Tesar-Reynes

Six weeks into my first position at a marketing/PR agency, I find myself working with clients more often. The task can seem intimidating at times. For a rookie, managing the client relationship can be like sitting at the dinner table with your rich uncle you only see a few times a year. You’re eager to impress, but don’t want to seem overly try-hard.

Last week, Kevin Donnellon, a friend and former VP at PR agency giant Golin-Harris, sent me this newsletter on client relationships. It was a welcome read. I mentioned the important lesson Kevin taught me on handshakes in a previous comment on one of Tony’s posts.

If you’re new to the industry like me, you probably don’t have much client relationship experience to draw …

With the holidays around the corner, how will advertisers counter effects of a slumping economy in the most important shopping season of the year?

According to a Times article today, it all comes down to one word – price.

The article talks about how consumer psychology is changing. Nowadays buyers are skipping “luxury” items from Macy’s in favor of the practical buy from Wal-Mart. When you’re constantly bombarded with messages of a slumping economy, it makes you think twice about reaching for that $100 sweater from Ralph Lauren.

Consider Tim Calkins opinion, a professor of marketing at …

About every two months I get asked by one of my candidates whether it’s better to write an e-mail or a handwritten thank you note to someone after an interview. The people who ask this question tend to fall into one of three groups: they are over 40, they’re very concerned about relationships, or they came out of public relations.

I can argue the cause from either side. I personally feel that e-mail is the currency of communications today. I do think any form of IM or twitter is far too informal. On the other side of the coin, a handwritten note shows an extra sense of caring and work to produce the document.

In the final analysis, I always try and listen to the …

I’ve written about Hulu plenty on this site. As a college senior, one without cable, it’s my favorite way to catch all my shows. What started out as a joint venture between NBC Universal and Fox last year has grown into an Internet phenomenon.

Yet, I get the feeling, not many of our readers are aware of it. Hulu is a medium favored by the young and tech savvy. Older X-gen’s probably have never seen the site.

Marketers have been trying to solve the Internet advertising problem for years. Give credit to NBC and Fox for having the gumption to take a stab at it. And, according to an article from today’s Times, …

Eye contact, like the handshake, is absolutely essential to all physical communications, particularly interviews. In my rating system, you can lose just as many points by not looking at me as by having a fishy handshake.

When someone looks at me when I talk to them I feel that they are processing what I am saying. They’re trying to be committed to understanding what I’m talking about. I can also extrapolate that this person will treat other people in a like manner. Also, when someone silently looks me in the eye while I am talking, they are not talking back or interrupting. I feel that most of the processing is going to listening, and not a rebuttal or trying to act smart.

I lose interest when someone is talking to me, and …

I have a big stack of things that I’ve cut out, written down, or saved for future blog posts. When I am not inspired to write, I dive into this stack for some ideas. Thus I found a thought-provoking article in an old issue of Ad Week that I thought was worth commenting on.

The headline was “The Digital Skills Jobseekers Need to Survive Now.” The article describes five personality traits that help contribute in a digital perspective. The first is the hacker, who is capable of going into a site figuring out how it actually works. They may also contribute code to make it better.

The second is the technologically curious, a person who doesn’t write the code, but will nonetheless go into a place and rummage around to figure out how …

In tough times, job cutbacks are inevitable.  Having lived through some myself,  here are some suggestions to keep your job.

1.  Follow the money.

If possible try and work on an account or brand that has relatively consistent spending.  Areas such as health care, manufacturing and certain business services fall into this category.

2. Work for a winner.

There are certain golden people in the office that everyone knows are the stars.  If cutbacks occur, they will not be affected nor will the people who work for them.

3. Get credit for your work.

It is wonderful to be a team player, but make sure that people know what are the individual contributions you have made to the organization.

4. Nurture your network.

Make sure you grow and contact your network of friends, …

My best friend is a financial director for a person in the US Congress. On a recent mailing, the response rate was less than .5%. Now a good direct response person would say that the list or the offer was bad. I happen to believe that the addresses were good; I can’t attest to the message.
This instance does remind me of the fact that people don’t respond to my messages. I sent out 37 in-mails in Linked In and I only received 12 responses. The addresses were good and the offer, from my vantage point, had no negatives.

This all brings me to a question: why don’t people return calls and …