This morning I read this one from Professor Henry Mintzberg, author of The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Managers Not MBAs, and a dozen others on management and organization:

“A leader has to be one of two things: he either has to be a brilliant visionary himself, a truly creative strategist, in which case he can do what he likes and get away with it; or else he has to be a  true empowerer who can bring out the best in others.”

A few names come to mind:

• Ronald Reagan – visionary
• Steve Jobs – visionary
• Bill Gates – visionary
• Steve Ballmer – empowerer
• Tony Robbins – empowerer

Is it that black and white?  Can you be a visionary AND an empowerer?  How will you lead your teams today?

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1. Are You Talking To Yourself?

Often when I talk to clients about their messaging, creative, advertising copy and such, I have to ask if they are talking to themselves – meaning they using too much jargon or industry-speak in their copy.

One of the hardest things to do as a marketer is to get outside of yourself, the company’s four walls, and the industry so that you can talk/think like a customer.  Especially a customer who has a limited attention span and is not interested in becoming an expert in what ever it is that you do, but is interested in themselves and solving their own problems.

I’ll save that for another blog post.  Today, I wonder if you are talking to yourself in a way to build yourself up and get you focused for the day ahead of you.

Self-talk, the conversations you have with yourself in your mind, is one of the primary ways you direct your focus.  Self -talk falls into two categories: positive self talk, and negative self talk.

Negative Self Talk:

• Why am I so stupid?
• I am fat.
• Why does this always happen to me?
• I can’t do this.

Positive Self Talk:

• I am healthy.
• I am on top of my game.
• I am loved.
• I want to make a positive impact on my family.
• I am great at what I do every day, and getting better.

Focus on what you “Want” – not what you “Don’t Want”.  Your subconscious mind does not know the difference between what you want and don’t want – it will focus on the “thing” you are thinking about.

• “I want to keep my job”, NOT “I don’t want to get fired.”
• “I want to be healthy”, NOT “I don’t want to get sick”
• “I want to spend my money wisely”, not “I don’t want to waste money.”

Do you see the difference?  If not, read it again and again until you do – this is the key point.

Your positive self talk should be expressed in terms of the things you WANT, and the things you ARE which are consistent with your IDENTITY.  You have to work hard at this to keep the negative thoughts out of your mind, and to get rid of the internal “critic” who cuts you down, or reminds you of something somebody said to you a long time ago.

Your positive self talk should be consistent with your “big rocks” and your definite major purposes/goals in life.

Using positive self talk and visualization, you should create a picture of yourself already in possession of the goal you want.  For example:

• My team members respect me.
• I have total financial security.
• I am loved.
• I am going to do great today.

If you are unable to fully see yourself fully in possession of these goals, then ask yourself “How Can I?” questions so that your subconscious mind will go to work on obtaining the answer:

• How can I get people to respect me?
• How can I get my team to work together better?
• How can I become financially secure?
• How can I WOW people today?

The way you talk to yourself, and condition your mind, will determine your outcome for the day.  Try it for a week and see what happens – I guarantee you’ll carry yourself differently, see things in a more positive light, and become a better marketer because you have DECIDED you are one.

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Here are four ways to out-prepare your competition:

1. Study: While others are filling their time with entertainment and escapism, superachievers are studying and improving their craft. Having more knowledge, data, background and intelligence will always give you the upper hand in any situation.

2. Develop: Develop the skills necessary to achieve excellence in your game. Brian Tracy explains that every skill you need to succeed is learnable. There is nothing you cannot learn and master to achieve anything you want in business and in life.

3. Practice: Sporting teams practice for games. Musicians practice for concerts. Busy professionals and entrepreneurs should practice the skills they need for success—public speaking, impactful writing and interpersonal communication. After all, practice makes perfect.

4. Play the Game in Your Head First: Before making a presentation, an important phone call or having an important meeting, play the event out in your head exactly as you want it to happen first. It is amazing how your posture, energy and expectation will change, and your performance will rise to meet it. Try it.

– Courtesy of “SEEDS for Success”

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When Walton died in 1992, the family’s net worth approached $25 billion. Today, Wal-Mart is the world’s #1 retailer, with more than Wal-Mart Stores has more than 5,700 stores, including some 1,350 discount stores, nearly 2,000 combination discount and grocery stores (Wal-Mart Supercenters in the US and ASDA in the UK), and 550 warehouse stores (SAM’S CLUB). Nearly 75% of its stores are in the US (around 3400). It owns 42% of Japanese supermarket chain SEIYU. Wal-Mart also has operations in Asia, Europe, and South America.

Marketers who love business and leadership will find these as great reminders.  Share them with your team and inspire them to reach the next level.  Here are Sam’s Rules:

Rule 1: Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else. If you love your work, you’ll be out there every day trying to do the best you can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you – like a fever.

Rule 2: Share your profits with all your associates, and treat then as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations.

Rule 3: Motivate your partners. Money and ownership aren’t enough. Set high goals, encourage competition and then keep score. Make bets with outrageous pay offs.

Rule 4: Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners. The more they know, the more they’ll understand. The more they understand, the more they’ll care. Once they care, there’s no stopping them. Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitors.

Rule 5: Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. A pay check and a stock option will buy one kind of loyalty. But all of us like to be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them. We like to hear it often and especially when we have done something we’re really proud of.

Nothing else can quite substitute for well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free – and worth a fortune.

Rule 6: Celebrate your success. Find some humor in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and everyone around you will loosen up. Have fun and always show enthusiasm. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. Then make everybody else sing with you.

Rule 7: Listen to everyone in your company and figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front line – the ones who actually talk to the customer – are the ones who really know what’s going on out there. You’d better find out what they know.

To be able to push responsibility down in your organization, and force good ideas to bubble up within it, you must listen to what your associates are trying to tell you.

Rule 8: Exceed your customer’s expectations. If you do they’ll come back over and over. Give them what they want – and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes – and don’t make excuses – apologize. Stand behind everything you do. “Satisfaction Guaranteed” will make all the difference.

Rule 9: Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you are too inefficient.

Rule 10: Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.

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Dave Carroll’s story depicts the value of great customer experience and illustrates that spending a little can save millions when it comes to your brand’s reputation.

In 2008, Dave was flying United Airlines with his band Sons of Maxwell when a passenger sitting next to the window exclaimed that the baggage handlers were “throwing guitars out there.”

Carroll’s guitar was broken. He spent the next nine months in a service maze pursuing compensation. Eventually, customer service at United Airlines told him they were closing the incident and would not respond to any further emails.

Carroll vowed to write three songs about the experience and post them on YouTube, hoping to achieve a million views with all three combined. But he did much better. He hit one million on the first song within one week, and is at six and a half million views at last count. A media frenzy ensued and United’s market capitalization dropped $180 million over the next three weeks.

As of today there are over 6 million views of this video, and several parodies and add on’s.   Dave has appeared on CBS News, CNN and other major media outlets, telling his story.  Do you think United could have handled this better?  How are you handling your customer issues today – are you delighting those who complain, or encouraging them to spread poison?

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Many of you agreed with me that the new packaging was boring, unappetizing, generic and just plain bad. (Original post here.)

Original vs. New

Recently, we noticed that the old packaging had returned to the shelves. At first I was concerned that someone dug up a palate of cereal that had been sitting in a warehouse somewhere, but the expo dates were well into the future. Seemed like this was indeed a fresh box.

Then came the corroboration: reader “Eddie” wrote this comment “They apparently went BACK to the OLD design!! Cause I in the store I saw all the boxes with the familiar logo again and it says (c) 2009 on them! General mills realized their stupid ways (They also changed honey nut clusters and basic 4 to this LAME design, hopefully those are back to the older ones as well!)”

So just to make sure, I thought I would check in with General Mills.  I went to their web site, eventually found a consumer feedback link, and sent them this note:

“Did you change the packaging on Raisin Nut Bran back to the original design? I couldn’t stand the “new” boring design – thanks for bringing the old package back – if that’s actually what happened.”

Five days later, I received this reply, from email address Corporate.Response@Genmills.com :

Dear Mr. Stapp:

Thank you for contacting General Mills. Your comments are important to us.

We are committed to making a difference in the lives of our consumers. Feedback such as yours is important to the nature of our business.

We appreciate your loyalty and the time you took to contact us. Please be assured that we will share your thoughts with the appropriate individuals.

Sincerely,

Rhonda Short
Consumer Services

I hope the “appropriate individuals” read this blog post – I’d love to share some thoughts……

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To counteract scathing reviews by Web users at sites like InfomercialScams.com and RealSelf.com, do-it-yourself face-lift maker Lifestyle Lift  allegedly posted fake user reviews with positive critiques by supposed patients to review sites and other destinations.  But this strategy had a flaw:  the “patients” turned out to be company employees who had been paid to enthuse about Lifestyle Lift.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has extracted $300,000 from Lifestyle Lift to settle allegations that the reviews amounted to deceptive commercial practices, false advertising, and fraudulent and conduct. Lifestyle Lift also promised it would no longer anonymously post positive reviews.

Fake User Reviews are a dumb idea

The thing I like best about user generated content and user reviews is that its really easy to spot the fakes.  The temptation to post fake reviews is so strong because in a recent Nielsen report, over 70% of web users trust online reviews.  So why not try to scam the system?

Angie’s List is a member-supported consumer review site that provides reviews and grades on contractors and doctors.   The members view the reviews as credible because people have to pay to use the service, there are no anonymous reviews, and the reviews are checked for authenticity by both a sophisticated algorithm and by hand.  If a contractor tries to game the system, they get put in the “Penalty Box” which means death among the members.  In this model, the user reviews are helpful and credible, so much so that people will pay to read them.

Overstock.com posts good/bad/ugly product reviews on its site, and it helps customers to make good buying decisions.

LaserShield customer reviews are all real, and sometimes surprising.  Which is part of the whole point – real user reviews are helpful to both prospective customers AND to the company selling the product because you get insight into how people really feel and how they really use the product or service.

Maybe Lifestyle Lift should have taken some of the real user complaints to heart instead of burying them.  I know of other companies that do the same thing, and they suffer from an underlying insecurity about the true value of their products/services and their business practices.

The truth will set you free.

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Today I got this in my email:

A jump start can be the perfect beginning.

That’s why we’re excited to provide you with 10,000 complimentary Elite Qualifying Miles (EQMs) – which have already been deposited into your WorldPerks account – to help you requalify for Elite status in 2010.

We understand your ability to travel is more restricted this year, due to the economy and other factors, but we hope you’ll continue to fly with us and enjoy your elite status benefits while continuing to add even more Elite Qualification Miles to your balance. Take advantage of our vast new network, serving almost 400 destinations in more than 65 countries on six continents, including new routes to Johannesburg, Sydney, Saigon and beyond. Book a flight today.

You’re the reason we fly,

Jeff Robertson
Vice President – Loyalty Programs

So what just happened here?

1. They recognized me as a valuable customer
2. They surprised me with a gift
3. They did all they work – I don’t have to register to qualify or anything like that
4. They made me feel special
5. They recognized the environment we are all in together and came up with a solution.

As you may know, Northwest is now part of Delta.  Many years ago I was 1,000 miles short of qualifying for Gold Elite on Delta and called to see if I could get amnesty – to my surprise they recognized my loyalty and not only upgraded me to Gold but also gave me two free first class upgrade coupons.

How have you delighted your customers today?

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I have recently had several CEO’s and CMO’s tell me that they are frustrated with the candidates they are interviewing for various marketing roles, ranging from “utility player” marketing mangers to Senior VP’s . They tell me of candidates yawning during interviews, looking at their watches, being unprepared, dressing inappropriately, and overall just not seeming enthusiastic about the job. Over and over I hear that candidates just don’t “WOW” them.

Part of the reason is that many hiring managers have newly increased expectations for candidates – with the economy in it’s current state, they expect to hire only the most exceptionally talented and versatile people. Or, it may be fatigue on part of a candidate on their 47th interview – they may just be tired of the whole process.

So I thought this would be a good time to share some thoughts on things that I always look for when hiring great marketing people. If you want a job in marketing, here’s how to bring your “A” game:

1. Back To Basics. First, lets make sure you have the small, but important details covered. No typos on your resume. Dress appropriately. Know who you are meeting with and research them on LinkedIn. Know what the job is about, and what the company does. Arrive early. Bring copies of your resume, samples of your work, something to write on and a pen. Cell phone off. I know this all seems elementary, and you would be surprised how many folks sabotage themselves by missing these simple steps of preparation.
2. Show me you understand. I am looking for marketers who are also business people, so that means you need to tie together your specific area of expertise with the bigger picture. If you purchase media, I expect you to know how audiences consume media regardless of device. If you are a designer, I expect you to know how the overall campaign performed and how your design (or copy, or artwork, etc.) impacted the campaign results. If you are an e-mail expert, I want to see how you view communication in general and how you balance response with branding. It’s not enough to say that you faithfully executed your part of the program, but can’t share the results because “they” never gave them to you. I am looking to see your natural curiosity that drives your interest in the business.
3. Show me you can learn. No hiring leader expects any candidate to have 100% perfect knowledge going into a new marketing role. So if you are skilled in a different tool than the one I use to measure my web site activity, I would expect you can learn a new system because you have a larger understanding of web metrics that transcends the specific tool. If you are a great DRTV buyer, show me how that expertise could move over to radio or even online media buying. If you don’t know my industry, show me how you can come up to speed quickly or how your inexperience may provide fresh insight because you are new to the space. I have hired dozens of people who did not fit the classical description of a marketer, but showed potential to grow and learn – and several have exceeded my expectations in their careers. So show me that you can learn, grow, and be more than what you are today – and convince me to invest in you.
4. Ask great questions. First, lets define what a great question is NOT – it’s not about benefits, perks or pay (you can ask the HR folks about those things), and its not any kind of suck-up question (“Can you tell me all about those great looking kids in that picture?”). A great question shows your thought process beyond the specifics of the job and to the overall task of marketing, building market share, acquiring new customers, retaining old customers and the like. It shows your interest, curiosity, insight, desire to learn, and personality.
5. Show me both sides of your brain. I expect marketers to be both creative and analytical. I subscribe to the ABC principle – Always Bring a Calculator. Even if it’s a creative meeting where we might be reviewing storyboards – Always Bring a Calculator. Because its part of your mindset that shows you understand that marketing is about much more than pretty pictures and clever prose – its about selling things at a profit and returning investment to the company. Analytical marketers who deal in paid/organic search or media buying need to demonstrate a creative flair for how they approach the role. Creative marketers should be prepared to discuss examples about how your programs performed and the impact they made – with real numbers to back you up.
6. Show me you fit in. Your resume and initial phone screening interview most likely covered the basic job qualifications that got you to the point of having a face to face meeting. And there will certainly be some more investigation into your skills and background, but you need to remember one thing: as the hiring leader I want you to be right for me and my team. My deepest hope is that you are the right person and that I don’t have to look at any more resumes or meet any more candidates. At this point, its all about culture fit. I want you to be “the one”. Show me that you are, and you can have the job.

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From the article:

The about-face comes after consumers complained about the makeover in letters, e-mail messages and telephone calls and clamored for a return of the original look.

Some of those commenting described the new packaging as “ugly” or “stupid,” and resembling “a generic bargain brand” or a “store brand.”

Old Package vs. New Package

Pulling back from a major rebrand/redesign takes real leadership.  Someone had to make a convincing and probably passionate argument as to why they should pull back, and give the people what they want.  The money is already spent, they probably wont get any back from their agency, but that’s no reason to stick with a bad decision and a bad design.  Congratulations to Tropicana and the people who had the intestinal fortitude to do the right thing.

While the article doesn’t mention sales figures, I can only assume that lower sales figures may have played a role in making this decision easier…

BTW – click here to read my original rant on the subject of Tropicana’s new bland packaging that started it all…..and comments from other readers of Consumerist.com.

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