Stacy's Blog | tips for writers, speakers and marketers

A marketing brochure in my portfolio has recently received a Communicator Award. The brochure was given an Award of Distinction in the Print category. The Communicator Awards is the largest and most competitive awards program honoring the creative excellence of communications professionals. The Communicator Awards is sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a “Who’s Who” of acclaimed media, communications, advertising, creative and marketing firms. IAVA members include executives from organizations such as Alloy, Brandweek, Coach, Disney, The Ellen Degeneres Show, Estee Lauder, Fry Hammond Barr, HBO, Monster.com, MTV, Polo Ralph Lauren, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Victoria’s Secret, Wired, and Yahoo! To learn more about the IAVA please visit www.iavisarts.org . “The quality, creativity and execution of this year’s work is a true testament to the talents and abilities of communications prof

We were a salesperson’s dream – we had money to burn. My husband’s employer had given him a chunk of money to spend freely after reaching a significant years-of-service milestone. The big purchase? A new stereo system. My college stereo system (circa 1992) didn’t integrate with today’s technology. After reading online reviews and window shopping for the past few years, my husband was eager to buy. Soon, our living room was full of boxes, cables, packing materials and some cool new technology. Then came the hard part. For four futile hours we tried to set it up and integrate the new gadgets with our existing equipment. Normally I am savvy with electronics and figuring out how to properly connect wires and cables, but by midnight I had lost all excitement about our new purchase. I stared at the technical manual and tried to make sense of the instructions. I read and reread the sections that seemed to match our tasks. After a frustrating week of tinkering, we packed the boxes back up and

Barack Obama nailed it. As a curious Canadian, I watched his paid advertisement last night. With his numerous friends in Hollywood, he could have dazzled us a million different ways in his 30-minutes of prime time television. But Obama didn’t impress us with his fancy friends, instead he reached out to us with vivid stories from the common American. References to Joe the plumber and soccer moms are now replaced with real stories and dramatic images. I woke up this morning still seeing a mom standing in front of her open fridge, finding creative ways to stretch out her groceries. I’m remembering a woman’s crooked, arthritic fingers and her husband getting dressed for a job he never meant to have in his retirement years. I watched a senior man, trying not to cry, as he talked about his monthly pension payment that falls hundreds of dollars short of what was promised. A while ago, I attended an excellent webinar on “Marketing Through Storytelling” by Andrea Learned . Learned talks about s

Like many Canadians, I curiously watched the broadcast of the vice-presidential debate between Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Gov. Sarah Palin last Thursday night. While I was watching, I was wishing that I could give Governor Palin one tiny bit of advice. I would like to delete one word from Palin ’s vocabulary. No, it’s not the word betcha, a word with a dropped g (like goin ' or somethin ') or the term maverick. I would tell Palin to stop using the word also . Palin says also approximately 50 times during the course of the debate, and approximately 50 times the word is unnecessary. This filler word weakens her key statements. Take a closer look at the debate transcript and you'll see what I mean. Even though Palin probably has access to some of the best speechwriters in the world and is well-coached on her key messages -- the best writers cannot prevent her from sneaking filler words into her spoken delivery. We all use filler words or verbal pauses in our langua