Did you notice what began right after Thanksgiving?  I’m not talking about holiday shopping, although if you haven’t started yet, join the club.  We weren’t even into the week after the holiday when I saw my first set of predictions for 2012.  By now they’re coming out at full throttle.  Predictions for food, wine, technology, social media, fashion, you name it, they’re on their way.

Some people make predictions to show how prescient they can be.  Others do it as a new business ploy, thinking that their business prospects will be swayed by their foresight.  One thing I haven’t seen yet is anyone measuring their success for the predictions they made for 2011.  I don’t think we’ll see much of that since it’s not part of the sport.  But I’m going to change that.  I’m joining the club of predictors and prognosticators and making twelve predictions for 2012, one for each month.  And I predict that they will all come true – 100%.  I’ll come back in a year to check and see if I’m right and then expect a crescendo of congratulations.  So here goes:

1. People will talk. You can bet on it.  With a national election next year, the economy trying to rebound and the usual celebrities acting out, there will be plenty of chatter on TV, radio, the all-important blogosphere and by the office coffee maker.  If you decide to spend the year in some distant atoll in the Pacific, don’t fret, you won’t miss a thing.  It will all happen again in 2013.
2. People will be interested in themselves. Face it.  There’s not a lot of altruism in the world.  Even those who say they’re altruistic often aren’t.  Political, business and social motives often spur our eleemosynary sides (always looking for an opportunity to use “eleemosynary” – look it up).  I’m not preaching about this.  I suffer from the same affliction.
3. We will become more distracted. It’s been said many times.  There’s too much information and too many ways to communicate.  It’s becoming increasingly difficult to focus.  That’s not going to change.  Huffington Post will probably add twenty more sections for us to while away the time.
4. We will become more desperate. I’m going to take credit for something.  In 2009, I gave a presentation in Chile about business prospects in the U.S. during the recession.  At that time, I said the U.S economy wouldn’t return to some semblance of normal until 2014 at the earliest and most likely, not until 2016.  Why?  As large as our economy is – $14 trillion – it can’t recover quickly when our housing value loss is about one-third and real unemployment (reported + unreported) is probably closer to 16% than the reported 8.6%.  We dug a giant hole for ourselves by conducting two wars and cutting taxes at the same time.  Most Americans wish someone, anyone, would wave their magic wand and make things better.   It doesn’t work that way.  We have the patience of a two-year old.  I hope I’m wrong but I’d bet $10,000 of Mitt Romney’s money that we’re not.  If you’re one of those impatient types, plan your desperation calendar now.
5. The economy may get worse but it could get better. Having just said that we’ve got a long row to hoe, we’re going to see some cycles in the midst of our misery.  Expect the current administration to do whatever it can to pump things up a bit before next year’s election.  And also expect the stock market to get overly pumped up before it gets let down.  Am I being overly dreary?  No, just realistic.  They also say pessimists are often happier people because their expectations are easily exceeded.
6. All politicians will lie to us except for those who tell the truth. In our current climate, does anyone really think anyone running for election to be truthful?  They’re more likely to meet Steven Colbert’s low standards for “truthiness.”  Yet, there will be a few who will tell the truth.  They’re either the ones not running, retiring or the losers.
7. Facts will be fungible. Who says you’re entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts?  Nobody’s going to stop writing their own facts just because Tom Friedman says to in one of his brilliant columns.  The most current book next year will be, as it was this year, 1984, published in 1949 by the way.  How prescient was Orwell?
8. Everything old will be new again. It happens every year, short is back and long is out or is it long is out and short returns?  Whatever.  Gotta keep those factories moving.
9. What goes around comes around. Not all that different from #8 but the point here is to be nice to the people you meet on the way up.  They’ll look pretty good to you as you head the other way.  Success can be ephemeral, just like fashion.
10. Blame will be assigned but not to ourselves. Here comes Tom Friedman again telling us to take responsibility for our actions.  When did this guy come along?  Sadly, we are in a world where no one jumps up and says “I take responsibility, now let’s figure this out together.”  It’s too easy to point the finger at politicians, business people, the media and each other.
11. Difficult decisions will not be made but will be forced upon us. If we had begun making good decisions 30 years ago, we’d all be driving cars that got 50 miles per gallon, that’s when we’re not taking mass transit.  We’d have a fair tax code.  Banks would be our guardians instead of robbers and CEO’s would be making 10 times the average worker, not 300.  All this may happen soon but at an enormous cost and it will be forced down our throats.
12. At year-end, predictions will be made for 2013. I can guarantee this one.  There will be plenty to say next year at this time.  I’ll check to see if I’m right but I don’t think I’ll make predictions again.  I’ll just reprint this entry.

Tags: Altruism, Americans, Assumptions, Blogosphere, CEO Compensation, Change, Chile, Crazy people, Desperation, Distractions, Dreams, Economy, Election, Events, Foresight, Governments, Huffington Post, Mistakes, Mitt Romney, Outcomes, Pessimist, Politicians, Predictions, Recession, Recovery, Situation Analysis, Steven Colbert, Stock Market, Success, Tax Code, Thanksgiving, Tom Friedman, Truthiness

(See prior entry for Part 1)

My travel ordeal from 9/11 was complete and I slept through much of that day.  My plan had been to get out and see Asunción but lack of sleep and hunger took over.  Besides, as I didn’t have my luggage and didn’t know whether it would arrive, one of my priorities was finding a few basic clothing essentials in case I was going to make my presentation the next day in jeans.

After lunch at the hotel, I walked outside where some workers were erecting a large sign for the conference.  They were showing me as the second headliner.  The top dog was Alvaro Uribe, former president of Colombia.  I suppose he deserved to have his photo over mine

I walked across the street to the local mall to buy a clean shirt and underwear.  (Something about the idea of talking to 700 people in suits while wearing three day old underwear didn’t have the right appeal.)  What can you say about a mall?  They’re pretty much the same all over the world in both developed and developing countries.  That’s both comforting to a wayward traveler and a bit disturbing as we continue to lose our national identities.  Was that Benetton store I just walked by the one in the Rosebank Mall near Johannesburg?  No, remember I’m in Asunción today and it’s the Shopping del Sol mall.  How could I forget?  There’s Burger King in the corner.  Maybe I can get some good Paraguayan food there.

Underwear and socks, no problem.  I picked those up at a completely forgettable store but now I wanted a nice shirt so the conference attendees wouldn’t think I walked to Paraguay.  I walked the corridors of Shopping del Sol mall looking for the right kind of store.  Then I saw the words “Christian Dior”, the store name, “Giorgio Patrino” and most important, “Liquadacion” plastered all over the windows and underneath “40%, 50%, 60%” – my kind of place.

Like most high-end stores around the world, the well-dressed staff looked me over as I entered and saw a downtrodden mess of a man and I could tell they were considering asking me to leave.  But my quick gringo response to the salesman’s query, “solomente buscando” gave me away as someone who might have a wallet stacked with credit cards, so he gave me the run of the store and I soon found the fancy shirt section.  After a few minutes, I found a nice Italian shirt in my size.  I looked for the price and there was none on the shirt, always a bad sign.  So I asked the ever-watchful sales man for the price.  He looked at me, looked down at the shirt, smiled and said 819,000 guarani.  Now that sounds like a fortune in guarani but a quick calculation told me it was about $190, in my world, a fortune to pay for a shirt.

So, I looked at him, looked at the shirt and said, “muy, muy, caro!”  He shrugged.

I pointed to the store windows at all the Liquadación signs and cleverly said, “es imposible que el precio es correcto; es mas barrato in los estados unidos; es mas barrato en Italia”  Although, frankly, I had no idea what the shirt would cost in Italy but clearly, he could see that he was dealing with one tough hombre.  So he took out his calculator and gave me a new price, “645,000 guarani.”

I shook my head and said, “todavia mas caro.”

He went to work again on his calculator, looked back at the store manager who nodded at him and, after a moment, he offered, “385,000 guarani.”

Maybe I could have gotten him down further but he had dropped his price by more than half, so I said okay and the shirt was mine for $90.  He seemed like a beaten man, although the manager was smiling behind him.  I left content but thinking that this exchange could have taken place almost anywhere in the world.

I returned to my hotel to work on my presentation.  As numero 2, I wanted to be good and I had been asked to speak for 90 minutes, something I had done once before but it’s a lot of work to keep the masses entertained for that long.  What preoccupied my mind though was what Karin had said to me during our drive to Asuncion when I asked how they were going to get me out of the country as I was there illegally without a visa.  She said, “there may be a bribe involved.”  I began to wonder what life inside a Paraguayan prison might be like.

Later that day, I met some of the officials of the Paraguayan Trade Fairs organization.  One told me he was a good friend of Paraguay’s Vice President and assured me that I wouldn’t have to pay the maximum fine, which I learned was $6,000.  “I’m sure we can get you out for no more than $1,000.”  Good thing I got that shirt for half off.

The conference and my presentation the next day will be covered in later blog posts.  However, the organization was very professional and my session was well attended.  I had started to think about looking like Steve Jobs up on the stage wearing jeans but Karin showed up the previous night with my suitcase, so I looked pretty much like every other suit in the place, only I had a headset mike and earpiece so the simultaneous translator could tell me to slow down or repeat a sentence.

The following day, I had scheduled a lunch with a cabinet minister in Chile, a meeting that I didn’t want to miss.  I looked to see if I could get to Buenos Aires the night after my presentation so that I wouldn’t miss my morning flight to Santiago but the last flight out of Asunción was too early for me to make it.  The next morning, I was scheduled for a 6:00 am flight to BA and then the short flight over the Andes to Santiago but that meant I would have to leave the hotel at 4:00 am to go through customs and make my flight.

I had dinner that night with the owners of Paraguayan Trade Fairs.  The same gentleman who told me about paying the fine sat next to me but said nothing about my visa.  However, he was genial, interested in my speech from earlier in the day and well-traveled.  He said something to me about the region that I think encapsulates some of the culture of the countries in the southern cone region of South America, “Paraguay looks at Argentina and Brazil; Argentina looks at itself and Chile looks at the world.”  I find all three countries to be a bit provincial but Chile is certainly the least so and the one that has built a strong economy based on global exports.

Years ago, on a Scandinavian trip, I heard an expression about that region which goes, “The Finns design a product; the Swedes build it; and the Danes sell it to the Norwegians.”  These are generalizations but there is a little bit of truth in them that describes their national character.

At 4:00 am the next morning, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed (as much as one can be with four hours sleep) at the hotel when Karin, her husband and 18 month old son pulled up to take me to the airport and get me out of the country without a jail term.  This couple deserved a medal for how they took care of me, although as my local travel agents, they felt some responsibility for not ensuring that I knew about the visa.

Karin asked me how much money I was carrying.  I told her a couple hundred dollars and a little more in euros.  “Forget the euros,” she said.  I was trying to as I acquired them when the euro was about 20% higher.

When we got to the airport, she walked with me right past the security entrance to go through customs.  There was a guard there but he didn’t bother to ask for our tickets or passports but ahead of us was the usual lineup of customs agents sitting in boxes stamping passports and asking probing questions about travelers’ visits.

I waited in line for our turn, not knowing what Karin had in mind.  She pointed toward the end of the row and said, “See the guy in the last booth?”  I nodded  “That’s our man,” she said.  Now, I knew some sort of fix was in but had no idea how it would turn out.  When we got to the head of the line and it was our turn, we walked over to our “hombre elegido”.

Karin asked for my passport, handed it to him and commenced a rapid negotiation in hushed tones.  She seemed irritated at what he was asking for.  I thought about my newly honed negotiation skills buying a shirt two days earlier and was about to offer some suggestions when I heard a stamp come down on my passport like a hammer. She took my arm, walked me to the side and asked, “Could you give me $60?”  I pulled a couple hundred dollars out of my wallet and began counting twenties.  She pushed my hands down so that no one from customs would see.  I gave her the bills and she directed me toward the x-ray machines.  I lingered for a moment wondering if I was to watch her buy my way out but she motioned for me to leave.

Thus ended my trip to Paraguay.  Smuggled in and bribed out, a first and hopefully, a last for me.  The flights to Buenos Aires and then to Santiago were non-eventful except for the incredible views of the Andes.  I made it to my lunch meeting in time.

On the whole, it was a pretty interesting adventure, although one loss was that I never got time to see Asunción.  Perhaps, though, my introduction to the wonderful hospitality of the Paraguayans made up for that.

One final coda to the trip was that from the time I got off my flight in Santiago until I walked into my hotel in the city about 15 miles away took about an hour.  It was the kind of efficiency one sees in places like Zurich and wishes for in London.  The contrast to my trek to get into Paraguay was evident and I thought again about the direction these countries face and the way they are developing themselves.

Tags: Americans, Assumptions, Asuncion, Chile, Governments, Mistakes, Negotiation, Outcomes, Paraguay, Situation Analysis

I think it was around 3:30 am as we turned into a parking lot in some godforsaken place in the middle of Paraguay when I realized it was the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  That morning ten years ago, I was having breakfast with the president of one of the world’s largest public relations firms and I replayed the day in my mind.  I wanted to forge a business relationship with his firm and I think he was there out of curiosity as his agency had recently lost a competition for an agency search I conducted for a client.

Ironically, we were in a restaurant called An American Place at Lexington and 51^st, now no longer there, and had just begun our breakfast when we noticed people gathering around the TV at the bar.  We asked the waitress what was going on and she told us a plane had hit the World Trade Center.  So we got up and went to the bar to watch.  I think only the first jet had hit at that point.  Like everyone there, we were stunned but went back to our table not quite sure what to do.  It may have been that the second plane then flew into the towers or something hit us that the country was under attack.  Uncertain of what to do, we got up, talked about calling our families and then parted.  I think Andy went back to his office as one of the airlines involved was a client.  I realize now that I don’t know what the rest of his day was like.

I was working out of my home office at that time having recently moved to New York, so I returned to my apartment on 43^rd and 1^st and, like millions of people around the globe, stayed glued to the TV for the next several days.  Much of it is a blur now but an image that will always be etched in my memory is waking up the following day and seeing snow outside my window.  When I went up to the glass to look, I realized that what looked like snow falling was actually ash.  I still shudder at the thought.

Ten years later, I was sitting in the back seat of a Toyota, somewhere in Paraguay, trying to sleep with little success.  In the front seat was a Paraguayan woman, 8½ months pregnant, reclining, sound asleep and next to her, her snoring husband in the driver’s seat.  I was wired from a day of coffee and soda so sleeping was out of the question.  I wanted to get out and take a walk but we were parked near a police checkpoint and I didn’t want to raise anyone’s suspicion.  I was there illegally.

It wasn’t meant to be that way.  I had been invited to be one of the keynote speakers at a prestigious business conference in Asunción, the country’s capitol.  I had been to Chile and Argentina many times but never to Paraguay and my image of the country was outdated and based on what I knew about a former dictator who was openly sympathetic to Nazis and stories of trading in contraband.  So I was curious and had been offered a reasonable fee to speak about branding.

The trip seemed uneventful at the beginning.  Business class on Tam Linhas from New York to Sao Paulo and then I’d get my connection to Asunción.  I left New York on the 9^th so I’d get two days to see the city and form some current perceptions of Paraguay.  Everything went the way you’d want it to go on an international trip until I went to board my flight to Asunción.  I was asked for my visa.

“What visa?” I replied.

“You need a visa to enter Paraguay.” a surprised gate agent told me.  “You can’t board this flight.”

No one had said anything to me about a visa.  Not the conference organizers, not the Paraguayan travel agency that booked my flights and not the speaker’s bureau in Chile that arranged for me to speak and negotiated my fee.  Nadie.  Nada.

Within a few minutes I was approached by the airline’s security officer who explained the visa requirement to me again and then told me that they were going to put me on a flight back to New York that was leaving in a few hours.  While he escorted me to the business class lounge, I negotiated with him to have four hours to figure things out.  If I couldn’t get to Paraguay, I’d go directly to Chile where I had meetings scheduled the next week.

Once settled in the lounge, I began to email, text and call furiously to the event organizers, travel agent, speakers bureau and my wife.  “Why didn’t anyone tell me about the Visa requirement?  How are you going to get me into Paraguay, now that I’m stuck in Sao Paulo with a visa?  If I don’t hear from you in three hours, I’m going to Chile instead.”

Within my three-hour time limit, I received instructions from the event organizers that they had bought me a ticket to Buenos Aires and then another one from Buenos Aires to a town called Posadas on the Argentine-Paraguay border.  They told me I would be met there and driven to Asunción.

With my spirit of adventure in tow, I followed the instructions arriving in Posadas at close to 10pm that night.  I knew nothing about Posadas except where it was located.  The airport reminded me of other small towns around the world – two gates and served by only one airline.  It was, as the saying goes, not the end of the earth but you could see it from there.  Not only was there little activity, but neither my suitcase nor ride were there to meet me.  So here I was, in the middle of nowhere, Argentina, no luggage and no ride.

I went to the airline desk to find my bag and after the desk agent made some calls, he informed me that my bag was in Buenos Aires and he could have it in Posadas the next night at 10pm.  I asked how far it was from Posadas to Asunción and after checking with his friend in the back office, he told me five hours by car.

“¿Qué? Cinco horas! ¿Cómo peudo reciber mi equipaje cuando estoy en Asucncion?”, I pieced together with my fledgling Spanish.  Not that he needed to come up with any ideas as my whereabouts wasn’t his problem, he kindly informed me that there was a flight to Ausunción at the same time the next night and he could have my bag sent there.  Yes! One problem solved, assuming it was, in fact, my bag that he found in Buenos Aires.  I hadn’t seen it since I dropped it off at the departure counter in New York.

Now, for my ride.  It was 10:30 and after solving my luggage problem, the desk manager said, “Señor, tenemos que cerrar el aeropuerto.  No hay más vuelos esta noche y queremos ir a nuestras casas.”

My ride had not shown up yet, so again, I began to text, email and call furiously but typical of many small towns, cell connections weren’t great.  Then, I noticed one more problem.  My cell phone battery was getting low.  They were turning off the lights in the airport and the three or four staff that were there were looking at me sympathetically and sadly but not with any ideas.

I walked out in front of the airport.  There was one cab there, still hopeful that maybe he’d get me as a fare to somewhere; perhaps to my long lost Argentine cousin or to some wealthy benefactors with a large estancia on the border?  If I was going anywhere in a cab, it would be to the nearest hotel where I would spend the night and get myself to Chile the next day.  Then, I finally got a text from the people coming to get me, “We are late, the traffic has been bad but we’ll be there soon.”

I decided to trust the text not really knowing who it came from, waved the cab driver off, watched the airport staff close and lock the airport doors and head off to their cars to go home.   They waved as they went by with an enthusiastic “Buena Suerte!”  I looked around and saw there were no benches so I sat down on the curb and waited.  The thought occurred to me as I looked around and saw only some distant headlights that I might spend the night there, wherever there was.

About thirty minutes later, a car drove up and a very pregnant woman and her husband got out.  They introduced themselves as Karin and Diosnel and apologized profusely but said the traffic from Asunción had been terrible and the drive took seven hours.  I looked at my watch and grimaced with the thought that the return trip is going to put me in bed around 5:30 the next morning.  Well, it’s off to Asunción we go.

It took about a half-hour to get to the border and I was beginning to wonder how we’re going to get me across without a visa.  The only thing my drivers could tell me in a tentative voice was, “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”  It was about at this point that my phone began to receive automatic texts from ESPN telling me every time there was a score in the Michigan – Notre Dame football game.  The game was going back and forth and was a high scoring affair so it was really running my phone battery down with each text, but being a Michigan alum, I couldn’t stand the idea of turning it off.

Argentina and Paraguay are separated by the Parana River, second largest in South America after the Amazon, with customs checkpoints on either side of the bridge.  There was long line of cars waiting to cross into Paraguay, probably Saturday night revelers returning home from the high life in Posadas.  When we got to the first checkpoint, the Argentine customs agent asked for our passports.  He looked at them in a rush, stamped them all and waved us through.  Now, for the hard part I thought, entering Paraguay with no visa.  My phone sounded a text announcing that Michigan had scored again to take the lead.  I envisioned myself spending the night in a Paraguayan jail, hungry, lonely but knowing the score in the game.  But when we got to the other side, the border police simply waved us through.

“Easy peasy!” Diosnel exalted, and then, “I’m hungry.”  Personally, I wanted to just get on the road and get to Asunción as soon as possible, ever hopeful that a five to seven hour drive was a bit of hyperbole.  But Diosnel was hungry and we drove through Encarnación, a ramshackle Paraguayan border town.  I hadn’t seen much of Posadas on the Argentine side but after a few minutes driving through Encarnación, I could imagine that a Saturday night in Argentina could be quite alluring.  After a few minutes, we pulled up next to an Italian restaurant.  Is there anywhere in the world where there isn’t an Italian restaurant?  And no different than at hundreds of other similar restaurants in small American towns, the food was lackluster but the beer was spectacular.  It was called Baviera and, maybe it was the late hour and my weary day, but I could have been in Munich as I drank that beer.  Then I remembered what I had known about Paraguay as a haven for ex-Nazis and great beer in Paraguay made sense.  What else do you do if you’re an ex-Nazi in hiding?

When we left the restaurant and got back on the road, I looked at my watch and saw that it was 1:00 am.  The memory of the beer quickly faded and I prepared myself for a long drive to Asunción.  It also occurred to me that Diosnel had driven seven hours to get me and so far, another hour on the way back.  How was this guy going to stay awake to get us back?

It was a bright, moonlit night and as the small-city lights of Encarnación faded, we drove past what looked like fields dotted with palm trees – probably quite beautiful in daylight.  I tried to sleep but had consumed too much caffeine during the day and the monotony of the drive began to wear on.  That’s when we turned off the road so Diosnel could take a nap.  I looked at my watch and realized that it was 9/11.  What were the terrorists doing ten years ago?  Waking up?  Bathing and shaving all the hair off their bodies?   Preparing for their day of infamy and promised meeting with 72 virgins?

When I was growing up, I knew that places like Paraguay existed.  I had geography in elementary school and loved it.  I used to play a word game with my father.  He would name a place in the world and I would have to name another that began with the last letter of the place he named.  Then it would be his turn.  I never tired of it and it was how I learned about the world.  How else would I know about the Sea of Okhotsk or the Pirana River if my father hadn’t pulled those answers out when I thought I had him finished with no more places beginning with S or P left in the world?

I replayed the day as Diosnel and Karin slept and while I was angry that I had gotten into this situation, I was appreciative of their effort and that I could still travel to places like this ten years after an event that would change us forever.  I think I was doing what you’re supposed to do at times like that – remember and appreciate – so perhaps, the fact that I was doing that in a parking lot in the middle of Paraguay was okay.  Technically, I had been smuggled into the country.  Unsure of what the rest of the trip was going to be like or how I’d get out legally was yet to be encountered.  However, I think I gained a certain perspective on the world that day and the one I had ten years before.

In my next post, I’ll complete the story about the conference and getting out of the country.  When I asked Karin during the drive to Asunción, she said, “There may be a bribe involved.”  Not what I wanted to hear.

Tags: 9/11, Americans, Argentina, Assumptions, Chile, Mistakes, Outcomes, Paraguay, Terrorists

I’ve been holding onto this one since last month.  I came across an article on Bnet.com, titled “Should we advertise on Glenn Beck?” by the CEO of Blinds.com an online store that sells all types of window blinds.  You can read the story for yourself but in short, he thought a good place to find a demographic for his company’s products would be consumers who listen to Glenn Beck’s radio show.

Within a week, he received a boatload of hate mail.  In his words, “It took all of about 6 days before the vitriolic verbal attacks against me and my company rolled in via Twitter. And they’ve been nasty — I’ve been called everything from a Nazi and a homophobe to a slew of other names that if published here my editor would surely censor….One day last week, within 24 hours alone, I received hundreds, if not thousands, of tweets along these lines.”  He went on to say that he never had any intention of endorsing Gleen Beck’s views.  In fact, he said he never listened to the guy.  All he was doing was looking for a demographic.

His article piqued my interest because we do so much consulting to clients about aligning corporate values with those of customers.  We know value is important but today’s consumer still wants more.  So I looked him up and sent him this email:

Dear Jay,

I consult on these types of issues with a lot of clients that are foreign countries and their industries.  As a large part of our business is foreign, I think it gives us some 30,000 foot level perspective on the U.S..

One thing I tell them, that you’ve discovered, is that Americans don’t just want value, they want values.  It’s both a negative symptom of our political and media polarization and a positive manifestation of our increasing awareness of globalism and multi-culturalism.

It’s not enough to buy an audience or demographic any more.  You have to consider how your values and those you espouse through your company relate to or resonate with a marketing vehicle’s audience.  Due to our extreme polarization, we have as many rabid against-anythings as we do pro-anythings and they will readily take action in opposition to the other.  This is a tough needle to thread for any marketer.

Personally, I probably wouldn’t buy from a company that advertised on Glenn Beck, although the only way I’d find out is from someone writing about it and the fact that they would and do tells you something about the environment we’re in right there.  Professionally, I’d be unlikely to recommend it because I know and you now know what would ensue.

There are so many ways to reach your target customers that are likely to be more effective, non-controversial and much more economical.  While I want to impart some good advice to you, I’d also like to sell some of those ways too.  You may get a hint of that from our website, but I can be more specific if you contact me through our website.

Good luck and best regards,

Well, I got a form email response back.  It was polite enough but no further dialogue ensued.  That’s okay though because I thought it was the perfect example of what a treacherous marketing world we’re all in.  It also tells us who’s really in control.  We have to decide where we stand, not just in business but personally, define our values and then adhere to them in the way we conduct ourselves personally and through work.  Otherwise, many of the people we’d like as customers, friends or associates will drop us like…well, as quickly as they can drop the blinds on their windows.

Tags: Americans, Assumptions, Blinds.com, Customers, Demographics, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Individualists, Marketing, Media Buying, Mistakes, Outcomes, Polarization, Situation Analysis, Social Media, Strategy, Tweets, Twitter, U.S. Marketplace, Value, Values

I recently was interviewed by Kirk Laughlin of Nearshore Americas about nation branding with particular focus on Latin America.  The interview can be seen here or at this link.

Tags: Americans, Branding, Chile, Costa Rica, Events, Governments, Latin America, Leadership, Marketing, Miners, Nation Branding, Outcomes, Positioning, Situation Analysis, Strategy

This is the fifth installment in a series on Mistakes Countries Make and How They Can Get It Right.

With all the research resources available around the world, foreign companies and business sectors still can make two mistakes about the U.S. regarding its size.  The first mistake is misunderstanding or under appreciating the distances from market to market.  The best way to say it is that it takes about the same time to fly from New York to Los Angeles as it does to go from New York to London.  That’s been said many times but until you have to set up meetings on opposite coasts on a frequent basis, the wear and tear on personnel and resources doesn’t really sink in.  Enough said about that.  It’s a big country.  We all know that but market planning from abroad needs to look at the practical daily impact of the America’s size.

The second mistake is to think that one needs to cover the entire country or most major metropolitan areas at once.  Of course, it depends on what industry companies are in but the size of individual state and region economies is larger than that of many countries.  A number of people have illustrated this with maps showing the GDP of states as equivalent to countries.

For example, the map below shows the economy of California as equivalent to that of France, Canada to Texas, Brazil to New York.

Tags: Americans, Assumptions, Countries, Customers, Due Diligence, futureshift, GDP, Governments, Situation Analysis, States, Strategy, Trade Associations, U.S. Marketplace

It’s been popularized by the media, pundits and pols (including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) that business in America does better when Republicans are in office.  It sounds good but rather than accept the platitudes, let’s let the data tell the story.

Since 1930, the average annual growth rate in GDP when Republicans held the White House (39 Years) is 1.82%. When Democrats have held the White House (41 Years), the average growth rate is 4.92%. During the Bush years, the average was 2.1%, Clinton 3.9%, Bush + Reagan 3%, Carter 3.3%, Nixon 2.8%, Kennedy + Johnson 4.9% and so on. While this does not reflect the party controlling Congress or the balance of the two, the data shows that Democratic party control of the White House has been better for GDP growth and consequently for business too. We often look at emotions or subjective arguments when facts tell a completely different story.

But why is just the opposite what so many believe?  There are several reasons, one being the Democrats own fault because they constantly accuse the Republican party of being the party that protects business in the U.S.  Republicans, for their part, like to say that Democrats have done nothing for jobs and that if we only reduce the tax burden placed on businesses, more jobs will be created.  The data, however, tells a different story and it’s hard to dispute facts.  There is another factor which should tell us that Democrats are better for business:  they tend to be protectionists, leaning against global, free trade.  This should translate to more jobs being kept in the U.S.  Republicans, however, can be expected to protect offshoring and outsourcing.  While I’m an ardent free trader, I still find it hard to understand why the myth exists about political parties and business.

There also is a third reason.  Republicans are much better at getting their message out there.  Democrats always seem to be the gang that can’t shoot straight.  The U.S. electorate likes simple messages and stories and Republicans are just better at telling them.

Finally, you might ask why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hasn’t pointed out the dramatic difference in business growth under different party rule.  The Chamber should be a champion for all businesses in the U.S., not just those that benefit most from tax cuts or free trade.  While difficult for us in many ways, free trade makes a lot of sense and ultimately forces U.S. businesses to do better in order to compete.  But when we’re talking about whether the economy, hence all U.S. businesses, do better under party rule, let’s make sure we know what has actually happened in the past.

Tags: Americans, Assumptions, Democrats and business, Electorate, Free Trade, GDP growth, Media responsibility, Politics and business, Republicans and business, Trade Associations, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

This is the third of a series on Mistakes Countries Make and How They Can Get It Right.

Those immortal words were heard in millions of American homes every Sunday night, during the 1950’s and 60’s, as they were spoken by television impresario, Ed Sullivan on his weekly variety show.  His show was so popular that it was common for children and adults to mimic Sullivan’s nasal accent saying, “Tonight we have a really big show.” A “really big show” for Sullivan fans meant an extravaganza of music and theatrical variety.  It wasn’t Elvis Presley’s first television appearance but certainly was his most famous.  It’s where the Beatles were first seen by most Americans and where viewers were introduced to opera and ballet.  If it was big in entertainment, it was on Ed Sullivan.

The idea of the big show continued into business where today, the really big shows are the Consumer Electronics Show, National Housewares Show, MacWorld Expo and many more.  Large trade shows have become prolific in the U.S. and around the world to the point where they are almost a commodity.  Their cost for exhibitors has increased rapidly placing a premium on those shows where one can see a clear rate of return.

Yet, despite the high costs of trade shows, the idea of the “really big show” has morphed into private, branded trade shows and has become a part of many marketing programs from foreign industries.   It has become common for foreign governments to come to the U.S. and hold large private events for their industries such as food, wine, textiles, technology and more.  An event company and PR firms are hired, hotel and exhibit space secured, visitors and prospective buyers are recruited, foreign companies provided with exhibit space and dignitaries flown in to cut the ribbon or give a keynote speech.

The expectation is that the U.S. media will show up (they rarely do), give the event, its organizers and the foreign industry the right amount of fawning coverage in newspapers and magazines and that buyers will attend with their wallets at the ready.  To ensure the event’s success, the media from the home country is brought in, photos are taken, ribbons cut, speeches made and the event is widely proclaimed to be a grand success…except that it’s often not.

What can’t be seen from abroad is that Americans have become jaded by the extraordinary amount of marketing clutter in their lives.  Surveys have suggested that Americans are exposed to more than 1,500 marketing messages a day.  From the time they wake up until they turn their lights out at night, Americans are bombarded with radio, TV, print, Internet, outdoor, mail, email, phone and tradeshow messaging.  Of course, this takes place in other countries but it has been going on for more years in the U.S.  What foreign visitors most comment on when they visit the U.S. is the number of choices that one has during the day, whether shopping, viewing, listening or traveling.  It all adds up and the bottom line is that the only thing that makes a difference in our lives is the value of our relationships.

When there are so many modes of marketing, word-of-mouth from people we trust has so much more influence than anything else on what we buy and the decisions we make.  Just as we trust our personal friends, business relationships are what influence us in the end.  With all the decisions we have to make, and features and benefits to evaluate, it’s the value we place on relationships and the people who make recommendations to us that makes a difference.

The problem with the “really big show” is that relationships are begun there but not developed or solidified.  We use shows for looking, evaluating, asking and considering but rarely for buying.  When considering any product that has a high cost or a long-term evaluation or testing phase, shows, at best, serve as introductions.  It’s the work that takes place afterward that makes a difference.  Small events or conferences are often better than big ones because they allow prospective buyers to ask more questions and conduct a give-and-take with the seller.  Prospective buyers considering a foreign supplier want to know that both the individual they’re dealing with and their company isn’t going to be in the U.S. for only a week here and there.  They want a commitment to a relationship, to being involved for the long-term, to possible risk sharing or even partnership.

Trade associations and their government partners who have the mandate to promote industries, should consider:

• More small events are better than a few large ones.
• Teach your people to engage with Americans.  Too often foreign business visitors to the U.S. stay back and don’t approach Americans.  We like you to reach out to us.  In fact, events that are built around networking are likely to be more effective than those built around display.
• Events, big or small, will be more successful with both pre and post event follow-up programs.  Prospective sales are most often lost because of poor or slow follow-up.
• You should have an active online social media program that reaches out to prospective buyers.  You’ll know the difference when your social media site has far more Americans or customers on it than your domestic friends and associates.  It’s incredible how many companies and industries tout their facebook and linkedin pages that are filled with people from their own country.  Where are the buyers?  Who’s building relationships with who?  To what end?
• Remember that social media sites like facebook and linkedin are closed systems and have their limitations.  There are no lists to download nor will you have access to anybody’s email address.  At futureshift, we build private communities that support events but more importantly build and support relationships because members self-subscribe and willingly give you their private contact information.
• Rather than think about events, think about building communities.  Community members gain trust for each other and that’s what builds brand loyalty and sales.

So given all this, what made Ed Sullivan such a successful icon?  Sullivan spoke to American audiences in the 1950’s and 60’s when modern marketing was in its nascent stages.  He spoke to us every week, his way of building a relationship with us, and he always showed us things we had rarely seen before.  If you’re a modern day business version of Ed Sullivan, which probably means your name is Steve Jobs, go ahead have the “really big show”.  Otherwise, do something that makes sense and works in today’s U.S. marketplace.

Tags: Americans, Assumptions, Communities, Customers, Ed Sullivan, Events, futureshift, Governments, Marketing, Media, Social Media, Steve Jobs, Trade Associations, Trade Shows, U.S. Marketplace

This is the second of a series on Mistakes Countries Make and How They Can Get It Right.

So you don’t know who Harold Hill is?  You should.  He’s the fictional con man who in the Broadway musical and later movie, The Music Man, poses as a boys’ band organizer and leader and sells band instruments and uniforms to naive townsfolk before skipping town with the cash.  He’s a part of American folklore and culture.  He’s the classic American dreamer.

If you don’t know the U.S. well, here’s the problem:  The U.S. is a society of individualists.  We’re people who say we can do anything.  In fact, a client from Romania wrote me today, “When I was in NY I was impressed by the can-do attitude of the people, you could feel it in the streets. What is going on now is revealing me another side of US. I can imagine it’s a big country, but we need to work only with people with a can-do attitude.”  The difficulty is that as he noted, everybody shows a “can-do” attitude.  We see it in politics, business, culture and social circles.  It’s part of our unique American DNA.  It’s our greatest strength and weakness at the same time.

A South African client tells of buying an event sponsorship with the promise that his buyers will be there only to find the attendees had no interest in his business at all but were only looking for a free party.  A Spanish client came close to spending several hundred thousand dollars on a sister-city promotion until we informed him that the city he had in mind already had more than 20 sister cities and that the designation is of little significance here, even though he had been told otherwise.

The Harold Hills are plentiful and there are five things to know when being presented with the “the most incredible marketing idea ever.”

1. Due Diligence is required. Ask for references and call them.  Find out if the promise was fulfilled in the past.
2. Don’t get fooled by big names. Big isn’t always better.  The reasoning goes, if they’re big they must be good and if their name is well known, no one will criticize your decision.  But big companies have to feed their machine and will often charge more than they’re worth.  Foreign suppliers and trade officials can be easy prey because they often think the big U.S. companies can’t be wrong.  How would they get so big otherwise?
3. Don’t take things at face value. Dig deeper.  Ask “how”, “why” and “how do you know” when assertions are made.  If you don’t get answers that make sense, don’t buy in.
4. Look for tactical neutrality. You should expect an advertising agency to tell you that the answer to your problems is more advertising, a social networking firm to say social media will solve your problems and so on.  It’s how they make money.  They may have a good point but chances are they only provide part of the answer.  We live in an integrated world where people no longer think in linear ways, but make their buying decisions in a relational way.  That means you’ll need a tactical program mix, all pursuing the same strategy.  A good marketing service provider is going to think about your goals and recommend the best mix to reach the business objective.
5. Stick to your strategy. Make sure you have a market-based strategy but then adhere to the discipline that your strategy provides.  If an idea is off-strategy, say “no”.  And if it turns out that it was a good opportunity, you can know that others will come along soon.  We live in a dynamic market.

The American dreamer is out there.  He may make you rich or break your bank.  The five steps above will tell you which.  Finally, if you’ve never seen The Music Man, rent the movie.  It will tell you a lot about what makes us a country of dreamers.

Tags: Americans, Assumptions, Big Names, Due Diligence, Individualists, Marketing, Mistakes, Strategy, Tactical neutrality