Refections. Maybe it’s the peaceful early morning snow falling. Maybe it’s the quiet neighborhood and our house aglow with snowflake lights dangling from the gutters over the front porch or the colorful sparkling lights of the three spiral Christmas trees with glistening stars decorating the front yard. Maybe it’s the warm glow of our Christmas tree brightening the dark early morning hours. Whatever it is, I sit smiling gazing out the window at how peaceful it all is. It’s these quiet moments that I catch here and there that I really cherish. My personal escape from the hustle and bustle of it all. I drive hard all year long. Pushing, pulling, tugging with my foot always on the gas. But it’s these unexpected, quiet moments that mean so much. A momentary break. A chance to breathe. A chance to reflect. A chance to enjoy those important things in life that I love. My beautiful daughter, my adoring wife, my family near and far, my cherished friends who we never seem to spend enough time with each year.

I’m committed to finding more of these unexpected moments in the new year, but this moment I steal to reflect. To my dedicated employees and loyal clients who make working seem less like work – thank you. To my friends, my family, to Becky and Jackie. Thank you for making me better.

Merry Christmas. May we all help to make someone else better in 2011.

My daughter Jackie and my wife Becky

What is your primary news source?  Have you stuck with a printed newspaper or do you visit a news site on the web?  Do you have a smartphone that you use to stay up to date with your current events?

For me, my phone is my primary news source.  Between different news apps and my Twitter feed, I can easily stay connected with what’s going on in the world. My favorite news app is: “News Junkie” – it combines all major national publications into one convenient location.

You can definitely tell who the creative ones are.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Circle of Sisterhood is positioning itself as the avenue for sorority women to work together to make education possible for women around the world. Below are some of the guerrilla marketing tactics they used to launch this initiative.

Circle of Sisterhood chose the AFA annual meeting as the forum to launch their efforts. Because the conference attendees are professionals who work for colleges, universities, and inter/national fraternities or sororities and who serve in advisor roles to members of Fraternities and Sororities the audience was the ideal audience to engage as advocates volunteers and donors for the organization. Unlike students, who remain on a campus community for only a few years, advisors are the continuity. Circle of Sisterhood utilized guerrilla marketing tactics to encourage attendees to visit their booth in the conference’s exhibit hall and to attend the kick off event, hosted toward the end of the annual meeting.

• Volunteers carried orange tote bags so conference attendees easily identified them.
• Volunteers wore a large button that featured a number (updated daily with a dry erase maker) that was a talking point. For example, 6.7. 6.7% of the world’s population has a college degree, compared to 100% of the conference attendees. It gave volunteers the opportunity to talk about the privilege of education, something this audience might typically take for granted.
• They had a giveaway contest for the book, Half the Sky. Anyone who gave a business card was entered to win the book that was the impetus for the founding of the organization. The giveaway had multiple purposes; encouraging people to stop at the booth to enter the drawing, encouraging them to attend the kick off event to see if they won, encouraging attendees to read the book (which could lead to a desire to be involved) and helping the organization acquire the names of potential volunteers, advocates and donors for their mailing list.
• Though the kick off event was listed in the program as invite only (making it seem exclusive) volunteers had round invitations (playing on the circle theme) that were distributed to individuals that they met during the conference.  The invitation featured part of a story from the book. The recipient of the invitation was invited to the kick off event to hear the remainder of the story.

These are just a few examples of tactics used by Circle of Sisterhood Foundation. To see more examples of guerilla marketing visit http://www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com/

Could your business or organization benefit from guerilla marketing tactics? We can help you formulate a plan.