Most of my adult life he has been there, on the television screen–horn-rimmed glasses, thick German accent, steely eyes– opining on the sweep of human events: war, plague, genocide, coups, peace and detente.

Most of my adult life I have not understood a thing he says.

I recall the early days of his public discourse, immediately after leaving the White House. As crises would flare up around globe, the call would go out for Henry The K to put it all in perspective for the nightly news audience. I would look forward to his appearances, seeking the insight I knew I lacked on the why’s and wherefore’s of this or that international incident.

And each time I would be left thinking:

“What the hell did he say?”

I have come to realize that Kissinger is a figment of a marketing machine: identified as a “wise” Harvard academic by Nelson Rockefeller, brought to full Technicolor fame by President Nixon, Kissinger was identified as a diplomatic genius due to where he worked, who he worked with, and the way he spoke. A virtual Chance, the character in the classic Peter Sellers film, where a dunce of a gardener is perceived through a weird set of circumstances to be a wealthy captain of industry, whose every word is doted on.

Henry Kissinger has had the mystique of a marketing machine–a mystique he diminishes every time he opens his mouth.

There is a wider marketing rule here: when a product, a company or a leader manages to develop a mystique, don’t let it speak. Mick Jagger could be on Letterman and Oprah once a month if he wanted to. When is the last time you saw an interview with Mick? It’s not that he doesn’t adore fame. He just knows when to shut up and let the machine do its work.

Throughout their careers, a treasure of world-class personalities have created god-like personas in part because they allow their fame to grow cult like, knowing that every time they would appear on Leno or Meet The Press would interfere with that viral magic. They know instinctively that cults grow best organically.

Think of Dylan, Lennon, Salinger, Jobs, Gandhi. Every time these icons would sit down for a Charlie Rose interview, we would see them as human. And humans don’t make for good icons.

We all fall victim, and happily so, for products that make a BIG promise but never explain HOW they will:

* Make us bone thin

* Make our minds wiser

* Make our teeth snow white

* Teach us Russian in a week

The more they say, the less we would believe. Great politicians know this all so well. The ones who win high office do so on the basis of a slogan. All of their commercials are slogans. All of their debates are simply another venue to toss out the same slogans. Ask them a question, and they answer in a slogan.

So often, clients want MSCO to say everything about their product or service. But we know, and advise, that so often, that less is more. The devil is in the details:so put them in the fine print.

Once you start talking to hear yourself speak, it’s always Kissinger redux.

Mark Stevens
CEO

Images Courtesy: 1, 2.

I am reading a NY Times story that zooms in on a question that has been waltzing around in my mind for weeks.

How did Citigroup get caught up to its eyeballs in subprime junk when one of the true wise men of the financial community, Robert Rubin, was embedded atop its management hierarchy? The same Rubin who attained Wonder Boy status at Goldman Sachs only years out of Harvard and Yale. The same Rubin who went on to rule at Goldman and top that by serving as the greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton. The same Rubin who has Mick Jagger status with government and financial leaders around the globe.

Well, the Times piece fudges on the issue at hand – why didn’t Rubin stop the bank from its collision course with stupidity – when his alma mater, Goldman Sachs, turned one of the worst fiscal disasters in US history into a gold mine for its partners and clients.

Rubin’s argument appears to be that because he didn’t have the official title of CEO (the fact is, he held even more power of influence at Citi than the CEO), it wasn’t his place to speak up.

Let’s put this in perspective. Years ago, someone once told me that there were thousands of people as smart as Einstein. They just didn’t voice their theories. They kept them to themselves. They didn’t speak up.

I felt then, as I do now, that there is no such thing as a silent genius.

Unless you have a novel idea and the skill, the guts, the determination to put it forward, to air it out, to toss it to the world and see what the world thinks of it, you are no Einstein. You are no smart person. You are no force. You are no change maker, catalyst, mover of the needle, raiser of the bar. You are a piston in the machine someone else built.

In the history of the world, there has been but one Einstein. He was a beautiful anomaly. So I am not talking about making ourselves heard at Albert’s level. I mean in everyday life. In our jobs, our friendships, our arts, our passions whatever they may be and wherever they may emerge, unless we have epiphanies and then share them with our worlds, we are silent figures moving aimlessly on a stage someone else erected for a show someone else wrote.

It is possible to hide in life. To lurk in the shadows and say not a word of true value. To glide from birthday to birthday without causing a ripple. To say that you care immensely about world peace, the environment, the cinema, the underprivileged, business success. And to be the silent genius who says not a single original thing about any of it.

But you are a legend in your own mind. The fact is, wise people are dummies when there mouths are shut. All Rubin had to do was say “No,” and Citi would have been spared the loss of its prestige and its treasury. All we have to do is to take the ideas we have had for moments or for years – the time of gestation is immaterial – and act on them. Bring them to light and let the chips fall where they may.

It is said that all great people stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before them. One of the true super novas, Isaac Newton, acknowledged that. The same is true for all of us mere mortals. A chain of thought, aired by others before us no matter what we do or where we live, provides a platform for our own thinking and the action that brings that thinking to life.

But I think the chain is more than a platform. I view it as an obligation.

As long as we are blessed with brains and the ability to express what floats around inside of them, we are obligated to make our own voices heard.

Mark Stevens

CEO

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

Click on the image to read the whole article on the USA Today Website.

Mark Stevens is in the national spotlight again, this time in a page 3 story in USA TODAY: “CITIES DRAW LINE ON RISQUÉ BILLBOARDS”.

Hundreds of new visitors came to MSCO’s Web sites, no doubt intrigued by the message and asking: Who gets to decide what’s OK and what’s risqué?

The articles begins: “Mark Stevens has seen his website’s name in the clouds, if not exactly in lights: ‘www.YourMarketingSucks.com.’” The reporter, Charisse Jones, then gives an account of how this message was posted on a billboard purchased by Stevens, and one day, without notice, explanation or reimbursement, he drove past it only to find the message removed.

The article identifies similar billboard messages across the country taken down because of one or several complaints. But ask yourself: Do you have a right to eliminate or remove everything you disagree with or don’t like? Is that the American way? Or do we behave like adults who know that everyone won’t agree or like every thing, and move on.

Read the article online to get Mark’s reaction, and comment on the story yourself.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-06-billboards_N.htm

In case you missed the kerfuffle earlier you can read Mark’s original post here: Mark Stevens Vs. Warren Buffet And you can read some of the comments on the issue here: Comments on Billboards that Suck

And we’re interested in knowing your take on this whole issue, even if you made a comment earlier… leave one now.

By: Chris Kieff

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

So I received a signed limited edition photo of my ex-wife Uma Thurman today. She sent it with a lovely handwritten note, “Happy Birthday From Your EX, Love Uma.”

I hate to air family laundry in my blog, but I am steamed! So here goes…

We had five good years together before her head got swelled by the Hollywood machine and we went our separate ways. Now I do fine financially, but she makes $20 million a pop for Kill Bill’s and then there’s the 2,000 products she endorses. And when we split, the divorce required her to pay me $32.6 million. What have I received so far? How does zero sound? What about nada? The selfish self-absorbed diva has one excuse after another. And I’m sick of it. Up to here!

Truth be told, I was never married to Uma. She begged but there was another Queen of my heart. So what am I saying here? Hold on, there is a point to be made…a method to my madness.

Several months ago, I wrote a blog, Men and Women, and joked that Uma was my ex wife. And What! Clients, friends, etc. started calling to tell me they never knew the blonde nuclear bomb and I were once married. And it happens every week. And then Uma sends me her signed photo.

So the point is this: Say anything with conviction, get others to repeat it , let the viral thing do its magic. And a lie, an exaggeration, becomes the truth. The gospel.

Pay up Uma. Kate (Moss) and I want to buy a Gulfstream.

Mark Stevens
CEO

That’s the fission of men and women. That’s the Da Vinci of life. That’s the code breaker for a magnificent business. Men and women.

Mark Stevens

CEO

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