I am, of course, referring to the fact that while I build
programs and make recommendations for clients, stressing
the importance of social media, and blogging and being
consistent and regular, my little blog falls to the wayside.

My clients get fantastic blog entries and thought-provoking,
dialogue-generating communication and my poor little blog
sits exposed on the internet with last year’s worn out shoes.  Sigh…

My new year’s resolution was to be more consistent.
It really was. And I’ve had a million ideas and started writing
in my head many, many times. But then a call came, or meeting
prep was required, or a writing deadline was looming…and once
again, my child was patted on the head and told, “I’ll be back soon.
No really. I promise.”

Tonight, as I researched and wrote my client’s blog, I could hear
my baby calling for me to come and play. And I felt guilty. And so,
even though I have 3 other deadlines, a growling tummy
(man, I skipped lunch again!) and a need to just stretch and
get away from the desk, I am writing and posting this blog.
And smiling. Because it feels good and reminds me of why I
started this in the first place.

Time: never enough when you need it, but, oh
too much of it when you’re waiting for something!

At this time of year, I believe in stopping, reviewing and
being thankful for the achievements of the current year
and taking a moment to consider the goals for the next.

My first year as Diana Degan & Associates is almost done.
I launched my new blog, DDA, on my revamped web site.
I was fortunate to win another IABC international Gold Quill
Award. I was honoured to be recognized by Cambridge
Who’s Who as their Professional of the Year for Public
Relations & Marketing and featured in their magazine.

I started working with several new clients including the
Responsible Gambling Council. And I have been selected
as a speaker at the IABC World Conference to be held in
Chicago, IL next June.

The next year looks brighter than ever. A new project with
Storck for their Werther’s candy promises to be especially
sweet. I’ve just been asked back to Loyalist College to
speak to their Post-Grad PR program — my 6^th year!
And I have a trip to Chicago to look forward to.

I wish you all the happiest of holidays and a very successful
2012. I thank you all for your support, your advice and
your friendship and look forward to seeing you in the New Year.

My fellow panellists – Al Goodhall, a commercial truck
driver and 2010 Winner of Driver of the Year for the
Central Chapter, and Lorne Honickman, lawyer and
very familiar face from his days at City-TV as the legal
reporter and now host of CourtTV and Legal Briefs –
and I discussed the whys and how-tos of using social
media. With a very healthy dose of “holy crap, you need
to be careful” thrown in by Mr. Honickman. And rightly so.
As he told the crowd, “the Internet and social media is
like the Wild West” and he wasn’t so sure it was going to
be tamed.

Mr. Honickman specializes in the legal implications of
social media use and his examples of how fast an
off- the-cuff comment can turn into a legal nightmare did
make people stop and think. Our panel moderator,
Lou Smyrlis, Editor of Truck News, did an on the spot
poll at the end of the session and everyone agreed that
the legal implications did worry them and would make
them stop and pay closer attention to how they were
using social media.

One of the points that I made during the presentation
was that you shouldn’t put anything out there, regardless
of how you do it, social media or otherwise, that you
wouldn’t want in the newspaper tomorrow. It is all too
easy with social media to just send a comment “out there.”
Something that you would never dream of saying face-to-face
or even in an email. And with the ability to hide behind
usernames and anonymity, it can be a free-for-all. Although
Mr. Honickman said they can track you down if they need to.
(Just like a sheriff on horseback!)

I found it interesting to hear both my co-panellists speak. Al has
been blogging and tweeting about life on the road as a trucker
and has been asked to participate in numerous industry groups
about safety and other industry issues as a result. I certainly
made a point of getting Lorne’s business card – you just never
know where that next client crisis is going to come from and
given our discussion yesterday and my research leading up
to it, it’s clear that social media will play a bigger and bigger
role both in causing a crisis and how you can deal with it,
proactively and reactively.

I had the TV turned on to see what the traffic into the city was like.
I was in the bathroom doing my makeup when I heard a commotion
on the TV and came to see what they were talking about. As I watched
the live program, the second plane flew into the World Trade Centre
in New York. I watched as the plane hit the building and like the rest of
the world, was stunned.

My first thought was that there must be a problem with air traffic control
at one of the local NY airports. Why else would two planes hit massive
buildings? Your mind tries to make sense of what it is seeing. Very quickly
the reporting told a different story, although no one really understood what
was happening.

I still had to drive into Toronto. It was an absolutely beautiful day, with
blue skies and the occasional floating cloud. The perfect fall day.

My appointment was in Yorkville and as I parked the car and made my
way to the building, people walking around me were on cell phones and I
could catch snippets of conversations. “Have you heard from….” “I can’t reach….”
“Can you get me a flight home?” The film festival was in town
and people who might otherwise have been in NY or who knew people
in NY were desperately trying to connect and reach loved ones.
 

There was an almost eerie feeling to Toronto that day. I thought it rather
ironic that as many people were trying to get out of the city – because who knew?
Toronto might be next – I was driving into it, and right through the
heart of the financial district.

The world was changed that day.

For me personally, several really interesting jobs I was considering dried
up because the tourism market was impacted so severely. I turned down
several jobs because I recognized that their expectations were completely
out of line in what was going to be the new business reality over the next
year. And I decided to see if I could make it on my own.

Here I am, 10 years later. It’s been a decade of immense change.
 

I’ve won 18 business awards in the last four years alone and been named
Small Agency of the Year three times. I value my family and true friends
more than ever. I embrace the opportunity to work with clients that look
for ways to incorporate social responsibility and helping and educating
others to make changes in small and large ways. I strive to meet new
people, enjoy new experiences and help others find their way. I look for
ways each and every day to bring kindness, grace, wisdom and learning
into my life and to those around me. And I take the time to enjoy my life
and live in the moment, for today…even if that is a simple as taking my
morning coffee out onto the porch to check out how the new baby mourning doves in
the nest in my hanging fern plant are doing.
 

Today, I take a moment to stop, reflect and remember.
And to wish you all well.

I love it when you read about a marketing idea
that makes you smile. I just had to write about this
in my blog and post it immediately because that’s
what having a blog is all about right?

Every day I get two Marketing Magazine email
news brief updates. And in this morning’s was a
story about how everyone is getting in on the
upcoming Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
Last week, the airport welcomed TIFF in their own way.

On an average busy day at the airport, the luggage carousel
light and buzzer sounded and then all of a sudden
1,000 boxes of popcorn poured onto the carousel.
The look on the people’s faces is priceless.
The smiles, the chuckles, the snapping of photos,
the munching of popcorn … you can see it all.
And it makes me smile. You have to go check it out for yourself. http://www.marketingmag.ca/uncategorized/watch-this-pearson-pops-surprise-for-tiff-promotion-35313?p=35313?utm_source=EmailMarketing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=marketing_daily_AM

You know as a marketer that the impact was great that day,
immediately touching those in the area, and there were people
on hand to pass out the boxes to travellers to extend it a bit further.
But the reach goes WAYYY beyond that…. the PR component kicked
in today as I read the story, viewed the video they obviously shot that
day and smiled. And blogged about it. Nice job guys.

I have been very fortunate to find what I love to do early
in my life. And I have had the opportunity to learn and grow
and stumble and fall and get back up off my butt and learn
to keep pushing forward. I have worked with some amazing
people and I have worked with some…um…not so nice people..
ok, let’s call a spade a spade, horrible people. You learn lessons
from both.

I’ve learned that it really is true that when one door closes another
one opens…sometimes it can be hard to see the open door through
the tears, but it’s there. You just have to look really hard for it.
Mopping the tears up a bit helps by the way.

I’ve realized that the lessons never stop and that we often continue to
make the same mistakes over and over again until we finally learn our
lesson. I was recently told that if I let go of an opportunity I was trying
to force, another more beautiful one would come along. My mentor
was right…I let the one go and was rewarded with landing the
Responsible Gambling Council as a client. We’re working together on
their Problem Gambling Prevention Weeks happening this fall. I saw
a little more karma surround my win, so it was even sweeter.

I have had the good fortune to work with some great clients through the
past 10 years and I thank each and every one of them for their trust,
their confidence and their support. I look forward to working with more
great clients for the next 10 years.

So happy birthday to me times two!! I’ve been blessed and given many
gifts in my life.  And today seems like the perfect time to acknowledge it.
And if that’s not Drop Dead Appropos, then I don’t know what is.

It’s been a long time coming. I’ve been in business for 10 years this summer and for many of the past five years, I have contemplated starting up a blog. But I also wondered whether I would have anything to share. What could I say that wasn’t already being said by a host of other bloggers out there? And yet, I still had this little niggle in my brain.

Then two months ago I attended an IABC/Toronto presentation on Social Media by industry expert Randall Craig. And I specifically asked the question if I should start up a blog. His response: absolutely!! No waffling, no hesitation, just unequivocally…absolutely!

So, here I am!!

As with anything, just making the decision isn’t enough. There is a lot of strategy, planning and implementation that goes along with it. Kind of like when I decided to change back to my maiden name last year. Making that decision was one thing; actually making it happen was another. (That’s a WHOLE other story.)

The biggest realization was how to integrate a blog into my existing web site. And like a game of dominoes, one thing leads to another to another…In the end, my “web site guy”, Mike Lush of Masterplans and I decided the best thing to do would be to overhaul my existing web site and move it to the new Web 2.0 platforms that are apparently the way of the future and going to make everything else look outdated.

Well, we’re almost there. Nothing like tackling new business proposals while your web site is under construction!  Ah well, what’s that saying? The only thing that is constant in life is change.

Oh…the name.  Why Drop Dead Apropos?  I originally considered not having a name and then realized my newsletter has a name and it seemed kind of lame to just refer to “my blog.”  I thought it would be interesting to see if I could use the first letters of my company name, Diana Degan & Associates — DDA.  But unlike when I started my newsletter, I couldn’t find one word with all three letters that really worked. So I started looking for three words. Drop Dead popped out at me as I was doing research. Which just left me with finding an A word. Hmm….and the word Apropos snuck into my mind.

Apropos…okay, first I had to look up how it was actually spelled. And I found that it could be an adverb, an adjective, and a preposition. Interesting. It means at the right time, by the way, fitting the occasion, relevant, in connection with, being at once opportune and to the point. All of those meanings were perfect as far as I was concerned for a blog about my day job, PR and marketing communications. And it worked with Drop Dead. So the blog was named: Drop Dead Apropos. And on a really rough day sometime in the future, I can just say, with as straight a face as I can manage… “ya sure, Drop Dead…Apropos, my blog..check it out.”