to all of us.
Our Initial Response
First we sent Mr. Gunther a nastygram. Then we sent one to Orlando Vera and copied the other 736 people on the list and said:
Orlando Vera,
I do not at all appreciate your compromising my business strategies by sending out my email address with all these other contacts. I doubt they do either. Personally, I think we now all should be entitled to at least two month’s worth of free services from your company because of this compromise. Not to mention a letter of apology.
I’m trying to run a PR and social media company in Dallas. Like my counterparts on this list, we all now have to wonder if any of our competitors also are on this list. And since there are more than 700 people, that’s going to take a little bit of time to figure out. Please enact stricter policies about how you send out emails. If you need some help with setting that up, fixing your public relations mess you just created, or doing some social media damage control, please feel free to contact my company.
DC
That email went out at 8:57 a.m. CST. As of time of publishing, 10:24 a.m., we’ve not received any response or phone calls within two minutes from InfoUSA.com.
But we are getting other messages from some of the other recipients:
I am a consumer who registered with InfoUSA because I couldn’t find any other way to contact them to be removed from their mailing list.
InfoUSA ignored the fact that I registered on the National Do Not Mail list at DMAchoice.org more than 5 months ago. They continued to sell my information and I finally found out it was InfoUSA because one of the companies that sent me mail told me where they bought my information.
I am trying very hard to reduce my impact on the environment and it is extremely frustrating to get paper mail from companies I’ve never heard of in spite of all the steps I take to prevent it.
I recommend that all of you use a different marketing company that is more respectful of your consumers’ mailing preferences – you will end up annoying less of your potential customer base.
Orlando – thanks for including everyone’s email address in the “To” field so I can get the message out. Next time maybe you’ll use the BCC field. 😉
Sincerely,
-Janie Pumphrey
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Hi Donald,
If Orlando can actually manage over 700 new client accounts, maybe one of us should hire Orlando. Amazing.
This is exactly why I use a dummy email account when I’m reviewing new marketing options.
Regards,
Owner Collaborative Quality Systems
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Mr. Vera,
I completely agree with Mr. Claxton. And wish to thank Mr. Claxton for pointing this out to you.
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Those are just the beginning. We’re going to publish this piece now and update it throughout the day. Please feel free to forward this link to as many other business friends as you like. You might also offer the InfoUSA.com listing to your competitors. Or maybe not. Karma, don’t you know.
We’ve offered InfoUSA.com a chance to respond, yet they’ve been silent. We still think several months of their services for free would be nice, but from the way Janie Pumphrey’s email reads, that’s the last thing we’d want to do.
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