Bloghound

Should the United States Post Office be in the business of promoting direct mail?

Yesterday I received a copy of “Deliver,” the USPS’ expensively produced, 32 page magazine. USPS sends the free bi-monthly magazine to 350,000 marketers.

The
business world is moving to a paper-less, digital world, but the Postal
Service is trying to promote the value of direct mail and other
“innovative marketing tools.”

“Finding innovative marketing
tools is a must for any company that needs to promote its brand and
products to the consumer,” according to USPS press release announcing the magazine last winter. “Today the U.S. Postal Service is
Deliver-ing a magazine for marketers about strategies and trends that
are shaping the world of marketing and advertising.”

My view is
that the USPS has no business trying to be in the marketing advice
business, especially as their advice is grounded in the old print
world, which is hardly innovative. That's just a bad use of our tax
dollars. Not as bad as the USPS' huge sports sponsorship spends a few
years ago, but still rather irresponsible.

USPS should take the
hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on the magazine and
address its real issue: how to create a new USPS business model for a
world with less and less mail.

Now, back to getting my tax returns completed…

Women stepping up to run countries were in the news today.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a 67-year-old Harvard-trained economist, is being inaugurated as the president of Liberia, the first woman president in Africa. Michele Bachelet, a doctor and former political prisoner, was yesterday elected as Chile’s first woman president. German Chancellor Angela Merkel just finished a visit to the White House. And Finland’s first female president, Tarja Halonen yesterday failed to win enough votes to secure re-election, forcing a runoff against a conservative challenger.

Why is it that women are succeeding as CEO’s of countries, but not of businesses?

I believe it’s because people today are screaming to be heard and to be understood, and women use a conversational communications style that recognizes those voices.

Look no further than the online world for evidence of wanted to be heard and involved. An estimated 50,000 new blogs start every day. Millions share product reviews and recommendations online. Communities are thriving. MoveOn.org has changed political advocacy, making it easy for people to be heard and get involved.

Women‘s communications styles tend to be more engaging, involving, and conversational than men. Most men talk more than they listen, not recognizing other people’s voices. Women, it seems, may have the inside track on knowing how to genuinely connect with people.

In her fascinating book, “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,” Deborah Tannen explains that men are more comfortable using “report-talk” while women use “rapport-talk.”

“For most women the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships,” she writes. “For most men, talk is primarily a means to preserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order.”

In Alice Walker’s novel “The Temple of My Familiar,” the main character falls in love with a man because she sees in him “a giant ear.”

Maybe women are succeeding because they are giant ears, and people prefer to be led by big ears instead of big mouths.

I got excited this morning when I heard that President Bush had invited
about a dozen former secretaries of state and defense — from both
parties — to the White House today to talk about Iraq.

Imagine
the potential value of putting such talented people to work to figure
out how to best navigate the complexities of this situation?

But
was the intention to really listen to new voices or simply to put a
more positive public spin on the Bush Administration? Here's how to
tell the difference.

My communications scholar friends, like Walter Carl at Northeastern University,
say that there are three general categories of listening, a sort of
Maslow's hierarchy of listening, if you will. People tend to feel
listened to when they reach the third level.

1. Recognition: just recognizing the other person's existence
2. Acknowledgement: acknowledging what another person feels or thinks or says
3. Endorsement: accepting another person's thoughts or worldview as valid and legitimate

Were these former global public policy leaders really listened to today?

PS: This listening hierarchy is also helpful to assess whether we're really listening to customers.

Yesterday the U.S. Army hired a new ad agency, McCann Erickson, according to Ad Age. The budget: $1.35 billion to be spent on ads to recruit for active duty and the Reserve. That’s right, more than a BILLION dollars.

This
decision comes at a time when the marketing industry recognizes that
conventional advertising is not effective, particularly if the value
prop is weak. (Or if you’re being recruited to go to Iraq, maybe a
non-existent value prop.)

Is there a better way to spend $1.35 billion of our money?

Use
a slice of the money to figure out how to get out of Iraq sooner; then
we wouldn’t have to recruit so many people. Despite its advertising and
aggressive recruiting, the Army missed its recruitment target this year by 7,000, according to a report in today’s N.Y. Times. Maybe no amount of advertising is going to work. Like Vietnam, people
don’t believe much in the military’s cause. And if they don’t believe,
they’re not going to join.

Create an online community where active duty Army professionals
can talk to those with a possible interest? Let the people who know the
value of being in the Army – and have the most credibility – tell the
story vs. ads?

The goal of the Army is to recruit 80,000 new soldiers a year. Divide 80,000 into $1.35 billion and you get $1,687.50. If the army upped the signing incentives by another $1,687.50 would that be as effective as advertising?

Reinstate
the draft. Give full college scholarships to everyone who serves. Make
the military reflective of a democratic society. The added benefit: the
middle and upper class would be mad as hell and would get more involved
in government’s decisions. (As the mother of a young son, I hate to
think of a draft…)

Maybe some of these things
are already happening. I’d sure feel better knowing that the Army has
looked at alternatives before committing $1.35 BILLION on trying to
market something no one wants to buy.

In times of crisis, the job of leaders is to be visible — to step
up and absorb people’s fears, reassure them about what’s being done,
and put the events within a forward looking perspective. People want to
be led, especially during times of upheaval.

So where oh where
is France’s President Jacques Chirac this week? I don’t live in France
and I’m scared about what’s going on with the unrest and riots in the
country’s slums during the past two weeks. Imagine being a French
citizen?

Rather than going on TV or the radio to declare a
national state of emergency, Chicrac and his administrators had a
government spokesperson read a statement to journalists on Tuesday
after a Cabinet meeting. Unbelievable.

The job of
communications is an executive’s job. Just ask Rudy Giuliani, Jack
Welch, or Tony Blair. In times of crisis, communications cannot be
shunned or delegated without serious ramifications.

The medium is not the message. The deliverer is the message.

For France, this means the government may have much graver problems than any of us realize.

After the French voted “non’ and the Dutch followed with a “nay” on the
European Union constitution this week, many policy experts, journalists
and politicians started dissecting what happened.

One of the
biggest issues, and not talked about much, is that the voters just
didn’t understand what the EU constitution would mean to them.

The
policy makers and politicians failed to communicate with the people.
They holed up in Brussels writing dense, rhetoric-filled papers, shared
these with insiders, and thought they were done. Their approach is
similar to what frequently happens in the corporate world where
executives develop complex corporate strategies with their seven figure
management consulting firms, write a report (or a really, really big
PowerPoint deck) and consider the job done.

Whoa. If people
don’t understand what the strategy means to them, they will not accept
it, work to make it happen, or in the case of the EU constitution, vote
on it.

Talking yesterday on NPR’s “Connection” radio
program, Jocelyne Cesari, Visiting Associate Professor at Harvard’s
Center for Middle East Studies and Divinity School, underscored the
communications problem.

“What is missing in Europe and the EU
building process is a political narrative that would be appealing to a
lot of segments of European society — especially young people. Up
until now the European Union has been seen as a bureaucratic process.
When people say Brussels they mean a very specialized place – writing
treaties of 30 pages long with technical features.

“People in
Europe don’t understand what the story would be for them in this new
union. This is very important. It is the responsibility of all national
political classes to make a story that resonates.”

Another example of how essential strategic communications is – and the cost when executives fail to make it a priority.

Forget March Madness. It’s Message Madness time. Still smarting from
November’s loss, the Democrats know it and are stuck. In wake of the
Pope’s death Friday, the Catholic Cardinals are tackling it. How to articulate a clear message that is relevant and influential to your audience.

Consider the advice that’s being published:

• “If
  we want to make progress we need to focus on constructing a set of
  clear and concise principles and values that centralizes and
  homogenizes our message, but not our members.” Letter to the editor, New York Times, Sunday, April 3, 2005
• “The church is self-consciously struggling to make its message relevant.” Page one article, New York Times, April 4, 2005
• “The
  major challenge facing the church is to articulate the message of the
  faith in a way that’s actually influential and convincing to people.” Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tuscon, New York Times, April 4, 2005
• “Democrats
  Getting Lessons in Speaking Their Values” Democrats believe that the
  absence of a unifying theme or clear message cost them the election
  last November. New York Times, Feb. 11, 2005

Overcoming the obstacles to great messages

Creating
relevant and influential messages is hard work, which is why so few
organizations and companies have effective ones. My advice to the
Catholics, Democrats and anyone in the corporate world wrestling with a
“message makeover” is this:

Do a listening tour among your most influential and committed members. Then talk with influential former
members. Ask for their advice and opinions. Really listen to their
words and emotions. Why do they still belong? Why did they leave the
flock? Tape record the conversations so you can go back and listen
again for the nuances and language. That the Catholics are locking up
Cardinals in the Vatican to select the new Pope and discuss associated
implications to the Church’s messaging is a bad sign. That the
Democrats are enlisting a bevy of diverse consultants and perspectives
is more hopeful.

Beware of copycats and fraidy cats. When you’re losing votes, members and revenues, it’s time to take
calculated risks to turn around the situation. Don’t try to copy your
competitors’ messages. They’ll still be their messages and
not yours. Ban fraidy cats from the messaging process. At best they’ll
support incremental change; more likely they’ll suck the energy out of
the process. (Note to Democrats: Beware of quoting the Bible and
talking about moral values – despite some of your consultants’ advice.
That’s the Republican angle. You need your own platform. I vote for
“Personal Freedoms. Community Responsibilities.”)

Go to the organizational attic and review the founding vision and values.
You just may find some insights worth re-exploring in context of what’s
most relevant today. While my religious training was quite limited
having preferred Carol Ann’s donut shop to Sunday school, I do remember
being taught that Jesus was forgiving, nonjudgmental, and lived by few
rules. Maybe there’s an angle here for the Catholics if the Unitarians
and Congregationalists haven’t already co-opted that message. As for
the Democrats, remember that Thomas Jefferson founded the Democratic
Party in 1792 to fight for the Bill of Rights.

Take a hard look at the issues that are most relevant to your members today.
Map them out to really see what issues are increasing (or decreasing)
in relevancy, and take a look at what issues are most closely
connected. A visual view may help you see informative, new patterns.
Then adapt your message – without altering your values – to today’s
context. (Note to Catholics: preaching against birth control and condom
use makes your organization appear outdated and highly irrelevant –
even in areas like Africa where membership is growing.)

If your
message isn’t relevant, it won’t be influential. As Louis B. Mayer once
said, “If people don’t want to come, there’s nothing that we can do to
stop them.”