So I think Counting Crows is one of the best bands of the past two decades. No Led Zep but who is or was? At their best, Counting Crows was genuinely good, original, and at times (Recovering The Satellites, Anna Begins) exceptional.

And then they lost the artistic magic or Adam got tired or who knows what but a devoted following sat in disgust listening to Hard Candy, the first Milk Dud by a group of guys who seemed incapable of sinking so low.

Ok, so they had a loser. Everyone is entitled to a bad day now and then and so the devoted waited for the recovery album. And waited. And waited. And nothing…..

Until late last month when the band on the run released Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

It is a clunker. It is a once seamless band that made magic instinctively now trying too hard. You can hear the hard work. You can hear all the old riffs repeated here.

I think they knew it. I think they recognized this was January compared to August And Everything After.

So what do they do to breathe some life into a wounded bird? They try all kinds of traditional PR, which will drive some heightened anticipation for sure, but it’s sales they want. You can’t take anticipation to the bank.

They know a little secret about the Internet. You can listen to it. You can hear it. So they take the only hook song on the album, You Can’t Count On Me, create a landing page, give you a link to download and viola, digi does what print can’t even touch. (It’s not called a hook for nothing). It sells songs.

There is still a huge place for traditional PR in traditional media. And we should play it like it’s 1953. But with one hand, while the other is on the mouse. Because that “huge place” is relative and gets smaller every day.

And if you can’t hear the hook, you ain’t buying.

Think about it. The Web sings…..literally.

Mark Stevens

CEO

What’s that you say? Can’t get enough of Mark’s wit, insight and Unconventional Thinking?

Well you’re in luck! Because Mark is BrandWeek Magazine’s latest blogger:

Mark is described by the magazine as :

Mark Stevens is CEO of consulting and marketing firm MSCO in Rye Brook, N.Y., and one of the cadre of new Brandweek Bloggers.

In addition, Mark gave the keynote address at the recent Platinum PR News 2007. Click the link below to watch Mark’s interview about the future of PR.

I just returned from Germany, where Albert Einstein was born. As I walked through the streets of Berlin-a lovely cosmopolitan city that shows no sign of the past, only the future-Albert was on my mind.

Why would Albert Einstein be on my mind in a city blessed with beautiful parks, electric restaurants and dazzling women? Because all of my life I have been in search of life on earth. Not the kind that proves it is alive because it is breathing. No, that’s hardly a test of anything. I mean the kind that is a life force. The kind that sees a high wire and wants to walk across it because it is NOT safe. The kind that imagines that massive change is possible and does more than knows it, but goes out and turns the wheel, knowing the odds against them are nearly impossible. The kind that gives love with every bit of their hearts without an ounce of fear that the love won’t be returned.

Einstein was always a life force. It just took four decades of his existence for the rest of the planet to know that. And related to this, his greatest achievement may have been that he proved it is never too late to rise from obscurity and soar into the Pantheon of true greatness.

Ironically, all of the time Albert was viewed as just another civil servant on the government payroll. He was paying zero attention to what anyone else thought. He was thinking, dreaming, testing, wondering, rejecting, rethinking-taking the puzzle of the universe and remaking it. Einstein always believed in Einstein. Do you believe in you?

When I was a child, Jonas Salk came out of left field and obliterated polio. A life force took on and defeated a life destroyer. He wasn’t a Roosevelt. No one expected much from him. But the children of the world were blessed by a man who gave them the most precious gift we can have: Life.

Like Einstein, Salk was a life force in disguise. As was Martin Luther King, Marie Curie, my third grade social studies teacher, Billy Graham, Jesus, Moses, and Henry David Thoreau.

So yes, there is life in the universe. But we owe God’s universe more than life. We owe it courage. More of that innovation. More than that, the willingness to take the gift of existence and give it depth. Give it meaning. Live up to its promise.

Not in headline ways alone. In ways only you see. Only you understand. Only you are fulfilled by. If others gain the vision, wonderful, but you don’t need them. Live your life without their approval.

Einstein would have been sublime without his Wikipedia page! Greatness is quiet until the world discovers it. And it’s their loss if they don’t.

Mark Stevens
CEO

What did your life force allow you to achieve?

We live our lives believing there are sharply defined and crystal clear moments of truth. Moments when we are struck with an epiphany and have to change something in our worlds. And myth has it that these earth shattering slices of time prompt us to dramatically change who and what we are.

But the fact is, we tend to camouflage the epiphanies, tuck them away in the recesses of our minds, and even deny their veracity or their very existence.

We convince ourselves that all will be fine. And so often we do nothing, turning the moments of truth into moments of lies. We do this in our business lives, our personal lives and the lives that are a fusion of both because:

• What was once good, was so good, we don’t want to admit that it no longer holds that high ground. So we just don’t face it.
• The strategy we created before taking a new product to market seemed so brilliant on the drawing board but failed in the real world. But, we say, something may change tomorrow. Magic may happen. The strategy was too ingenious to fail. But in the fleeting moment of truth, it did fail. And in the moment of lies, we just don’t face it.
• The investments we make in anything- a marketing campaign, a new technology, a sister company- may look like a sure thing at the outset. A slam-dunk. And then the champagne goes flat and the losses accumulate and it’s that moment of truth time to take our hit and sell, but we just don’t face it. Moment of truth to moment of lies.
• We haven’t had a new idea in years, and our company or our career trajectory reflects this. So it’s time to think and dream and come up with that new insight that will effect real change. Unless we do, we are hopelessly sliding down the arc of a has been. Painful moment of truth. But, hey, I still have my job and people still buy from my company, so…I’ll get to it. Moment of lies.

There are no paint by numbers instructions to living a great life. To making a difference. The whole chain of neutrons and protons is too complex for that. But, we can make a difference by keeping the moments of truth from turning to the moments of lies:

• Recognize that these moments of truth are pathways to change.
• Don’t fear change. It will happen to you no matter how much you seek to avoid it. It is simply whether you control the agenda or you blow in the wind.
• Use the change you engage in to exceed anything you have ever done before. To be wiser and tougher and more creative.

James Taylor wrote, “The secret to life is enjoying the passage of time.” And learning from it. And turning the learning into action.

Mark Stevens
CEO

How have you kept your moments of truth from turning into moments of lies?

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

For years after it ruled the Billboard Charts, Stairway conquered radio as the most consistently requested song. You could hear it 1000 times and just want more. Like a first kiss. The tropical moments of a steamy romance. Led Zep was more than a band. They were a magic act. Perhaps the best to ever own a stage. Not only were they great musicians, they knew what the fans wanted and they gave it to them. A Whole Lotta Love.

Which brings us to Sam Walton. The guy never heard of Led Zep. But although neither knew it, they were kindred spirits. Every day before Sam wolfed down his bacon and eggs and prayed to God, he thought about ONE THING. Not money or stock prices or store openings. He thought about his customers. About the promise he made to them to deliver everything from Pampers to pajamas at the lowest price.You see, Sam was not really a CEO. He didn’t really give a damn about that. He was too busy and too passionate about filling another role that is vacant at virtually every company in the world: Chief Customer Officer.

Let’s take GM. The bloated swine of a company has a zillion management clods -entire teams of people under the CEO, CIO, CFO, CMO - but no CCO. Not a single person of power charged with putting herself in the customer’s mind and making sure the company stops making garbage on wheels and delivers one word absent from the GM lexicon: quality.

GM is hardly alone. Every time I arrive at a top corporate summit, the white board is painted with boxes and arrows and numbers and all kinds of hieroglyphics designed to make the executive host look brilliant. And inevitably, the word “CUSTOMER” is nowhere to be found. It’s as if the stairway to heaven is in the conference room -not the marketplace. Companies don’t talk to their customers. Don’t know if they are deliciously happy or delicately hanging on. Don’t know because it’s no one’s job to know. The Chief Customer Officer would know-and would bring the voice of the customer into the conference room and on to the white board-but there is NO CCO.

It’s time for change. People like it when you make good products and provide good service, but they are ecstatic and loyal and intoxicated and starry eyed and impossibly loyal, when you give them A Whole Lotta Love. Aren’t you?

Mark Stevens CEOWhat’s your side of the story? Comment below:

Every marketing and general management professional thinks we can teach Kate Moss-just a “dumb model”- chapter and verse about business. Man are we donkeys.

I can hear Kate laughing at us. (In fact, she is sitting right next to me as I write this.)
[Editors Note: Yea, in your dreams, Mark.]

What do I mean by this deification of Moss? In business, the art of recovery is critical. From time to time, we all blow it. How and if we emerge from the mud is what separates the real world stars from the college professors.

And Kate, well she was considered done, fried, fini, just months ago. Now she is not only back from the muck, she has cemented her position as the el primo “dumb model” in the world.

How she did it reflects a bedrock business principle.

If people love you
your product
your service
-not just like, LOVE

-they will forgive everything and keep buying.

For Kate, there were no sloppy Today show Mel Gibson 10 cent apologies. No groveling for forgiveness. She simply stood there and broadcast her greatest asset: drop dead, sex machine, ice cool beauty. Forget all the nonsense crisis management scrap metal shoveled out by the “professionals.” Just lead with love. Listen to Kate.

Mark Stevens
CEO

There was a time …yes there was… When great business people created extraordinary companies not on numbers or Wall Street green lights or the promise of personal wealth…

but instead on the power of love.
What?

We are so removed from this ideal now, that this seems like a fantasy. A dream, actually, like nonsense. But hold on cowboys and cowgirls, it’s true. Not in movies or novels but the cold reality of day.

Walt Disney was not a businessman first, he was a lover. Of ideas. Same for Henry Ford, and Ralph Lauren, Richard Branson, Thomas Edison, And Mary Kay.

Miracle men and women such as these fell in intoxification with ideas and then acted to bring their ideas to life. Did they become wealthy in the process? Absolutely. But did they do it for the money? Absolutely not. They did it for the love of the idea. For the realization that life is short and the spoils go to those who dream, love and take risks for the sake of their romance. Disney wanted to create a world of imagination. A world humanity could get lost in. Was it a sure shot then? The raving lover that he was didn’t give a damn.

Neither should you. Or I. Great companies, spiritual companies, dreaming companies, genius companies, world changing companies are not founded and grown by MBAs. They are cultivated like desert flowers by lovers.

Throw away your spread sheets for a moment and fall in love. Take a chance. Risk failure. But be driven by love. Sooner or later you will find excellence. The speed bumps along the way are simply the price all lovers pay.

Mark Stevens
CEO

Tell us how love has changed your business,
Leave a comment below.

All of a sudden the US, the longest enduring republic in the world, no longer has a President. Sure a suit sits at the historic desk in the Oval Office, but suits don’t Presidents make. And the best way I can express how disappointed I am at this, is that I voted for this suit twice.

What a pseudo leader. What a miserable marketer. Every nation, every company, needs a leader. He or she is the exponent that makes everything-the hard assets, the people, the ideas-greater than the sum of their parts. Right now, the US-the finest nation in the world-fails that test. Like Ford and GM and countless other companies that are essentially leaderless, it is twisting in the wind relying on committees to make decisions and we all know committees are the folks who turned the horse into a camel.

Leaders have more than power, they have humility. They have the guts to admit mistakes. They have the agility to make mid-course corrections. They have the brains and the determination to find a way out of the inevitable setbacks that befall every nation, every company. They are never imperious. They are smart, shrewd and always pragmatic.

You don’t have to be a Harvard political scientist or a Wharton management guru to know when the person on top is simply a placeholder - in fact, the oft-quoted professors haven’t a clue about anything in the real world. All you have to do is drive your Chevy to the levy and you’ll see the levy is dry.

And you can listen to the Sounds of Silence. And it will be deafening.

It’s The Day The Music Died.

Mark Stevens

CEO

What do you think? Post your comments…

Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” is one of those lightning rod songs that flies out of the magic of the creator’s mind and blows everyone away the first time they hear it. Like Halley’s Comet or a meteor shower. Zoom, the music enters your brain and you are in love.

What makes the song zing is the passionate and profound fusion of dreamy lyrics and music. It’s all about calling a time out in life and allowing the mind to free float. To draw cartoons. To imagine the impossible. To embrace the romance of life. To do nothing and in the process to do the most powerful thing in existence. To think with no rules. No preconceptions. No limitations.

This is the most powerful, liberating and exhilarating thing in the universe. It was a founding principle at the once great IBM. And the once great Microsoft. And the greater every day Google.

So why has it been wiped off the agenda at virtually every company on the planet? Why is hardly anyone ever told;

“stay home today and just think,”

or“sit under a tree and chase cars”?