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Every day as PR professionals, we are tasked with writing solid, compelling content to be used across our client base on any number of media platforms. It’s the PR life and while I love it, writer’s block comes and blindsides me from time to time leaving me staring at a glaringly empty screen. 

The PR world is fast-paced by nature, so there’s little to no time for writer’s block on any given day of the week. Everything has a deadline, so wasting time isn’t really an option!

Here, I offer up a few of my own go-to tips on how to fight writer’s block and push through the brain fog:

1.  Plan ahead

Far and away the best way I’ve found to avoid writer’s block all together: plan ahead!

If you know you need to write something, schedule yourself the time to brainstorm ahead of time. Whether simply writing down ideas or bouncing around concepts with a coworker, if you give yourself time to work through both good and bad ideas, you’ll end up with much stronger content and can avoid sweating while writing it five minutes before your deadline.

2.    Troll for sources, facts and supporting articles to color your piece

<<Dear World, Are you using Google Reader for your Google Alerts? If not you are MISSING OUT! XO Lauren>>

But really — I used to spend time hunting through my massive email inbox for Google Alerts that slipped my radar and went unread. Despite making good use of Google mail’s fantastical automatic labeling capabilities, the alerts were clogging up my email more than they were helping keep me organized.

Now I have all of my favorite alerts sent to Google Reader and OH MY LANTA! The ease of being able to find and track relevant and interesting articles – it rocks! Looking for something “newsy” to inspire a blog post? Go riffle through your Google Reader, you’re guaranteed to find something worth sharing or blogging about!

What I mean is, unless you work in an airtight, locked room, you probably have people near by. That means more brains that could spawn creative ideas or angles that may have gone un-tapped had you not been the social (and professional) butterfly that you are!

Reach out to someone who hasn’t worked on the same clients, give a shout out to the project you’re working on and ask for some feedback, and I’ll bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised at just how much value you get out of the resulting conversation — just don’t let the time get away from you while you’re chatting away

Take your fresh ideas and run with them! Let the creative juices flow and VOILA!

So I shared my writer’s block secrets, what are yours? Eating some chocolate? Going on a run? Taking your laptop outside for a change of scenery? Sharing is caring, people so let us have it!

One of my favorite parts about working here at ANDERSON is our weekly brainstorm meeting. Every Friday we all come together to brainstorm about current projects and plans. The meeting is always accompanied with a fun and unique theme (usually food related) and it is a great way to bond as a team while also sharing ideas.

All the salsa competitors

With the upcoming Cinco de Mayo weekend approaching, we felt there was no theme more appropriate than a good old-fashioned salsa challenge!

All week long, everyone bragged about their salsa recipe. So when Friday finally arrived we were all ready for the big taste testing fiesta.

With six contestants entering for the grand prize package of an apron, cooking bag, and bragging rights the competition was fierce.

Ultimately, our very own account manager Will Lloyd took home the big victory with his crowd pleasing creation of Mango-Jalepeño “King Kamehameha Salsa”.

The salsa feast is ready!

I have to admit, it was quite delicious and won my vote for best salsa of the day! Overall the salsa challenge and Cinco de Mayo fiesta was a success!! It even opened the door to tons of food themed competition possibilities in the future to allow our team to show off their culinary skills. Stay tuned for the next one!!

You may know the company Adobe by its most famous (and infamous) product, Photoshop. What you may not know is that Adobe also releases dozens of other multimedia design software packages, including Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, Flash, LightRoom, InDesign, and many others. These programs compliment and enhance each other in different ways during the creative workflow, and many are essential in any creative professional’s bag of tricks. It’s safe to say that 99.9% of professional media design you see in print, television, and the movies have an Adobe product turning the gears behind the scenes at some stage of the production process, and this summer, Adobe is releasing new and updated versions of all of these programs in their “Creative Suite 6″ package.

More than just a shiny new box and CD, each program is getting a major performance upgrade with added features. After Effects, for example, will be receiving 3D capability, giving video editors and motion graphics artists like myself a brand new and easy to use tool to crank our videos up to “11″ with expensive and fancy looking 3D logos, without having to bring another program and/or artist into the mix to complicate things.

And that’s only the pointy tip of the iceberg of Adobe’s CS6 package. It’s literally the new cutting edge of software for creative professionals, which we will be upgrading to here at Anderson Advertising & Public Relations when it’s finally released. And I’m PSYCHED!

We try to keep the team spirit alive by having different activities once a month where we all get together and spend sometime outside the office together and March & April’s events were sporty and awesome!

First we had the ADDY awards at the beginning of the month where we not only took home two lovely statues but we had a lot of fun!

Grant & Michelle enjoying mini milkshakes - yum!

It won a ribbon. Come on...

The Duce delivered!

Company love & pride!

Then the ANDERSON clan hit up Arizona Stronghold’s Spring Palate Training at Salt River Fields towards the end of the month.

Wine + Baseball = Magic.

They did three rounds of tastings with two wines in each round. So delicious!

JJ wore a fabulous shirt to the event. We would expect nothing less of him!

Have to love some great AZ sunshine!

Just this past week we  had the chance to take in the Coyotes last home game of the season in a sweet suite.

Michelle & JJ bundling up and being goofy. Typical.

Laurie, Will & Grant chatting between periods. We were a chatty bunch!

For being from the East Coast Will sure needed the warmth of his Coyotes scarf...

Can’t wait to see what the next month brings, we’re off to our Friday brainstorm! Have a wonderful weekend!

One of the things I love about the advertising business is working hand-in-hand with clients to help their businesses succeed.

Having the latitude of being the “crazy ad people” allows us to bring ideas to the table without worry.   One of the best examples of an agency unfailingly doing this, and creating a world wide brand, was led by industry legend George Lois. Some say Don Draper was inspired by George.  He was recently interviewed on NPR and told this great story.

From ADWEEK, By David Griner

If you missed NPR’s interview yesterday with legendary adman George Lois about his new book, Damn Good Advice, it’s worth going back and giving it a listen. The highlight for me was hearing the tale of how Lois (in his version of the story, at least) single-handedly invented Aunt Jemima syrup. It’s one of those advertising yarns you’d expect to have heard a million times over, and possibly you have, but it was new to me.

When Lois was working the Aunt Jemima account, the Quaker-owned brand was known for pancake mix but didn’t make a syrup.

“I said to them, ‘How come you guys don’t have a syrup? You own the pancake business,’ ” Lois recounts in the NPR interview. “And they said, ‘Well, that’s not our business,’ and they came up with 12 reasons why they don’t have it.”

Not getting any traction after months of pressing the issue, Lois decided to drop the idea into a consumer survey about pancake habits.

“The last question in this questionnaire about pancakes listed a bunch of syrups, and I included the words ‘Aunt Jemima syrup,’ and I said, ‘Which of these syrups have you bought in the past year?’ And something like 90 percent of the people circled that they had bought Aunt Jemima syrup, which was nonexistent.… I showed them my research and said ’90 percent of Americans believe they are already buying Aunt Jemima syrup. Would you please make Aunt Jemima syrup?’ And of course they created the syrup, and they became the leading syrup brand in the world in two days.”

Just goes to show, there’s no limit to what creativity can accomplish when you add in some pestering and unsolicited advice.

I know, I know. It’s Friday, which means that you’re all waiting with bated breath for ANDERSON Feature Friday. Don’t worry. I’m here to deliver. So settle in, folks!

Now you might remember our little video holiday card, which allowed our Account Coordinator, Lauren, and I to show some of our comedy-writing prowess. From the feedback we got on it, we’re fairly certain (most of) you found it funny. Thank you, by the way!

This week for Feature Friday I was more than happy to volunteer my blogging services in the name of showcasing some of the agency’s funnier moments from AC Lauren. The excellence I’m here to commend has come in the form of Lauren’s daily lunchtime emails, sent each day to remind the team to please cover the phones while she dashes out on her next mid-day adventure.

What started out as a simple “Hey guys, can you answer the phone while I run out?” has evolved into an email that most — if not all — of us look forward to every day. In short – they’re hilarious and unique. Every. Single. Day.

The ANDERSON team is packed full of some extraordinary talent, and we really believe our work is benefitted by the team’s collective sense of humor – something we hope you picked up from that holiday video, and that we’re sure you’ll see from the sampling of our daily email treats below.

Below you’ll find screen shots of some of our favorite Lauren (aka @lstreiff / Lo Lo Bird / Lo) lunchtime emails. We hope you enjoy them as much as we have.

That last email links to this gem of a music video.

See you guys next week!

I was reading an interesting article on AdWeek earlier this week about creating “better” mobile ads.  This is a topic that has come up recently as we are working with a few clients to move some of their advertising budgets from traditional media to online and mobile. “What a great idea, everyone is doing it! Web and mobile spending are the fastest growing sectors right now…”  We’ve all heard this before, but the next question to field once you get clients to buy in is how exactly to turn these ads into customers.  Conversion rate.

We had a conference call with one company about a few options today, and I believe the answer (right now) is better served with a simple question: how creative can you be?

The beautiful thing about mobile advertising — and to some extent, web — is the amount of creativity afforded.  In a meeting last week, we were looking at options to show the closest theatre to your mobile phone or iPad.  By looking at your cookies, the mobile ad server can show you one of three different trailers, one with a bug in the corner about the weather, and one focused on why it’s a good idea to see a movie today. Then, the ad can show you the closest location and that day’s showtimes of that very movie you just watched a trailer of – at that location.  All you have to do is click on the ad, and in less than a minute you can have a ticket to the movie on your phone. I personally find that amazing.

If you are headed to dinner, or to a game, then the ad probably isn’t going to change your mind. But if you’re on the fence, it will at least put the idea in your head.  And isn’t that what good advertising does?  Open the door to possible action?

You, the consumer, have to make the choice to buy the widget, see a movie, or eat a chicken sandwich, but interesting, engaging advertising – done properly and placed well – can at least put that chicken sandwich, or movie, or widget in your head where it wasn’t before.

So now, more than ever, be creative. Ask “why not?”. Push the envelope.  It’s that creativity that is going to turn the CPC ad into $$$ at your location, regardless of what you’re offering.

We know. You’ve heard about Google+ and you know in your gut that it’s your turn to get with the times and dive in. But if you’re like [most] everyone else, you still have some questions – and we don’t blame you!

Check out the 35-slide clarity-providing, epiphany-provoking breakdown that journo, Gideon Rosenblatt shared via (wait for it…) Google+ here.

According to Gideon, Yes, Google+ is Google’s answer to Facebook, but not in the directly competitive sense many journalists [or people] assume. Google+ is core to Google’s mission ”to organize the world’s information”, and that’s a better frame for thinking about this service.

[Let's] kickstart a different perspective on what Google+ really is – a “shared interest graph.” 

Buzzwords and terms to watch out for: #information networking, #shared interest graph, #information networkers, #influence graph