Do you have problems with time management? Staying organized? Stress management?  I do! There are so many things I want to accomplish each and every day, both personally and professionally, that I am constantly stressed by my ‘to do’ list. If I’m working, I feel I should be doing things with my children; and when I’m with my children, I feel I should be ticking things off my ‘to do’ list for work. Continue Reading »

Here’s another good article  from “Destination CRM” about the trend toward online advertising and the shift from traditional PR to online marketing techniques.  The great thing about marketing on the web is that you can measure and analyze everything you do. You can tell what people like and what they don’t. You can change your course quickly and efficiently.

It’s really quite amazing how the web can teach us about the preferences of the public and of our targeted publics specifically. And with the kind of comments and feedback that people give you on the web, it’s easy to solicit opinions from visitors to your site. I believe that’s why, in these tough times, marketers are turning to the web for results and ongoing feedback from their customers and prospective customers.

My son was born just yesterday….or so it seems.  Yet this past week he went to his junior prom…how could that be? Here he is with his date Kelsey arriving at the prom last weekend. I know you’re thinking he wasn’t born yesterday, but if life was passing as fast for you as it is for me, you’d know how I feel.

I don’t know about you, but for me, time is literally flying by.

The only way I’ve discovered to slow it down is by scrapbooking. Now some friends who know me well are amazed that I would choose a hobby that involves sitting for hours, cutting out pretty papers, applying stickers, writing journal entries and organizing photos. But truly, it is the only way that I can slow the passage of time and try to remember the details of this busy life I lead. Continue Reading »

What is it about number two pencils that draws me? I have a strange obsession with the yellow number twos. Don’t try to give me any other color… as a matter of fact, I can’t stand the kind of pencils with really hard erasers that just smoodge the writing when you are trying to make a clean erase. I love the yellow Ticonderoga Number Two, with the soft pink eraser. Just today I found two brand new number two pencils in our basement on the piano. I think one of my two children must have left them there. I experienced such joy and pleasure when I picked up those pencils! I can’t explain it. Continue Reading »

One of my employees, Sarah Fuller, sent me a great article from the May 4  edition of  Nations’ Building News Online. The article talks about how public relations, more so than advertising, helps companies to fully tell their story, therefore building their brand. It also talked about the relationship between public relations and online communities, which I’ve discovered are a powerful combination. Continue Reading »

Today I helped coordinate a media event at my client Skowhegan Savings’ location in Madison, Maine. Army Sgt. Eric Pierce, a 27 year old from Embden, Maine introduced his dog Sandy to people who had helped provide the money for him to bring the dog back from Afghanistan.

This is a photo of Sgt. Pierce with his sister Christine, her daughter Abby, and Sandy the dog. Christine volunteers for an organization called Lucky Pup of Kennebunk. She is a ‘foster mom’ for puppies. Lucky Pup is one of the beneficiaries of the extra funds raised for Sandy.

About a year ago, Sgt. Pierce and his army mates found Sandy and his litter mates near Kabul. Pierce says that after fighting all day, it was comforting for the troops to come back to their base camp and have a dog to play with and care for. But there are evidently lots of stray dogs over there so army officials ordered Pierce and the soldiers in his unit to dispose of, or actually to shoot the dogs. They couldn’t bring themselves to do that, so they brought the dogs out in the wilderness and dropped them off. But the dogs came back. At that point, Pierce became so attached to Sandy, he called his mom Maddy back in Maine and asked if she could help him raise the $2900 to bring the dog home. So Maddy put the word out to the local community. Reporter Doug Harlow from the Central Maine Morning Sentinel wrote a story about it which ended up getting picked up in newspapers statewide. Continue Reading »

My son Craig is a junior in high school this year and he has recently started looking at colleges. Over the past week, he and I have visited three different campuses, and today he went with my husband to visit another one. Tomorrow he is actually going to another campus on his own. It’s hard for me to take my marketing hat off when we go on these visits. I find myself being very critical and wondering ‘what were they thinking?’ when tour guides make grandiose proclamations about their colleges.  To protect the innocent and my son, I’m not going to name any college names. Also God forbid I say something negative about the college that ends up being his first choice and then he doesn’t get in because of his opinionated mother.  (But then again, aren’t all mothers opinionated when it comes to choosing a college for their child?)

The tours are conducted by students, which is good because the prospective students would rather hear from an actual student than an adult. However at one college we visited, our tour guide was wearing extremely short shorts. Now I’m no prude, and I try not to sound like my own mother who is always critical of how teenagers dress, but I would think that the Ivy League institution she was showing us around would require at least long pants or appropriate length shorts. Of course my son had no problem with the short shorts and probably wishes that all the girls at the college of his choice would dress like that.

One of the tours was conducted by two students together — a male and a female. It seemed rude at first because they were both drinking these big cups of Starbucks coffee….didn’t their Ivy League etiquette teach them that it’s not polite to drink coffee when your guests aren’t offered any? It definitely came off as if they were trying to show off how grown up they were as colllege students drinking their large cups of Frappacinos and Mochachinos.

Plus they were both walking backwards the entire time around this rather large campus, which was very awkward. At one point they nearly walked into a professor who came out of the library with his nose in a book. I was sure there was going to be a big collision, spilled coffee, broken bones, and embarrassed high school students, but I guess my imagination was running away with me instead of paying attention to the tour. Continue Reading »

 Last night I had the honor of attending the Maine premiere of a new documentary film called The Way We Get By.  It was held at the Collins Center for the Arts at the University of Maine in Orono. When I arrived, there were several  TV crews with their live trucks set up for broadcast, a red carpet leading to the front door, and military troops lined up to welcome the guests to the premiere. The Governor and our congressional delegation was on hand. Little did I know this was the beginning of an experience that was going to have a deep impact on my life.

The film tells the story of the senior citizens in Bangor, Maine who have been going to the Bangor International Airport as “troop greeters” at all hours of day and night for years to meet and greet the members of the military as they arrive or depart from the U.S. to head to Iraq or Afghanistan. Continue Reading »

I attended a book club meeting once. It was after having surgery back in the year 2000, and I was supposed to rest on the couch for six weeks so I figured I had time to read and go to a meeting. I’m not the kind of person who can actually sit still on the couch for six weeks. I think I actually took about 10 days off then I had to go back to work (Confession: I have a bit of OCD.)

Anyway, the book was “Ahab’s Wife” by Sena Jeter Naslund. It was a fabulous book and I enjoyed the experience  of reading the book and discussing it with friends immensely. I wish I had time to continue to attend book club meetings  regularly, but I haven’t been able to in the past 9 years because my schedule … with business, family, and life…is crazy.  For better or worse, I just don’t have time to read the books and go to meetings. Continue Reading »