Over the past year, Odell and his team have achieved some significant successes including his support of UTI’s government affairs and corporate compliance efforts, the grand opening of a brand new UTI campus in Dallas, and the company-wide 45^th Anniversary Celebration.

Odell joined UTI in November of 2008, as Director, Internal Communications.  Prior to UTI, Odell spent almost two decades in communications roles with Motorola and Philips.

Jody Kent

For the past 10 years, Jody has been president and founder for her own strategic communications firm, which provided a full range of branding, communications, public relations, community relations, and perception management services to clients. Prior to her agency, Kent held numerous roles, including the VP of Strategy & Research for a marketing and public relations firm and Marketing Director for Showcase Home Entertainment.

Well, Len was right.  I do find myself constantly thinking of stuff to post.  I think the immediacy of writing for a group of readers that are all within striking distance makes it appealing. Communicating with nameless, faceless business people spread across the country is one thing.  Knowing I can make a joke about how hard it is to get into Pizzeria Bianco is another. By the way, did you hear they’re opening for lunch?

So attending the Mayor’s State of the City address at the Sheraton today is definitely a local topic. Right after the national anthem, and before the chicken d’jour, came the Prayer. It would be reasonable to assume the content would be non-denominational, a la the “In God We Trust” that’s on the dollar bill in your pocket. Right?  Wrong. It closed in a way which certainly appealed to the majority but definitely excluded the minority.  Ironic, considering the Mayor personally falls into the latter group. I can’t even begin to fathom the outcry if the roles were reversed. But the point is, the names of the groups are irrelevant. Or should be.

Can someone please explain how this is ok?

Prior to her appointment, Lough held several different public relation and news reporting internships throughout the Valley. Her experience consists of non-profit, agency and in-house work in a variety of fields, including sports marketing, retail, hospitality and real estate development.

Lough was born and raised in Phoenix and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Relations and Strategic Media from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University in 2009.

Tonight I caught the beginning of the show, “How I Met Your Mother” and it reminded me of a time I made a huge mistake. One of the characters was talking about “gaps in knowledge.” She stated that everyone has a gap in knowledge. That common word, phrase, fact or thing that somehow missed you in life, something that everyone else on the planet seemed to know but you, something that usually bites you in the butt at the worst time.

Yep- it happened to me. Something very common (and made famous by the Simpsons)  just passed me by in life, caused a gap in my knowledge and came back to bite me and my co-workers on live television. It was probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest and dumbest mistake I will ever make in my career and you can see it here. If you work in media, you may have heard this story and will know which blooper is mine. If not, you will have to guess but it should be pretty obvious. I’m kind of outing myself here- so please be kind. Also, please note that since the time I am referring, I have done a large survey that proves I am not the only one who has “missed” this particular bit of information in life

Since this whopping blooper (that I am surprised hasn’t been on Talk Soup) I have learned a few things, the main one being the importance of using my co-workers for help. I actually almost made another big mistake at work today but saved myself by remembering what I’ve learned. These are some pretty rudimentary/no-duh tips that I think we forget to use somewhere along the way:

- Never be too proud or embarrassed to ask for help.

- If something seems off, it probably is. Trust your instinct.

- Always double and triple check your work, even if you are in a rush.

- If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

- Put family and yourself first.

- Don’t get too cozy with your co-workers- put professionalism first.

- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Ok, with that said I wanted to put some other funny “gaps in knowledge” out there. These are some other examples of things that “missed” some folks:

- When reading off of an Apples to Apples playing card, a grown woman pronounced the word “chameleon“: sham-el-on.

-  The character on “How I Met Your Mother” didn’t know that the North Pole was a real place.

- A reporter I once knew did not know what an ottoman was and found out while working on an important story.

- Someone I know thought the Arizona state bird was a Phoenix and announced that at a business dinner.

- Someone who had never seen the word “colonel” spelled out before thought it was a new word pronounced co-lon-el.

- Someone didn’t know how to pronounce “rendez-vous.”

- A grown adult didn’t know what “apartheid” was.

Bottom line: Everyone does have a gap in knowledge. Mistakes are inevitable and the only way to prevent them is to gain experience. If you think you will look back on something and laugh, you may as well laugh about it now.

What’s your “gap in knowledge” or a bad mistake you’ve made at work? Please share!

Phoenix PRSA Happy Hour events are a good opportunity to meet, re-connect and network with other PR professionals in the Valley. Cost includes appetizers and one drink.

When: 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Where: The Lodge (4422 N 75th St., Scottsdale – just south of Camelback Road)

Parking: Free parking is available on the street, as well as in a parking lot located behind the bar.

Cost: $10 for Phoenix PRSA members; $15 for non-members
Cost includes appetizers and one drink.

RSVP: Kindly RSVP by Friday, March 25 at www.PhoenixPRSA.org

Questions: Marina Renneke, (602) 254-7312, marinarenneke@mosesanshell.com

Jodie’s niche will be an array of coaching services, as she has many years of experience working in different outlets at 15. She’s been a part of their investigative I-team, MMJ’d and reported for Daybreak and produced Sonoran Living lifestyle segments. Whether your client needs help with crisis management, speaking engagements or cooking demonstrations, she knows exactly what the media wants from them.

Along with media coaching, Jodie is planning to have workshops for local organizations and businesses and is available to speak on topics such as; An Insider Look At Local Media, Getting Your Business In The Media, The Changing Media World, Becoming an “Expert.”

Contact Jodie by email or phone at 602.904.2758

The thrust of the article was that after the recession hit, many legal Top Gunners dropped their price to $990. Thankfully many of those top shelf lawyers are now charging as much as $1,250 a bottle. Wow, talk about a hangover.

My studio has had the (sincere) pleasure of working with some of the top attorneys in Phoenix. So this post bears no reflection on them. It actually has nothing to do with lawyers at all. Hell, who among us wouldn’t charge $20 a minute if we could get away with it? More on that in a few weeks.

I’m actually poking fun at the clients. Let me get this straight. During the stormiest economic climate anyone on this planet has ever faced, top tier executives at Fortune 500 companies like GE and DuPont were ok with retaining counsel for $990, but heaven forbid, not $1,000? Hmmm, if you move that decimal doesn’t $990 look suspiciously like 99 cents, as in the STORE?

We all know that people allow themselves to be seduced by arbitrary numbers and shiny price tags. Hence the timeless .99 phenomenon that stretches from candy bars and oil changes to big screen TV’s and cars. I don’t know about you, but I have heard many times over the years that “just because you know B-C marketing doesn’t mean you can do B-B.” There is an undeniable hint of condescension attached to that theory as if selling professional services is any harder than clothes, coffee or fitness club memberships. It’s not.

Whoever makes major purchases while wearing a tie or pantyhose has a reputation, salary, bonus, mortgage, family (and ego) to protect. You think only facts drive those career decisions? What salesperson will deny that the personal relationship is central to the sale. That whining and dining still works.  How many deals are cut out on golf courses and in strip clubs? That’s why stadium luxury boxes were invented.

People have always bought with their hearts and brains and they always will. Great marketing is about appealing to both organs. A $990 lawyer proves that.

I find myself saying “seriously” quite often these days. Saturday Night Live’s Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler regularly lampooned the term so I don’t claim to have invented it.

But still, what word better conveys the sudden, staggering state of disbelief you feel when a client makes that last second request?  Or when a prospect thinks the creative for an ad campaign should cost $2,000? And the infamous intern who didn’t like sorting the highlighters? Not to mention the geyser of venom spraying from our elected officials.

Writing is how I process all which defies logic, reason, common sense or basic human empathy.  My goal is to evoke thought, discussion and change. To rattle the gilded cages of those who want nothing more than to keep people who think, look or love differently than them, out of their cage.

Everything in the world relates to marketing — and all the specialties, strategies, disciplines, tools and tactics we  fill our days with.  Sometimes you might think a post isn’t relevant to you. Look closer, it’s in there. The Mona Lisa is nice, but I’m more of a Jackson Pollock guy. There won’t be any guardrails like, “the reason this matters if you’re in PR is…”

• While maniacal about verbal grammar, in print I have no AP Style whatsoever. That’s one of the many reasons I surround myself with smart Cronkite alumni.

• Life is about perspective. I have been the client much longer than the client services provider.  I was another brick in the wall much longer than I’ve been the owner.

• People should always come before profit. Sam Alpert and I have walked that walk at DSPR for the last five years. I will challenge every boss in town to hop on the treadmill and sacrifice your $200 rounds of golf so you don’t have to lay someone off.

• I think the word boss is repugnant and, contrary to popular opinion, all millennials are not self-entitled slackers. I have dozens of case studies to support both views.

• 80% of my life, career and education has been spent outside Arizona. The Grand Canyon is beautiful. But if you profess that it’s the most beautiful place in the world and you’ve never been east of the Rockies or south of Rocky Point, I’m gonna call you on a major parochial violation.

• Humor is the greatest gift there is. When, not if, my words piss you off, remember that other readers at that moment are laughing — hopefully anyway.

• We all need to do a better job of sharing our oxygen, whether you think the climate is changing or not.  You can believe in whatever you want as long as you don’t believe you have the divine  right to extinguish mine.

• Life is too short to eat vanilla because you’re afraid what people might think if you like Phish Food.

• A positive attitude is nice but not when it’s delusional. As Arizona prepares to celebrate its 100th birthday isn’t it time we stop acting like we’re in our terrible two’s? Last I checked, horses stopped galloping down Central Ave decades ago.

• People in Phoenix are mostly nice — except behind the wheel. Our highways are more toxic than the roads of Istanbul, Boston and Bangkok.

• Agencies like Ogilvy and Edelman would have offices in Phoenix if they saw us as a viable investment, in other words, a world-class city. That requires a sophisticated economy with a highly educated work force and socially progressive culture.  Who’s starting that creative brief?

At the end of the day, most of us marketing communications professionals just sell stuff, services and space.  It’s the teachers, public servants and ace reporters at TMZ who make the world a better place, not us.

So laugh more. Enjoy the ride. It’s the only one you get.

That’s my perspective. Seriously.

D

I was lucky enough to work with Glen a lot back when he covered real estate and when I did work for a variety of real estate firms. He always took my calls and returned my emails and he even told me straight out when he thought a story wasn’t newsworthy enough. Our thoughts are with his family this morning, and especially my friend and neighbor Cathy Creno.

Feel free to share any stories you have about working with Glen here in the comments.