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Top of Mind Thursday – October 3, 2024: A Better Year Ahead
Today is the first day of Rosh Hashonah, the Jewish New Year, for 5785.
Tradition has it that this is the time when we celebrate by wishing each other a sweet year to come.
That’s a little harder to do this year. Monday is the first anniversary of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel that killed over 1200 people and resulted in more than 250 being taken as hostages (some alive, some as corpses).
Almost immediately after that attack, Hezbollah started shelling Northern Israel from posts on the Lebanese border. After almost a year, Israel has pushed back, attacking Hezbollah operatives and killing the founder of the group, who was also responsible for killing more Americans in terror attacks than anyone except Osama bin Laden.
Meanwhile, antisemitism has spiked around the world, growing like wildfire on US college campuses and among ultra-progressives. While some may disagree on Israel’s tactics, these people think the country has no right to exist. Some, like singer Macklemore, think that applies to the US as well.
With all this going on, it’s difficult to feel joyous on day #362 of October 7th. But we still look forward to a better year ahead—to a day when these conflicts are behind us and we can focus on simple things like happiness, health, and prosperity. In the meantime, I leave you with the words I wrote here last October:
Know that even as we fight through all of this, our prayers all end with a wish for peace.
Check out our marketing leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
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Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday – September 26, 2024: Someone is Always Watching!
This week, news reports broke the story that Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, had made a number of inflammatory comments on the chat forum of a porn web site, including calling himself “the Black Hitler.”
That would be bad enough for any politician, but Robinson’s comments were often diametrically opposed to the extremely conservative, anti-abortion, anti-transgender stance he has taken as a politician. Following this revelation, most of his campaign staff and staff in his current role as lieutenant governor have resigned, though Robinson says he intends to continue in the race.
How was this discovered? Turns out Robinson had used the same user IDs across social media, as well as using his real name and address. Yet, Robinson denies the charges, saying these were AI-generated and not real—in spite of the fact that many of the comments were made before today’s AI tools were released.
In this day and age, it’s hard to believe that anyone—let alone a politician running for office—wouldn’t know that everything we say and do online is recorded somewhere. This includes things you said or did before you entered the public sphere. As I’ve told clients for years, the web is enduring, not endearing. Once something is out there, it’s almost impossible to make it totally go away.
Robinson was significantly behind the Democratic candidate before these revelations were made public. While it was unlikely he’d win before, now his chances for victory are practically nonexistent.
Meanwhile, there’s a lesson for the rest of us. Be wary of what you say or do online. Very few online forums are really, truly private. Presume everything you do is recorded and someone out there will be watching what you say and do—if not now, in the future.
Someone is always watching. Act accordingly!
Check out our marketing leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
.
Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday – September 19, 2024: Misgrading Home Work
This week, Amazon announced that as of January it will be requiring all employees to work from the office five days a week—ending their hybrid work program.
This affects engineers and others whose work can be done offsite—not those on package assembly lines or delivery workers. Amazon says they are doing this to “strengthen the company culture.”
I don’t get it. Amazon thrived during the pandemic with employees working from home. What went wrong since then? And will the culture magically be strengthened by requiring everyone to spend time commuting to work and sitting in a cube all day, then spending even more time in Seattle traffic to get home?
I spent 15 years at Sun Microsystems. Never during that time did I belong to a work team that had all of its employees in the same physical time zone—let alone all in the same building. It never stopped us from dominating our market space for years. People either got the culture, or they didn’t. And if they didn’t, they didn’t last.
Too much bad behavior is blamed on cultural issues, and too many arbitrary decisions are handed down in the name of culture. Meanwhile, management makes vapid promises about work-life balance, without realizing how they are upending the lives of their people.
If Amazon has a problem with the culture, they should dig deep to figure out what is causing the issue and deal with it. I highly doubt it’s not seeing your colleagues in the break room every morning, every day of the week.
It will be interesting to see how this impacts productivity, as well as retention. Handing employees an F on home work is likely to result in valued employees deciding there are better cultures than this one.
Check out our marketing leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
.
Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday – September 12, 2024: The Debate Goes to the Dogs (and Cats!)
On Tuesday, the two major party candidates for President met in Philadelphia for a debate.
The first debate, in June, was the event that killed Joe Biden’s re-election hopes. This time, the Democrat facing Donald Trump was Kamala Harris, and the evening went very differently.
Harris had obviously prepared for the occasion, going on the offensive and baiting Trump with statements that she knew would push his buttons. And they did. Whether it was the size of his rally crowds or how much money he inherited from his father, Trump immediately focused on his take on those details, rather than maintaining the focus on national issues or policies or Harris’ prior record.
Probably the strangest part of the evening was Trump’s fascination with an already-debunked story that Haitian immigrants were eating local residents’ dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. Huh?
While most observers noted that Harris easily won the debate, the question is will it move the needle on the election?
Most people entered the evening having already chosen a candidate. Those choices aren’t likely to change. This election will likely come down to a few thousand voters in just a few battleground states. Both candidates are focused on those areas and the race is too close to call.
Perhaps the one action that happened on Tuesday most likely to impact the race was Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris after the debate. Millions of people have already reacted to her social media post. Will they come out to vote? We’ll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, let’s hope there are no more wild stories like Springfield, OH, which brought a whole new meaning to the term “catfishing.”
Check out our marketing leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
.
Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com