A few days ago, I was bestowed with a charming and old-fashioned gesture: A wish to “Have a Wonderful Weekend.” The problem is, the gesture was plastic. Literally. It was stamped on a bag of band-aids and toothpaste I’d purchased in a local pharmacy. Perhaps I am a cold-hearted SOB, but I don’t get the warm and fuzzies when a bag whispers sweet nothings in my ears. In fact I wanted to, and ultimately did, tell the pharmacy they would be advised to replace the weekend “love note” with one that reads: Whatever You Need, Whenever You Need It. Just call us at xxx or visit us at pleasingyoumakesushappy.com.

Why wasn’t this done at the outset? Why won’t they do it ever? Because what used to be one-on-one customer service that came from a culture that truly respected and appreciated customers as the soul and the lifeblood of a business has been reduced to a series of monotonous and superficial scripts that come from nowhere near the heart:

Have a nice day.

Please hold, we’ll be right with you.

If you would like to talk to a live person, press the pound key.

Well actually, I would prefer to talk to a dead person-or even a plastic bag- than push ten more buttons until I find someone totally annoyed that they have to DEAL with a customer. What’s really happening is that businesses are so focused on consummating transactions that they spend no time building enduring relationships. Plastic bags can’t do it. A “Thank You For Your Patronage ” note stamped on an invoice can’t do it. The only way it can be done is if Management develops a culture that truly embraces customers.

The classic customer service survey asks people:

1. Do you like our products/services?

2. Would you buy them again?

3. Would you recommend them to a friend?

What they don’t ask goes to the core of great business, of extraordinary companies:

Do you have faith in our company? Do you think we are committed to you?

They don’t go beneath the surface, the superficial, the scripts because they don’t want to know the answers. They don’t care. The DNA of true customer service, of businesses built on relationships as opposed to transactions, has virtually disappeared. Sadly, today’s managers think it’s all in the plastic bags.

Many of us are dream chasers, like kites floating through the Western sky, the dreams captivate and drive us. Running after them, feeling the wind in our face, we are exhilarated. Intoxicated. If we can only catch the kite, grab hold of the dream, we will pass through to another dimension. We will understand the mysteries. It will be our Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone, the dream, will be our prism. Through it we will see the truth. So we run into the wind and chase the kite. Such is the life of a dream chaser.

I am happy to live that life. I would have it no other way. But I know that this is a lie wrapped in a lovely and deceptive package. The kite is simply an illusion dancing in the blue. You can love it but you cannot rely on it. Not to reveal the truth about anything but your own limitless and invaluable imagination.

The real truth is delivered in the hard boiled experiences of the street. Of the nights alone in a laboratory or in front of a blank computer screen, searching for the words or the formulas that don’t come easily. They are embedded in Edison’s revelation that genius is 99% sweat and 1% kites.

The great among us know how to look past the lies we tell ourselves in the midst of our romantic delusions and how the focus on the tedious work of experimenting with compounds delivers the first antibiotic. Ask Alexander Fleming. And how the refusal to accept the lies about vaccines, led to the cure for polio. Look up Jonas Salk. And that the great bulwarks of media could be torn down and humiliated. Ask Rupert Murdoch.

When the lies are pipe dreams we refuse to see through, they are stop signs that thwart our personal achievement. But when they are soaring kites that prompt us to chase the horizon, to look beyond it, to enter states of thought and wonderment that place all of the lies in their proper light and turn them into catalysts for discovering the truth, they are divine. Divine.

Einstein liked to say that his intelligence was a wonderful asset but his sense of imagination enabled him to encircle the globe. It is so interesting to realize that in the right hands, our hands if we allow it, if we adore the kites but see them for what they are, we recognize they are something so strange and so sweet.

They are lies that open windows to the truth.

Mark Stevens
CEO




Click here to read the full interview with blogger Lewis Green.

This story appeared in the Bedford/ Pound Ridge Record Review newspaper on Friday August 17th 2007, and is reprinted here with permission.

Freedom of speech violation or just doing business?

By EVE MARX of the Bedford Record Review

Mark Stevens is ticked. The Pound Ridge resident and CEO of MSCO, a Rye Brook-based international management and marketing firm, took a hit earlier this year when an ad for Mr. Steven’s latest book, “YourMarketingSucks.com,” on a billboard in New Rochelle was abruptly removed. He said Clear Channel Outdoor, the company responsible for the billboard, never notified him they were taking it down.

The reason, a spokesperson for Clear Channel, Jennifer Gery, said, was, “Some officials complained.”

In addition to running a company, Mr. Stevens is the author of 20 books including “Sudden Death: The Rise and Fall of E.F. Hutton,” a Wall Street Journal best seller and Library Journal business book of the year. His enormously popular “Your Marketing Sucks,” published by Crown in 2003, is a perennial best seller in paperback and overseas. The “Your Marketing Sucks”billboard has been displayed in numerous markets around the U.S. including Manhattan, and two locations in New Rochelle.

“The billboard was up and we were getting a lot of response from it,” Mr. Stevens said last week. “It got people going to our Web site and generated a lot of Web site traffic to the MSCO Web site. Then one day I was in a conference room in my offices in Rye Brook and I got a call from a guy who demanded to speak to my assistant.”

Mr. Stevens said the man was “furious.”

“He said he was driving along and he saw the ‘Your Marketing Sucks’ billboard and he flew into a rage. He started screaming. He said he had his 5-year-old daughter in the car and that my billboard had ruined her life.”

Mr. Stevens said he never got the name of the man, who said he was a vice president of a division of Berkshire Hathaway, an Omaha, Nebraska based company whose chairman and CEO is Warren Buffett. “He said my billboard ruined his daughter’s life but his phone call basically ruined my day.”

Mr. Stevens said he tried explaining to the man that the word “suck” was not an obscenity.

The caller wouldn’t hear it.

“He demanded I rip the board down,” Mr. Stevens said. “He said that if I didn’t, he would bring the wrath of the entire Berkshire Hathaway empire down on me and my business. I told him I don’t take to threats kindly and I said goodbye.”

But that wasn’t the end of the story.

Soon afterwards, without notice, Clear Channel tore the billboard down.

Mr. Stevens only became aware of this turn of events by accident when he took a drive to see his billboard and found it blank.

“I thought it was a mistake,” he said. He called Clear Channel and was told his message was down because of official complaints. Besides his grievance that its removal was in violation of his contractual agreement, Mr. Stevens feels his First Amendment rights have been violated. “Where do you draw the line?” he said. “It’s like taking every newspaper in the country and burning it because you don’t like the headline.”

Since then, Mr. Stevens has been interviewed by USA Today, Reuters, and numerous radio networks about the incident. What really ticked him off was that Clear Channel gave him no reimbursement, no apology and no explanation.

In similar situations across the nation, residents and lawmakers have been demanding signage deemed to be offensive be taken down. In some cases, the signs do not have to be removed, but must be set a certain distance from the highway. There may be other restrictions. For example, a billboard in Manhattan displaying bare bottoms with smiley faces never saw the light of day after a judge last July temporarily blocked its installation because the nearby Times Square Church objected. In 2001 the billboard industry added an anti-obscenity clause to its code of principles. The clause has been both vilified and applauded depending on who is doing the complaining.

“I feel completely angry,” Mr. Stevens said, although he said Clear Channel agreed to put up another billboard in another location with different text.

“They did not notify me which they are contractually obligated to do,” Mr. Stevens said. “It’s crazy, but there were two billboards in the same community that had the same message. One is still up and the other is down.”

Mr. Stevens said at one point he was planning to take Clear Channel to court, but then they gave him a free board. “There are other companies that do billboards,” Mr. Stevens said. “I could have gone to any one of them. My company has a major campaign and there hasn’t been a single problem anywhere else in the country except for New Rochelle.”

Mr. Stevens said there is nothing pornographic about the word “suck,” which he believes lies at the heart of the issue. “The word is not pejorative. There’s nothing pornographic or insulting to anyone except for marketers whose ideas don’t work.” He said he can’t be responsible for things that other people have a problem with. “There are people who have a problem with dogs who aren’t dressed,” he said. “There’s a whole movement against dogs not wearing clothes.” He also pointed out that a diet book called “Skinny Bitch” is now a hot best seller.

“Somebody at Clear Channel is clearly afraid of somebody in New Rochelle,” Mr. Stevens asserted. “I have no idea who called me that day on the phone. I feel like I’m on trial and I don’t even know who the accuser is.”

When contacted by The Record-Review, Jennifer Gery, the Clear Channel spokeswoman and an employee of Brainerd said that she was no longer commenting on the situation and that a Clear Channel executive would have to respond to any questions. So far there has been no response.

“I know political correctness has risen to tidal wave proportions,” Mr. Stevens said. “Still, ‘YourMarketing Sucks.com’ is not the worst thing anyone is going to hear or see all week.”

This story reprinted with the permission of the Bedford/ Pound Ridge Record Review.

Okay, the iPhone has eclipsed Paris Hilton as the media’s hysterical focus of attention. It’s the new subject of furious debate that amounts to nothing more than a tempest in a teapot. Will the iPhone sell? Does it connect slowly to the Internet? Is it too expensive? Is it truly a technical marvel? Is Jobs just a huckster with slick designs?

The discussion dominates the national dialogs, techie columnists are spewing forth with their self-important critiques, news shows are holding viewer polls and…Steve Jobs could care less. Not a whit. Zero. He isn’t listening to a word. He’s off at his bowling league or whatever the hell he does when he isn’t making billions selling stuff everyone else wishes they thought of.

It’s not that he doesn’t care about the iPhone’s success. This is one driven capitalist. It’s just that he knows that the iPhone has a secret weapon that assures its fantastic success. A weapon he did not create but one he manipulates masterfully.

It is called Christmas.

Nothing, absolutely nothing can stop millions from putting iPhones under the tree on December 25^th. Steve Jobs owns a big share of Apple but his dirty little secret is that he owns a bigger share of Christmas.

Slow connecting to the Internet? He’ll fix that but even if he didn’t, do I want a damn tie for the holidays or an iPhone? I have absolutely no need for the new Jobs toy, I may not even use it. I may stick with my ugly old cell phone and ancient Blackberry Pearl, but don’t give me the damn tie. I want an iPhone. Just because it’s cool and fun and sexy and none of your business, I want it. And I want to give it for Christmas. Dozens of them. And the gods of tech reviews can’t stop me.

Steve’s true genius isn’t commercializing the graphical user interface, or music downloads, or putting every form of digital information in your palm. It is instead in owning Christmas.

There is a big, noisy, powerful lesson here for everyone in business. Don’t just focus on the product or service, think about THE day people have to buy something en-masse and make it YOUR day. Then you can go bowling while everyone else is working.

Ask Hallmark. Steve did.

Now tell me what you are going to do differently to make your day.

Mark Stevens
CEO

Imagine this: a company arrives in town and offers the good people who live there jobs. No one is forced to take one. No one holds a gun to their head. The same company then has the temerity to say, “If you work hard and serve our customers well, we will promote you from within.” Horrors.

Now let’s look at the other side. A company arrives in town and offers the good people who live there just about anything they want for less money. The bastards actually save people money. Money they can use for nest eggs and college tuitions. Why doesn’t the National Guard march in and close down a company like this?

Hearing Wal-Mart’s detractors you would believe the company is a disgrace. Instead it is a national treasure. Sam Walton started with an idea, and with drive and determination he built a wonderful business. Isn’t this the essence of capitalism? Oh, but wait a minute, do the Wal-Mart whiners want capitalism?

Oh, I know the school of hatred that says Wal-Mart arrives in towns and crushes the local merchants. The ones who charge you more? Who lived off the fat of little or lazy competition at your expense? Here’s what I say to that: Wal-Mart is great for competition. I have competitors. I lose business to them. When? When they are smarter or cheaper than my company. And it makes me think:

• How can we raise the bar on our work?
• How can we be as efficient as possible?
• Do we do enough to promote from within?

Walk the streets around any Wal-Mart in the world. What will you find? A mass of small businesses that found a way to survive, to thrive, precisely because they understand business is a jungle and that they can’t rely on the whiners to protect them. If any of these small businesses become the next Starbucks, the whiners will want to punish them for their success in a heartbeat. Blame global warming on them. Toss them in the prison for the rich and throw away the key.

And by the way, on those same Wal-Mart streets you also find a Target, which became an exponentially better business competing with the house that Sam built.

If you don’t have a Wal-Mart on turf, pretend you do. Go to sleep concerned. Never settle for how your business currently performs. Declare war on every aspect. Leave no rocks to hide under.

And Wal-Mart stop wasting good shareholder dollars on PR to silence the whiners, because you can’t. This is their sex.

Mark Stevens
CEO

I drink, on average, eight a day– Diet Cokes, that is. Talk about a breakfast with voltage! Nothing comes close. I worship the gunk.

As do we all. Even Britney Spears has been rumored to drink 24 Cokes a day! We are not Americans. We are, technically speaking, “descendants of Pilgrims who are addicted to brown carbonated dish water with legal overdoses of sugar.” That’s our beloved Coca Cola. A nation of Coke addicts– that would be us.

In my life, no other company, not one, has remained as solid as Mt. Rushmore and so steadfastly successful. Oh sure, there was the new coke, old coke marketing idiocy, but the only ones who made a federal case out of that were the losers in the business schools who call themselves “professors”– a euphemism for “what the hell is going on?”
How has Coke made us not customers, but addicts? Otherwise disciplined people craving the stuff? Well actually, by practicing the oft discussed but rarely practiced, majesty of execution.

Sure, Coke, the national drug company, advertises and holds events and other junk to move the gunk, but mostly they do nothing but the really “hard stuff” that is at the core of every business:

1. Distribution: Coke is everywhere. That is no accident. Forget the advertising agency that dreams up stupid taglines. The wholesalers deserve more credit. Ever walk into a food store and want a Coke and walk away empty handed. No! That’s execution!

2. Ever have a bad Coke? A stale one? One that tastes somehow not like a Coke? No. Quality control is King and when you serve a billion a day and never screw one up. Wow!

3. The drug of choice is always, always cool. To rappers and hip hoppers and investment bankers and accountants. Yes, accountants, (actuaries are still stuck on milk, but who wants to satisfy actuaries?)

Coke is NOT a creature of marketing. It is a success story of execution. A national addiction. And when you need a drug, and it’s there, you are addicted for life! What a life. What a country.

Mark Stevens
CEO

Tell me what your success story of execution is.

Janis Joplin, the wild woman who downed Southern Comfort like it was Poland Spring burst on the drug-soaked rock scene in the 60’s and became its most electric diva. The girl was wired. She screamed her own brand of blues like she had ten minutes to get it all out before she died disappearing as fast as she arrived. But her legacy remains. The music, sure, but even more potent than that, the nuclear passion that fueled it.

In a real sense, Joplin was a mini industry, selling records and concert dates and Janis stuff. I think about how she ran her company, her life, as I walk down the halls of so many corporate offices.

Passion? There’s not a trace. Electricity? It’s like all the wires were cut. Dreams? What do dreams have to do with business?

No, the typical office is a virtual graveyard. Quiet, predictable, passionless. And that’s what leads to Buick’s and Campbell’s Soup and Ann Taylor clothing. Management there takes the Joplin’s of the world out in the shed and shoots them for lunch.

Every year (this summer will be no different) bright and jet fueled kids will stream out of colleges across America and dive in what they believe will be exciting companies because they have cool brands. And they will find, in an awful flash, that they are locked into hardened bunkers that demand adherence to the way it is, as opposed to suggesting how it should be.

The kids lose but not nearly as much as the companies that hire them. They put a lid on the creativity, the raw power, the dangerous thinking that is the real secret weapon of the Google’s and the Pixar’s of the world. They institutionalize mediocrity.

How can you prevent this postal mentality from turning your company into a motor vehicle bureau? Only by declaring war. With passion. The way Janis would do it:

• Seniority no longer counts for anything. Even the most junior of juniors can bring ideas to the CEO.
• A chief innovator is engaged and empowered to challenge and discard every tired practice that is clogging up the company’s arteries.
• The company’s biggest critic-from the media, the trade, etc-is brought on board and given a real platform for change.
• Management answers the questions that has been gnawing at it for years: How come it’s no longer fun to work here? And why don’t our records sell like they used to?

Mark Stevens
CEO

Sometimes, a question is infinitely superior to an answer. Often because the so-called answers are simply camouflaged and subterfuge. In this spirit, let me ask ten business questions and invite your answers.

1. Why don’t companies have Chief Customer Officers?

2. Why do managers complain for years about slackers under their command but allow them to continue collecting paychecks?

3. Why is it near impossible to have a customer service hot-line where a human answers the phone when you call and provides service?

4. Why do companies allow their advertising agencies to vie for creative awards as opposed to driving sales?

5. Why have you never had a female CEO?

6. When is the last time you invented something new?

7. Why do you fear Wal-Mart?

8. Why do you have a diversity policy? Why doesn’t it just happen?

9. Why don’t your managers ever go out and sell your product/service themselves? Ever?

10. Why do you lose customers?

Mark Stevens
CEO

If you were starting a business today, whose brand would you want to leverage? The august American poet with a junkyard voice? The eclipse of the sun beauty with enough sex appeal to melt a star? Or who the hell is Conrad Hilton?

Let’s think about this in business terms. In metaphorical and pragmatic terms. If you were selling just about anything but stuck-in-the-sixties Volvos, you would want Paris over Bob. So you call her agent, pay her a zillion dollars and presto, you are a genius. “We got Paris! We got Paris!”

A feat comparable only to the Manhattan project (in the eyes of the mega budget Clio drooling crowd that calls themselves marketers). And Ms. Hilton may help sell your stuff for a while, but forgive me but I am driving to a bigger issue here. For most of us, the goal is to build enduring businesses as opposed to here today, gone tomorrow cooleramas. Dylan has been a major brand, a mini industry, for four decades. And one that has accomplished something of true and timeless significance.

In four decades, Paris Hilton will be as cool and as magnificent as the Pet Rock, The Chia Pet. Odds are she will not even be remembered. Except perhaps for a vague connection to the titan who built a great and enduring business and bankrolled Paris’ ascension up the trajectory of zero-substance global heroes.

Which brings us to Conrad. Long after “Like A Rolling Stone” is elevator music and Paris is just a city again, millions will be gambling in Hilton’s casinos, sleeping in his hotels and drinking in his bars. Conrad’s that is.

As responsible and visionary businesspeople, we must ask ourselves:

• How do we build a company with legs?
• How do we balance fashion with substance?
• How do we declare constructive war on our businesses so that they never get complacent?

Mark Stevens
CEO