Awesome By Accident

Garth Beyer

I wrote about voice yesterday. When a group of mine (who did the same activity) commented on my short essay, they expressed how crafty I was by neglecting indentation. As you will read in my response about voice, I talk about not needing to be perfect because it takes the humanity out, the voice out. They went on to say how not indenting made my writing flow better and drive home my point. To be forward, I simply forgot to indent.

Goes to show many might love what you thought was a mistake. If that’s the case, might as well try making a mistake on purpose to make your writing or your work more alive. An accident isn’t always a bad thing, and an accident on purpose may be just what you need.

For those interested, you can read my short essay on voice here. (3-min read)

 

Stay Positive & Give Your Work Some Voice

PR Freelancers Don’t Neglect The Last Phase

Garth Beyer

Public Relations Phase

A PR strategy can be broken down into three phases. The last, the most important and often neglected.

1) Ideation

Write down everything. Brainstorm. Read about other products’ PR strategies (not just similar brands to the one you’re working with). Talk with a different person each day and ask for help. You can do it alone, but you can do it better with others’ help. Here’s a site I read a lot when brainstorming.

2) Evaluation

No one loves to redo something because they forgot a piece. Nor does anyone enjoy scrapping work they’ve spent hours on because while it may be good work, it doesn’t fit the overall strategy. Evaluation is easy, but dealing with the criticism may prove difficult to handle. You can get attached once you start creating, not before.

3) Creation

Here’s the spot a lot of PR freelancers neglect before pitching their strategy. It’s easy to suggest a business sends out a newsletter. It’s much more difficult to write that newsletter yourself. It’s easy to suggest how to use Twitter and Facebook, but much harder to think of 30 tweets or 24 Facebook posts they can use. It’s easy to suggest building a clock a bird pops out of each hour and sings, but … you get the idea. No business wants to hear what they should do they want to see it. After all, they are hiring you to do it, not just think about doing it.

 

Stay Positive & Go Create Something Special

The Truman Set

The Truman Set

Garth Beyer

Harry's GQ Magazine Ad

Harry’s is a brand of men’s shaving products. I’ve had a browser tab open with a Harry’s product (the Truman Set) for nearly a week. I want it. I think it will be something worth talking about. And I’ve had the same big brand razor for at least 4 years. I’m tired of it.

Yet, each time I open my laptop and see the Truman Set, I wonder why I haven’t committed to the purchase. I’ve been asking myself over and over, “What’s missing?”

I think I figured it out.

When you look at the Truman Set you see the handle, two razors, and cream. Harry’s, who tells an exceptionally beautiful story with their products (and advertising!) falls short on putting some of that humanity into the product package. There’s a missing emotional, personal, human factor in the product package.

Perhaps a card verifying the integrity of the product signed by Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider? Perhaps a 5-tips guide to shaving written by them? Perhaps a coffee packet or Simply Orange coupon or a unique spoon to get people to share pictures of them owning their AM?

It’s hard to create a flawless product. It’s harder sometimes to remember to add a little humanity to it… sort of the opposite of flawless.

 

Stay Positive & Add Some Surprise To Every Gift

To add a bit of humanity to this post, I’ll have you know each time I refreshed my home page to edit this post, Harry’s advertisement came up on it suggesting I “Shave goodbye to my old razor.” I think I will. 

Changing Your Mind

Garth Beyer

It’s cool, it’s no problem, it’s often better you do (so long as you’ve thought enough on the benefits and consequences of the act). Maria Popova reminds us that one her biggest lessons from running BrainPickings is to allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind.

What you believe in and stand for right now doesn’t need to be what you believe in and stand for later.

Everything in the world, outside of your control, is always changing. Why should you be any exception?

 

Stay Positive & Keep Moving, Keep Changing, Keep Rediscovering Yourself

A Much Needed Appreciation

Garth Beyer

It’s really refreshing to notice more people in all industries (especially PR) are appreciating the conscious and deliberate action of their employees, friends, managers, coworkers and interns living life: traveling, meeting culture shock at its door step, experiencing other parts of the world that aren’t labeled “work.”

I see more people getting hired after they come back from a 3 month trip to Napal or Beijing than I do college students holding a diploma. I’m not arguing the significance of a diploma, I’m simply stating a trip to a new location (for whatever reason) offers you more to talk about and people are generally, oh, hell, they’re always more interested in hearing about your unique experiences than your time in school.

Forget work and balance. Just focus on life. It resonates more.

 

Stay Positive & Damn Do People LOVE Stories

 

Don’t Forget The Friend With…

Garth Beyer

10 close friends.

You can start marketing to the top 1 percent of people who are obsessed with your product, who blog endlessly about the type of product you offer, who are the go-tos for anything related to your product…

or you can find one friend who has 10 close friends who trust her and ask her to share your product with them and then ask them to share the product with 10 of their closest friends.

Virality of a product is carried out by those who sneeze easily and sneeze often, not by those who sniff 100 ideas before they sneeze one. Sure, you’ll see a spike in sales from the connoisseur or aficionado, but then you wait worrying if the idea will stick with people or if it’s just a spotlight phase.

With 10 friends referring 10 friends, you won’t need to worry.

 

Stay Positive & Make The Obsessed Find You

Idea Overload

Garth Beyer

1) Who someone has working on a project right now, might not be as good as you. In a world where permission is free, all you have to do is ask. (Realized by tweeting to a business I would be happy to help with their PR. Guess what I’m now doing?)

2) The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but the human communicator gets the high quality stuff. (Extinguish your rage and speak with sincerity, never giving up on what you deserve, but doing so as a human, not a devil.)

3) Reach out for help, always, always, always. (I can create a good PR strategy for any business, but with friends and other experts, I can create a great one. The right way to show off on stage is to be up there with others.)

4) Enjoyment almost always comes after understanding. (Yup, at first nearly everything is work until you understand it.)

5) There’s no point in having an umbrella. It defeats the purpose of rain. (Rain gear is acceptable at times.)

6) You don’t know struggle until you try going the extra mile after you’ve gone 10 extra miles. (My current freelance work is on making an already incredible business more incredible. I’m dancing with magic and struggle.)

 

Stay Positive & 7) If You Aren’t Learning, You’re Not Quite Living