Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Kennedys Aren't Only Family Seemingly Cursed: You gotta meet mine, at least the few members still living

The Kennedy Curse.

Of course, we all expected that phrase to blanket media coverage when Mary Kennedy, estranged wife of Robert Kennedy Jr., was found dead.  The media didn't disappoint.

However, so many of us also live - and are grateful for at least that - on the verge of panic of what will befall our own families next.  We R the dysfunctionals.  On the Eastern European side of the family (mother's maiden name was Miksza) passive suicide is rampant, fatal cancer happens at a young age, fatal alcoholism happens even earlier than that, prison time is par for the course, and after stays in mental hospitals the rest of the lifetime spent on SSI.

I felt I had dodged the curse.  At least until last Friday when I underwent a breast biopsy.  I explained to the attending doctors why I was convinced that I didn't inherit that set of genes with all the cancer.  There was a briefing on Mendel. Then one doctor mentioned that breast and colon cancers tend to be linked in families.  Both are in mine.  I prepared to find a home for my 16.5 year cat Jason. 

Today I found out yet again that I did dodge the family curse.  Everything is okay.  Was this a case of having a winning ticket in the genetic lottery or a mindset determined to beat back the darkness? My hunch is that blogging keeps me alive.

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.

Buddha: Today he'd be working in PR

Buddhism and public relations do the same thing: Frame.  So, it's obvious that if the Buddha were setting out on his journey today he would likely make a stop in PR.

The fundamental of Buddhism is that we change our world by changing our thoughts.  We can position our Dickensian childhood as the reason for our life of misery. Or we can reframe that meme to those wounds were the platform on which our success has been built.  Yes, we treat them as a special gift.  Remember those college classmates who seemed to step off the set of "Father Knows Best?"  Most of them vanished into mediocrity.

The business of PR is to reframe X into a meaningful Y.  Master of PR Hillary Clinton reframed her spouse's betrayal as a rare opening for her to reach people through her pain.  Look where she is now. Ann Romney accomplished something similar when attacked for having been a stay at home mother. 

Some smart pro on the macro level in this field of PR - maybe a Jack O'Dwyer - should knock out an e-book "The Zen of Public Relations."  It can describe the mastery of reframing as a sacred ritual.

 

Charisma & Complex Times: Is the force of personality an anachronism?

I have been looking around at the business enviroment, ranging from startups to public companies.  What I'm asking about is the risk associated with the charismatic leader.  For example, can Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg reset himself to the kind of manager a public company needs?

I reported on this issue for the financial information company Motley Fool.  Here you can reflect on what I came up with.

Goldman Sachs: Getting back its "brand heat"

That once powerful brand Goldman Sachs may have its best days behind it, observes David Weidner in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

That brand has been about making money, lots of it. Both its clients and investors loved that ability.  Now Goldman Sachs is vulnerable to competitors who are giving off more of what David W. Langston, Senior Partner in Evoke Communications calls "brand heat."

In essence, explains Langston, "brand heat" is the metabolism of an organization or individual player.  When it's set at exactly the right temperature, there's a pull force. Current examples range from Apple to Nordstrom.  

Goldman Sachs can rebrand itself, that is, re-set its internal metabolism.  That used to be called the art of the comeback.  IBM navigated that process back in the early 1990s.  A time of less volatility, IBM was atypical in having declined so much that its competition, ranging from Microsoft to Apple, could have made such inroads on its territory.  Now, of course, the process of readjusting the brand heat is the new normal. 

The trick is to be able to stop.  Then build outward from the inside.  Challenged organizations tend, observes Langston, to "continue to race from crisis to crisis."  Likewise, challenged professionals tend to leap into frantic activity.  Consequently both give off overheated brand messaging.  Constituencies flee.

Here you can calmly reflect on the next step for your brand, organizational or personal.  Langston can be reached at dlangston@evokecomm.com.

Zen of Less: Not boasting about being so busy, including all-nighters

The secret to hitting the target, be it in pitching for a new account or putting together an article, might simply be to do less.  Back in 2009, Buddhist coach Marc Lesser explained that fundamental in his book "Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less." Support for that world view is growing and the social payoff of boasting about how busy we are and how many all-nighters we pull is, well, getting less.

BUSINESS INSIDER features the side effects of the all-nighter.  One of the most alarming is that our Social Intelligence (Emotional IQ) plummets.  That means that we may be destroying the important relationships we are attempting to cultivate through working so hard.

 

Coding Those Internal Programs: Why did it take 8 years?

It was 8 years ago that I drove to Salem, Massachusetts and broke open to a old-world prophet who had made a life among the witches and wizards.  He worked out of one of that shops near the ocean.  I told him where it hurt.  He told me that I would have to reprogram my inner technology. 

I have been doing just that for the past 8 years.  Now it doesn't hurt.  That wise man is dead so I sought out another.  Last night I met with a man who had spent years in a Buddhist monastery but never became a monk.  Why did it take 8 years, I asked him.  His answer was that I should be glad I could accomplish all that coding in 8 years.  I had never thought of it that way.  Now I have the rest of my life to think about things, do things, and maybe even continuing to code without the pain.

Armstrong-Huffington Show, Oprah, Olbermann: All that drama wearing us out & we don't like that

Maybe this is a generational divide.  Maybe that's why I as Baby Boomer have gotten first weary of, then angry at the high drama of the Tim Armstrong-Arianna Huffington show at AOl, Oprah Winfrey's mea culpas about her mistakes at OWN, and Keith Olbermann's seeking a legal remedy for getting canned.

Unlike the breathless posting of breaking news and opinion on Gawker, Mediabistro, and Abovethelaw by Generations Y and X, me the Baby Boomer prefers a more calm rhythm.  And hold the glut of way too much news and commentary.  There are 76 million of me + all those members of the Silent Generation who maintain influence.  For example, those leaders didn't retire from IBM and GE to play golf.

What could be bubbling up is a backlash, both against those excitable media properties (they will lose page views and then advertisers) and those they focus on to star in the digital soap opera.  Why I predict that is the economy is getting better.  All generations have a better shot at making a buck and make a buck we will.  There is less time for the entertainment of following the goings-on of AOL, OWN, and Current TV. Therefore less interest.  Will we continue the frenzy of leaving comments?  Those may also become a victim of better economic times.

As with Christmas day, this holiday weekend, my non-U.S. as well as domestic clients intend to work.  I might take a break and go to the cinema and see "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen," categorized as an over-50 film.  Aside from that I will neither be seeking nor allowing in any other drama such as the artificially created soaps which digital media feature minute-by-minute.

Yeah, let's make money, again.

"I wish I had gone to a better school" - Maybe we won't be thinking that on our death bed

We all know that bit of conventional wisdom, said to get us over-strivers to pursue balance: No one ever regretted on their death bed not working more and harder.  We all agree there is something in that.

But, there are those of us, especially when feeling the pain of a professional setback or, worse, being ignored in our careers, who are convinced we will die feeling angry at ourselves, our parents, our limited high-school counselor, and society for not "going to a better school."  Now, of course, that extends all the way to K-12.

That category of resentment might be becoming an anachronism.  In a now workplace, the past is no longer prologue.  When presenting ourselves to employers, clients, and customers, the focus is what outcomes we can achieve for them in the next 30 days.  Track record, not credentials, is the platform for that pitch.

Maybe more of a paradigm shift, academic pedigree may become irrelevant.  In a breakthrough article in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Holly Fine makes the case for online instruction as the equal opportunity force in education.  Those who are insightful about implications and have the fire in the belly to push forward will be the economic winners.  Nothing wrong with going to Harvard but there will increasingly be not so much that's wicked smart about it.

My first stop on my career path was a women's Roman Catholic college Seton Hill, Greensburg, Pennsylvania.  The student body was mostly, like myself, first-generation college.  We tended to feel less-than then and more less-than later as we moved on to prestigious graduate schools and the Fortune 500.  That pain some of us nurtured into a primal wound.  It's funny: that doesn't matter much any more and it will matter less and less.

 

St. Patrick's Day Mythology: Ruin of many a fine writer

As writers know, at least those serious about the craft and who get somewhere, the inner software which equips them for that line of work is atypical.  Let's leave it at that, not attempting to assess if it's better or worse than the software which runs the rest of the human race.  

Because of this obvious difference, writers tend to isolate, even if they appear publicly to be among people.  Yeah, hiding in plain sight.   Look at Truman Capote, supposedly gregarious, who never really was himself out there.  The role he played, as Falstaff to the wealthy, finally destroyed him.  He turned to drink, which finished him off.

Like many writers, Truman defaulted into the myth, whose foundation was laid down by Irish literary geniuses, that his unique talent gave him license to drink as much as he wanted.  Actually what it did do is impair his judgment.  Otherwise he would not have assumed he could out the rich in his later writings and get away with it.  He was their entertainment, not a member of the tribe.

Last night at our usual 12-step meeting in North Haven, Connecticut, it was announced that the West Haven, Connecticut 12-step club was sponsoring a traditional Irish feast, sans booze, for St. Patrick's Day.  The writers among us had no excuse to become Irish for the holiday and embrace the centuries old mythology that being unusually sensitive permitted us to be unusually self-destructive, without dire consequences.