Law Firm Marketing by Mark Merenda | Smart Blog

Ode To My Suit

Every morning you wait
on a chair, suit,
for my vanity, my love,
my hope, my body
to fill you.
I have hardly
emerged from sleep,
I leave the water,
I enter your sleeves,
my legs search for
the hollow of your legs,
and thus embraced
by your untiring loyalty
I go out to walk the pasture,
I enter poetry,
I look through the windows,
things,
men, women,
events amd struggles
keep shaping me,
keep confronting me,
making my hands work,
opening my eyes,
wearing out my mouth,
and thus,
suit,
I also keep shaping you,
pushing out your elbows,
tearing your threads,
and thus your life grows
in the image of my life.
You flap and rustle
in the wind
as if you were my soul,
at bad moments
you cling
to my bones,
empty, at night
darkness and dream
people with their phantoms
your wings and mine.
I ask
whether somday
a bullet
from the enemy
will stain you with my blood
and then
you will die with me
or perhaps
it may not be
so dramatic
but simple,
and you will gradually get sick,
suit,
with me,
you will grow old
with me, with my body,
and together
we will enter
the earth.
That's why
every day
I greet you
with reverence and then
you embrace me and I forget you,
because we are one
and we will go on facing
the wind, at night,
the streets or the struggle,
one body,
perhaps, perhaps, motionless someday.

                                                                — Pablo Neruda

Jai guru Dev

Your humble servant has been quoted twice this month, once in the West Virginia Record ("West Virginia's Legal Journal") and then in the August edition of the ABA Journal. In the ABA Journal article I opine as to how blogs are probably a good thing for attorneys, and in the WV Record, I put forth the proposition that there is more security in having your own practice than in working for someone else. In the latter, I am referred to as a "law firm marketing guru." Ooooooooooooooooooooom.

iPod Not Included

    There's an old joke that defines a psychiatrist as a person who goes to a strip club and watches the audience. By that standard, a marketing person is someone who watches TV in order to see the commercials.
    So the other day, I was watching a commercial for a new SUV — I think it was  The Nissan Quest. Looked like a pretty cool vehicle. The commercial featured lots of images of families having fun, and then wow, a shot of a youngster wih an iPod plugged into the car's stereo. Way cool! And then the letters across the bottom of the screen: iPod Not Included.
    Bummer.
    I dont get it.
    If I was their marketing firm, I'd tell Nissan, let's make a deal with Apple. Let's add $300 to the price of the car and include the iPod! Let's call it the iPod Mobile! Let's leverage those great ads for iPods, the ones with the silhouettes. Let's show the silhouette of our SUV, with earphones plugged into it! Let's include a card for $15 worth of downloads from iTunes. Let's....
    Well, you get the idea. Let's not be everyone's humorless aunt saying, iPod Not Included.