Lights, Cameras, Jobs!

Jobless Make TV Ads Pitching Themselves For Work – AP via Yahoo!News

Reading this, a few thoughts came to me:

• Marketing Communications is perennial. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
• In this day and age, personal branding has never been so important. Truly before its time: Tom Peter’s “The Brand Called You“. What’s your personal brand?
• Times are really quite tough. What do we need to do to survive, or even thrive, in such times?

Full article after the jump.

A Long Time Ago Is Last Year

Nowadays, a long time ago is last year. That is how fast things are changing.
~ Datuk Nazir Razak, CIMB Group Chief Executive

Ideas Are Easy, Doing Stuff Is Hard

From my marketing hero, Seth Godin:

…ideas are easy, doing stuff is hard.

My feeling is that the more often you create and share ideas, the better you get at it. The process of manipulating and ultimately spreading ideas improves both the quality and the quantity of what you create, at least it does for me.

History is littered with inventors who had “great” ideas but kept them quiet and then poorly executed them. And history is lit up with do-ers who took ideas that were floating around in the ether and actually made something happen. In fact, just about every successful venture is based on an unoriginal idea, beautifully executed.

So, if you’ve got ideas, let them go. They’re probably holding you back from the hard work of actually executing.

Is Good Enough, Good Enough?

I remember coming across this quote from somewhere else before and really loving it. Then, Seth Godin comes up with this fantastic (and somewhat frightening) thought:

Is good enough enough?

Most marketing efforts are projects in response to problems. “We need a box for the product launch.” “We need a press release for the tour the boss is doing.” “We need an ad campaign for the Super Bowl.”

In response to projects, many organizations figure out the resources they’ve got and then work hard to do something good enough. On time, within budget. Meeting spec, after all, is your job.

You end up, if you’re talented, with something good enough.

Is that enough? Is good enough enough to win? To change the game? To reinvent your organization and your career? In a crowded market, when all the competition is good enough, not much happens.

How to be a great receptionist

I love how Seth can point out ways to be excellent even in what is considered to be one of the most entry-level jobs! (Original article here)

Being a pretty good receptionist is easy. You’re basically a low-tech security guard in nice clothes. Sit at the desk and make sure that visitors don’t steal the furniture or go behind the magic door unescorted.

But what if you wanted to be a great receptionist?

I’d start with understanding that in addition to keeping unescorted guests away from the magic door, a receptionist can have a huge impact on the marketing of an organization. If someone is visiting your office, they’ve come for a reason. To sell something, to buy something, to interview or be interviewed. No matter what, there’s some sort of negotiation involved. If the receptionist can change the mindset of the guest, good things happen (or, if it goes poorly, bad things).

Think the job acceptance rate goes up if the first impression is a memorable one? Think the tax auditor might be a little more friendly if her greeting was cheerful?

So, a great receptionist starts by acting like Vice President, Reception. I’d argue for a small budget to be spent on a bowl of M&Ms or the occasional Heath Bar for a grumpy visitor. If you wanted to be really amazing, how about baking a batch of cookies every few days? I’d ask the entire organization for updates as to who is coming in each day… “Welcome Mr. Mitchell. How was your flight in from Tucson?”

Is there a TV in reception? Why not hook up some old Three Stooges DVDs?

Why do I need to ask where to find the men’s room? Perhaps you could have a little sign.

And in the downtime between visitors, what a great chance to surf the web for recent positive news about your company. You can print it out in a little binder that I can read while I’m waiting. Or consider the idea of creating a collage of local organizations your fellow employees have helped with their volunteer work.

One amazing receptionist I met specialized in giving sotto voce commentary on the person you were going to meet. She’d tell you inside dope that would make you feel prepared before you walked in. “Did you know that Don had a new grandchild enter the family last week? She’s adorable. Her name is Betty.”

In addition to greeting guests, internal marketing can be a focus as well. Every single employee who passes your desk on the way in can learn something about a fellow worker–if you’re willing to spend the time to do it, they’ll spend the time to read it.

Either that, or you could just work on being grumpy and barking, “name and ID please.”

7 Insights to Better Creatives

From Improving Your Creative Life for Tomorrow Starts Today, by American Copywriter:

Some of the stuff that has been floating around in my brain the past few weeks.

1. If you have to revise a concept, the copy or a layout more than three times, you need to kill the idea.
   I cannot express this enough. David Lubars said it best. When you go shopping for a suit with your significant other, there are a lot of racks with a lot of different suits on them in a lot of different stores. When you like a suit and your wife doesn’t, you don’t just cut off the right pant leg or splash yellow paint on the jacket (revisions). Instead, you put the suit back on the rack and find another you can both agree on. As Dr. Lubars concluded, “There’s a suit out there you and the client can agree on.” Don’t stop until you find it. Just know you’re going to have to embrace murder along the way.
2. Do research first, not last.
   Too often, we create concepts out of thin air based on poorly written briefs or for ill-conceived projects. So start with research, do benefit testing, interview consumers of the product, watch them at home, whatever. Hey, the CW/AD team will always come up with something. Let’s start respecting them, ourselves and everybody’s precious time more. Respect each other enough to try to do it right the first time versus wasting two weeks concepting a project without the proper insights or account planning. It’s two weeks you will never, ever get back to spend with your family.
3. Ask for more mandatories.
   If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: Creatives are very literal people. If we can’t use blue or have to use the word “Crisp Crumb Coating” just tell us. We’re professionals, we’ll deal with it. What we hate a lot more is when we’re not told that orange and blue are out because one client hates the Florida Gators (true story) or that another one hates the word “administrate” because it reminds her of the word “menstruate” (Again, and sadly, true.) When we can, let’s move this stuff from the creative review to the kickoff meeting.
4. Tell the truth.
   For deadlines, client craziness and general ad insanity, simply tell the truth. Creatives aren’t children so don’t treat them as such. If it’s due Friday, don’t tell them Thursday because you know they’ll be late. Tell them Friday and then praise them by saying, “And I know you’ll get it done because you guys rule!” Why? Because, even though they aren’t children, they still like to be praised in the same way my 5-year-old does. Further, stop cheerleading all the goddamn time. When the assignment sucks or the deadline is awful, don’t say things like, “We know the timeline isn’t ideal.” Say, “Sorry this timeline is so shitty, we couldn’t do anything about it.” That lets them know you’re on their team and not the clients’.
5. And creatives, tell the truth about your ability to get the job done.
   If you don’t have enough time or are too busy or whatever, tell the AE or traffic. EARLY. Don’t wait until an hour before the review to tell somebody. That’s BS. Man up and ask the AEs for more time. And AEs, man up and ask the client for more time. It was once said that, “There’s never enough time to do it right but there’s always enough time to do it over.” Write that one down and tack it to the wall. It’s truer today the way advertising works than it ever has been. And my personal experience has proved time and time again that, aside from the Super Bowl, virtually every deadline (including media placements and insertions) are arbitrary. There is ALWAYS a day or two in there you can give back to the creatives if they need it.
6. Stop when it’s time to stop.
   My stopping time is 5. I get up, close the laptop and go home to see my kids. Now, many nights I’m back online after I get them to bed, but my time to stop is 5. Always has been. After a day of this, I just cannot muster the strength or creativity to keep on going until midnight. Now, like all of you, I have worked all night when I’ve had to, but I don’t believe in it. Great ideas are more likely to come after a good night’s sleep than during some caffeine-fueled all-night concepting circle jerk. That’s where you write those terrible, illegible notes to yourself that – in the fluorescent half-light of an office at 3:30 am – seemed destined to be One Show worthy but stink worse than goose poop. So stop when it’s time to stop and pick it up later. If you don’t have enough time, see #5 and ask for it.
7. Don’t blame the creatives for not caring after round of revisions 13.
   Are you kidding? If your spouse asked you – no demanded – that you rearrange the living room furniture 13 times over the course of two days, stopping whatever else you were doing each and every time to do so because it “had to be done right now!” you would quickly stop giving a shit about where the couch and overstuffed chair were. In fact, you’d probably throw him/her and your cadre of Pottery Barn tchotchkes out the freaking window. So don’t blame the creatives when this happens. Man, it’s human nature to stop caring.

   Besides, you should have killed that concept 10 rounds ago.

Tapping The Power Of Your Morning Routine

How disciplined are you about your early-morning routine?

If you want to maximize your success while achieving the best possible balance in your life, you may want to take a fresh look at what time you wake up and what you do with your time before getting to the office.

A Wakeup Call

Last week, I contacted some of the business leaders I greatly admire and inquired about their early-morning schedules.

Specifically, I asked 20 CEOs and top executives what time they wake up, when they have their first cup of coffee, when they start on email, what if anything they do for exercise, what time they leave for the office, and what else they do before walking out the door.

I heard back from half a dozen of them within 10 minutes, and, in a matter of a few hours, I received answers from a total of 17 out of the 20 — a response rate that would be the envy of any market researcher.

It didn’t take long for the patterns to emerge. Based on an analysis of the executives’ schedules and activities, I discovered seven practices you should seriously consider adopting in order to make the most of your morning.

1. Start early.This is the part of your morning routine over which you have the greatest control. To fit it all in, it’s a must to start early. The latest any of the surveyed executives wake up is 6 a.m., and almost 80 percent wake up at 5:30 or earlier.

   The early-bird-gets-the-worm award goes to Padmasree Warrior, chief technology officer for Motorola, who rises at 4:30 a.m., spends an hour on email, reads most of the news online, and then does an hour of either cardio or resistance training each morning. This allows her to get her son ready for school and drop him off, and still get to work by 8 or 8:30 in the morning.

2. Get a jump on email.If you think you’re alone in feeling overwhelmed by email, take comfort: even top CEOs and the most senior executives feel compelled to stay on top of their email, and most of them find time in the early morning to do so.

   Ursula Burns, the No. 2 executive at technology giant Xerox, says, “I do email from the minute I get up [5:15 a.m.] and all day long, finishing around midnight.” Haim Saban, chairman and CEO of investment firm Saban Capital Group, starts email right after his first cup of coffee “at 6:02 a.m.” and works on it for about an hour before his 75-minute morning exercise regimen.

   Lou D’Ambrosio, chief executive officer at telecommunications equipment leader Avaya Communications, is “on email literally within one minute after waking up. I spend about an hour at home in the morning doing email to jump-start the day. This allows me to have a clear mind when I set priorities for the day.” Lou also does email from 10 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at night.

   Several executives wait until they get to the office before they start working on email. Matt Ouimet, president of the hotel group for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, for example, rises at 5:30 a.m. and leaves the house at 6 a.m. to get to the office very early — “I’ve always been anxious to get to work: game time” — and responds to email undisturbed for an hour while the office is very quiet.

3. Exercise every morning.It’s often difficult to find a way to fit exercise into your busy schedule, but knowing that some of the most successful businesspeople do so might motivate you to find a way to work it into your routine.

   More than 70 percent of the business leaders in my survey perform their exercise in the morning, while 15 percent find a way to do it during the day (one does it late at night before turning in). Only two of the executives admit to not exercising on a regular basis, although one said, “I know I should.”

   The individual who demonstrates the greatest exercise discipline is the CEO of a high-performing global technology company (I promised him anonymity so as not to blow his cover). “I exercise at lunchtime,” he says. “I block the time every single day. This is because I’m a runner and that’s the best time to run outside all year long.”

4. Be thoughtful about the source, form, and timing of your news.Much has been written about the demise of the newspaper, and, along those lines, about a quarter of the executives I spoke with has switched to online news. Yet most of the others maintain the morning newspaper as a central part of their routine.

   Steve Reinemund, the CEO of PepsiCo, reads the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and the Dallas Morning News. Rafe Sagalyn, CEO of the prestigious Sagalyn Literary Agency of Bethesda, Md., blends traditional and new media. He says, “I simultaneously skim online newspapers from Boston to Los Angeles and half a dozen blogs one really has to keep up with. At about 6:30 a.m., I fetch three morning papers — the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.”

5. Problem-solve.The quiet of the morning is often the time when your mind is at its clearest and most well-suited to solving important problems.

   Steve Murphy, CEO of publishing company Rodale, says, “A line in a William Blake poem inspired me to think differently about my day: ‘Think in the morning, act in the noon, read in the evening, and sleep at night.’ This has made a huge difference in my life. Now, I take out a yellow pad every morning and write my thoughts for the day, which allows me to be much more strategic and proactive than reactive.”

6. Make family time.
   Many business leaders find that the morning encourages important family time. Some have breakfast with their families or make taking kids to school a central part of the morning routine.
   Clayton, Dubilier & Rice managing partner Kevin Conway lingers at home when he can to help send off all three kids to school. Greg Maffei, CEO of Liberty Media Corporation, says, “I try to talk one of my kids into going outside to get the paper, but end up getting it myself. I then have breakfast with my wife and kids, help the latter get dressed, and drive the older boys to the bus stop at 7:40 a.m.”
7. Be creative with your morning routine.Despite all the discipline and structure described in the above best practices, it doesn’t mean you can’t be creative with your morning rituals. Gerry Laybourne, founder, chairman, and CEO of Oxygen Media, maintains a routine similar to other business leaders.

   However, she adds a unique twist to her schedule: “Once or twice a week, I go for a walk in Central Park with a young person seeking my advice. This is my way of helping bring along the next generation. I can’t take time at the office to do this, but doing it in the morning allows me to get exercise and stay connected with young people at the same time.”

The examples cited here have led me to reassess how I structure my early-morning time, and I hope they help you in making the most of your daily routine as well.

[From Jim Citrin's Leadership By Example, via Yahoo! Finance] 

The Most Successful Companies in the World: What Do They Have In Common?

According to Shel Horowitz in this article, here are the top five things the most successful companies in the world have in common:

1. They have a cause, not a wimpy, committee-driven “mission statement.”
   People who work there know they’re part of a big, bold, meaningful idea to fix a problem or make the world better.
2. They let go of things that aren’t working — even entire companies.
   Let go of “yesterday’s breadwinners” and of doing things the way they’ve always been done.
3. They understand that success is not about mere customer satisfaction — but about utterly delighting the right customers…and choosing not to do business with the wrong customers.
   You learn how to utterly satisfy your customers simply by asking them.
4. Everyone in the company thinks and acts like an owner.
   They know — and evangelize — the value of the company, and they know what value they add. They are empowered to make decisions and compensated for the value they add.
5. The leaders see themselves as stewards.
   They share information freely, make themselves accessible, avoid artificial barriers (like fancy offices and fancy suits), and pitch in whenever and wherever they’re needed. In general, they do this out of the public eye; they don’t seek publicity, and they don’t have an exit strategy, because they love what they do.

Sun Tzi on Strategy

Two great quotations:

The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

Value Add!

When something comes into your hands, it should leave better than when it arrived.

That’s what it means to value add.

And that’s powerful. “Value-adders” bring so much, well… value to the process that they become… *ahem* valuable.

Let everything that passes you (reports, news, ideas, etc.) leave better than when it arrived!