Internet startups do things a little differently than traditional print products. Recently, we decided to try something a little unusual in the marketing department. We're working with Peter Shankman, an "entrepreneur, adventurist and CEO of The Geek Factory, a PR and marketing boutique firm in New York City."
He and our vp for marketing, Paula Sirois, came up with an interesting idea -- pitching to his clients an opportunity to do his job for us. Here's the pitch he sent out yesterday for those of you who might be interested in trying your hand:
So... It's Friday morning. Wanna win an Amazon Kindle? Here's the deal. One of my really fun clients, (They're all really fun...)Divorce360, is the ultimate social network for anyone dealing with divorce, going through a divorce, or coming out of a divorce. I've already gotten them some great press.
But can you do better?
"Do Peter's Job, because he's so busy sending out the freakin HAROs." Come up with a great promotion for Divorce360.com. Can be anything.
Basic rules: Has to be simple, legal, media worthy, and under $2,500. Email kindle@divorce360.com with your idea on how to promote the site. I'll pick a winner in a week or so, and if you win, we'll give you a Kindle, and pimp you and your company out to 20k or so people in an upcoming HARO. You don't have to implement the idea, just come up with it. Go have fun, win a Kindle. Again - DO NOT EMAIL ME - but kindle@divorce360.com.
Pitch lively!
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
About Life, Love and Junny Rios-Martinez
A note to readers: Normally, this blog is about my travels from newspaper to online journalism. Today's blog is a little more personal.
Sometimes things happen in life that change you forever. And you can never go back.
Today, the state of Florida executed a man it released early from prison in 1991. He was a convicted sex offender who had raped several boys along Florida's Space Coast. On April 18 of that same year, he kidnapped and raped his last victim -- 11-year-old Junny Omar Rios-Martinez. Then he killed the boy.
At the time, I was a police reporter covering the beat. And I knew that night when I went to talk to his parents for the story, something in my gut told me, this child was never coming home.
I never met Junny. At least not when he was alive.
But I got to know him, a little bit I would like to think, by talking to his family over the next 17 years. I spotted him in the quiet intelligence of the younger brother he left behind. Or the impish bravado of his tough-girl little sister. I found him in the laughter his older sisters shared like a secret language no one else knew.
But mostly, I found him in his parents struggle to keep their family from falling apart after the unimaginable became their reality -- the unspeakable their truth. These days, couples fall apart for something the courts call irreconcilable differences. But for Vicki and Junny Sr. that never happened.
Instead, over time, their loss became a gain of sorts, a harsh recognition that sometimes life is shorter than we think, that the tiny moments of the every day are the ones that really count the most in the end. And in that recognition, they found a strength that perhaps they didn't even know they had.
Over the years, Mark Dean Schwab has fought against his death sentence. On November 17, 2007, days after his execution was delayed again, I saw the Rios-Martinez family at a celebration to honor their son. It was held in a park that bears his name just a few blocks from the home where his parents still live. "This day is all about Junny," Vicki said, before she and her now grown children and her grandchildren released doves in his memory.
Some years ago, I wrote a column about courage that ran in the newspaper where I once worked. I wrote about Vicki and Junny Sr. and said that courage was "waking up every morning knowing that your son is dead and getting out of bed anyway."
Today, I know I was wrong.
Courage is more than that, really. It is in the deciding that, despite what has happened, you will do more than merely survive. You will choose to live -- and to love anyway.
Vicki and Junny Rios-Martinez did just that. And no one, not even Mark Dean Schwab, can ever take that away.
In memory of Junny Rios-Martinez: 5/16/79--4/18/91
Sometimes things happen in life that change you forever. And you can never go back.
Today, the state of Florida executed a man it released early from prison in 1991. He was a convicted sex offender who had raped several boys along Florida's Space Coast. On April 18 of that same year, he kidnapped and raped his last victim -- 11-year-old Junny Omar Rios-Martinez. Then he killed the boy.
At the time, I was a police reporter covering the beat. And I knew that night when I went to talk to his parents for the story, something in my gut told me, this child was never coming home.
I never met Junny. At least not when he was alive.
But I got to know him, a little bit I would like to think, by talking to his family over the next 17 years. I spotted him in the quiet intelligence of the younger brother he left behind. Or the impish bravado of his tough-girl little sister. I found him in the laughter his older sisters shared like a secret language no one else knew.
But mostly, I found him in his parents struggle to keep their family from falling apart after the unimaginable became their reality -- the unspeakable their truth. These days, couples fall apart for something the courts call irreconcilable differences. But for Vicki and Junny Sr. that never happened.
Instead, over time, their loss became a gain of sorts, a harsh recognition that sometimes life is shorter than we think, that the tiny moments of the every day are the ones that really count the most in the end. And in that recognition, they found a strength that perhaps they didn't even know they had.
Over the years, Mark Dean Schwab has fought against his death sentence. On November 17, 2007, days after his execution was delayed again, I saw the Rios-Martinez family at a celebration to honor their son. It was held in a park that bears his name just a few blocks from the home where his parents still live. "This day is all about Junny," Vicki said, before she and her now grown children and her grandchildren released doves in his memory.
Some years ago, I wrote a column about courage that ran in the newspaper where I once worked. I wrote about Vicki and Junny Sr. and said that courage was "waking up every morning knowing that your son is dead and getting out of bed anyway."
Today, I know I was wrong.
Courage is more than that, really. It is in the deciding that, despite what has happened, you will do more than merely survive. You will choose to live -- and to love anyway.
Vicki and Junny Rios-Martinez did just that. And no one, not even Mark Dean Schwab, can ever take that away.
In memory of Junny Rios-Martinez: 5/16/79--4/18/91
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
About Paul Simon, Divorce and Cinderella
I am divorced, and I don't talk about it often. Going through it was difficult enough, so why rehash? The closest I have come to describing what I felt are the words of a Paul Simon song on "Graceland." It goes something like, "Losing love is like a window in your heart. Everybody sees you're torn apart. Everybody feels the wind blow." While it's been almost 10 years since my own experience, I'm always amazed that I still occasionally feel "the wind blow."
Sometimes I think about the decisions I have made and wonder if they were the right ones, even though my gut tells me they were. The circuitousness of those decisions seem incredibly random today. I left Florida in the middle of a divorce to take a job at a newspaper so I could avoid hearing the sound of that wind. I returned to Florida to work for an Internet startup whose first site was focused on, you guessed it, divorce. Funny the way the world works. I'd call it serendipidy, except that implies a mood that's lighter than the circumstances.
I've been reading a book called, "Eat, Pray, Love," by Elizabeth Gilbert, which is, for some odd reason, connected to the other thoughts rambling through my brain. The book begins with her, weeping on the floor of a bathroom as she realizes her marriage isn't working anymore. So she gets divorced and gives up everything familiar to spend the next year searching for some meaning to it all -- through Italy, India and Indonesia, all places that seem like fine destinations to find some meaning.
Over the weekend, while I was preparing for the wedding of a friend who -- for years -- swore she'd never find the right partner, I came across this passage in the book. It was toward the end and it struck me as a pearl... "I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and then I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism."
Given the number of conversations I've had with the site's sources and writers, media covering it and even the folks running it, the quote stuck with me. It made me wonder if this isn't the problem we all have. We want to believe the best about the people we love. But the truth is, they're human -- just like us. And sometimes that humanity isn't pretty or even fun. In fact, sometimes it's just dark and sad and incredibly exhausting.
But in the middle of that pain, we look for something meaningful, picking up and continuing down the road with no guarentee that we'll ever find it. Because the simple truth is that we want to be like Ms. Gilbert, whose book has a Cinderella-type ending, or like my friend, who despite what she said for so many years, got married this weekend to a man who adores her -- and vice versa.
I guess the meaning is as simple or as complicated as we make it. We all want the glass to be half full -- half full of joy, of peace, of love -- for the short time we're here, because it really never is as long as we think it will be.
And isn't that really the meaning after all?
Sometimes I think about the decisions I have made and wonder if they were the right ones, even though my gut tells me they were. The circuitousness of those decisions seem incredibly random today. I left Florida in the middle of a divorce to take a job at a newspaper so I could avoid hearing the sound of that wind. I returned to Florida to work for an Internet startup whose first site was focused on, you guessed it, divorce. Funny the way the world works. I'd call it serendipidy, except that implies a mood that's lighter than the circumstances.
I've been reading a book called, "Eat, Pray, Love," by Elizabeth Gilbert, which is, for some odd reason, connected to the other thoughts rambling through my brain. The book begins with her, weeping on the floor of a bathroom as she realizes her marriage isn't working anymore. So she gets divorced and gives up everything familiar to spend the next year searching for some meaning to it all -- through Italy, India and Indonesia, all places that seem like fine destinations to find some meaning.
Over the weekend, while I was preparing for the wedding of a friend who -- for years -- swore she'd never find the right partner, I came across this passage in the book. It was toward the end and it struck me as a pearl... "I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and then I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism."
Given the number of conversations I've had with the site's sources and writers, media covering it and even the folks running it, the quote stuck with me. It made me wonder if this isn't the problem we all have. We want to believe the best about the people we love. But the truth is, they're human -- just like us. And sometimes that humanity isn't pretty or even fun. In fact, sometimes it's just dark and sad and incredibly exhausting.
But in the middle of that pain, we look for something meaningful, picking up and continuing down the road with no guarentee that we'll ever find it. Because the simple truth is that we want to be like Ms. Gilbert, whose book has a Cinderella-type ending, or like my friend, who despite what she said for so many years, got married this weekend to a man who adores her -- and vice versa.
I guess the meaning is as simple or as complicated as we make it. We all want the glass to be half full -- half full of joy, of peace, of love -- for the short time we're here, because it really never is as long as we think it will be.
And isn't that really the meaning after all?
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