It’s been going on for years, people confusing advertising and marketing with arts and crafts. These all involve design and the right side of the brain but are completely different things. If you are a business owner and mistake one for the other, you will be wasting your advertising dollars.

How can you tell the difference? Ask to see samples of work created for businesses similar to yours. An advertising agency, design studio or professional freelancer will have a portfolio (either digital or traditional) full of successful promotions created for their clients. Your friend who teaches art, works real cheap, and knows how to use a Mac, will not.

My traditional portfolio is available by appointment and a digital version is available on my website.

You may have heard of Toastmasters International and wondered what it was. You might have read that it’s an organization that helps you become better at public speaking. Or, maybe you’re like my creative friend Daryl who writes copy for Grabowski & Co., an award-winning marketing communications firm. I can always count on his whimsical comments about burnt toast and jelly in response to my Facebook posts about Toastmasters — he cracks me up.

As a Toastmasters Club member you’ll not only learn to speak in front of a group but also about listening, motivation, planning, building confidence and leadership. I’ve been a member of Medina Toastmasters Club 941 for four years. As a new member I once watched a visitor at her first meeting, shy, fearful, and even afraid to make eye contact just walking through the door and I knew she would never be back. Imagine my surprise when she became a member and within a year blossomed into a confident, well-spoken leader. This happens countless times at Toastmasters clubs around the world.

I would like to recommend Toastmasters to everyone of course, but especially to those who have lost jobs to this economy. Losing a job can be a demoralizing, confidence shattering experience. It’s a negative, life altering event that Toastmasters can help to turn around. If you know someone who has lost their job, please encourage them to join Toastmasters. As a Toastmasters member they’ll learn to think quickly on their feet and be able to ace even the toughest of job interviews with confidence.

Winter was nearing it’s end as Pantone LLC released the PANTONE® Fashion Color Report Fall 2010. With the bright colors of spring and summer still months away it was hard for me to get excited about fall colors.

Now that spring is finally here I’ve taken a peek at the fall season’s color pallet. All that I can say is “move over spring and summer because fall is going to be gorgeous”. We’ll all want to include these trendy colors in our fall wardrobe, and of course, in any advertising and marketing promotions that are scheduled to release in the fall.

To help you do this I’d like to give you my “Top 10 Fashion Colors for Fall 2010″ bookmark. You can use it as a bookmark or take it along with you to the shopping mall to use as a guide. It even includes CMYK values for my graphic designer friends. Click here and download yours now.

Recently I read about a coupon that could be downloaded from a company’s Facebook fan page. Since I suffer from a  “keeping up with the Jones” mentality when it comes to technology, I wanted to distribute coupons, too.

After doing some research, I discovered Wildfire Promotion Builder, an easy-to-use web application that allows designers to create interactive Facebook campaigns. To add to my excitement, I learned that it was much more than coupons—it was also contests and sweepstakes! My head began to spin…the more I learned, the more I had to have it, both to draw traffic to my Facebook fan page and to offer promotions via Facebook to my clients.

I signed up for the free version and installed it onto my fan page. Now I had it and victory was mine! What to do, what to do… I know—what better way to work out all the kinks than to take it for a test drive? Thus, the “Komjati Design FRESH CASH Giveway” was born.

Today is the third day of the sweepstakes and it has had a few touch-and-go moments. Moments that made me glad it was my own personal project. Like the first day when the Promotions tab completely disappeared from my fan page. I removed the Boxes tab, posted the promotion again and all was right in my world, whew!

Why is it that new business owners will spend thousands of dollars on inventory, buildings and equipment only to neglect advertising and marketing? 

A couple of years ago I attended a Chamber of Commerce networking event. It was held at a new, upscale furniture store and the husband and wife owners were our hosts. As I roamed about the store, drinking wine and greeting other Chamber members, I met the husband’s mother-in-law. She confided in me that her son-in-law had invested everything in the store and that she prayed it would be a success.

When I met the store owners and questioned the husband about advertising, I learned that he had assigned all advertising and marketing to the Store Manager. As I ate my way across the room, sampling strawberries from the chocolate fountain, and cheeses and veggies from the buffet, I finally found the Store Manager. He quickly let me know that he had their advertising under control and he happily showed me the Grand Opening ad that he had just ran in the local paper that day. The ad was one-half page of white space with a very small store logo in the center. Under the logo, in very small type it said “Grand Opening”. I can’t remember for sure if the address was even listed.

I was horrified when I saw this “Institutional Ad”. An Institutional Ad is fine for well-known companies trying to increase brand awareness – not for stores like this one without name recognition. As a matter of fact, many large, well-known companies don’t have the budget to run an ad that’s not driving home some critical selling feature or encouraging the consumer to act.

It was no surprise to me when this store closed in less than two years. Why would someone invest everything and then turn something as important as their advertising over to an unqualified employee? With the relatively recent invention of the computer, anyone who can learn the software programs can produce advertising and they do! But not the kind that inspires and motivates the public to take action – that takes an experienced professional.