The Fat Bastard Vs. Powerman And The Money-Go-Round

So what I want to know is: Since when did a snowplow driver become a Fat Bastard?

For those of you who don't know sports (and some of you who do) let me explain a Fat Bastard. A Fat Bastard is a player, most often a football lineman, who on the basis of one quasi-All-Pro season signs a five-year, $175 million contract, reports to camp looking like he swallowed Jonah, tweaks his hamstring in the first workout, and spends the remainder of his contract shuttling between the trainer's room and gentlemen's clubs.

Albert Haynesworth is the reigning Fat Bastard. Redskins fans hate Haynesworth because he's only in it for the money, and he quit trying once he got the money. Plus he was never that good to start with.

Somehow, astonishingly, in Wisconsin that same sort of hate is being leveled on snowplow drivers and second-grade teachers and all manner of public employees.

(Yes, this is a marketing column and not a political screed. Stick with me on this.)

The attack is being led by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who is sort of the Jim Rome of politicians minus the occasional zinger. His line is: 

1. Wisconsin needs to cut government spending; and
2. Breaking the public-employees' union is the way to get there. 

This is the simplified version. The more complicated version also involves removing the gold-plated urinals from the Black River Falls DMV office and replacing the snowplow-equipped Bugatti Veyrons with more conventional diesel-powered Macks.

Walker is much loved by the Tea Party, a group that can be described as the reactionary version of Wavy Gravy coming out of retirement and organizing all the flax-weavers and organic goat farmers in support of legal mushrooms for everyone.

Walker's line is being accepted because there is a current of society which holds to a complex belief system consisting of this: teachers make too much money.

Ever since there have been teachers there has been a segment of society claiming that teachers make too much money. When the first mother archaeopteryx nuzzled her baby archaeopteryx out of the nest and coaxed her into flight there was a equus on the ground saying, "She got two lizards for that?"

I've seen a lot of teachers, and from what I've seen 90 percent of them do not make too much money. Their benefit packages have been brought more in line with private industry, and they'll be graded on outcomes and paid on merit within the next 10 years regardless of whether Scott Walker dons a tiara and declares himself King of Brodhead and Greater Juda.

Public employees' compensation is generally built on a formula that pays less in wages and more in benefits. As a university official told me the other day, "When we recruit we know our wages are 15 percent below the market, but we used to make up for it by saying, 'But we have a really solid benefit package.'"

Because the benefit package is really solid – really solid, mind you, not outlandish in any dimension -- it is declared to be too much (definition of "too much": anything more than what I have) by those whose self-assembled retirement package consists of a handful of acorns stuffed into a hollow tree. And a twelver of Keystone.

Gov. Walker's remedy to this problem which is not really a problem is to strip the union of its collective-bargaining rights, which is like the old Monty Python sketch that has a couple of Bruces bagging a mosquito with a bazooka.

The Tea Party's message (and here's where the marketing comes in) has been communicated very successfully through Gov. Walker and his minions (who actually are little yellow pills, just like the characters in Despicable Me). Then again, it ought to be, seeing as it consists of four words: Taxes are too high.

The problem is it's inaccurate – or at the very least unfair.

Railroad workers have a fabulous retirement package, mostly funded by the government -- and by extension taxpayers -- but you don't see fiscal Luddites marching on Washington, the earpieces from their transistor radios pumping Glenn Beck into their shared left brain, demanding that the railroad workers give some back. Yet just as assuredly railroad retirement is paid for by the taxpayers, and railroad workers' benefits are paid for by consumers in higher prices for everything from bouncy balls to ball bearings.

And railroad workers are just one example. Think you don't pay for the severance and retirement packages of BP executives in terms of higher gas prices? Think you aren't paying for someone's cottage in northern Wisconsin every time cable rates go up? I know of some executives in an arcane nook of the financial-services industry who just voted themselves $20 million into their 401(k) accounts. Think that has something to do with the 0.5 percent you get on your money at the local bank?

Fact is, just about everyone is paying for everyone else's retirement, Social Security notwithstanding. But when the non-union private sector does it it's all right with the TP'ers, and when a union or a public-sector group does it they howl like a wounded panther.

Okay, so what happens next?

The Tea Party and its Republican shills, as mentioned earlier, hold the marketing high ground by virtue of their simple all-purpose message. No matter the issue the answer's the same. The environment is a mess. Taxes are too high. Discrimination is rampant. Taxes are too high. Corporations are taking the incentives and offshoring anyway. Taxes are too high. Health insurers and drug companies are making zillions and an inner-city mom still can't get to a doctor. Taxes are too high. John Boehner's hair looks like it was dropped on his head from a helicopter. Taxes are too high.

The Democrats, in contrast, have a couple of disadvantages. Their rebuttal is shorter – no, they're not – but far less versatile. Also, there has not been a ripe political situation since the Great Depression that the Democratic Party has not managed to spill all over themselves. They're the Exxon Valdez of political parties: They carry a lot of important stuff, but they run aground at the most inopportune times, and cleanup's a bitch.

In essence, what we're seeing is effective marketing of a lie versus ineffective marketing of the truth. In a case like this, sorry to say, bet on the lie every time.

There is hope for the truth, however. The images from Madison, the firefighters walking through the capital rotunda, are powerful tools for an outside organization with the bucks to spew it everywhere. Social media has already proven its worth in that regard.

History has also shown that a simplistic movement like the Tea Party breaks down when presented with a situation that does not lend itself to a simple answer – "A school-choice program requires taxpayer dollars" comes to mind – but does lend itself to divisions within a previously unified movement. Also, political pendulums do swing.

The 2012 elections will be interesting. And expensive. Count on seeing the images from Wisconsin 2011 over and over again. Count on hearing the Tea Party mantra repeated like ... well, a mantra, only with fewer people reaching fiscal nirvana for the buzz. And count on seeing a new Fat Bastard crowned sometime during the process.

This time, let's hope it's a real Fat Bastard. I have a few ideas if you're interested.

Consumers And Canteloupe, Qualitative And Quantitative

Pleased to meet you, Miss Five-Foot-Seven, Chai-Drinking, Coon-Cat-Loving, Versa-Driving, Hair-Dyeing “Toddlers & Tiaras” Watcher. I’m Mr. Six-Foot-One, BMW-Driving, Golden-Retriever-Petting, Downhill-Skiing, Pokemon-Watching Foreign-Currency trader. Only I’m not.

I’m not any of those things. Oh, I’ll pet a golden retriever if it’s handy, and I’d drive a BMW if my income as a blogger let me afford one, but I’m not most any of the things the ad profilers and online targeters think I am. And too bad for them, because they’re investing a whole lot of money, and a goodly chunk of the southwest Asian ex-pat community, into convincing advertisers that I am.

Let me put it another way. One of my favorite marketing quotes of all time comes from that fabled business text – you see it at Wharton and Harvard all the time, tucked inside an upstanding copy of Practical Cost Accounting – The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading, And Bubble-Gum Book.

The quote goes like this: “If you’re looking to build a large cantaloupe, it’s best to start with a small cantaloupe and not a collection of cantaloupe parts.”

Are you digging the marketing connotation? If not, let me place both my hands on your back and push. If you’re looking to know your customers, it’s better to really know some of your customers and not just be a collector of customer parts.

I’m an eclectic guy. If someone were to borrow my iPod, I guarantee they wouldn’t last five songs. Maybe the grunted Bahamian gospel songs would do it, or the scratchy Hawaiian-guitar songs, or the hardcore Cajun stuff, or maybe the one-man-band recordings of my own compositions. And if by miraculous means that wouldn’t drive them over the edge, I’d tailwhack them into the abyss with a 40-ounce chunk of Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.

My whole life’s like that, and targeted ads can’t keep up. In fact, all they do is amuse me with their Mr. Magoo-like focus on what they think matters to me right now. As sharpshooters, they’re Brazilian rainforest tribesmen trying to take down stealth bombers with blowguns. I checked out all the hot hatchbacks from Mazda to Subaru and bought a van. I don’t want a McPherson guitar. They’re $9,000 and they don’t even have the soundhole in the middle of the top. Today I want the album from Nat “King” Cole’s brother; yesterday I wanted The Kooks. At no time was I even remotely contemplating the new release from Sugarland.

However, what I wouldn’t mind is a company that wants to sell me something sending a person to sit across from me and ask me what I like and don’t like, and especially what I like and don’t like as pertains to their product.

And the funny thing is, as a marketer I want the same thing. In a world where quantitative data drives Mark Zuckerberg’s limo, I would much rather have one really good piece of qualitative data, shaded and nuanced beyond measurability. I would rather truly understand one of my customers than watch the numbers of the masses pass before me like Oompa Loompas.

I was going to call this decision is a no-brainer, but actually it’s the antithesis of a no-brainer, which I suppose would make it a “brainer” if that term didn’t sound … well, like it was created by someone with no brain. Emotional connections are formed in shades and nuances, and once purchases move outside of the sustaining-basic-needs range, emotional connections are the driver.

And they’re not just the driver of a single purchase; they’re the driver of repeat purchases, which are the Treasure of the Sierra Madre to most sellers of stuff. And they’re not even just that: They’re the foundation on which Apple was built, and Starbucks, and Fender, and Gucci and Harley-Davidson and Disney and all the other brands with Fill-In-The-Blank Stores on Times Square – not to mention Times Square itself. Hey, an iPod is a limited-access hard drive in a box. Starbucks is a cup of coffee. The head says you need a cup of coffee (especially this morning); the heart says you need a Starbucks.

The problems with going qualitative are pretty obvious, and never more so than when you’re scanning the columns to either side of whatever you’re trying to read on the internet. Qualitative is pretty much numbers-proof. Hard data can’t be captured from qualitative research any better now than it could be back in the days when advertising two-stepped to the theme from “Bewitched,” less Elizabeth Montgomery and the elephants in the living room. And the major selling point of today’s fin-de-siècle media landscape is that everything can be measured.

Not yet. IBM may have invented a computer that can beat Ken Jennings at “Jeopardy!”, but it has no idea how Jennings feels about that. Could be that Jennings will now devote his entire life to defeating the computer, riffing on Boris Karloff one minute and playing Rocky the next. Running up the library steps and raising your arms exultantly may take on a whole new meaning.

Qualitative also requires a different sort of front-end work. Instead of tapping the masses’ data vein and just letting it pour into a bottle, qualitative requires endless sorting through the flow to find the killer T-cell.

What’s interesting is that the electronic landscape exudes qualitative potential like Sarah Palin exudes faux compassion. And Oil of Olay. The experts and agencies who view the internet as a sea of quantitative data aren’t wrong per se; they’re just missing the ocean of qualitative data right next door. Twitter and Facebook are the keys to a qualitative castle that will not – I repeat, will not – tell you everything you need to know about your customers, but will point you in a direction where you can find everything you need to know about your customers.

It’s a fine line, I know, and the temptation to stop at Facebook and Twitter is greater than the urge to scarf a Thickburger when the rational mind says, “Salad. Ranch on the side.” But these über-destinations are the mere jumping-off points, the home of cantaloupe parts and small cantaloupes alike. It’s up to you which you choose, and what you do with them next

But leave me out of it. I don’t like cantaloupe. And I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Leonardo da WHO?

Knute Rockne would have you believe there’s a direct connection between success in football and success in business, but since he’s dead you’ll have to believe me. There is a direct connection between success in football and success in business.

However, the direct connection is not always the one you think.

Here; let me explain.

A week ago the home team, the Wisconsin Badgers, played in the Rose Bowl against the mighty Horned Frogs of Texas Christian University.

Now, far be it from me to disparage the institution that brought the football world Doak Walker and Sammy Baugh (not to mention Tonsillitis Johnson and Artis Toothis from Dan Jenkins’ delightful quasi-sequel to Semi-Tough, Life Its Ownself). However, Wisconsin didn’t exactly put its best foot forward in Pasadena.

The mighty mighty Badgers made it to the Rose Bowl by virtue of the off-tackle play and pretty much just the off-tackle play. You can read more about that over in the football blog (football-1-stick-gum.blogspot.com), but the idea is that Wisconsin built up a Rembrandt offense – painting and only painting, and furthermore only paintings of the off-tackle play.

The problem with that is Paul Chryst, the Badgers’ offensive coordinator, wasn’t happy being Rembrandt and running a Rembrandt offense. He wanted to be Leonardo da Vinci and invent the helicopter, too. He wanted to run bubble screens and skinny posts and toss sweeps just to show he could, and he wound up losing the most important game of his life because he couldn’t just face facts and be Rembrandt.

In terms of his job, Paul Chryst makes a great Rembrandt but a lousy Leonardo, and that got me thinking: What do you do as a marketing professional when a genuine Leonardo appears in your midst?

You know the marketing type: the person who can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan, the person not only equally adept at research and product design and creative, but so overdept that they’re better at all three things than any one person in your department is good at one of them.

The easy answer is just to defer to them and let them do everything. That’s what I do, for I love the easy answer the way a wino loves muscatel.

However, I also acknowledge there are big problems with that, starting with the fact that letting them do everything runs like Cam Newton over every process and workflow in your organization.

Now, workflows and processes and I get along about as well as Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck, but I have to say if you want your own personal series called The Office renewed it’s probably not the best idea to ignore them entirely, even in the face of greatness.

The trick is to maximize use of your renaissance person’s skills without pushing aside everyone else in your department, and fostering the impression that you respect The Way Things Get Done Around Here, even if The Way Things Get Done Around Here is that nothing gets done around here.

Unfortunately, there’s no shining path to enlightenment in a case like this. What you do depends on the temperament of the individual, the collective mood of the department, and the culture of the organization as a whole.

It’s important that the factors be considered in that order, though, starting with the individual. The No. 1 question is whether you want this person in your department long-term. I know the temptation is to say, “This person is a fargin’ genius! Why would I not want them in my department?”

Because they know they’re a fargin’ genius, for one. Because their fargin’ geniusness disrupts everyone around them, for another. Because what your department and your organization needs right now is not genius but order – and there are times even an old chaos-theory guy like myself would take order over brilliance. When an advertising campaign has already been launched and simply needs to be maintained, for instance. When there’s a whole lot of gruntwork to be done and a shortage of grunts, for another. Geniuses tend to rebel at gruntwork, or do it so haphazardly you’d think it was done by a goat – and not one of the better-educated goats.

 Assuming the renaissance individual is capable of working productively in a team setting, the next step is to build a department so that everyone’s happy and the best talents are best utilized.

I’m a big proponent of ownership. I believe an organization functions most effectively when everyone is given ownership of a piece. It can be a tiny piece, but it’s theirs and they have control over every phase of it – including deciding where the money is going to be spent. If you own the hood ornament on the company limo and you’re given the power to spend money on its upkeep, you’re going make sure it’s the best hood ornament in the universe, even better than the Petty Girl ornaments on the old Nashes.

As it applies to the renaissance individual, give them a little piece of everything from your department – or better yet, give them ownership of one entire marketing program, top to bottom, start to finish. Remember Standard Oil; vertical integration can work even better than horizontal integration in the proper setting.

Organizations are sort of the anti-Paul Chryst. They refuse to acknowledge the possibility of a Leonardo in their midst. It’s understandable; organizational behavior is all about predictability, and genius is by nature unpredictable.

Given that, if a master of all trades should materialize in your midst like The Last Mimzy the best approach may be to pretend to the organization that such a phenom does not exist at all. It certainly expedites things. Things have come to a pretty pass when you have to hide such a light under a bushel, but considering that most organizations operate by shoving people into silos it’s not unexpected.

So to bring it all back home, the connection between success in football and success in business is in recognizing your Rembrandts and your da Vincis, and not allowing one to be the other.

Good luck with that. And Go Badgers!

Here's Your Christmas Bonus

Sorry, gang, but I'm taking a short break from Here Lies Marketing, both because of the holidays and because I have a kids' book that was just released titled Jake The Grizz And The World's Fastest Snowboard that I should probably help market. If you want to know more about the book check my LinkedIn or Facebook pages. Until the next time, thanks, and Happy Holidays!

Bridge On The River Why?

Too many people confuse marketing with a nerd’s first date. 

I feel I can speak for the lank and bespectacled folk of the world, the squeaky of voice and pigeon-toed of foot, having been a brother on the march with the SAT scores to prove it, and I know what some of my first dates were like. What started out semi-promising as dinner and a movie ended up in a one-sided debate on the noumenal concept in pre-Victorian English literature. 

I find way too much of this spirit in much of what I read on marketing. 

Take this heaping helping of marketing-related letters and punctuation marks, from a recent article on MediaPost: “’Marketing tends to be preoccupied with staying on track with individual tactical executions or traditional marketing fundamentals like lead generation, campaign execution and content or creative development,’ sums up Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. ‘However, today's demand chain requires a new mix of digital, direct, and retail distribution, fulfillment, measurement and tracking capabilities to maximize customer contact, conversion and interaction.’”

That’s a whole lot of summing up there, Mr. Donovan Neale-May. I believe you and I dated, and bored, the same women. And whatever happened to the concept of marketing as the way stuff gets sold?

Let’s take a giant T-Rex step backwards and try again. If marketing tends to be preoccupied with staying on track with individual tactical executions or traditional marketing fundamentals like lead generation, campaign execution and content or creative development, it’s bad marketing. 

Not that lead generation isn’t important. If it wasn’t for lead generation I’d be four-foot-three and have the brain power of a handful of Brussels sprouts. Oops; sorry. I confused lead generation with lead poisoning. If it wasn’t for lead generation I’d be doing exactly what I’m doing now, because lead generation is one of those tasks deemed to be a little bit too creepy-close to sales for comfort. It’s like the revelation that Abraham Lincoln slept with another man in a single bed for four years before he was married. It’s factual; it’s just not appropriate. 

Let sales generate their own doggone leads, in other words.

Marketing turns into bad marketing when it begins obsessing on the means rather than the ends, when they wrap themselves like a ball python around the axles of campaign execution and creative development.

It’s fiendishly easy to do, in part because there are so many toys to do it with. When all you have is building blocks there’s no question about what you’re going to play with today. Some kids say, “Rats – blocks again,” and sulk like a wide receiver spurned. Other kids build the Eiffel Tower. 

On the other hand, when you have blocks and LEGOs and Barbies and Polly Pockets and K’Nex and Hot Wheels and Uno and a Leapster and Twister and Trouble and Sorry! and an iPod Touch, you’re more likely to chuck the whole lot into a corner and watch infomercials for The Perfect Brownie.

It’s about playing, in this case. In the other case, the one over there being held by a supermodel, it’s about marketing. 

When you have so many ways to do marketing, you forget how marketing is done. Marketing is done with whatever tools are at hand to accomplish the current task, with the ultimate goal always being increasing sales, or something akin to sales, for your company.

William Holden in Bridge On The River Kwai was trying to blow up a bridge, but only because he was trying to win a war. He didn’t like the sound of the blast or the thrill that comes with watching a steam locomotive plunge into a gorge. He harbored no illusions that he was going to win the war by blowing up the bridge, but he felt pretty sure he was helping the process. 

The difference between that and dysfunctional marketing is that William Holden did what he did with the ultimate goal firmly understood and in sight. He also used dynamite more liberally than most marketers. 

Although it’s been said many times, many ways, it needs to be said again: marketing is the targeted application of common sense. It is only about the targeted application of Twitter or metrics or Q scores or best practices or apps or widgets or digits or Donner or Blitzen when it makes sense to apply them.

Put more simply, it’s not about the pencil. It’s about doing the right thing with the pencil. And you know what the right thing is.

When marketing is approached from that direction, which is approximately three degrees west of west-northwest, all the stuff that concerns Mr. Donovan Neale-May and all the stuff that Mr. Donovan Neale-May believes marketers should be doing miraculously converge.

Digital media generate leads. Campaign execution is measured. Customer interaction increases.

It happens organically. It happened even when all marketers had were a wagon full of Playskool blocks and a hammer, but we’re not supposed to talk about that, since marketing has a shorter memory than Troy Polamalu after a helmet-to-helmet hit. It’s how marketers keep their jobs. 

Even the best marketers lose sight of the goal, which is another reason why the goal should be as crystalline as the Lake Superior sky at night. Even the best marketing chops get stiff with disuse. But marketers shouldn’t blab that fact to the world. There’s too much to fix as it is.

Welcome To Heck. Here's Your Manual.

A friend of mine got a new job last week, which was great. He earned it, and absolutely deserved it.


As part of the congratulatory phone call, he asked, "So you got any advice for me?", not expecting anything, because what sort of advice do you give the man who has everything, when everything in this case is a job he needed and wanted?

Well, I can't not give advice in a situation like that, not anymore, not since I've been a blogger. For better or worse, thinking I have an audience for these weekly rants has given me that awful feeling that everything I say is a pronouncement. I have to pinch myself and remind myself that I'm really still a peon, and sometimes I pinch myself because it just plain feels good.

So he asked, and I told him, "Communicate in person. Don't pick up the phone or send an e-mail for the first month unless you absolutely have to."

I've talked about the benefits of in-person communication before, and I'm going to keep talking about it until you get the idea. There is nothing that makes a better impression and carries more weight than in-person communication.

Communicate in-person with the people in the mail room, the people in maintenance, the administrative assistants and the miscellaneous service providers, and not only will they know who you are, they'll be extra-willing to help you negotiate the maze of procedures and rituals that make up a corporate culture. If you bring chocolate you may just make friends for life.

Communicate in-person with the people at your level in other departments and you start forging those cross-disciplinary ties that will help you hit the ground running and keep running, even when other new hires have hit the wall.

Communicate in-person with the people above you and they'll know who you are – and that never hurt.

You're in marketing, and marketers have two main duties: to unite disparate elements and to communicate. Supporting sales is the goal; communicating and facilitating are the ways there. The best way to get a head start on your core duties is to talk to people right out of the gate.

It doesn't have to be heavy conversation. Ask a basic question about how do do something that you know they know how to do. Establish them as an expert. Put them in a position of helping you. Almost all people in an organization, even the evil administrative assistant and the extra-evil frustrated mid-level manager, when addressed as an expert, will share what they know in a supportive manner.

One more tip: There's a branch of communication research called Uncertainty Reduction Theory which states that people will try to find common ground in a conversation because it reduces feelings of threats, and once they find that common ground, communication becomes more more effective and purposeful. Use that theory. Try to find common ground and build on it. Remember that common ground the next time you talk. You'll be amazed how quickly you get acclimated.

Don't take the expedient way out of this one. Sit down with people. Talk, and most of all listen. Oh, and good luck with the new job.

We Have Met The Enemy And He Is R&D. And Operations. And Finance. And IT, Too?

While Peanuts continues its run in the newspapers for all eternity, or at least until we run out of newspapers, other funnier, more satirical and more insightful strips from the great days of newspaper comic strips get pushed by the wayside, or at best get shoveled into Fantagraphics collections (which are marvelous, by the way).

A prime example is Walt Kelly’s Pogo. As a kid I found Pogo tough sledding sometimes. The dialogue seemed apropos of nothing and seemed to trail off down the same hole from whence it came – and it’s still a little like that. But Pogo also produced one absolute freshwater pearl of a line, a line with a million uses, a line that treads on the border of cliché without ever quite crossing over.

I am referring, of course, to, “Huh? Um … what? I … uh … mm.”

Actually, I’m referring to – say it with me – “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

That’s the way of it in marketing sometimes. People on the inside not only don’t approve of your efforts, they are to your marketing efforts what Sarah Palin is to the English language – an active antagonist, running around with a dynamite plunger in one hand and an internal memo in the other.

 What do you do when internal forces are hard at work tearing down your marketing efforts? I know what you want to do, and we won’t get into that. Plastic explosive does not heal all wounds, and it doesn’t even, in the marvelous words of Nick Lowe, wound all heels.

The process of not merely getting folks on the inside to buy into the plan but to keep them from tearing down the plan starts the way most marketing things do – with communication.

Number one, everyone on the inside needs to know the plan. A solid three-quarters of the opposition to Marketing comes from people not knowing what Marketing is doing or why they’re doing it. Let other departments keep their plans to themselves, as is their wont. Your marketing plan, or a version thereof, needs the widest possible circulation within your organization – because if your marketing plan is one of the good ones, it will outline the corporate mission and the on-the-ground goals and how marketing can address both.

Next, remember Dorothy Parker. “You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think,” she replied when asked to use the word “horticulture” in a sentence, and the same applies to your internal audience. Don’t assume that because they’ve been given a copy of the plan they will actually read the plan. This is like assuming that just because no one has ever escaped from Stalag 17 that no one will try.

What you as marketers need to do to keep other factions on board once they’ve been given the plan is to do a little marketing. I’m amazed at the marketers who don’t market their marketing plan. There are a million ways to do it, but why am I telling you this? You’re marketers – do what comes naturally. Keep it simple, keep it honest, use common sense, and you’ll be just fine.

It goes back to what I used to hammer into the trading-card companies back when they were making money, before they jumped on the death-spiral merry-go-round: Listen, if you don’t believe your product is the best, whatever your product may be, either do what you can to make it the best it can be or don’t sell it. And marketers very often have the unique power to optimize products – especially when that product is your very own marketing plan.

But don’t stop there. The No. 1 most effective way of communicating to people is face-to-face, so as you make your rounds of the company as you as marketers do, ask people, “Did you see our latest brochure? What’d you think? Did you see the ads? What about that new product? Did you see the article?” Ask but then listen, not only to what’s being said but how it’s being said. Look for any vocal or non-verbal cues to get a feel for how your work is really being perceived, by executives and line workers alike.

Okay, so what if sharing the plan, marketing the plan, and then doing field work don’t work? Well, the plastic explosives are still a possibility, but before hauling the gelignite out of the desk drawer, try a couple more things. One is to isolate recalcitrant units and bring them into the process. Think The Producers, and you’re the skinny guy. The way to get the money from the widow is to put on her show. Certainly there are pet projects favored by your antagonists that you can advance without too many barnyard odors. Ease those up the ladder and see if it makes a difference. It may not. They may be playing you. C’est la vie. Sometimes you have to rise above, even if you are a marketer.

As you battle the enemy that is us, remember this: You really are the good guys. You really are trying to move the organization forward in a reasonable, well-researched fashion. If it turns out that you have to be satisfied with that, it's a lot. It can carry you through.