Read It

This week’s Newsweek, the “My Turn” essay. Title: “Live Life to the Fullest: Enjoy Every Sandwich.” The author begins, “Getting cancer didn’t move me to climb mountains, but it has made the ordinary feel better than ever.” Great advice for all of us! And implementation does not require a grim medical event! Meanwhile, I’m off to Tokyo. Enjoy Every Sandwich while I’m gone!

Military Maneuvers

Fast Company has assembled What Warfighters Can Teach Business Leaders, a collection of articles providing some lessons about military strategies and tactics that can be applied to business. For instance, the commander of a $1 billion warship discusses leadership:

There is no rocket science to leadership. Leadership is a collection of seemingly minor things that, taken as a whole, create a climate in which people feel honored and valued. When people feel as if they own their company, they want to do great things to help it and its leaders succeed.

Interesting advice from some (perhaps) unexpected sources.

It Began as a Rant

Airline foul-up. Catch 22. Code share computer flummox. (Repeatedly told I did not exist!) United villain-in-chief, USAir co-conspirator. Location: Ronald Reagan National in DC. Plan: Rant! Decision: Why bother?

Seems the major airlines are in a (near) death spiral. Costs totally whacky. Must cut. Do cut. Cut muscle as well as flab. Understaffed everywhere! (Hopefully not mechanics!) So service deteriorates. So more switch to cut-rate competitors. So more cuts by majors. More bods in the streets, pension cuts. Service deteriorates, morale in the tank. (Impossible to hold even a 30-second grudge relative to an airline employee in the high-travel summer season. They try their best in a hopeless situation … then wait for the next “give back” “request.”) So: Even more PAX exit for the lower-priced spread.

Answer? Perhaps none, except to truly and forever lose a couple of the majors. I, for one, doubt that the industry, as it now exists, can be saved. As for me as a business traveler, I cannot afford stress-inducing rants. Hence (see recent blogs) I’ve resorted to stress-reducing breathing exercises … at RR National such a quick breathing regimen reduced my pulse from a post-episode 84 to 58 in about three minutes.

Duh, as in Duh-rect

I’ve written a lot about the Web as a premier marketing tool over the last six or seven years. I’ve even been called a “wild-eyed advocate” at times. But in a larger vein, “it” all came home to roost for me in the last ten days, thanks to a rather large series of coincidences.

The “it”: “Big 3” TV ad-marketing-customer connection dominance is … dead. Welcome to … Direct World! As to those Coincidences:

(1) Ten days ago I was in Aspen, Colorado, attending a client meeting for infoUSA. By some measures the $300-million Omaha-based company maintains the largest private customer/client/human database in the U.S.A. I chatted into the wee small hours with scores of database-direct marketing gurus/execs from firms of all sizes and shapes.

(2) Last Tuesday I listened as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee claimed on prime time that the Dems have caught up with the Republicans on life and death issues of database reach and effectiveness. (Also listened to Howard Dean’s remarks—while he is a clear “loser,” his grassroots-Web initiatives certainly will be perhaps the highest impact happening in politics in the last 50 years.) (Incidentally, infoUSA is, I understand, intimately involved in the transformation-reformation of the Democrats’ Herculean direct customer/voter contact activities.)

(3) Also last week I began to shape a Tom Peters Company relationship with BzzAgent.com, one of the most intriguing Web-based proactive-purposeful-strategic “buzz builders” around. Their slogan: Exponential Word of Mouth Marketing and Customer Feedback Programs. (I’m going to test them on some forthcoming publications—stay tuned.)

(4) Upon re-reading Michael Levine’s Guerrilla PR Wired: Waging a Successful Publicity Campaign Online, Offline, and Everywhere in Between, I summarily decided that my future—for good or for ill—lies to a significant degree in blogging. (Again: Stay tuned!)

(5) I went to dinner with some high-powered “party plan” consultants working with my wife’s home furnishings business; she is contemplating a major strategic thrust in customer intimacy (and market share!) via an aggressive foray into home parties. (I agree with her. Stay tuned!)

(6) Finally, this past Friday and Saturday I attended a “little get-together” of about 15,000 reps-independent contractors from the field force of the World Financial Group, a huge “MLM”/Multi-Level Marketing organization which is owned by the giant Dutch insurer AEGON N.V. While I’ve had some skepticism about some MLM activities, I attribute that in part to a marketing traditionalist’s (me) inherent bias. I left fascinated and intrigued and ready to shed my biases.

Bottom line: Who knows why all six of these things occurred in the space of just nine days? Whatever the cause, it ended up being an accumulation of affairs the led me to the edge of a—and over the edge—tipping point. (Maybe even an epiphany!?) Supporting data point: In the last decade, mega-giant American Express has reduced its share of marketing dollars spent on TV from 80 percent to 35 percent, according to Ad Age … and American Express is hardly alone.

To me it (now/finally) seems obvious that everything from mass-customization manufacturing, Dell-style, to the Web, to databases such as infoUSA’s and database manipulation software from the likes of Oracle to “CRM” (Customer Relationship Management) software from Seibel Systems, salesforce.com, et al., to MLM’s increasing legitimacy and reach is racing, raging in the same direction: the first truly revolutionary shift in “customer contact” (marketing!) since the advent of “modern” marketing at P&G and the Harvard Business School 50 to 75 years ago. Winners (survivors!) of all shapes and sizes will … Think Direct … first and foremost! That is: Welcome to Direct World! On the bus … or off the bus. Posthaste.

Event Slides

Tom speaks to the World Financial Group in Las Vegas, NV, 30 July and 31 July 2004.

Offing Health Care Again

The entire health care establishment has been slow to jump aboard the IS train. Though it’s starting to get better. At any rate, for a great discussion-review of the topic see this week’s U.S. News & World Report‘s “Special Report,” titled “A High Dose of Tech.” The lead line is a quote from HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson: “Some grocery stores have better technology than our hospitals and clinics.” I’d disagree. I’d have said “most grocery stores …” Needless to say, there’s a high correlation between this issue and the criminal patient-safety statistics I blogged about a couple of days ago. Perhaps I’m super sensitive about this because I’m considering some minor elective surgery: Who in their right mind would voluntarily go near the Killing Fields … umm … hospitals?

On the Other Hand

Let there be (health care) kudos as warranted: It’s a “little thing,” but then most great “customer service” is an accumulation of so-called little things. I had an interview with a prospective surgeon. Upon finishing an exam, he prepared to discuss his hypotheses about my options. “Why don’t you get dressed first,” he said, “and then we’ll sit down in my office.” I enquired why I needed to add the extra steps of dressing and going to his office. “Well,” he explained, “I have you at a disadvantage when I’m in my white coat and you’re half-naked, in a gown, and splayed out on a table. When you’re dressed, and I’ve taken off the white coat, then we can have a professional discussion as equals about your case. After all, it is your case.” How refreshing! How rare! (In general, and especially among docs-surgeons!) How brilliant!

Speaking of Health and Wellness …

I offered my views on wellness in a long blog last week. I revealed that I’d bought the Whole Act about the importance of good breathing practices. (Wow do they work, on the fly, in stressful situations! And the great news—you always have it with you! Your breath, that is.) At any rate I have discovered a brilliant book on the topic, the best I’ve read so far. Namely, Free Your Breath, Free Your Life, by Dennis Lewis (Shambhala, 2004). No dogmatism. No mysticism. Practical, do-able practices. TP: Learn to breathe! Get a life!

Europe, Reeling

You think the Chinese boom has us (USA) on the run, pity poor Europe. That’s the view of Yale B. School dean and BusinessWeek columnist Jeffrey Garten. “Europe: Staring Into the Abyss” is the title of his screed in the August 2nd issue of BW. Later in the same issue, there’s another gloomy piece titled “Productivity Paralysis: If Europe Doesn’t Boost Spending on Tech, It Will Fall Further Behind.” Sky-high wages, miniscule work weeks, interminable vacations, and still recalcitrant unions in “Old Europe” are not a pretty mixture as true globalization—from Shanghai to Bangalore to Prague—picks up steam.

You Must Read …


I love Mark Stevens’ Your Marketing Sucks. (I admit it, I start by loving the title.) Clear language. Strong point of view. Actionable as the dickens. And … extreme. (My favorite word.) “Extreme Marketing” is the author’s mantra. Book came at the perfect time for me. I’m having a knock-down, drag-out tiff with the CEO of a mid-size company over whether or not he needs a fulltime CMO/Chief Marketing Officer. I say yes … unequivocally. He says “others” (unspecified) can “pick up pieces of your precious marketing thing.” I say he’s full of crap. I am a champion of inspired, intense, radical marketing—for the one-person accountancy, or mega-corp. I have at least one surprisingly new convert-ally: GE CEO Jeff Immelt just hired that firm’s first “CMO.” Hooray. (And … ’bout time.)