Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman's Blog About Surprise

What I Learned This Week--Follow The Leader, or Swing on a Star?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote here about a better-than-anticipated company strategic meeting. 

One of the main accomplishments emanating from said meeting was the forming of a mission statement that didn’t suck.

This is a monumental achievement, as most company mission statements are about as relevant as an Organ Grinder or a telegram (ask your great-grandparents), and usually because of the one simple word that has become the scourge of the corporate lexicon:

Leader

Used as an adjective to describe a company’s stature, the word “Leader” has degenerated into an ineffective cliché, one that is not only a weak, second-rate aspiration, but a hard-to-measure milestone that shines as bright as a plastic neon glowstick…and lasts about as long as one, too. 

When I was in the tech business, every company—EVERY one!—had the word “leader” (or a derivative of) in its mission statement.

• “We want to be a leader in the field of branded mobile content.”
• “We want to be the leading provider of enterprise solutions.” 
• “We are a leader in systematic symbioses…” 
• “We are a leader at using the word ‘leader’ in our descriptions…”

I could go on for hours.  The image I used to conjure up, with so, so, so many leaders, was one of a race where 10,000 people cross the finish line at the same time, followed by the one poor sap whose second-place finish made leaders out of everybody else.

Now there’s nothing wrong with being a “leader,” particularly in the worlds of politics or social good. But what exactly is one, in the context of a company?  Are you a leader because you sell more stuff than anyone else?  Because your stock price is higher?  Because you’re most profitable?  Or are you a leader because you’re better know than anyone else?  Because you have more “likes” on Facebook? Because you’ve won more industry awards?  Because you’ve been around longest?

The evaluating factors are many and close together (note: the opposite of “few and far between”), so as long as you choose the proper—and most likely narrowing—niche, you too can be a leader within it.  And live up to your mission statement.  Hooray!  Let the bonuses flow! 

While we are still finalizing our mission statement at Just For Laughs, I’m at least peacock-proud that we’ve chosen to do away with the fossilized term of “leader” and have focused on something that can be equally as ephemeral, but is universally understood, and more importantly, emotionally internalized.

For at the root of our mission, we want to be recognized as a:

Worldwide Star

Hokey? Trite?  I think not.  Everyone knows what a “star” is.  We aspire to be one.  We make special previsions for them. We bask in their glow.  A star’s power is often disproportionate to its reality. A star can get away with things leaders can’t even dream of.  And a star can dream of things leaders can’t even fathom. 

Nothing against “leaders.”  People indeed respect them.  But the feeling is rational.  In the head.  In contrast, people are drawn to stars like iron filings to electro-magnets.  People bow to stars.  They open doors, and roll out red carpets for them.  The relationship overflows with emotion.

Is Google a leader?  Is Apple? Is Virgin?  How about Tesla, Amazon or Netflix?  I’m sure there are categories where they blow the competition out of the water…but other metrics/analytics where they may be miles behind the category “leader.”  But in the end, they “own” their spaces…and not only because of the bottom line.  Granted, stardom can be fleeting; nobody stays hot forever.  But being a leader is equally as transitory, no matter how you choose to ultimately measure it. 

So in business, if you ask me which one I’d truly desire to be, well…uh, look up. 

One anecdote to drive this home.  Last Thursday, I performed at the C2-MTL creative/commerce conference.  The three-day lineup was jammed with luminaries the likes of business legends Sir Richard Branson and Barry Diller, designers Philippe Starck and Diane Von Furstenberg, and entrepreneurs Bobbi Brown and Blake (Toms Shoes) Mycoskie…amongst so many others.   If this were a boxing or UFC match, I’d be on the undercard, scheduled when people are still getting beers.  If this were a music festival, I’d be on the poster’s bottom line of type, along with other bands whose names can only be read with the aid of a nuclear microscope.

Given that positioning, if you asked me my mission prior to appearing on stage, I could’ve said:

“Well, I hope, once the audience evaluations comes out, to be a leader in the categories of spectator satisfaction and appreciation.”

But I didn’t.  Because that would’ve been lame.  And selling my aspirations short.

What I did say—and did so like a cocky little bastard on Vine to ensure that the challenge was recorded—was:

“I wanna make sure

that people never forget me.”

Did I deliver?  Well, that’s for others to say.  But I wouldn’t be sending you to the #ctmtl Twitter hashtag if I’d bombed.

People may revere and admire their leaders. 

But they remember, and talk about, their stars.

What I Learned This Week--When Your Title is You

Last Tuesday, I was introduced to a young man who will be working for me this summer as our advertising and promotional coordinator at Just For Laughs.  He was introduced as “The New Theo.”  That introduction was a massive compliment, to him, but especially to Theo.

For the record, “Theo” is Theo Lepage-Richer, a stylish (very) young man who worked for us over the three summers since I’ve been back.  Theo’s job was to harmonize the daily flow of advertising and promo material, put out in two languages, from the start of our promotional rush (early May) until the end of the event (last week of July). 

Said job is a relatively thankless job one requires a lot of patience, mind-reading (“I think I know what he meant by that grunt”), organization, scheduling, cajoling and deal-making.   And it’s actually worse than it sounds, because it requires working with stressed-out creative people, producers and executives; with print, radio, TV, web, outdoor and other assorted media forms; getting various levels of approvals and sign-offs; all while adhering to (and extending) deadlines and commitments.  And doing so on a daily basis amongst dozens of changes, indecision, disregard for timelines and procedure.

Sadly for us, gladly for him, Theo has taken on a full-time position at the Sid Lee agency, but his reputation and spirit still lingers.

And is the inspiration for the lesson of the week, which is:

When your job

becomes your name,

you’ve done something right.

No offence to the gentleman who’s taken Theo’s place (I don’t even recall his name, but will find out by the end of this blog post), but he’s stepping into big shoes.  At Just For Laughs, we all know what a “Theo” is, but I’d venture to bet that nobody ever knew his official title or job description.

In fact, getting to this pinnacle of respect almost negates the need for either one of those two traditional forms of classification.  When your job becomes your name, you go way beyond the realm of your task list and even further beyond your designation on any org chart.

An old health adage you may remember is “You are what you eat”; in the office, you know you’ve made it when “You are what you do.”  I’ve talked before about the value of making yourself indispensible, but there’s no greater compliment, no better mark of organizational value, no stronger personal and professional endorsement than when your name is synonymous with not just what you have to do, but what you actually do.

So, a shout out to “The New Theo”: it ain’t gonna be easy this summer, but keep up the fight and help get us through.

Who knows?  Play your cards right and maybe next year, the job will be called “Dominic.”

What I Learned This Week--If Your Past Is Your Future, You're History

As a rule, I usually dread corporate strategy meetings for a number of reasons, including but not limited to:

• They are clichéd
• To the loudest go the spoils
• There are few concrete results
• If perchance something concrete is resolved, it is forgotten within a week

So imagine my surprise at the recent productive two-day session we had at Just For Laughs.  The jury’s still out over the long-term effectiveness, as we need further meetings to build on the foundation…but at least we came out with some sort of a foundation, one that was built on respectful (!), reflective (!) and intelligent (!) debate.

One such debate focused on the exploitation of the vast Just For Laughs catalog.  A content company with over three decades of TV history, we’ve been mining our vaults for gold for years now. One of our projects—the Just For Laughs Gags channel on YouTube—is perhaps the company’s most successful and profitable, culling hundreds of hours of content and more than four million unique visits per day into one of YouTube’s top 100 worldwide destinations.

On the surface, this is good, if not great, news.  But a little scratch reveals a chink in the armor sparked one of the meeting’s best debates, namely the one that arose when I said:

“If your future

is based on your past,

you’re screwed.”

(To be honest, I used a term a little stronger than “screwed,” but why be profane?)

The euphoria of continually going back to the well and finding it full is, in my mind, short-lived and dangerous.  And this isn’t just relevant to those producing “content.”   No matter what your business, if your dreamy current sales projections are based predominantly—or entirely—on what you’ve produced before, you are in for a rude awakening.

One can argue (and some at the meeting did) that if you are actually in the business of selling the past, my premise is invalidated.

No it’s not.

Even if you’re dealing in antiques (be it the guy down the street or the Gold family on TruTv’s Hardcore Pawn), history (like my friends at Alexander Autographs), family trees (like geni.com or familysearch.org) or non-comedic forms of previously broadcast filmed entertainment (everything from ESPN Classic to Turner Classic Movies), your future doesn’t necessarily have to be mired by your past. 

Different methods of packaging, of distribution, of presentation, or of editing can breathe new life into the past, and do so in a manner that’s so effective and fresh...

...it’s as if the past

is making its debut. 

Case in point—the new iPad app chronicling the history and career of The Doors, a passion project of former Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman that just about reinvents the music biography.  Or the one by my buddy, Pearls Before Swine creator Stephan Pastis, that doesn’t merely aggregate a bunch of his previously-published newspaper strips, but through animation, audio and video commentary and original corresponding content, gives them a new relevance…not to mention a new hope for the survival of the comic strip genre as a whole.

Selling the past can be easy, but you’re ascending a slippery slope that you’ll eventually slide down…and fast.  Re-making the past is more difficult; it’s a different story that requires a different skill set.  Yet it’s the only way if you don’t want to get caught up in the past/future conundrum shouted out in bold red above.

Perhaps the best way to summarize this week’s lesson is not just to re-use the words of philosopher  George Santayana, who said “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it,” but to paraphrase and re-make them into:

“Those who (merely)

repeat the past are

condemned to be forgotten.”

What I Learned This Week--Chewing On Perspectively Modified Organisms

When is a food not a food?

To legions of concerned and vocal do-gooders, its when "Big Agri" steps in and toys with Mother Nature to produce Genetically Modified Organisms, aka GMOs.

But to people in the marketing biz, it's when “Big Brother” steps in and toys with definitions and behavior change to produce Perspectively Modified Organisms, aka (well, as of this sentence) PMOs.

Now this may sound somewhat ominous, but in the end, depending on the behavior being adjusted, PMOs can please both the boardroom and do-gooders alike. 

The modern PMO trend started in 2004, when Kraft (more specifically, its Nabisco division) responded to the vilification of its less-than-healthy products by shifting attention away from the foodstuff itself and onto the repackaging of it with the introduction of "100-Calorie Packs."  Instead of gorging on handfuls Chips Ahoy! cookies or Ritz Crackers with Peanut Butter, consumers could now daintily pick through wallet-sized, predetermined portions of the same.  

That was one small step for a man (or woman), but a giant leap for snack-food marketers, as they changed consumer perspective from chomping "snacks" to expending a small portion of their daily caloric intake instead; a win-win that simultaneously reduced public guilt and increased corporate bottom lines (the idea was a huge win, and because of the massive margins it delivered, was quickly adapted by other companies). 

The latest such

Perspective Modification

has not yet been put

into everyday practice...

but should be.  

And, I suspect, will be.

Right now, in an effort at consumer education for best health practices, many restaurants are providing calorie counts info on their menus. Despite some mind-numbing figures (I remember a colleague almost falling off his chair upon learning that the "healthy" Cobb Salad he would regularly wolf down at Ted's Montana Grill in New York was a 1,232-calorie fat-bomb), the end result is that people still aren't ordering fewer calories...in fact, some order an extra glass of wine to help them forget just how many they are consuming. 

However, a study released two weeks ago by researchers at Texas Christian University suggests that what would be way more powerful and persuasive than mere calorie data would be listing the exercise needed in order to burn off the food eaten.

In a nutshell, the study took 300 young adults, aged 18 to 30, and separated them into three groups.  While their food selection was the same (a standard American fare of burgers, fries, chicken sandwiches, salads, etc.), their menus were different:

• One group’s had calorie labels and food listings
• One group’s was food listings only
• And one group’s had labels of minutes of brisk walking required to burn off the calories in the food items (i.e. two hours of brisk walking to burn off a cheeseburger)

Suddenly, to one group, food wasn't food anymore.  And the results were...well, what you'd expect:  those given the "exercise" menus consumed way fewer calories than the people with or without the calorie count.

This shouldn't come as a major shock, because no matter how many calories you add up, people just don't understand the notion of them.  To most, a calorie is ephemeral intangible; what people DO understand is hard, sweat-inducing exercise...which, to many, is a fate worse than death. 

I'm an exercise fanatic and just this morning, I did a lung-busting 30 minute power-ride on an expresso.com networked stationary bike.  For all my huffing, puffing and thigh-burning, I disposed of 360 calories, which is about a slice of an all-dressed pan pizza from Domino’s, or a five-ounce petite filet from Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. That’s not an equation tipped in my favor.  When food becomes work, I’ll think twice about what goes in my mouth.

Bang! 

Perception Modified.

It’s not just about food, either.  Last week, I had a meeting with two friends of mine who run a foundation that provides art to hospitals and other institutions of healing or convalescence.  They asked me how they could raise more money for their operation.

It’s a hard sell three ways:

• Medical people face bigger problems and are severely time and budgetarily challenged
• Art people may be off-put by the venue
• The general public doesn’t understand or necessarily care about art

Ouch.

My advice was to PMO their raison d’etre.  Like changing snacks into calorie counts, I suggested they change art into medicine by referring to what they deliver as “Visual Meds” or “Visual Tranquilizers.”

No guarantee of a win, but at least it’s a way towards a new start of a new way to think.

So what was this week’s big lesson?  In essence...

How things are seen

is way more important

than how things actually are. 

 

And the best way

to change people

is to change their perspectives

on how they see things.

Anyway, after all this writing, I’m starved.  I think I’ll go eat a TRX workout and wash it down with two-thirds of my hockey game tonight.