Walking around town the other day, I came across this sign in the window of a local store:

I also saw a similar sign today that read, “Free Wood For Sale.” Actually, I didn’t see it, my son did while we were driving home. He swiftly noticed the irony in the message and reported it to me (that’s my boy!). Maybe I’m just a little nuts, but stuff like this drives me crazy. Didn’t anyone read these signs and realize how ridiculous they were? Tops on my list of pet peeves are errors and visual offenses in signage and print ads. Misuse of possessive vs. plural is particularly annoying to me. This is one of my strange obsessions I guess, but I always look at signage and ads in search of errors, verbal and visual.

Just as there are rules for grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling, there are also rules of graphic design. A graphic can become visually ineffective, confusing, or outright visually offensive, simply by the choice of font style, font size, color, placement, and shapes.

It all comes down to attention to detail. If you can’t spell, then use spell check. If you are grammatically deficient, then have someone edit and proofread for you. If you can’t write, then hire a writer. If you can’t design, then hire a designer. It’s like one of those poor tone-deaf people auditioning for American Idol, truly thinking they can sing, only to put themselves on national television for the ultimate in public humiliation. Before you go ahead and plaster grammatical, syntactical, spelling or graphic errors and offenses on the front of your store, on a billboard, in an ad, on your blog or in any public forum, stop and make sure that the message is clear and the visuals are appealing. Presentation is everything.

I just read a post on Amber Naslund’s blog about her perspective on the ineffectiveness of pitching in corporate-speak language. It got me thinking about writing pitches in general and how a one-size-fits-all pitch never works. There is an art to pitching. The bottom line is that when you craft a pitch, it needs to speak to the person that you are targeting and/or to their audience. Naslund’s perspective is coming from the angle of social media. In that case, corporate speak is not effective, because that’s not how people in social media talk. In other instances, a more formal tone may be more appropriate. The key here is to know who you are pitching, know a bit about who they are, know their style, and know what it is that you want them to do and if that actually is something they can and may be willing to do. Do your homework and adjust the tone of your pitch depending on who you are approaching. Pitching a blogger is different than pitching a trade magazine. Pitching a consumer magazine is different than pitching a potential corporate sponsor. Speak their language. Put yourself in their position and try to understand how they will respond.

For example, I recently got a pitch from someone at a product company that, although his email started with “Hi Cheryl,” clearly he had never read my blog or taken the time to understand what I do. He went on to say (cut and pasted) that he really enjoyed my blog and all the great giveaways that I host. Um, folks, do you see any giveaways here? He wanted me to host a giveaway for his product even though that’s not what I do. Delete. No, actually, I first emailed him back and told him what I do, and that if he found his current email campaign to be ineffective, then he could hire me to help him craft a more effective one. Then I hit delete.

If you don’t take the time to try to know or understand the person or organization you are pitching, then why would they take the time to care or act upon what it is you are asking from them. Tailor your pitch to fit your mark and your successes will be greater.

Jane Jetson chatting online

I may be dating myself here, but sometimes I step out of my day to day and sit back, totally amazed by the technology and tools available to us.  I work with them day in and day out and often take them for granted, but every now and then it hits me that I am living in what was the future of my childhood.

This ocassional amazement is probably something that kids, teens and twenty somethings can’t relate to at all, and don’t ever think about. But maybe I think about it because I typed my papers in college on this Smith Corona typewriter with erasable paper:

Maybe I also think about it because I grew up watching the Jetsons and saw the future through George’s daily life.  George Jetson used Skype everyday when he called Jane from the office.  He used the Internet to read the news. It all seemed so impossible to me at the time, but look at us now. We ARE living in the future, at least the future that I saw in cartoons when I was a tot. Let’s all take a moment to pay homage to the technology that allows us to do what we do everyday.

My son eating dinner while chatting on Skype with his dad, who was in China

What will my son’s future be like? I’ll either have to be sure that I live for another 40 years or so to find out first hand, or maybe I should just go watch some cartoons. Underwater Geodomes a la Spongebob’s pal Sandy, perhaps?