Bloghound

Conde Nast’s Portfolio magazine is gorgeous. But I don’t like it. I couldn’t put my figure on why until I mapped out the articles in the October issues of Portfolio and Fortune against the “9 Themes People Like To Talk and Read About.” (See chart below.)

Too much high anxiety

While both publications run about the same number of personal stories and glitz and glam features, Portfolio, unlike Fortune, runs many articles that raise apprehension, fear, doubt and anxieties about different businesses or business trends. Consider the headlines on the Portfolio cover flap:

“Did Chiquita Finance Murder: Inside the Company’s Death-Squad Crisis,” “Starwood’s Barry Sternlicht Exacts His Revenge,” Google: The Worst News Ever for Cell-Phone Carriers.”

“Anxiety” stories once had appeal, but have lost their juice because the media and politicians have over-played the anxiety angle. Elevated security levels, retirement crises, healthcare fraud….it’s too much negativity all the time about topics people can generally do little to change. So we tune out the anxiety stories.

Too few trends

Another difference is that Fortune features five stories on “avalanches about to roll,” those big trends about to happen, compared to just two in Portfolio. These stories always appeal to business people because we like to be insiders about what’s coming next and be early in tracking big trends. Aside from having so few “avalanche” stories the Portfolio trend articles seem not so trendy — one on the PC industry in China and the other on alternative fuels for cars.

Oops we forgot the how-to and aspirations

Business people love how-to stories and a reason to believe in something or someone. Yet Portfolio has neither type of story. Fortune, on the other hand, features “How to be a Great Leader” on its October cover. Aspirational and how-to? You bet.

Being a longtime magazine junkie, I hope Portfolio can make it. Without a new tone, however, my bet is that it will be gone in 18 months.

If there are some Portfolio lovers out there, help me see what I’m missing.

Riding down the elevator at the Westin Hotel in Kansas City on Monday, a nice guy asked me if I was in town for the BlueCross BlueShield conference.

“No, but I’d love to be a fly on the wall. As a business owner I’ve got some issues with Blue Cross,” I replied in my usual reserved way.

Then he laid the Blue Cross elevator pitch on me – in the elevator. “I always say that when it comes to you and your family’s health, you can’t put a price on health care. “

“That’s the problem,” I replied. “Blue Cross doesn’t seem to be able to put a price on health care. The prices skyrocket every year. People do love their families but there are financial limits. Good luck to you at your conference. Watching the health insurance industry and Blue Cross should be good business sport.”

“Business sport? I’ve never heard health insurance put that way,” he said.

“Oh yes. Many of us will be watching BlueCross’ every move closer than Monday night football. And we’re not going to be quiet about what we think. Nice talking to you.”

Observations:

1. You can get some frank feedback on elevator pitches on the elevator.
2. Marketing messaging today needs to go beyond the elevator pitch; if people are engaged in your company or issue you need to be able to have a conversation, not just recite an elevator pitch – even in an elevator.
3. Hot issues create fervid online and face-to-face conversations — conversations that people follow like sports — requiring companies to listen in new ways and actively participate in these conversations, as heated as they may become. Traditional command-and-control communications and marketing is over — especially for health insurance providers.

One of the most interesting Internet radio/podcast programs around is Susan Bratton’s DishyMix. Her style? “Juicy interviews with famous Internet and media people.” Emphasis on juicy and unexpected. A style kind of like the best of a combined Ed Bradley. Oprah. Tim Mathews and Barbara Walters. Some recent guests have been creativity and innovation sage Sir Ken Robinson, friend of Sir Paul, David Weinberger of forever Cluetrain Manifesto fame and so much more, and yours truly.

Susan’s intro about our interview:

“Lois Kelly of Foghound lifts the fog on marketing heaven, alpha fraidy cats, the jerk-o-meter, seeing patterns and more.

This DishyMix interview with Lois Kelly will restore your confidence that there are sophisticated communications professionals with maturity and elegance who understand how to tell a company or product story that gets absorbed.”

Thanks Susan!

While there’s a lot of interest in customer engagement, don’t forget employee engagement. And it seems most companies have. A Towers Perrin study found that just 21 percent of all US employees are fully engaged; most are frustrated and skeptical about their senior leadership, which correlates to operating profit and income, according to two recent studies.

The bottom line upsides of an engaged work force:

• 3.7 percent increase in operating margins and a 2.1 percent boost in net profit margins, according to an I. M Dulye & Co study of 41 international companies with 360,000 employees.
• 19.2 percent increase in operating income and 13.7 percent increase in net income, according to a Towers Perrin study across 50 global companies.
• 19 percent improvement in annual operating profit, 18 percent improvement in productivity and 400 percent reduction in errors at Rolls Royce Engine after committing to an employee engagement program. “It’s been like a tidal wave,” said Raj Sharma, president of the division. “Employees couldn’t believe that we’d listen to their suggestions, that decisions would involve them. And business performance is the only motivation to do this.”
• There’s a direct link between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and between customer satisfaction and financial performance, according to a study by Prof. James Oakley of Ohio State University.

What three things matter the most in engaging employees, aside from the obvious Sr. leadership commitment to involving employees? Says Julie Gebauer of Towers Perrin:

1. Rational understanding of the company’s goals and values

2. Emotional attachment to the organization

3. Willingness to go above and beyond specific job tasks

Whose job is it anyway? HR? Corporate Communications? Marketing? Probably not HR. None of four HR functions — selection, development, performance management and compensation — was found to influence employee engagement according to a study by Northwestern University Forum for People Perfrmance Management and Measurement.

If you could go to a marketing boot camp with five musicians, who would they be? Here are my five picks and reasons why.

This “top five list” is part of this week’s nonprofit consultant’s carnival being hosted by Katya Andresen over at Getting to the Point.

Five reasons I’d want to spend a weekend talking marketing with these musicians:

1. Their primary obsession is creating great music, not sales.
2. Fans are more important to them than big name record labels.
3. They’ve created innovative business models – it’s about multi-platform, not multplatinum.
4. Experimentation – in music and marketing — is in their DNA.
5. They’re distinctive, genuine and have succeeded without trying to fit neatly into any genre.

The musicians at our marketing fantasy camp:

1. Prince

2. Feist

3. Martin Sexton

4. U2

5. Rufus Wainwright

And just for fun Mick Jaeger will swing by to share how he keeps the Stones’ brand going and going without much new music or innovation. Plus I hear he’s got some great stories about a well-known politician who drank too many martinis in her bikini while ranting about Fellini.

PS— photo is of Leslie Feist, another emerging mega music star from Canada.

Here are some people making headlines and my take on whether they were customer-focused or boss-focused. Just like brands, those that are focused on delivering value to the customer win. Those who consciously or unconsciously play to their bosses inevitably fail.

Who else should be on the list — and would you rate them as boss-focused or customer focused? Please share!

For anyone interested in changes in journalism and the rise of citizen bloggers, don’t miss last night’s “What’s Happening to the News, ” the third installment of Frontline’s superb four-part investigation into what’s happening to the news.

While journalism was once viewed as a public service, the program shows how it’s devolved into infotainment with the goal of making money, not helping to inform and enlighten the public. (Which is why Frontline is always so refreshing as it represents thorough, insightful reporting at it’s best. It hasn’t sacrificed standards like the network news and the cable bigs like CNN.)

I was amazed at the defensiveness of the old line media executives, and the dismissiveness of Nicholas Lemann,the dean of Columbia’s Journalism School regarding bloggers, calling blogs “church newsletters.”

There’s a reason why our media consumption is changing. The root causes hold some answers for the what was once the mainstream media.

Why don’t we get rid of the small obstacles to marketing success? Why live with small, thorny nits that could be easily fixed and put aside?

Last week in Iowa, Sen. Hillary Clinton told a crowd, “Well, I guess people will keep talking about my clothes and my hair.” Why not just fix those issues and get them out of the way if they’re so annoying to people — and affecting her marketing campaign for U.S. President? Surely Sen Clinton has contacts who could help her fix something as simple as a consistent hair style and wardrobe? (Maybe Nancy Pelosi? Dianne Feinstein?)

My firm is about to change accounting firms because of two small — but highly annoying — business practices that we’ve repeatedly flagged the accounting firm about. They’ve recognized the issues, but over the past two years have never fixed them. When interviewing other firms we raised these annoyances. The other accountants acknowledged the problems and explained the business practices they’ve put in place to solve them. Hooray.

Or consider shopping around for the best CD rate from banks. In browsing local banks recently, I found information about how to open CDs but no rates. I called the three banks and got the reply, “Oh we don’t like to list the rates online. We want people to call us so we can offer personalized service.” I just want to open a CD, no personalized service needed. Instead they’re annoying customers. They won’t get my business. Why not solve this small problem and list the rates?

We marketers shouldn’t sweat the small stuff, but we should probably fix that stuff to get it out of the way.

I was moderating a conference session a few weeks ago and asked marketing executives from Gillette, Dunkin’ Donuts and Circle Lendng what they thought was the most important competency for marketing professionals today.

Their unanimous response: math.

With so much customer data available today analytics is becoming one of the most strategic aspects of marketing, yet there’s a huge talent shortage in this area.

"One of the new marketer’s key skills is the ability to marry fluency in higer mathematics and computer modeling to marketing flair and creativity," wrote Richard Rawlinson in last summer’s issue of Strategy & Business. "Just as mathematics has revolutionized finance, it will now invigorate the marketing field, as new models and algorithms are developed to extract value from consumer and business databases, and to allow more precise targeting of ‘hot’ topics to each consumer."

I know a lot of students read this blog, so if you’re interested in a marketing career think about analytics. And for the rest of us, maybe it’s time to learn more about the scientific and mathematical aspects of marketing to be able to be creative in measurable new ways, and to elevate the value of our profession.

marketing and math

  Four friends called this week. Two are stuck in job ruts, trying to muster the energy and guts to do something different. Two others called to say they had just been diagnosed with cancer.

The conversations remind me to take heed in Michelangelo’s advice to his apprentice, Antonio — whether it’s moving ahead a career or seeking a more joyful, contented personal life amid what is. A few days after his death, this note was found in Michelangelo’s studio:

“Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.”