my 2 cents

Hometown hero

The suburban New York town where I grew up and still live -- Mount Vernon -- has been home to a pretty good number of celebrities for a city its size.

It was the birthplace of writer E.B. White, author of the children's classic Charlotte's Web.  Actors Art Carney and Denzel Washington also hail from Mount Vernon.  Eternal teenager Dick Clark is from my town.  Sports figures like basketball's Gus Hall and baseball's Kenny Singleton (he was a high school classmate) are from Mount Vernon.  Others who have lived here include jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal, Cosby co-star Felicia Rashad and biz guru Seth Godin, with whom I used to play pinball.  Rock musicians like Roy Blumenfeld of the legendary Blues Project, as well as more contemporary names like Heavy D also come from this city of 70,000.

We recently lost one of our hometown heroes, pro-wrestler Captain Lou Albano.  I didn't know Captain  Lou.  I may have met him a long time ago at a local political or charity thing.  I know his younger brother George, who is a well-respected and much-loved principal at an elementary school in town that's won all sorts of awards for excellence.  George is a nice, caring and giving person. I've had the privilege of working with him over the years on local school board activities.

So as I was reading some of the obits on Captain Lou, it didn't surprise me that the kooky-looking, blustery big guy that was Captain Lou to the world was just the opposite in his private life... a family-first person, eager to help others whenever he could.  He came from a good family, whose values stayed with him.

It just serves as a reminder that you can't always a judge a book by its cover.

Condolences to George and the Albano family.  Mount Vernon will always be proud of Captain Lou.

Rules of Thumb

A book review...

A few months ago, Alan Webber, co-founder of Fast Company Magazine, sent a copy of his new book "Rules of Thumb."  Since I read and enjoy the magazine, I agreed to give Webber's book a try.

I finally got around to reading it on a recent business trip and then on the beach on vacation.  It's an easy read.  Alan is a good storyteller.  Stories, well-told, insightful and thought-provoking, are what fills this book and make it enjoyable.

Sub-titled "52 Truths for Winning in Business Without Losing Yourself," the book is collection of brief stories and anecdotes that illustrate 52 rules -- one for each week of the year.  Webber says he spent several years jotting down insights and "rules" on index cards and finally culled them down to 52.

.............................................................................
        A random sampling of the 52 Rules:
            Rule #13: Learn to take "no" as a question.
            Rule #22: Learn to see the world through the eyes of your customer.
            Rule #23: Keep two lists -- What keeps you up at night, and what gets you up in
                            the morning?
            Rule #32: Content isn't king.  Context is king.
            Rule #36: Managing your emotional flow is more important than managing your
                            cashflow.
            Rule #51: Take your work seruiously. Yourself, not so much.
............................................................................           
 
What I like about this book is that it's not a "win at any cost" type of text.  It doesn't present hard & fast things you must do in order to succeed.  Instead, it's a delightful and interesting group of stories that illustrate Webber's points.  It includes real-life examples of how kindness, consideration and empathy, combined with the more traditional "success" attributes like persistance, motivation, innovation, etc. can make you a good manager, leader and a success in business.

What's key, Webber shows, is how important it is to stay true to yourself and your core values.  It's not necessarily about having the most money or the biggest company.  It's more about making a living, yes, but also meeting challenges, attaining goals and, along the way, having fun and doing good.

I won't go into details of the 52 rules here, since I won't do them justice in a few sentences.  I'll just say, it's worth a read.  You'll see for yourself.

"Rules of Thumb" by Alan M. Webber
2009, Harper Collins.  $24.99 US  ($16.49 on Amazon)

Other Voices: Realistic Expectations

We give this space over periodically to marketers who are not bloggers, in order to bring other voices into the mix and possibly encourage the guest writers to participate in the blogosphere.

Today's post is from Alan Hirsch, my former partner in p.r. (and in crime) and also my mentor when I first began in the field.  Alan, the first two-time contributor to Other Voices, headed G+A Communications in New York until a few years ago when he retired -- or as he says, he's now "on the beach."

Realistic Expectations

You probably know Lou Holtz as a popular college football analyst, which he is, but he is also a great philosopher with a thousand stories to tell.  Today I'm sharing something Lou Holtz taught me in 1980, when he gave our group a speech which I've never forgotten.

At that time, Holtz was the football coach at the University of Arkansas, where in seven years he compiled a good 60-21-2 record while maintaining his coaching and teaching standards.  Holtz told us that if we wanted to be in a position to sell things to people, we had to live up to certain standards.

He said he always tried to live up to those standards so he could sell his plans and ideas as a coach.  It is simple, he said, and if we do what he tells us, we will succeed.

This is what Lou Holtz told us:

There are only three questions people ask of you, even though they don't verbalize the questions to themselves.  If someone can answer "yes" to them all, then they can succeed.

Holtz' three questions...

1.  Can I trust you?

2.  Do you know what you are talking about?

3.  Do you care about me personally?

One "no" answer to any of the above and you will most likely fail.

In past years, I've used those questions over and over to protect against disappointment.  It has worked.

I once had a supervisor who fired a guy for no reason other than to placate a stupid client who had complained to my supervisor about him.  The guy who got fired had been doing the right thing, spending most of his time with the media as he was supposed to at the opening of a luxury hotel, since his assignment was media relations.  But the client had wanted the guy to spend more time attending to him.  Had he done that, of course, he wouldn't have done his media relations job well. 

But the client complained to my supervisor and the guy was fired when he got back to New York.  I was appointed as the replacement.

When I got the new assignment, I asked the supervisor why he hadn't stuck up for the guy.  "You should have told the client that the guy was doing his job and it would be wrong to fire him, but you didn't," I told my supervisor.  "That means you won't stick up for me, even when I deserve to be supported."

"You got that right, Alan," my boss told me.  

I worked on that account under that supervisor for 20 years, but that supervisor could never disappoint me.  I always knew he didn't care about me personally. 

-- Alan Hirsch

Other Voices: Memories and The Last Hurrah

I give this space over, from time to time, to non-bloggers.  The idea is to bring other voices into the mix and, possibly, get others hooked on the joys of blogging.

I've known and worked with Judd Cohen for more than 25 years.  We worked together at a mid-size p.r. agency back in the early 1980s, and we've shared office space and, occasionally, clients since the early 1990s.

Judd is a baseball fanatic.  For several years, he and his family made their summer vacation a pilgrimage to visit and see a ballgame in every Major  League park in the U.S. and Canada.  He may write a book about it some day.

Next season, he'll have two new ballparks to visit -- right here in New York.  I know which will be first on the list.

....

I was at Yankee Stadium last night; my final visit after 56 years attending Yankee games.

The final night at The Stadium was a tribute to, as everyone called it, an "iconic" ballpark that  some of the greatest teams and players called home and where some of the greatest games were played.  But, what most of us were celebrating were memories and the passage of time.  For me, it started with my first game and my father buying me a hot dog (25 cents, sold from wicker baskets) when I was eight.  They tasted so great back then.  I took my son to his first game at age six on a cool, sunny September Sunday during the Yankees skein of losing seasons in the late '80s and bought him almost every item in the souvenir store.

Everyone last night had memories.  That's what we were really cheering, the memories and the players who helped make them and brought them back to life last night.  After the game, as the Yankees paraded around the field, I looked around the stadium at the great seats behind home plate that my father used to get, to the last row of the upper deck in right field (they called it the Grandstand then, and admission was $1.25), where I used to sit in high school, to the seat where we sat when Jim Abbott pitched his no-hitter (my younger son's second game), to all the other seats on Opening Day, the World Series, playoffs, dull games.  The ballpark was alive with memories.  I felt emotional, but held it back and put my arm around my son.  In a way, he had grown up at Yankee Stadium.  He is now 25, a broadcaster who covered many games there in the past several years.  He interviews players whose autographs he sought as a kid and is friendly with journalists and broadcasters he looked up to.  He has his memories.

A baseball game is a great bonding experience for fathers and sons, perhaps the best, and in talking about baseball we usually say much more.  I also learned something years ago.  In the relaxed environment of a baseball game, kids probably tell their parents more about their lives than they normally do.

So the old ballpark is no more, the games will move across the street to the Xanadu by the East River, but the memories remain.  We'll have new ones starting next year and some day my son will go to a game with his kids and tell them about his memories of the old stadium, and the last game there.

-- Judd Cohen

Weekend fun: Fatherhood

CK tipped me off to a great PSA from the Ad Council.  It promotes parental involvement, especially among dads.  More than 79% of Americans feel "the most significant family or social problem facing America is the physical absence of the father from the home," says the Ad Council.

Play this...



It's a great spot that effectively gets an important message across.

It made me think of all the silly things I did with my kids when they were young.  I used to play "runaway boat" with them, splashing around the kiddie pool at the beach club.  My daughter or son would get onto my back and hang on as I'd crawl around the shallow pool making loud motorboat sounds.  If they'd fall off, I'd keep going until I'd run out of gas so they could catch me.  They'd then have to take me to the pool's edge, where they'd have to fill the boat up with vanilla ice cream-flavored gas.

Or at bedtime, the pre-book routine became "the dump."  I'd get down on all fours and they'd climb onto my back.  They'd steer me into their bedroom and I'd pull up alongside the bed and try to bump them off my back and onto the bed.  They'd hold on for dear life, and it became a nightly game.  I just started doing "the dump" with my grandson Jack, who is 2-1/2.

I may have looked foolish doing these things, but I loved it -- and the kids remember and still laugh about it.  Truthfully, I may have had more fun doing it than the kids did.  Which makes it hard to imagine dads who don't do silly things with their kids.  How sad.

Just for fun, leave a comment and let us know what silly thing(s) you did or now do with your kids.  Or silly things your dad did with you when you were little.  If you're too embarrassed, take another look at the clip above.

Cheap labor

My company, Reich Communications, hired an intern for the summer -- a nice kid going into his senior year at the University of Pittsburgh, majoring in communications.  So far, in the week he's worked for me, he's researched some media lists, did some news release rewrites and made a batch of calls to radio stations to set up phone interviews for one of my clients.

A lot of it's been what we'd call grunt work, but for Josh it's all new and part of learning how a p.r. agency works.

Although I'm not paying him, I offered to give him $25/day to cover his trainfare and lunch.

Two other companies on my floor also have interns.  One is another p.r. business; the other is a start-up online publication.  Neither are paying their interns a penny.  And their interns are often working more than 7-hour days.

Is this fair?

I know interns use this experience to get real-world background, hone their skills and have something to add to their resume.   And it's also true that it often takes more time to explain and oversee a beginner than it would take if you did it yourself.  I've probably spent a few hours already just talking with Josh, answering his questions and trying to put the tasks he's doing into the perspective of the broader picture.

But still... is it fair?

One young woman who just finished a 6-month internship for my neighbor was spending $100/week to commute from suburban New Jersey.  To be fair, my friend with the p.r. agency gave her a Mac laptop as a thank-you but if you do the math, the intern still came out on the losing end financially.

An internship is a learning experience for interns, but should those of us in business think of them simply as cheap labor? 

What do you think?

.

Listening -- The key component of Conversation

A few months ago I was in Grand Rapids doing a press event for a new documentary film on traumatic brain injury.  One of the people I worked with out there, Cindy Barrus, is a rehabilitative therapist who works with people who've suffered traumatic brain injury, possibly from a fall or a car crash.  I marveled at  the dedication and patience people like Cindy have as they do their job, often seeing progress moving more slowly than a snail.

Cindy has on her office wall a brief essay about the power of listening and I asked her to send it to me.  

With all the talk around the blogosphere lately about Conversation, especially as many of us have just finished writing our essays for the second collaborative book The Age of Conversation 2, the words I had seen on Cindy's wall seemed worth sharing.

Listening is perhaps the most important part of conversation.  If you're not listening, then it's a one-way communication.  That's not good in everyday life, and it's certainly not good in marketing.

From Cindy's wall...

"To listen is very hard because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. 

True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.

Listening is so much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond.  Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings.  The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start to feel accepted, start taking their words more seriously and start discovering their true selves.

Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner serves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you."

Listen to the words above. 

I got hugged by a Grouch last night

I was finishing a post about newspapers, which I had planned for today.  But that will wait until next week, because I met Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch last night.

Yes, I spoke with two of my favorite Sesame Street characters at the annual Christopher Awards last night.  Master puppeteer Caroll Spinney, who created Big Bird and Oscar when the groundbreaking children's show began 39 years ago, was a presenter at the annual awards program that recognizes outstanding work in TV, film and books.

Before he presented the Christopher Award for outstanding children's books, he told a story that touched me -- and it obviously touched him because he became choked up as he told it from the podium.

He told of a letter that came to the producers of Sesame Street from the parents of a young boy of about 5 who was dying of cancer.  He had lost the will to fight and was depressed -- never smiling.  The parents asked if it might be possible for the boy to get a phone call from Big Bird.

When the letter was passed along to Spinney, who seems to be a gentle and compassionate soul, he immediately agreed.  He said he called the boy and, in his Big Bird voice, spoke for several minutes with the sick boy.

A week later he received another letter from the parents, telling him how thrilled their son had been to get the call.  He showed excitement and smiled for the first time in weeks as he told his parents, who were at his bedside in the hospital, that Big Bird had called him and he was happy that Big Bird was his friend.  A few minutes later, he peacefully slipped away.

Spinney's voice choked with emotion as he told the story.  I had a chance to chat with him for a while after the ceremony, and he said to this day he is glad that he showed compassion and called that boy.  As we talked about it, his eyes teared and he explained it still moves him, even after a few years.

Spinney told me that Big Bird's role originally was simply to teach about letters and numbers.  But he realized the importance of teaching about compassion after he walked past a man on the street who he assumed was a derelict muttering to himself.  Something made him stop, turn around and ask the man if he needed help.  It turned out, the the man couldn't walk well and had been asking strangers to help him across the street.  Spinney walked the man not only across the street, but the three blocks to his apartment building.

The next day, he told the producers of Sesame Street that he wanted Big Bird to teach kids about feelings and compassion.  And after a while, Big Bird became the character who expressed concern about others' feelings.

Spinney, part of a pioneering TV show, added a new approach that taught life lessons perhaps more valuable than the ABCs.

After we talked for a while, I thanked him for taking the time.  And he said, "No. Thank you for coming over to talk with me."

And then Oscar gave me a hug.  How cool!

David, Oscar and Caroll Spinney (photo courtesy of Jules Peimer, 15minutes.com)

[To those who I met at BS 08, if I look different in the photo, it's because after seeing the BS 08 pix of myself, I ran out to get a long-overdue haircut.  It'll grow back quickly.]

Appreciating life -- a great job perk

One of the things I love about my work is the range of things in which I get involved.  I enjoy doing publicity for media- and advertising-related clients.  Promoting the semi-annual rare vintage poster auction in New York is fun.  And it feels good to put lifesaving messages out there for The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

A project I've been working on for The National Road Safety Foundation has opened my eyes and given me a renewed appreciation for the simple wonders of life.

I'm in Grand Rapids, Michigan, promoting the world premiere of a new documentary film called "The Other Breakfast Club."  It's not a big release from Warner Brothers or Miramax, but a small documentary produced by my National Road Safety Foundation client.  Aside from the premiere tonight in front of 400 invited guests, the film may never be shown again in a commercial theater.  But it will be seen by students in thousands of high schools nationwide, where it will hopefully get some young people to think and behave more carefully when they get behind the wheel.

The film tells the story of six young people who suffered traumatic brain injury and were in a coma after traffic crashes.  They all were treated and have been undergoing rehabititative therapy at healthcare facilities here in Grand Rapids, which seems to have become a center of brain injury treatment expertise.

The film shows the long and painfully slow struggle people with brain injuries endure to become whole and function normally again.  Unlike a physical injury like a broken leg, the brain heals slowly and, often, never completely.  For the survivor of a car crash who has a brain injury -- and there are 382,000 of them every year -- it often becomes a total re-learning process.  The victim has to learn once again how to organize thoughts, how to do seemingly mindless tasks like brushing your teeth, getting dressed, feeding yourself, walking.

Most of us just don't think about the agonizingly slow healing process and the courage and strength it demands of the victims and their families.

I now can begin to understand it, having spent time with the young people profiled in "The Other Breakfast Club."  I see the determination and the inner strength it takes to keep pushing toward recovery -- often at a snail's pace.  I am impressed by the stamina of parents, who don't give up.  And I am humbled by the true angels -- the healthcare workers who give so much of themselves to help people with brain injury try to put their lives back together.

It's also been interesting to see the reaction of the media to this story.  I can see how these supposedly hardened journalists are also touched by the sheer force of the crash victims' will to live and strugle to become whole.  It's relected in the story on the front page of today's Grand Rapids Press, and the stories on all the TV and radio stations who covered our story today.  Clearly, they were touched.

Getting to know people like the members of "The Other Breakfast Club" and those who are helping them is one of the great perks of my job.

The film will soon be viewable on the National Road Safety Foundation website -- www.nationalroadsafety.org  Or I'd be glad to send a free copy, if you send me your mailing address.

America's sexiest cities (really)

I can't make this stuff up. 

I got an email alert from Forbes.com, with the headline "America's Most Lustful Cities."  So, naturally, I pushed aside my pressing calls and reports and pitches to click onto this story.

Sure enough, Forbes -- not Playboy or Penthouse -- is reporting on a Nielsen study of per-capita over-the-counter contraceptives purchases over the past 52 weeks in major U.S. markets.

Like me, I'm sure most of you would guess Las Vegas, New York and L.A. would top the list, but no... none of them even came close to making the top 10 list.  Those three self-proclaimed sin cities actually scored an average or below-average index.

The top 10, in order are:

1.  Denver   --- I guess they don't need to fly to be members of the mile-high club.

2.  San Antonio (tie)

     Portland, Ore.

4.  Seattle   ---  It rains a lot in Portland and Seattle, so I guess people look for indoor activies.

5.  Salt Lake City / Boise  --- I haven't the faintest.

6.  Washington DC   --- All those politicians down there are looking to f*ck the public, so it's no surprise they're doing it to each other as well.

7.  Cincinnati  (tie)

     Columbus   --- Same comment as Salt Lake City.

9.  Baltimore   --- I guess it's the proximity to D.C.

10. Buffalo/Rochester  --- Got to do something when you're snowed in for days.

The article admits that condom and contraceptive sales are an imperfect way to gauge sexual activity, since married and monogamous couples don't use protection as much.

I don't know what all of this has to do with media, advertising or public relations. 

I wonder how these cities stack up in terms of blogging activity.  Any of you live in these top 10 lustful places?  Let us know if the survey looks anything like the town you know.