Last month, I wrote a press re­lease for a fundraiser a friend of mine is or­ga­niz­ing, which will take place on January 19. As the date of the event nears, we’ve been try­ing to get the word out through me­dia pitches, so­cial net­work­ing sites and word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing. Any ex­po­sure or me­dia at­ten­tion is more than wel­come.
Today, a free­lance jour­nal­ist based […]

Earlier this week, my friend Catherine posted a Tweet about her mother’s new web­site. It was a ges­ture from a lov­ing and proud daugh­ter — this was her mother’s first foray into so­cial net­work­ing and Catherine wanted to give the web­site a lit­tle ex­po­sure. The re­sponses from Catherine’s fol­low­ers on Twitter and Facebook were wel­com­ing, kind and gra­cious.
I re­mem­ber how nervous […]

When I was in university, I took a few feminist-driven courses. In one of the classes, we were shown a pre­sen­ta­tion on sex­ism and misog­yny in ad­ver­tis­ing. Open up any fash­ion mag­a­zine, we were told, and re­ally LOOK at each im­age. Why is that women naked and sur­rounded by fully clothed, men­ac­ing men? Why is that model on her knees? […]

UPDATE to Son of a Pitch!
The day af­ter the ar­rival of Cardboard Dave, the flesh-and-blood one called me. He sheep­ishly asked me if I re­ceived his pack­age, then stated that he wasn’t ego­tis­ti­cal; the idea was his mar­ket­ing de­part­ments. (Um, you are the VP of Integrated Marketing, so I as­sume you have a say in their cam­paigns?)
In my most pleasant […]

Before I went back to school, I was an ac­count ex­ec­u­tive at a newswire. My job was to ad­vise clients on their com­mu­ni­ca­tions strate­gies, which is more ac­cu­rate than sim­ply say­ing, “I sold stuff.” I was never the ag­gres­sive, Glengarry Glen Ross-type of sales­per­son; my skills lay in de­vel­op­ing re­la­tion­ships with my clients, un­der­stand­ing their needs and pro­vid­ing them with the […]