January 31, 2011 Leave a comment
January is Trade Show Month! After going to Las Vegas for the PPAI Expo earlier this month, I went to the ASI Show in Orlando last week to promote our vector artwork, embroidery digitizing, image editing and order management services to promotional product suppliers and distributors. Read more of this post
January 24, 2011 6 Comments
When I first heard about the Click Asia Summit, I immediately wanted to go. Not only was I likely to learn a lot from the scheduled sessions on SEO and social media marketing, but much of the discussion was also likely to be relevant to our business as a provider of interactive advertising and marketing production.
So I was really glad to be able to go, and have an experience that lived up to my expectations and more! Here are some of my highlights from the event: some sessions I loved, some things I learned, some people I met. Read more of this post
January 18, 2011 1 Comment
Last week, Reggie Gonzalez and I were in Las Vegas for the annual PPAI Expo. The PPAI Expo is the biggest gathering of folks from the promotional products industry, and I’m always thrilled to be there.
Reggie at our booth at the PPAI Show
January 17, 2011 Leave a comment
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 14, 2011 3 Comments
Earlier this year, we announced our participation in Street Source, an ongoing effort to help youth in poverty secure gainful employment and become productive citizens. Street Source is a program initiated by Street Kids International (SKI). Besides Affinity Express, companies such as Ayala Corporation, Virlanie and Cummins as well as the not-for-profit organization Project Concern International (PCI) have been involved in the program. Read more of this post
January 12, 2011 3 Comments
Salespeople. We all know several.
We encounter quite a few salespeople and, in various ways, we are all in sales—trying to “sell” our ideas to our family, friends and associates.
Salespeople often get a bad rep because of how they are portrayed in movies or because of bad personal experiences with pushy people. However, salespeople can be of help too.
What a good salesperson will do for you: Read more of this post
January 10, 2011 1 Comment
Kelly keeps sending me these print publications to read, and I love that. Even though I read most of them online, I’m still enough of a technophobe to like going through the print versions and always find that I’ve missed some of the articles. So I’m often a month or two behind on the magazine editions.
One of the magazines I regularly read is BtoB: I learn so much about marketing from reading that. But last week, as I leafed through a two-month-old issue, I read something that surprised me (and not in a cake-and-balloons way).
The writer claims that a friend who is a car dealer is having a difficult time, and then goes on to say that consumer electronics is a “horrible business”. Now that phrase caught my eye, so I went back and read from the beginning to see if I’d understood wrong. But no, the reason why these businesses are so bad now? It’s that customers have information.
But as a consumer, the easy access to information we have right now is an amazing boon. As Gillin points out, if I want to buy a new laptop, I won’t go to a shop to decide what to buy: I will compare not just specs but also reviews and prices right from home. I’ll find out what shop to buy from, and if I can get it cheaper in another city (or really, another country: the laptop I’m working on right now came from the US when my husband was over there on a business trip and he ordered it online and brought it over). Read more of this post
January 6, 2011 3 Comments
As I wrote in another blog post, Affinity Express is thrilled to be a sponsor of the Chicago Go Red For Women chapter, as well as a provider of design services for this worthy cause.
January 4, 2011 1 Comment
As we head into 2011 and our eleventh year in business, the Marketing Team asked me to provide a view of Affinity Express from my vantage point, give insight into my management approach and talk about what I see coming in the future.
Since 2008, when I first became CEO of Affinity Express, my vision was to develop a top-performing, global team with a burning desire to continually improve everything they do for clients and employees; a team who could work with me to build a fast-growing, early mover business process outsourcing (BPO) company in the media production industry. I realized at the time that this was no small task, but believed strongly in our potential.
A relatively short time later, in 2010, we received an indication that we are well on our way to realizing this vision. Affinity Express was named to the Global Services 100 list, which recognizes companies that define global outsourcing. Many major corporations in more established outsourcing categories were featured, yet Affinity Express was the only provider of advertising and marketing production solutions on the list. This is a wonderful honor and I consider it a testament to the passion and teamwork of all our talented people. Read more of this post
