Blogger Archive

With the recent downturn in the economy, basic staples are becoming difficult to afford. So are basic pens and pencils. Not to mention, basic rulers and Elmer’s glue. Recently, PlattForm’s Philanthropic Committee (a.k.a. “Team Phil”) teamed up Della Lamb to hold a company-wide school supply drive through early July.

Aptly titled “Operation Back-To-School,” the idea was to get nearly 50 backpacks filled with a wide assortment of school supplies to help low-income kids sponsored by Della Lamb charities.

“All of these items PlattForm donated are critical to starting each little kiddo off for a successful year of learning,” said Judy McGonigle Akers, Executive Vice President at Della Lamb. “These economic times are really hard right now for the working-poor … parents trying to stretch meager incomes against the rising cost of simple items. Your giving is exceptional!”

For the third year in a row, PlattForm organized the in-house school supply drive to help the nearly 800 kids sponsored by Della Lamb. PlattFormers from every department helped purchase a wide assortment of school items. According to Della Lamb, with PlattForm’s help, 2006 was the first year Della Lamb could provide every item on their back-to-school list to each of their clients. Items not only included school supplies, but new pairs of socks and underwear and personal grooming items as well. Subsequent years have been just as successful.

“These kids are going to start school much better prepared because of your generosity. They’re going to know that someone cared enough to include them,” said McGonigle Akers. “Once you’re on the receiving end of grace, you never forget it, and it affects everything you do from that day on.”

From crayons to compasses to Kleenex, PlattFormers were determined to make this the biggest and best school supply drive yet!

“We’re excited about the working relationship we’ve built with Della Lamb over the years,” said Team Phil Co-Chair Michael Mackie. “Since we’re in the career college marketing industry, we know how important the education process is. A school supply drive was a natural fit and a terrific win-win. We look forward to working with Della Lamb again in late 2008 for our annual holiday toy drive, ‘Operation Santa Claus’.”

For more information on Della Lamb or to volunteer, visit www.dellalamb.org

About PlattForm Advertising
PlattForm Advertising is a full-service agency specializing in interactive marketing and advertising for higher education. Boasting an internal creative staff of nearly 200 individuals, the Kansas City-based agency provides a number of student acquisition services including interactive lead generation; online marketing; search engine marketing; media placement; creative, print and video production; direct mail; and print media services. PlattForm Advertising is a division of Ad Venture Interactive.

Of all the places to slip away to on a near-perfect fall day, I couldn’t escape the lure of the windowless library not far from our corporate offices. The place I sit daily within PlattForm’s labyrinth of hospital green walls felt a little more folded in on itself than usual Friday, so I slipped out the back door for my share of more dim, fluorescent lighting.

Sitting at a table across from my book bag, I wrote in my dime store notebook realizing there weren’t many days like this left before the sky turns gray and the bottom falls out on 70 degree afternoons. Temptation to do something else rather than practice my writing was strong on the short drive. How could it not be with light winds twisting up fall leaves in tiny tornadoes and not-even-jacket temperatures?

But I felt a call from the book shelves where titles written in elaborate fonts tip sideways on brightly colored spines. Faces stared back at me from book jackets: Allen Ginsberg, Malcolm X, people who might have hated or loved me, Barry Goldwater, people to disagree with, Kerouac and Annie Dillard, people to talk to on barstool swimming with a light head while struggling to answer life’s deepest questions.

I could sense a cynicism from my colleagues who didn’t know I was sitting among the carols and private reading rooms. They’d left for lunch – crossed the black-asphalted parking lot that’s scorching hot in the summer, the sun burning up an amusement park smell from the ground. The parking lot with its sensible, modular lines contrasting with the way my mind today. Conflicting with my urge to attain clearer thoughts, just to write, really, and be creative, which is what I do, whether clients are there or not.

In the smallness of Saturday mornings, I write. On rainy nights at the library, I write. On airplane flights when I put myself out on the wing and on the land and in the in-flight magazine with a fiery explosion on the cover (bad omen), one with everything, I’m writing it down somewhere. I write to be more comfortable with my mind.

By book stacks and signs that hang from the ceiling or glow – limited loan, New Large Print, Children’s, new cards, copier – the librarians put order to all the chaos. Controlling all the secrets to the world, fresh from the author’s minds but held back by these gatekeepers, accessible for three weeks – if it’s a book, assuming there are no fines on the card in the first place – the librarians really feel the world. I don’t know if there will ever be such a thing as world peace or even world domination, but if there is, I’m certain the path to each begins in the public library. And it’s there, on the shelves, whether the huge, billowing gray clouds have moved in to dump snow, or kids are tossing the football and diving into leaf piles at the street’s edge.

The photo is just a few inches wide and in it, the girls are wearing what appear to be knitted pink stocking caps. They are asleep, their heads rocked back and they are off in that deep sleep only newborn babies find. For knowing them only by a photo, I was surprised to be so struck with their passing – conjoined, just a few days old, and lost to the world already.

I clicked on the headline sometime late last week and read about the birth of Joy and Joya at an area hospital and expected little more than a story about an amazing birth. Instead, I found these girls pictured in the arms of their mother who was proud of them as they were, born close enough together to share a liver and heart.

Without giving their predicament further thought, I went home for the weekend and forgot about what I’d seen in a few down moments at work. Friday night, my whole family – my wife and our three children – were felled with a stomach virus that pretty much brought our plans to an end.

I was worried all three nights for our children, the oldest of which is five. Being sick is the first in an endless string of realities they each have to face about the world. I watched them all, at separate times, drift off to sleep and even relegated myself to a temporary bed in the nursery beside our youngest daughter to make sure her night was uneventful.

When I saw the headline on Monday, at first I felt a deep sandess and then a silliness for the concern I had for my kids’ stomach ailments. Over the weekend the community had rallied around these children. “KC’s conjoined twins …” the headline reads.

And, the silliness wore off. Stories like these are a reminder to parents about how precious and fragile their children are – whether they are alive only a few days or 92 years. There’s a built-in emotion and it has nothing to do with the way an article is written or what a photo happens to capture, though that might grab your attention first. This feeling is deeper than that, and it comes with being human.

Five mornings a week, my father left his still-sleeping family for his job at the meat packing plant. Accompanied by a hot cup of coffee, he steered his pickup to the Bottoms, a section of Kansas City, Mo., nicknamed for its place on the river basin beneath downtown.

For the laborers, the area has taken this name more for its beaten spirit. Hope isn’t readily apparent in the long, one-storied red-brick buildings, the dented garage doors, the potholes, the hard hats and goggles, the constant smog from heavy equipment – chiefly 18 wheelers. Anything of value here, from food and lumber to electricity, is quickly packaged up and shipped away.

My dad stood along a metallic conveyor belt eight hours a day, trimming meat from sides of beef with a jigsaw. Every half hour, he’d cart away the bones and scraps. He willingly picked up a smoking habit because the company that employed him allowed smokers a 10-minute break every couple hours.

I can see him standing in a huddle outside with the morning about to break, taking drags and trying to hold back coughs among all the lifelong smokers. Then it was back to work again until the whistle blew at about two and the next shift came on.

Carrying a rolled-up, blood-soaked apron, he’d pull open the screen door on our modest house. There my brother and I would be on a perfect summer afternoon, watching Gilligan’s Island reruns, with technical college commercials running constantly during the breaks. Grunting a brief salutation, he’d trudge down the hall to change his clothes and shower, and plop down exhaustedly on the couch with a bag of chips.

I was just a kid then, in the 1980s, when career colleges were nothing more to me than 30-second spots about trucking and automotive careers. But I realize, now, my dad was a man who could have benefited by a career education. Well into his career, in his later thirties, an education could have restored his spirit. Even if it only saved him a couple years, it might have lifted him out of the Bottoms so he had something left for his boys when he came home.

Career colleges offer a chance at a dream for some, even if that dream is a normal life. And, for others, they are missed opportunities that slip by unnoticed like the early morning traffic and as quickly as the changing seasons.

A number of blogs blast PR professionals for making schmoes of themselves. They (meaning all PR people except those of us at PlattForm) manage to do this through every feasible job function a PR person can have. From small, one-person PR operations and charitable organizations to major corporations, it seems there’s no end to the stupidity in the PR profession.

Companies are called out for distributing poorly written press releases, making detailed story pitches to journalists’ voicemail boxes rather than the actual journalists, sending out bulk story pitches to the news media to INSERT NAME HERE rather than the individual journalist’s name, and so on.

You can see why we need scores of blogs dedicated to this. The people who commit these errors need to be made out to be the asses that they are, and in a very public way. I have found new inspiration in these blogs, though none actually offer up their own work scrutiny, and merely just offer suggestions and ridicule.

The PR division of PlattForm was developed to assist an entire sector of higher education that had mostly relied on executives with no PR backgrounds to promote the colleges. Some continue in that mentality. We have seen our fair share of releases that missed the mark, so rather than offering up our impressive work, I thought I’d tear down somebody else’s for a change.

Here is a poorly written press release distributed by a major university. All the names have been changed. See if you can guess why.

Katser Career College is pleased to announce that Dr. Mitch Reynolds, editor-in-chief of Psychology Journal, and Dr. Stacey Anderson, dean of Kinsman University of Health Sciences’ College of Veterinary Medicine and the first female dean of a veterinary school, will be the commencement speakers at the Katser Career College graduation ceremony on June 15.

Whoa! How many words can you stuff into one sentence? You guessed it: 54 words. We get a near-complete bio about who these people are, what they’ve accomplished in life, and an invitation (kind of) to an event in which they are participating. Plus, doesn’t the writer make this sound tremendously exciting? I can’t imagine spending my time covering any other story in the world after reading this.

Now, check out how PlattForm PR writes about an event to create reader interest (again, names are changed):

Creating memorable meals takes inspiration, perspiration and experimentation. Great chefs aren’t afraid to get out of the box. And, in some cases, they aren’t afraid to get out of the kitchen – chefs like Michael Midgley. The contestant on Bravo’s hit reality show Top Chef Season Two will be appearing as a guest speaker at the Institute of Technology.

Granted, this is about a much more exciting subject, but the other release never gives journalists a reason to be there.

PlattForm offers your company excitement, accurate and engaging writing, and an end to stupidity. We can get your event covered without making you or ourselves look like schmoes. Best wishes.