To Brand or not to, Brad.

Everyone should have a story like this. It seems as if somewhere, a page from my life was made into 47 different after school specials and 115 movies produced between 1983 and 1987. Does art imitate life or is life merely following the script handed to it by art? How many licks until you get to the center of a tootsie pop?

Brad was so much like the villain in all those mid-eighties teen romp films that I still wince at the idea that we were ever friends. Brad was much like a shrinky dinked Iceman from Top Gun. He had Iceman’s flattop and Hitler youth looks. Brad never really played sports but that didn’t matter. Huge doses of steroids (seriously) work wonders on the 13-year-old body and Brad looked like one of those freakishly built, pre-pubescent Russian gymnastic stars with the unnatural bulging muscles.

I guess I was friend of Brad because everyone else liked him or at least feared him. His synthesized testosterone temper earned him a reputation that other eighth graders avoided like a wedgie. Brad was not cool but no one dared say it. Becoming friends with Brad was like joining the army through transcription and even though I never really like him, over time he became tolerable.

Brad’s parents moved a lot. So when his parents moved a few towns away, Brad would come to my house to connect with the old crew. It was on such a day that Brad came over, and together with Amber (who will be explained in a second), we did what kids of our age did. We walked around the neighborhood.

Amber was what is defined at that age as my girlfriend. We were not old enough to go on dates or anything of the ilk. At that age, being girlfriend and boyfriend simply means when a slow song comes on (usually super rawk group Cinderella’s “Don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”) one should migrate over to slow dance with whoever your girlfriend was that week. Only, with Amber, the week had turned into two years. It started as kind of an accident. When we all first started junior high we played the all too typical game of musical dance partners where everyone pairs up with the person they will send cute little notes and custom mix tapes of love songs to. I guess I wasn’t paying attention with the music turned off and everyone grabbed a cheerleader and I got stuck with Amber. I tried to end it but she cried and I hate it when girls cry.

So here was Brad, Amber and I. I had a football game to go play, which left Brad and Amber to discuss things that 14-year-olds discuss. We beat Norcross for the county championship and I sacked the QB who would later play QB at University of Georgia (Go me!). But the elation of the win was not enough to quell the hurt that I felt when the final buzzer rang. Brad and Amber were now boyfriend and girlfriend, just waiting for a slow song.

Ironically, this happened to me again but with a slight twist. Our little town of Athens is celebrated for its artistry yet its prowess in marketing to the outside world is dismal. Every year our town’s various tourism and economic development entities run ads full of bullet points, clichéd pictures and some campy headline like “Have it all in Athens!”

My team and I decided we could help. We convened a group of the city’s tourism and economic development stakeholders. The Chamber of Commerce, Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), the Economic Development Foundation, the mayor’s office, the convention center and several area businesses were all invited to a presentation.
We were really on our game in this presentation. The concept we presented was called “Only in Athens.”

The concept and drive behind Only in Athens was to develop a brand that could be used to attract both visitors and relocatees of an individual and organizational nature. We marketed the idea that our seemingly paradoxical existences indicate our unique spirit that is desirable to businesses and individuals alike. For example, in an ad we showed two restaurants on our main drag in downtown. To the first restaurant pointed an arrow which said “Chateau D’ Pomerol, $198 a bottle” to the second restaurant pointed an arrow which said “Chateau D’ Milwaukee, $3.50 a pitcher. The ad then went on to explain that Athens’ biggest selling point is great diversity peacefully existing in one area. Diversity of geography, business, entertainment and lifestyle make Athens what it is. This approach is in opposition to the too often bullet point laden junk that so typifies destination marketing. We told the relocating businesses that our unique offerings were something that they needed and that they could only find in Athens. Similarly, we told the prospective visitors that unique cultural and enriching experiences also exist to make Athens a fine destination.

Walking out of the meeting, I knew we nailed it. You could see the glimmer in the attendee’s eyes as they imagined all the other seemingly paradoxical relationships that exist in Athens. We had struck a cord and were awaiting a flood of new and even better ideas to emerge from within the strategy. It took only days to get the e-mail.
And we were crestfallen. The head of the Conventions and Visitors Bureau dispatched an e-mail to the mayor calling for the group that had convened to reconvene for a more expansive study of which he would happily be in charge of. He powder puffed our efforts and vacuumed all the momentum we had created in pursuit of his ambitions.
Welcome back Brad.

In the three years it took the CVB to craft a brand for the city there was enough tomfoolery to upstage the Benny Hill show. The first firm considered promised to do a full review of operational effectiveness of the CVB and other brand entities. That firm was promptly dismissed because this effort was about the CVB trying to make itself relevant, not to let everyone see how the sausage is made.
The second firm was ousted for giving several communities the same brand. All of the smoke and mirrors that the CVB director had used to persuade the stakeholders towards and out-of-town firm ended up being just smoke and mirrors. The dismissal of the second firm was kept quite as to not wake those asleep at the wheel. The third and final effort used a professor from a college a state away, the bountiful resource of about ten thousand dollars and came up with something profound. Athens: Life Unleashed!

The effort landed with such a resounding thud that even some of the stakeholders would not sign their name to it. The newspaper called foul and conducted an online poll where two thirds of the respondents said they hated the concept. The CVB staff ran around like a battalion of keystone cops trying to cover their actions. When I attended their board meeting soon after the supposed launch they cowered from the subject and barely mentioned their three years in the making masterpiece.

I was asked my opinion because we had been summarily dismissed from the CVB because they could not gain political power from our continued efforts; the Economic Development Foundation loved our materials. So did the ADDY judges. The material was named “Best in Show” by the local ADDYs. A major market research company who studied the branding efforts of the State of Georgia said the work was “The best municipal marketing materials I have ever seen.” So what was my opinion?

My critique is simple. That’s not a brand.

It’s a campy slogan. It’s a poorly designed logo. It’s a group of ads that continue to perpetuate the undesirable concept that Athens is a place of excesses. Honestly, when was the last time anyone typified anything positive as being “unleashed?”

I blame the CVB for putting their own attainment of power and influence above the needs of the town but I don’t fully blame them for the brand screw up. It is a common problem to equate the idea of a brand with so much that it is not.

Businesses often make this mistake. They design a logo and call it and new brand position. They mock up a few yuckfest ads and say they have a new brand strategy and that strategy is “fun!” Branding has become the new buzz concept for companies but it is so widely misunderstood and widely misused that the unimpressive result of such misuse has made the approach suspect. It reminds me somewhat of the Adkins diet. People who know and faithfully implement the diet lose weight. People who do it halfway or simple don’t know what they are doing gain weight and blame it on the diet. Rarely does one hear someone say, “I tried the Adkins diet but my inability to following directions or commit myself to any long-term discipline has delivered lackluster results”.

I cannot and will not attempt to explain every nook and cranny of creating brand in this chapter. Instead, I’ll throw out some broad and oft violated rules that will help you test the integrity of what you are calling a brand.

A brand is a system of meaning.

A brand gives consumers predictability and assurance. A brand is all the attitudes and perspective concerning a product or service. It encapsulates the essence and inspirational nature of a brand. It is the awareness of the earth exuded by Patagonia and the love of driving extolled by BMW. A brand is a personality for a product or service. And like a person, if the brand is not interesting, engaging and fully developed from a personality standpoint, good luck making friends. And even if such a brand can make friends, they’ll all be like Brad.

A brand is not a logo.

A logo may identify a brand. A logo may even incorporate the spirit or essence of the brand (Like Nike’s swoosh) but the logo itself is not the brand. A swoosh without all the imagery and emotion of Nike is an icon that could just as well be promoting a fertility clinic.

A brand is not just for mass communication.

A brand also functions as an internal ethos. Companies with solid and rooted brand concepts have an uncanny ability to incorporate the meaning system within their organization. Sometimes it is the internal culture which gives rise to the brand. Brands such as Ben and Jerry’s and Saturn used the communication of internal culture to inform the masses what they stand for and believe in.

A brand is active. A brand is nothing without a brand strategy.

I have observed far too many companies conduct a distillation of their brand only to say, “Okay folks this is our brand: we believe in innovation.” “Now, back to work.”
A brand strategy that is not implemented is worthless. Brand strategies are not just the persona but how that persona is cultivated, communicated and nurtured. The brand strategy determines what types of media the communication will flow through and what the next product or distribution channel might be.

A brand is everyone’s business.

The iPod was not an invention of the marketing department yet it taps so deeply into the Apple brand. The brand is essentially what is being sold and it is everyone’s responsibility to live the brand. New products should be on-brand. Sales should be selling on-brand. The design of the corporate headquarters should be on-brand. A brand is what a company and its products are. It is based in who you are in the life of the prospective consumer. If it is something you try to fake, you will fail.

Brad vs. the CVB.

The violation that too many companies make, ultimately leading to their poor branding efforts, is betrayal. A brand is not created in as much as it is discovered. A brand already exists for most companies and the careful uncovering of exactly what motivates a consumer to take action and love a brand might as well be pure gold. The failed efforts of branding have given the practice a tarnished reputation when truthfully it was ineptitude and incompetence to blame.

Be it Brad, the CVB or your marketing department, loyalty can make the difference in whether or not those you want to like you will actually like you. When an entity shows loyalty to its prospect and earnestly listens to that which is already beckons the brand’s devotees, magic happens. In the all too common situation where personal agendas, politics and a little back stabbing are leading the way of your branding effort, I have but one recommendation: Put them back on the leash.

The dog and phony show

This is a true story. Sink, Matt and I hauled up across state lines for a competitive pitch on a nice piece of business. We had a good feeling about the account and had done some preliminary work that was pretty great. Anyways, they stuffed us into a boardroom while they went out to round up the attendees who had run off to play with their Blackberries between meetings.

On the client side, I’ve always hated these meeting. Agencies and consultant always seem to present a gumbo of campy clichés and talk to PowerPoint presentations for thirty minutes about creating a “winning mindset.” When I pitch these days, I think back to those horrid presentations and try to make mine a bit more interesting.

Back to that day in the pitch, I saw a small black box. Sink, who can get all clandestine on command, snagged the box and opened it. It was a cell phone with some stupid card that said something to the effect of “Make the call! Choose Purple Llama Advertising!” (name slightly changed). We studied the bribe and noticed a stand where a projector had just been. Right there, we completely changed the presentation. No slides, no sound effects. No bribes. Straight talk and straight answers.

I was told later that we butchered the competition from a strategic capability standpoint but that some of the members of the voting body were just enamored with the cell phones, gifts and other little gimmicks.

I have a confession to make: our industry does this. We offer bribes, and lavish dinners and outings to tattletales. We promise connections, influence and activities that could be accurately classified as kickbacks. I have seen agencies whore out employees, take clients to Vegas and/or suggest better access to high ranking state officials. It is important to note that not a single part of this has anything to do with ability or prowess in helping the client reach strategic goals.

What are marketers to do? On one side you have consultants and agencies sending you champagne and taking you on “media tours” that include $700 dinners they will eventually charge to your company along with the customary 20% markup. On the other side are actual capabilities. The answer looks easy, but the result anything but.

So what allows the substitution of food, embroidery or a cell phone for real ability? It has to do with marketing team construction, commitment and liability. The team is often the root of whether the right group of outside marketers or a group of dopes who gave away watches will be selected. Here a few tips to avoid making this dumb mistake.

The person in charge should be in charge.

In every environment I have worked in there are always those folks determined to milk the job for anything they can get. They bring in all their personal mail and use the company stamps. They ship their Christmas gifts with the company shipping account. They make their long distance calls from the office so they don’t have to pay for them. To them, this job is about what they get out of it. Never put this person in a position to extract perks from a vendor. I have seen brand managers use the relationship to subsidize travel, pay for vacations and even secure other employment. It’s sickening.

When a person has more at stake than the ability to get free junk, the truth of the situation becomes clear. Is this consultant going to mesh with the corporate culture? What will be the outcome and have we identified the desired outcome in the first place? And the easy tip is to never let a person be involved in the decision unless their neck or their reputation is on the line.

Tell the agency to stop kissing your assets.

Agencies have a knack for getting in the marketing budget and spreading it out until all marketing activities are conducted by and paid directly to them. Endless attempts to encumber more parts of the marketing budget are par for the course, and this is the strategic aim of most conglomerate agencies. Here’s the rub: an agency that oozes over into the area of what your company supposedly needs is never as potent as one who specializes in it already. I would never have an agency handle an important PR project when I know there are people who specialize in PR. I don’t care if the agency just hired two yahoos to write releases. There are people with real track records and abilities in the various subsets of marketing consultation. If you want good work, be willing to look for it.

I already have a cell phone. Give me a strategy.

An interesting fact about the groups I have seen using bribes and junk to peddle their trash is that not one ever had a decent command of the business problem. Instead of salient strategy, they offered logo emblazoned folding camp chairs. Instead of insight, they had an offer to have the next meeting in Bermuda.

Whether or not an agency or consultant can or does have a mental hold on the concept and business problem at hand is extremely relevant. I remember sitting in a meeting with a hack arguing because he could not understand the difference between an American pub and an English pub. Sure, he was more than willing to send our president on a lavish media tour of magazines in Chicago and New York, but ultimately it was worthless because he simply could not understand the strategy.

Put your strategy out there. Give the prospect a chance to reflect it back and comment on it. See if they can really let it soak in. Do they get it? If they don’t, show them the door. Free cell phone or not, your company’s well being is not worth including a dud on the marketing team.

A partnership is two sided.

The last and perhaps most important quip I can offer about the client/consultant interaction concerns the nature of the relationship. The agency is going to need to work from the inside if the results are going to be a real connection between the product and the consumer. Clients who treat their agencies like partners instead of vendors will far exceed the result of those that see the agency like the coffee service company.

So the goal is clear. Getting an agency that can partner with your company, understand your strategy and be a true contribution to the team is not hard to ascertain with a few questions. Ask prospects to explain the strategy and approach on other pieces of business. Ask them how they might approach your business. If they can clearly reflect back to you strategic ability and insight in addressing the business, tell them to keep the free phones and you’ll send them a contract.

PETA hates the dog and pony show.

In recent times, more companies are nixing the big production of agency pitches in favor or more personal interviews. After all, when you ask a person to join your team (which is what the hiring of agency should be), you sit and talk with the person to get to know him or her. You don’t ask the candidate to bake you cookies or make a video about how fun they are. Marketing is serious business and when the result of a marketing effort might have your job in its jaws, you might take the selection of teammates a little more seriously.

So what will it be? Embroidered blankets and promises of connections or strategy and ability? Will you be the one who knows there’s no “I” in team or the one who points out that there is a “me” in team? (There is also a “meat.)” Real business is counting on you to pick strategy over pomp. To pick ability over self interest. And, if after all this you have to have a dog and pony show, well …

http://www.hsus.org/

Just imagine everyone is naked.

There is a legendary class at the University of Georgia taught by one of the guys who led the largest mass streak, according to the record books. While the naked parade happened long before I arrived at UGA, my friend Guy was there, and he assures me everybody got their money’s worth. For a usually starched and pressed southern town, the local folk sure took joy in bringing their kids out to see the naked hippies run down Lumpkin Street.

The class, however, might be even more legendary than naked running hippies. “The Psychology of Sexual Deviation” is one of the hardest classes to get into at Georgia. Tales of posters and mobiles constructed from nudie magazines filtered down to us in junior high from our older siblings. One notorious exercise in the class has a guy and girl sit back to back and watch a silent x-rated film (yes, an actual film played on a projector) while one partner describes the actions of the film in fully clinical terms. No slang. No hinting. Just the facts in psycho babble with an imaginary disco bass track playing in your head all the while. The class had a several thousand person waiting list when I signed up. A groovy adviser and my psych major helped me get a spot in Dr. Pollack’s class.

The class was decent. We took a disturbing survey of what we though our parents’ behavior might be like. We watch a veiled attempt at fine art in a film that ultimately included the clichéd “bow chicka wah wah” track and involved a ballerina. The lady from the health department came in with assorted fruits and vegetables. All in all, it was a decent class.

But what about the posters and mobiles and ridiculous descriptions? I skipped registering for Bowling 101 and The History of Rock and Roll for this. When do we get to the fun part?

There was no fun part. The class had been tamed for some reason, and the result was a class suitable for all audiences. The image that I had trumped up in my mind turned out to be a supercharged high school health class complete with awkward giggles and a written final exam. What a let down.

All these years later, I’m still getting let down. As the tasks of my consultation business require me to find and use emerging methods, I find myself in self-directed study of all types of things. Case interviewing is one of those subjects. (While I could have learned this in business school, I instead spent my time in classes like “The Psychology of Sexual Deviation.”) I’ve studied what many of the greats have to say. I’ve learned methodologies from Kellogg, McKinsey and Thunderbird and many other organizations with names that sound like cereal, scotch and bum wine.

Yet again, though, I’m let down. In a book I am reading currently, the section on evaluating the marketing strategy is barely noted. A few paragraphs talk about position and selling proposition. A few paragraphs talk about linking consumer schema to product attributes in a meaningful way. What is terrible, though, is that the pages of the book don’t do any of the aforementioned things. Instead, they engage endless exercises of drawing circles and bubbles and listing out competitors. In the end, it is a sterile, PG-13 approach that has about as much passion as biology lab.

I don’t blame the author for glossing over strategy. When you don’t understand strategy, it’s hard to get excited. For those of us who understand the power of a huge strategic idea, we get excited because we know success can and often does hinge on the big idea. For the idea agnostic, the alternative is to try to flow chart the concept to death, endlessly searching for a new taxonomy and function paradigm in which to harness creative energy of ideation.

So, for your reading and viewing pleasure, I’m going to make a mobile out of nudie magazine pictures. Just kidding. Instead, I’m going to write the chapter I think is missing from the strategy book. It will be the Cliff’s Notes version - nearly as short as the few measly lines from my recent read. However, I’m going to give you a breakdown of how to evaluate your marketing strategy. For some of you it will be a predictable plot. For others we might have to up the film’s rating owing to your expletives at the realization that your marketing department’s big idea is just a big expense. Either way, get ready, the film’s about to begin.


Just because everyone says the class is awesome doesn’t mean the class is awesome.


Fads can be wrong. Even trends can be artificially engineered as hype spreads like the Norwalk virus. Managers in search of a cure-all happily embrace the newfound approach and then expound it to others in hopes that if the fad fails, they won’t be alone. Like the rumors of this class, non-marketing concepts like Total Quality Management and Benchmarking continue to run strategies amuck. Don’t get me wrong, TQM had some benefits. However, the broad assumption that consumers would flock to a product simply because the manufacturer claimed it was “made better” made a ton of companies looks pretty naked on the balance sheet.

I should have checked out that class before I signed up for it. Like many marketing magic pills, the prospect seemed too good to be true. Well, it was.



Make a mobile or a poster.

If you can’t clearly illustrate it, you don’t have it.
It has plenty of names, but one core concept. If you cannot clearly articulate a marketing strategy in thirty seconds, you do not have one. If you say it is because your plan is so multi-faceted, what you are really saying is that your effort has no unity and is basically a diffuse collection of tactics and efforts, which is not strategy.

Complexity is always covering up something. Though we never did the exercise, I imagine the most humorous part of the whole back to back exercise was to see how one might struggle to describe the acts seen on screen sans the colorful abilities of slang. I have met a few marketers who could ace this exercise with long, 8-syllable words and complex jargon that sounds like Klingon. My beloved mentor Bob once gave me the best breakdown of the many million, several thousand employee company he once headed. He said, “We make and then sell things and hopefully we sell them for more than it costs to make them.”

If you really feel like streaking, go for it.


There is something to be said for bravery in marketing. Bravery is making a call that could hurt your career now rather than absconding and letting it hurt the company later. Companies should be so lucky to have a marketer who puts his or her reputation on the line for a great win.

But don’t confuse bravery with stupidity. Bravery makes a judgment where data is simply unattainable. Stupidity just barrels in on a gut feeling without doing any homework.

Today’s lesson might get a little nasty.


Its can be scary to see the trends and not want follow them. The natural herd instinct of business comes to life when the boss pulls a clipping from a trade magazine and puts it on you desk with a post-it. Then again, you might be the one with a concept that needs the buy-in - in which case be clear, be thorough but quick. And then there’s bravery. It’s scary to be brave in business. Again, the herd instinct says don’t do what we’ve always not done. There’s risk in being brave. Your career teeters on whether your concept was a “game changer” or “the stupidest thing since we bought all those emus.”

Sometimes you feel all alone and naked in the field. But look up. There are a lot of people around you headed the same way. They are just as concerned and just as naked. There sure are a lot of them. Might even be enough for a world record.

Et Tu, CMO?

I was not the most popular student government President at DeKalb College. One of my Senators used to sit right across from me and make accusations; however, he would not direct them directly at me. He would use obscurities like, “Well, (snap) some people, blah, blah, blah random complaint blah, blah, blah.” I sort of feel bad about him not liking me, but he often wore fluorescent mesh tank tops and billowing workout pants to meetings, so I didn’t fully trust his judgment.



Being President had its perks, though. I got snubbed by Spike Lee when we picked him up at his mother’s house in a limo for him to speak at our MLK day celebration. I got to hang out with Zell Miller and discuss important things like cowboy boots and Georgia’s sodomy law. I hugged Maya Angelou and introduced her at an event where she sung and spoke for two mesmerizing hours. I saw and did a lot as President. But in that year, and without me knowing, my adviser Michelle taught me what it means to lead.



I’ve lead other things since being student government President at DeKalb. I was President of my local ad club and served as state director for the American Advertising Federation. I’ve led groups to study issues and solve problems. I lead Snowden Tatarski and it is not always easy, but I have to say if there is anything likable about my style of leadership it is owed to those mentors and friends who made it their cause to teach me.



My mentor Bob is the best mentor a leader can have. Bob teaches an inverted pyramid style of leadership where the leader helps facilitate the actions of the rest of the organization. Nowadays Bob teaches this leadership style to companies, organizations nonprofits and MBA students.



One of the things Bob has taught me in our work and friendship is the value of marketing leadership. A sales and marketing organization is an organism that has a stubborn, thick skin in some spots and a tender underbelly of vulnerability in other areas. Companies often seem to not know what to do with the marketing beast, so they feed it just enough to keep it from starving to death. This methodology leads to countless situations where a good product with sufficient opportunity in the market fails due to poor marketing leadership.



So what is marketing leadership? It is knowing that what you don’t know about the consumer or the product can hurt you, and then seeking clear answers in research. It’s the discipline to not screw up an otherwise good strategy with unneeded input. I am careful to distinguish between input which is helpful in the marketing process and input which simply exist to reinforce a power structure. Put simply, don’t be a bully just because you can.



Marketing departments often suffer from maladies and hexes that tax their own efforts. Whereas leadership could serve as an anchor and source of support, there is instead a black hole that that sucks in the energy and self esteem of the marketing team. To list all the sources of marketing leadership implosion would take volumes. Instead, here are a few of the greatest hits.



A fish stinks from the head.



Behind every dysfunctional marketing organization is a dysfunctional person. Good marketing leadership takes supportive and understanding leaders with the ability to cultivate the next line of marketing leadership. The stinking head of a stinking marketing department gets three words into the last sentence and decides its crap.



To be in the presence of one of these specimens is truly something. They are bullies. They like hunter green and royal red not because of any marketing purpose but because they like it and if you don’t like it you can shut up or quit. These fine individuals ask your opinion as they are walking out of your office. This embrace of command/control style of leadership can and does choke a marketing department down to a group of drones carrying out orders.



A better way to lead is to actually lead. If the team is too dumb to have a good idea, fire them and get a better team. Successful marketing managers hire intellectual equals, if not intellectual superiors. Bullies hire morons, bone heads and nincompoops to run around carrying faxes and press releases. Such makes bullies feel important but in the end the whole company suffers.



None of us is as dumb as all of us.



The opposite of the power bully (though they may coexist) is the kangaroo committee. The kangaroo committee is a group on non-marketers or pathetically skilled marketers who get in a room and try decide which photo to include on the thank you note. This gives an elaborate illusion of doing work. Truthfully, a single person could make all the decisions such a committee makes in a year in a single afternoon. Such committees seem to exist if only to waste time and give people the feeling that their input is wanted. In the end, the committee’s direction is always vague and so someone (often the bully) has to step in and make the decision.



Committees can be great for determining issues. It is worth while to ask the head of sales what they are learning about the customer and what implements would be helpful in closing sales. What you don’t need to know from sales is what color the background needs to be in the product shot. It is not that their opinion doesn’t count; it’s that the clock does. Time as a resource is finite. Unless your aim is waste time and money, find competent people and let them do their job.



The soup sandwich.



Occasionally marketing is seen as a place to resolve corporate conflict. Sometimes this is good and sometimes it is really good. Marketing is the perfect place to discuss the overall corporate strategy concerning customers, marketing, products and opportunities. When it comes to resolving such problems, marketing can really shine.



But the marketing department can also be a dumping ground. I have worked with teams that use the marketing department as a repository for non-marketing executives’ friends’ children in need of an internship, the boss’ spouse who really knows her way around Microsoft Publisher, and best of all, a giant slush fund to pay for undocumented expenses, country club dues and “leadership” trips to Vegas.



Again, strong leadership from a marketing department can snap the rest into focus. Organizations seem to lose focus on marketing because focus never really was the aim at all. Existence was. Instead, marketing pros should feel empowered and included in the crucial operations of the organization. Think deeply about it. Your next breakthrough, business changing concept - is it most likely to come from accounting, finance or marketing?



A modification of the soup sandwich is the invisible rope. The invisible rope ties up the hands of everyone in marketing and ties up nearly every project with only the top brass being able to untie the knot. There are companies where the CEO must see and comment on every ad before it goes out. Sure, quality control you say. No. The ads rarely make it out the door, and the only quality control is more like a limiter as the marketing department can only work at the speed of an eighty-year-old who works sparsely in between golf and naps.



Fire the guy in the poofy pants and pink tank top.



Had I known back at DeKalb College what I know now, I would have handled that Senator a little differently. While I’d be interested in his opinion of how a strategy or direction should be carried out, I would not try to brain (or blame) storm every aspect. I would take the officers who were most capable and give them every authority to solve the issue, but he would not be chosen. Am I being a tyrant or vindictive? I don’t think so. With the competitor, policies and sheer inertia of the masses against you, the least you can expect is honest loyalty and productive leadership within your organization.



I don’t have all the answers and I am not always right. But I know a few things quite certainly for my experience. Great leadership inspires great results. Beware of someone who attends an important meeting in a mesh tank top. And Maya Angelou is far more cordial than Spike Lee