Mark's @SPEED Blog

Someone over at The Motley Fool knows a hell of a lot about how to create emails that cheer up the CFO. These are industrious testers, not lazy followers. In this era of short, sweet, vacuous little telegrams, only rigorous science could have led to these enormous letters. But let he or she without an ounce of the human emotion of greed just try to stop reading before either the end or clicking on a link. And when you do click on a link, you have another pleasure waiting for you, because someone at The Motley Fool knows how to do landing pages too. The center of these overwhelmingly seductive experiences is an at least equally lengthy video – I mean the thing just seems to go on and on as long as a presidential primary debate. But it’s like that swirling hypnotist’s spiral – I defy you to try to pull up and out of it. What story telling! What wonderful stimulation of curiosity, admiration and greed. What direct response writing! What direct marketing! What was the symbol of that stock again?

I used to think that I had to overcome people’s natural reticence in order to get them to be more creative.

I suppose I thought this because I had overcome my own natural reticence in order to be more creative.

I was reinforced in this belief by the Rules of Brainstorming, which had come down to me as secular commandments. Though I started my career at BBDO, I didn’t know then that Alex Osborn, the O in Batten Barten Dursteen & Osborn, actually introduced the world to the Brainstorming session.

I also didn’t know that decades of studies have concluded that creative problems are better solved outside of traditional “no bad ideas’ brainstorming sessions. So, I cheerfully harangued and pushed people out “of their comfort zones” and felt I was doing my creative duty. But, I couldn’t help noticing that breaking up our sessions and letting people work alone or in much smaller groups to write down ideas actually yielded many more good ideas!

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How do luxury, fashion and retail brands out-pace and out-grow their larger competition?
I’ve spent the better part of my career working closely with leaders of innovative, fast-growing midsized organizations and I’ve coined a term for these leaders and their companies – I call them “Cheetahs.” Of course, the Cheetah is by far the fastest land animal, clocking bursts of up to 110 MPH. Cheetah leaders do move faster, eliminating or hurtling obstacles to growth.

When it comes to luxury marketing, I’ve had the best seats in the house. Dom Perignon, Moet & Chandon, Mikimoto, Van Cleef & Arpels, The Plaza Hotel, Fairmont, Jumeirah, Starwood Preferred Guest, Paul Stuart, Lotus, BlueFly, Belle & Clive, Coach.

According to the CEO of the Luxury Institute, Milton Pedraza, “Luxury is defined by wealthy consumers as the best in design, quality, craftsmanship and service, all combined into an extraordinary experience that is truly relevant, both functionally and emotionally.”

Of those elements — design, quality, craftsmanship and service — is there one more important than the others?

In a word, yes.

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Research in Motion (RIM) co-CEO’s are stepping down. RIM stock has gone nowhere since 2008. Today, RIM’s (RIMM) market cap is $7.74B. Apple’s (AAPL) market cap: $391.88B. Which means that Apple is 50 times more valuable than RIM!

There was a time when RIM seemed on top of the world, and Apple was the challenger. There’s a lot that mid-sized challenger organizations can learn from the way that Apple approached competing with RIM.

I’ve spent the better part of my career working closely with leaders of innovative, fast-growing midsized companies and I’ve coined a term for these leaders and their companies – I call them “Cheetahs.” Of course, the Cheetah is by far the fastest land animal, clocking bursts of up to 110 MPH. Cheetah leaders do move faster, eliminating or hurtling obstacles to growth.

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Gingrich pulls off a surprise victory in South Carolina and the Romney Campaign lurches into action, deploying new messaging, tactics and commercials in just a matter of days.
Now that’s fast! And I know fast…

I’ve spent the better part of my career working closely with leaders of innovative, fast-growing, midsized organizations, and have coined a term for these leaders and their companies. I call them “Cheetahs.” Of course, the cheetah is by far the fastest land animal, clocking bursts of up to 110 MPH. I’ve found that cheetah leaders and their organizations move faster, eliminating or hurtling obstacles to growth.

The thriving U.S. Presidential campaign best exemplifies the way of the cheetah. These campaigns must build winning brands with consistent core values at breakneck speeds, amidst vicious competition buffeted by dizzying change. A candidate can go from challenger to leader and back again in a matter of days. Which is why I love watching, analyzing and writing about political campaigns.

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So you get up in the morning, and the first thing you want to do is pull your pillow over your head and suffocate… or at least get another fifteen minutes of sleep. There’s a little boy yelling in your ear. “If I give you a hug, will you get up?! If I give you a hug will you get up?”

The gambit you used to delay rising for sixty seconds all those mornings ago has come back to haunt you as an entitlement. You gave him an incantation on the order of “Open Sesame!” Now he insists on making the incantation work.

You get up. Your head is swimming. Ideas are crawling on top of ideas like a kicked over anthill.

I’m brushing my teeth. I’m brushing my teeth. You repeat the mantra of the mundane to yourself, trying not to be too alarmed by your reflection in mirror. It’s too early to take on all those ants, too early to solve the problems of industry, so you try to bring yourself into the moment. Be present. Take a shower.

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Presidents and Companies as Challengers and Leaders.

Successful presidential candidates and innovative fast-growth companies have lot in common. Both must succeed first as challengers and ultimately as leaders. This is as rare a trick among companies as it is among politicians.

I’ve spent the better part of my career working closely with leaders of innovative, fast-growing mid-sized companies. I’ve coined a term for these leaders and their companies – I call them “Cheetahs.” Cheetahs out-challenge, out-pace and ultimately out-lead their competition. They do this through a process of brand-driven growth.

Brand is a much-abused word, mostly by overuse. To some it means merely a name. To others, it embraces a product’s visual identity as well. To still others, brand denotes the dollar value of the corporate reputation. My definition is a simple one.

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Definition of hypocrite? Here’s a “fiscal conservative” who will come to your state and literally promise you the moon!

While Romney can seem dull and disconnected, Gingrich is troubled by brand character weaknesses which led to a Job-like pile on of torments, only without the consolation of innocence. “Disloyalty” is the key idea undermining Gingrich’s electability. It resonates with his personal, political and campaign history. As he takes his Romney attacks to def-con five, he risks appearing to be willing to take down the Republican cause along with his own chances. Meanwhile promises of a Moon Colony “by the end of my second term” play into the image of a shifty and pandering D.C. insider and play up the grandiose and even delusional aspects of the Gingrich brand.

Continue reading: All That’s New Is Negative In Campaign Commercials

It’s all attacks all the time now.

The average voter doesn’t know as much history as Newt Gingrich. Until recently, this must have given the former Speaker some comfort, but Mitt Romney is effectively taking that comfort away. Romney’s new commercial continues a campaign of dramatizing Newt Gingrich’s political history for the current generation of primary voters.

“Credits- Mitt Romney” Jan. 28th (Appears to be the credits at the end of a black and white film) These are not the end credits of a movie these are the names of 196 House Republicans voted to reprimand Newt Gingrich when he was speaker. It was the first time in the House’s 208-year history it had disciplined a speaker for ethical wrongdoing. 88% of Republicans voted against Newt Gingrich. These colleagues agreed. This isn’t the end of a Hollywood movie. This is reality. Don’t let it happen again. I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this message.

Meanwhile, Gingrich has stepped up attacks to a level that looks desperate and downright mean. This is from his PAC:

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You can take the elephants and the dinosaurs – I like the Cheetahs.

I’ve spent the better part of my career working closely with leaders of innovative, fast-growing midsized organizations. I’ve coined a term for these leaders and their companies – I call them “Cheetahs.”

It is a privilege to be able to work intimately with these visionaries. Every working day is like going to the school of my dreams. As a young man living in Paris in the 1920s, my former client, the late Roy Neuberger, founder of Neuberger & Berman money management firm, studied art working along side such figures as Pablo Picasso (Neuberger was born in 1903, died in 2010 at age 107). I imagine he felt as I do, with the chief difference being that my masters are business artists.

Of course, the Cheetah is by far the fastest land animal, clocking bursts of up to 110 MPH. I’ve found that Cheetah leaders do move faster, eliminating or hurtling obstacles to growth. I’ve learned so much working with Cheetahs – about what makes an effective growth leader, and how to best accelerate growth in Cheetah companies, divisions and brands – that I’ve accumulated a great deal of writing on the subject.

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One of the wonderful things about agency life is that you get to learn from so many smart clients. When it comes to luxury marketing, I’ve had the best seats in the house. Dom Perignon, Moet & Chandon, Mikimoto, Van Cleef & Arpels, The Plaza Hotel, Fairmont, Jumeirah, Starwood Preferred Guest, Paul Stuart, Lotus… Coach.

According to the CEO of the Luxury Institute, Milton Pedraza, “Luxury is defined by wealthy consumers as the best in design, quality, craftsmanship and service, all combined into an extraordinary experience that is truly relevant, both functionally and emotionally.”
Of those elements — design, quality, craftsmanship and service — is there one more important than the others?

In a word, yes.

I would offer that service — a fierce customer-centric ethic — is the essential value. Design, craftsmanship and the other elements of product quality are table stakes and too easily matched to be decisive over time.

A recent study of the unmatched brand success of Coach speaks to this eloquently:

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You have to try on shoes. So who’s going to buy them online?

Turns out the answer is “a lot of people!”

Zappos earned trust and a lot of loyal customers by taking the cost and risk out of ordering shoes online. Free shipping both ways means people can order, try, return, repeat and end up with some awesome shoes that fit.

Zappos believes they are in the customer service business, and customers believe it too.

If you want to build a direct marketing flash-in-a-pan, come up with a product or offer that’s irresistible. If you want to build a direct marketing brand, then build a service culture. Analyze the problems of your category and innovate ways to solve them. Then, deliver.

PostSecret is the Haiku of the web. And it’s long been a very highly trafficked site. It’s so simple. People submit postcards, which conform to simple guidelines, sharing their secrets. PostSecret posts them online, and perhaps ads a bit of the comments they inspire.

What can you learn from PostSecret? To give people a simple art form, with rules that make success more likely. Discover something that needs to be expressed and give them the chance to express it.

DIGO did this when we created, “Talk Back To Cancer” for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. We knew people had an intense relationship with their cancer, so we built a simple social outlet for them.

It worked.

People will work hard even when there’s no money and little credit involved, if the challenge and subject matter moves them.

Thousands of volunteers around the world can keep an encyclopedia up to date and accurate enough to be incredibly useful without a great deal of hierarchy.

All of this can be led with a relatively small team paid for by donations, not advertising or commerce.

The resulting content can lead search results in many categories and become a cornerstone of the web.

Marketing genius Seth Godin founded Squidoo. This in itself is not a guarantee of success. Godin has founded many things, and quite a few of them didn’t work out, as he will freely admit in his own bio.

I’d bet on Squidoo. It has more than the spark that Godin brings to everything he does. It operates as the intersection of several trends that put together a compelling engagement model that is also a likely business model. This is rare.

On Squidoo, people put up their own “lenses.” A lens is basically a web page or site, that is the owner’s view of a situation.

You could do a lens about your love of a certain breed of dog. Or you could do one about a kind of chili you live. A recent “Lens of the week” winner was about a man’s childhood memories from the 1940.

Anyone can put up and maintain as many lenses as they want. In this sense, Squidoo is not unlike WordPress, Flickr and other similar sites. But, there’s an added incentive and focus for Squidoo lenses — money.

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“Word of Christ! Send money.” I have actually heard a huckster by the name of Robert Tilton say that many times. God I love to watch him. I’m endlessly entertained by his tacky sets, his Texas twang, his biblical lessons interrupted by alien-invasion-like attacks of speaking in tongues followed by the inevitable translation of God’s will into a call for more money.

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t have it! God will bless you all the more!”

“I heard from a man who was sleeping in his car in the church parking lot! This dear man could not afford a better place to live. He sent in his last $150 dollars. And GOD BLESSED HIM tenfold with a $1500 inheritance!!! He had faith! Send money!!”

I watch the golden voiced preachers fill churches that grow to the size of stadium arenas. I once traveled to Lynchburg, Virginia just to see Jerry Falwell, who had the demeanor and attire of a chairman of the board, preach at his own church there.

Was I appalled by some of what I heard there that day? Absolutely! I counted on it.

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OK, it’s already established that I’m a bit of a freak. From the time I was little, I loved the sound of the human voice, especially when talking. I loved to listen to Bob & Ray and Jean Shepherd on the radio. Church was a hot, hard, stifling, uncomfortable place, but I loved a good sermon (we called them homilies and served them up lukewarm in the Catholic Church, which was a constant disappointment to me).

From my early teens, I collected missionaries and evangelists. If someone knocked on the door – a Jehovah’s Witness, two Mormons – I would invite them into the family living room to show me their “pitch.”
I loved analyzing the differences in beliefs and therefore benefits between the different religions. I loved their slide presentations and enjoyed reading the brochures.

I supposed I entered each of these pitch situations with an open heart and mind, but I was never converted. Because, in truth I didn’t know it but I already had what I was looking for. I loved the music of the pitch. I loved letting the words and images wash over me. I loved the back and forth of the sales (or evangelism) process. And I loved analyzing the benefits, attractions and differences between the various pitches.

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A lot of marketers (and a lot of people) think it’s perfectly obvious: belief comes first. I voted for Soandso because I believe in her policies. Or I buy this because I believe it’s better.

Well, there’s reason to turn this whole paradigm on its head. People believe what they do. People are, in fact, more influenced by what they themselves do than they are by what others do, say, show or play.

We just don’t like to think so. We like to think that we gain information and then make rational decisions in our heads, then delegate the follow up to our bodies.

In fact, what our eyes see our hands doing has a great effect. And this effect has been experimentally proven.

Marty Staff, our client at Joseph Abboud, told us about a call he’d received from Steven Jobs, the CEO of Apple. Marty’s company had their flagship store in a prime location in New York City, and Steve was looking for the perfect spot for the first New York City Apple Store. And here’s the first interesting thing: Jobs didn’t want Joseph Abboud’s store, he wanted the store next door. But his design scheme envisioned using half of Joseph Abboud’s storefront for his super-amazing Apple Store sign. Jobs decided that this was something that he must have for Apple. If he couldn’t get it, then the whole plan wouldn’t work for him. It was all or nothing.

So the CEO himself gets on the phone to “talk” to CEO Staff. What ensued was a two-hour sellathon during which Jobs tried everything in his bag of tricks to get Marty to give up the storefront to Apple. He spent a good part of the time on how perfect the new sign would look! At the end of the call, Marty wouldn’t and couldn’t give up half his valuable storefront, but he came away impressed by Job’s salesmanship and commitment. The man would not give up. He wanted the best for Apple and he would do what he needed to do to get it.

Successful salespeople fail more. This is precisely because they pitch more. They push themselves into situations only a great salesperson can close. That’s why real sales professionals scoff at “order takers.” Anyone can take an order. Selling a difficult prospect is something to take pride in.

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Professor BJ Fogg, founder of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University, discovered a relatively simple principle for making every interaction more persuasive. I’ve further simplified (without oversimplifying) it here. You can apply this to everything you touch to make it more persuasive and effective.

What Dr. Fogg discovered in his research is that three factors impact the persuasiveness of virtually anything. The first is motivation – as in how motivated is the person. The second is ease – as in how easy is it to take the required action. And the third is time – is there a trigger at the intersection of the peak of motivation and ease?

It comes down to this. High motivation plus easy to do at exactly the same time = the action that leads to persuasion.

Here’s a key you can apply to un-sticking the potential for persuasion in literally everything you touch. Ask:

1. Is this as compelling as it can be? Have we captured and whipped up the motivation of the audience?
2. Have we made this as easy as it can be to do?
3. Will the audience experience both the motivation and the ease at exactly the same time? (trigger)

This is part of our system for accelerating brand-driven growth® at DIGO. Find resources and tools to get even more persuasion and growth from this insight here.

Many people made small fortunes in the direct-to-consumer computer boom of the nineties and early 21′s century. Unfortunately for many of those people, the small fortunes were made out of much larger fortunes.

When we began working with Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway, his company and Michael Dell’s, founded in the same year, were just two of 7,500 PC direct marketers in a gold rush mentality.

But Ted wasn’t just a savvy direct marketer, he was also a brilliant brand builder. He knew the shakeout was coming long before others realized it. While most people would just count their millions and feel brilliant, Ted had a small City to keep employed, so he had to peak around corners and try to see what was coming.

Luck for North Sioux City, South Dakota, Ted saw keenly and knew what to do. He’s the guy who said, “We have to stand out in a way that anybody can see. Let’s put cow spots on the boxes.”

What a brilliant, entrepreneurial, brand-driven growth move. Frugal, because Gateway already owned the boxes. They were what we call at DIGO, “owned media.” We counsel, beg and hector our clients not to miss the media right in front of them… the touch-points they own. We used creative hangtags and sewn in labels for Joseph Abboud. We put men running in human-sized hamster wheels in the window of Crunch gyms. In the seatbacks of JetBlue planes, we placed Airplane Yoga and Flying Pilates cards. In the airport terminals, we hung punching bags labeled, “Middle Seat” and “Missed Your Flight?” Snapple got messages under their caps, and Vitamin Water used the labels of the bottles to tell a unique and charming story every time.

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There is a business book with the clever title of, “The No Asshole Rule.”

This is a rule suggesting that businesses not allow assholes in. I think this is just as dangerous metaphorically as it is physically. The asshole serves an essential function.

My No Asshole Rule states that, “Any organization without an asshole will tend to bloat.”

Bloating is not growing. It is an unsightly, and ultimately dangerous condition of carrying too much dead weight. A well-placed asshole can prevent that.

No psychopaths. No serial killers. No dangerously dysfunctional people. Just effective, well-functioning assholes. To clear the waste out of the system.

Not a company of assholes, unless that’s your thing. But a healthy diversity. Different organs doing the job they were meant to do.
Some people love peace. Others enjoy conflict. Some look for similarities, while still others are vigilant in their search for differences. The world needs all kinds.

Nice people are nice. But an organization of sheep needs a dog, or it is surely headed for a hostile takeover by a wolf.

BIG ideas are different. They don’t so much defy logic, as go beyond it. They most of all challenge the risk averse illusion of costless compromise decisions that are the bread and butter of large organizations. If you are competing with, you need to be able to green light the big idea.

So, what is a big idea? What does it look like before it becomes a big idea? How can you recognize an opportunity to turn a pragmatic necessity into a big idea? What does it feel like to face a decision on whether or not to green-light one? And how do you know your decision was the right one?

Howard Schultz certainly made his share of Big Idea decisions while building Starbucks from a tiny company into one of the worlds largest retailers. Called back to the CEO role after an eight year working hiatus as Chairman, Schulz turned to the Big Idea again to help affect a massive transformation of the coffee giant. Schultz begins his book on the turnaround, Onward, with this story of green-lighting a Big Idea:

One Tuesday afternoon in February 2008, Starbucks closed all of its US stores. A note posted on 7,100 locked doors explained the reason:

“We’re taking time to perfect our espresso. Great espresso requires practice. That’s why we’re dedicating ourselves to honing our craft.”

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People want to commit to things that give their lives meaning, but of course people fear committing to things that will fail to return the love. Many institutions have done just that, leaving people with a lack of faith in any organization. So today, the dream seems to be of “passive income,” “the 4-hour Work Week”, the billion-dollar exit, freelancing, personal branding, trading in and out to make money.

In other words, the current popular dream is all about Freedom. Freedom from commitment. Freedom from sacrifice. Freedom from geographical limitations. Freedom from work. Freedom from want.

Yet, most people either fail to achieve this freedom and therefore exist in a dissatisfied purgatory of long hours and no love, or they achieve their detachment and feel a lack of meaningful connection in their lives. They realize they want to be part of something.

Look at it from the customer’s point of view. Do you want to do business with something that is just good enough to be easy money for the owner, or do you want to interact with something that represents a core commitment of the people who are involved? Do you want to work for someone who just wants “envelope money” or do you want to be part of something that is incredibly meaningful to the owner.

Love for one’s company strikes the post-modern ear as almost completely ridiculous, a total anachronism. Yet, I will argue that this sort of love is both more needed and more effective today than ever, and that love for company alone has separated many of the super-performing organizations of our era from the also-rans and failures that are all too common. This love that I speak of is not a “strategy” or “tactic.” It’s not an MBA lesson that can be trained into managers in some sort of executive finishing school. It represents a very real, deep, often painful level of commitment, a level of commitment that can ultimately create great success, great wealth, but much more than that, great fellowship and a great sense of significance and achievement.

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