Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

DYI: They tried on their own with X, didn't get results, and now come to us

The Do It Yourself movement has become not only a trend but a game changer.  More of the clients we are going to work with in communications have already done some, a lot of, or even all the work themselves.  After all, technology has given them the tools to plan and execute a social media campaign.  Webiners teach them how to research, write, and distribute press relases.  Smartphones empower them to create visuals cheaply, and, with practice, well.

Some communications pros may feel threatened.  Get over it.  If you frame DYI as a lemon, you are being short-sighted.  There is a growing field for us who parachute in when the DYIer needs greater expertise, is not getting the expected outcomes, or has set in play an ongoing disaster.  This is not just in communications.  Here in an analysis of DYI for the financial information company Motley Fool, I look at the business of DYI.

The challenge in becoming a vendor pitching to the DYI is that we have to make that internal paradigm shift and branding makeover to put ourselves out there as enablers, not so much brilliant, creative strategists and content-providers.  That entails studying this new kind of business to determine what are the pain points and how we can address them in our work and promotions.  The first step is speedreading each situation, holding back comments and recommendations.  On the basis of that, we ask questions.  At the top of the list is: What do you want? Then we give them that and only that.  The DIY economy does not reward providing more value than the situation requires. 

You can study up here on how other DYI vendors are making a good buck.

Whole Foods: Will that be the next place we're interviewed for assignments, jobs?

Most of us have been interviewed for assignments and jobs at Starbucks.  Then I had two interviews at Panera.  Now I'm expecting for my next audition to be conducted at Whole Foods.  Yes, Whole Foods. 

What started out as an upscale supermarket for natural and organic foods has evolved into one of those third places, just like Starbucks and later Panera.

I analyze that phenomenon for the financial information site Motley Fool.  Here you can read all about it.

Chuck Colson, 80, Dead: Taught us the art of the comeback, with a side of courage

It's not for us fellow myopic human beings to judge if Chuck Colson's conversion to evangelical christianity was sincere.  Rather the pragmatic among us analyse this strategy for his dramatic comeback from being a Watergate jailbird to a leader of spiritual values.  He is now dead at the ripe old age of 80, reports POLITICO.  Defeated man tend to die much earlier, including by taking their own lives.

In this era when more and more of us are knocked out of our professional comfort zone, the Colson story has much to teach.  Stripped of his former professional identity, in prison he found an entirely new one.  He made it work.

As I struggle with career upheaval in my own way in the 21st century (Download Geezerguts) I have been inspired by Colson.  In fact, he had replaced comeback Dominick Dunne as a role model for me.  Some of us recall that Dunne was arrested for drugs in an airport while members of his family watched.  He sold his dog to get money for the substances he needed.  Then there he is penning articles on the melodrama of law for VANITY FAIR.

Colson's journey became so riveting when I realized that, after prison, he went out there and stood toe-to-toe with the world.  Watergate, unlike Dunne's fall, was no private matter.  Actually it was a symbol of how power can overtake every decent human impluse in our wiring.   Colson turned out to be a man of courage.  

Joe Muto Puzzle: Hustler or self-destruct?

We have had a weekend to mull over whether whistleblower Joe Muto is a hustler (that is, totally in sync with capitalist America) or a self-destruct who sacrificed not only a job but one in the glamour industry of broadcasting.

Given the end of the traditional social contract between employer and employee, whistleblowing has become more common.  I take a look at this for financial information company Motley Fool.  Here  you can read that and think about the whole kettle of fish.

On the one hand, a relationship with the high traffic high profile Gawker, the platform for Muto's whistleblowing, can lead to the big time.  Authoring the column "Wonkette" gave Ana Marie Cox the ticket to just about any job she wanted in brandname media.  Also, Gawker paid Muto $5000.  Not a million bucks but a bird in the hand always beats a possible fortune in the bush.  Nice chunk of change to pay down credit card debt or the vestiges of student loans.

On the other hand, Fox tracked down the miscreant through a digital trail.  Muto doesn't seem too smart to have left one.  For example, tipsters to legal tabloid Abovethelaw.com know to leave the building and leak only on their own smartphones.  In addition, Fox News is not particularly vulnerable at this time.  Its powerful head Roger Ailes is holding a strong hand, including the ability to hire a Manhattan law firm. Whistleblower Greg Smith attacked Goldman Sachs when all of Wall Street has become an easy target.  No surprise he received a juicy advance of $1.5 million to continue to rat out his former employer.  There a precedent there in Michael Lewis' taking on The Street.

The next weeks will tell the tale about Muto as an entrepreneurial type or naive.  Monitoring that story will continue to bring heavy traffic to Gawker.  However, Muto could find himself out in the cold with only $5000 to show for taking this risk.

Whistleblowers, from Sherron Watkins to Joe Muto: Trying to make investment sense of all that

Why do some unhappy employees blow the whistle and some don't and what are the implications for the value of the company?  Years ago there was Sherron Watkins.  Yesterday and today there is Joe Muto.

I take a look at whistleblowing for the financial information company Motley Fool.  Here you can look over my shoulder.

Madonna: The art & science of comebacks

C.S. Lewis observed that experience is a brutal teacher but we learn, god, how we learn.

With the current volatility in the economy and how the media can upend careers, comebacks are more common.  Or at least the attempt at them.  Also, another force driving comebacks is simple aging and there is a lot of that these days.

So, many of us are watching Madonna, now over-50.  Can she pull off a comeback?  She performed at halftime during the SuperBowl.  She did a film on the Duchess of Windsor.  She produced a new album MDNA. 

It is frequently with some glee that both the official media and twitters opine critically about this comeback.  In FORBES, for example, Roger Friedman reports that album MDNA had the second week biggest drop in sales history.  It went from 359,000 the first week to 46,000 the second.  The first week's numbers were partly due to the CDs included with the sale of concert tickets.

Is Madonna, who always had more than the average share of highly vocal critics, under the microscrope because what she has recently been turning out is not exciting?  Or is it because her aging makes her a target in the entertainment world which can be brutal on those over even 40?

The interesting thing to watch here is what Madonna does, both in the art and science (proven promotional formulas), to remain relevant.  We have noticed how former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has yet to catch on again.  He has tried being a columnist and a talker on TV.  Former politico Al Gore has never really made it back after his splash in positioning global warming as the cause.  His Current TV isn't doing so hot.  Oprah Winfrey is starting out yet again to make OWN a go. 

On the other hand, Hillary Clinton roared back as Secretary of State after her defeat in campaigning for the White House.  Me? To my surprise I have been able to come back yet again.  Most recently it was from the error of trying to have a young - read that "snarky" - voice on the web.  Among others, Gawker panned me.  But here I am back.  My list of clients from the establishment and startups is growing.  If there is a secret to the comeback it is to become hopeless or bottom out.  Henry Cloud has lots of wisdom on that in his book "Necessary Endings."  That dynamic also underlines 12-step programs: Surrender to win.  Before this, my last comeback was around 2004 (Download Geezerguts).

 

Yahoo Coming Layoffs: Obviously, marketing's not a great place to be in organizations

Next week Yahoo is expected to make its move in layoffs, reports Kara Swisher in ALL THINGS D.  Those cuts will primarily be in marketing and product development.  As those pushed out of journalism or not making good enough money in executive communications might think twice before retooling for marketing. 

The vulnerabilities of marketers in organizations are not new.  When I was enrolled in 1 of those entry-level Dale Carnegie public speaking courses during that severe recession in the early 1990s, there were plenty of jobless marketers in class.  After all, it's a line of work in which outcomes could always be counted. 

What is new is the increased competition in every category + the volatility created by digital technology.  The function of marketing seems configured for a roller coaster ride.   Today the numbers are good.  Tomorrow they plunge.  We in providing content are experiencing that when we contract to work for brandname media companies where page views, comments, and more are tracked in real time.

Even staid businesses like law have high churn among their Chief Marketing Officers. Some get the ax, some seek positions elsewhere.  On help wanted sites there are always ads for marketing experts.  In LAW 360, management consultant Richard L. Upton reports that there was a point in 2010 when 25 major law firms had vacant CMO slots. 

The world of work isn't going to become less competitive or less tethered to developments in technology.  Therefore, marketing will remain a hit zone.  Those entering this area of expertise have to be realistic that they have to produce the numbers.  They also have to do that in ways which the organizational culture finds okay. 

Brand Ivy League: Is Harvard et al. going way of linear careers in journalism, law, and business?

"Watching the Ivory Tower Topple" - THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, March 24, 2012, by Holly Finn.

Will higher education become the latest battleground for leveling the playing field in opportunity in America?  We all know that life isn't fair.   However,
a fundamental value in this nation has been the priority to eliminate obstacles to professional success.  Among the tools have been affirmative action, formal and informal mentoring, and funding for entrepreneurial activity. 

Now, as THE WALL STREET JOURNAL reports, a new tool - and perhaps the most powerful of them all - has been free online education provided by some of the most seminal and respected minds in academia. This knowledge and insight into issues such as what could be the next frontier in digital technology could equip the determined among us to make it big, without a degree from the Ivies.  As has been hammered into us, many wildly successful business leaders didn't even have a college degree.  The names are familiar: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and Mark Zuckerberg.

These online courses such as Sebastian Thurm's dealing with artificial intelligence aren't new.  After all, MIT has been providing them free for a while, although participating doesn't award a degree.   But, again, many degrees both the entry level BA/BS and the advanced kind in journalism, law, and business, no longer guarantee much.  The media are constantly calculating the poor return on investment for such paper credentials.  At best, degrees can open the first door or two.  After that, buddy, you're on your own.

Often the big break comes from, to paraphrase the Nike meme, just having the confidence and drive to get out there and do it.  We might get noticed and/or we might produce an entity which those with money want to fund.  Or we might be offered a plum job such as at Google or Facebook.

Reflection: Should parents still target the Ivies for their children's education? Yes, if the children require that experience and credential to build their professional platform and network. It's a start.

 

OWN & Oprah: Soon the story of downward trajectory won't even get covered

For fading personalities the most cruel cut of all is to be ignored.  As yet, that has not happened to Oprah Winfrey.  The media, such as BUSINESS INSIDER, are still having fun tracking the downward trajectory of her OWN.  But that could cease to be a part of the conversation.

Oprah will remain iconic for the invention of mainstream oversharing.  That will be that.  Like former GE chief executive officer Jack Welch she will be part of history, not the now. 

Who has had a million second professional lives?  Clint Eastwood, Hillary Clinton, Betty White, T. Boone Pickens, Rupert Murdoch, and we Baby Boomers who want to or have to work.  What that takes is walking away from the past, both its victories and defeats.   Oprah's shoes are not made for walking.

A.M. Wars: Cola wars r so 20 minutes ago

A growing number of players in fast foods have decided breakfast is the way to get more of the consumer dollar.  The items on their breakfast menu can, like the McDonald's Egg McMuffin, become cult items.  My bet is on Taco Bell's burrito for the A.M.

So, where the promotional and media fun will be is in the A.M. wars.  Does Dunkin' have the edge over Wendy's and Starbucks?  That will be much more interesting than the tired Pepsi versus Coca-Cola wars.

I look at the battle plan for financial information company Motley Fool.  Here you can ponder all that and plan out where you're going to break the fast Saturday morning.