dispatches from the new world of work

Passin' the Time ...

Leg #1, BOS to SFO. (7 hours!) Great reads:

"Can Spies Be Made Better?" in the 19 March Economist (cover) and "Fixing the FBI" in the 28 March US News & World Report (cover). Intel is Priority One in the War on Terror, and the Cold War intel culture is almost impossible to remold. The stories per se are of the utmost importance; moreover these are the Mothers of All Org-Culture Change efforts!

"The New Pitch: Do Ads Still Work" in the 28 March New Yorker. The superb media guru Ken Auletta has written a terrific piece. Perhaps because it reflects my biases. Somewhat unlike my super-pal Steve Yastrow, I believe that bad ads are a large part of advertising's problem. Good Auletta quote: "[Agency CEO & Creative Director] Linda Kaplan Thayer ... worries most about self-indulgent and risk averse advertising." Me too! (NB: In launching the iPod, Steve Jobs spent 90% of his $70M marketing budget on TV ads. Very Cool TV ads, I might add.)

"The Digital Hospital" in the 28 March BusinessWeek (cover). Another of my hobby horses. Healthcare quality would rise dramatically if acute care centers edged out of the dark ages on IT!

"The Immelt Revolution: He's Turning GE's Culture Upside Down, Demanding Far More Risk and Innovation," in BusinessWeek/03.28.05. From Jack Welch's efficiency drives and financial engineering (which worked in another era) to a hard-nosed, investment, incentive- and penalty-laden (typical GE!) emphasis on risky "Imagination Breakthrough" projects. Acquisitions are (mostly) out. Innovation-led organic growth is definitely in! Cool! (And I bet he pulls it off.) Kudos to Welch on talent development: All three of the finalists for his job—Jeff Immelt, Bob Nardelli at Home Depot & Jim McNerney at 3M are going gangbusters!

Just started: China, Inc: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World, by Ted Fishman. All China stats are bizarre. Like this: People are moving from rural areas to cities so fast that China must create urban infrastructure equivalent to Houston ... every month for the next 15 years!

Tom Peters posted this on 03/23/05.

Comments

As an ex-healthcare manager for 35 years in England I would say amen to the digital hospital.

The problem is many healthcare managers still haven't fathomed out how to use the slide rule and logarithms!!

Clinicians usually know all the answers - managers usually get in the way.

Keep rattlting the healthcare cage, Tom.

Posted by Trevor Gay at March 23, 2005 12:59 PM

Tom, Do you see the opportunity agencies have to align with consumers? To be the emotional contractor between the company and consumer? We should give it a "think." The win is not for Thaler to self promote but to engage the parties.

Posted by Wendy at March 23, 2005 2:08 PM

CHINA IS SO FASCINATING - they should be a fabulous partner of/in the free world at an accelerated pace.

Posted by John at March 23, 2005 3:09 PM

WOW, Forget about Wal-Mart imports, Now is the time to set up a cement futures market.

Posted by Dick Novacek at March 23, 2005 6:22 PM

china is going to discover increadible resource limitations... trying to sustain this compound growth rate with 70% of her lakes polluted, air quality in major cities in horrible shape cotrasting wit US standards. and nearly .15 or every yuan now destined for health care/problems.

yes the growth is awesome, but the quality of life issues and challenges for china are huge...
it's in her best interests to take a more gradual tack althought that approach is considered and unlikely outcome.

Posted by kurt at March 23, 2005 11:39 PM

Tom ... I also agree that bad ads are part of the problem, I just think that this is a problem at the 3rd decimal place and the real issues are in the tens place!

The New Yorker article was very interesting. Linda Kaplan Thaler has had some amazing successes. (And I hear she's a real quality person - a good friend of mine was honored with her back in December in DC as two of the "10 Jewish Women to Watch in America." My friend, author Rabbi Karyn Kedar, raved about Linda.) She's responsible for the Alfac duck, among other successful ad campaigns.

The challenge is that for every Aflac duck or "I just saved money on my car insurance" there are a million (or a billion?) ad campaigns that never go anywhere.

Why? Bad creative is part of it, but there's more to it, as the global marketing officer for P&G is quoted in the New Yorker article, saying â€œI believe todayâ€™s marketing model is broken. Weâ€™re applying antiquated thinking and work systems to a new world of possibilities.â€ Marketing just doesn't happen with traditional marketing communications - it happens at all points of contact between a customer and a brand.

This article did what so many conversations about the decline of advertising do - they focus on other traditional marketing tactics. The most popular one these days is the product placement, as if this is the next big thing. Expanding the vision from advertising to product placements is still myopic - real marketing happens at all points of contact between a brand and its customers, not just at those touchpoints which have been annointed as "Marketing Communications."

(And, I also love the latest iPod ads, for the shuffle, Tom. They are all over the place, and
they've done a great job telling the iPod Shuffle story. So, great ads still can work ... but the success of Aflac of iPod doesn't mean that the old model guarantees success. In fact, these succeses shows how infrequently home runs can be hit anymore with traditional marketing tools.)

How were the flights?

Posted by Steve Yastrow at March 24, 2005 1:30 PM