Search results for Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense
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March 5, 2010 From Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense
The In the News story at right is a stunning admission by the president of Toyota—a dozen words that describe his giant corporation being totally out of control:
Some people just got too big-headed and focused too excessively on profit.
Who are “some people"?
Let’s call them a cabal, which the OneLook Dictionary defines as “a clique (often secret) that seeks power, usually through intrigue.”
Since 1999, this cabal has been responsible for a reported:
- 2,262 instances of unintended acceleration
- 815 crashes
- 52 deaths.
“We did realize that it was not good that pedals were not returning to their proper positions,” said Toyota’s quality control chief, Shinichi Sasaki, “but we took some time to consider whether we needed to take market action.”
Parse that. “We did realize ... but we took some time ..."
The message here to all businesspeople—from lone wolves to the CEOs of giant corporations:
For Pete’s sake, if you're CEO of anything, don't hide behind the words “we,” “us” and “our.” Don’t use them in copy. Don’t use them in speeches.
“We,” “us” and “our” are code for, “It wasn’t my decision alone, so I don’t have to take responsibility.”
Or, in the words of the late Freddie Prinze Sr., "Eez not mai yob."
When the Philippines fell to the invading Japanese armies in 1942, Gen. Douglas MacArthur didn't say something half-baked and corporate such as, “We shall return,” or “America shall return”—meaning if the Japanese won the war, it wasn’t his fault.
He electrified the world with three iconic words:
“I shall return.”
February 22, 2010 From Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense
When I read the review of “The Checklist Manifesto” by Dr. Atul Gawande, I ordered it on my Kindle.
Three minutes later I was totally hooked—engrossed in graphic descriptions of hospital emergency rooms where patients’ lives depended on split-second decisions by health care professionals operating as a team and guided by mental checklists. If they ignored a step or failed to communicate, the patient would assume room temperature—forever.
The author’s argument is simple: Checklists in this complex, high-tech world are indispensable.
It occurred to me that some years ago I created a checklist for direct marketers, and that it was currently residing on my Web site, www.dennyhatch.com. Given my newfound interest in checklists, I decided to revisit it. The thing was OK as far as it went, but woefully inadequate. So I reworked it.
I believe the revised and expanded checklist that follows will be useful to the 20- and 30-something newbies entering this business who are handed decision-making authority beyond their experience.
It's also invaluable to us addled seniors, who tend to forget things.
February 9, 2010 From Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense
The New York Times account of 100 institutions of higher education sending high-tech direct mail to high school students in order to rope them in as applicants—with huge success—grabbed my attention. I devoured Jacques Steinberg’s story.
It quickly became clear that some old direct mail pro had landed in the honey pot—a fossilized industry desperate for business—and cashed in big time. Using tried-‘n’-true techniques developed over the past 800 years, these colleges learned they could eat their competitors’ lunch.
In the middle of Steinberg’s story, the name of an old pro jumped off the page and grabbed me by the collar—Bill Royall of Royall & Co. out of Richmond, Va., who shook up direct mail more than 20 years ago.
Plus ça change, plus c'ést la même chose.
January 19, 2010 From Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense
The presidential memo under IN THE NEWS came to my inbox, and I printed it out. It was the 751st e-mail I received from the Obama organization since the first effort I received back on March 5, 2008, titled, “What Happened Today.”
This one stunned me—the real deal, the actual take-no-prisoners, kick-ass directive to the cabinet and intel agencies from a controlled but obviously furious president ordering them to cease and desist the turf wars and set up an information sharing system pronto. Implied: “or else ...”
Back in March 2009, I requested to be put on the Obama e-mail list and sent a small donation. I have saved all Obama organization communications (so far) in my computers as a record of the most successful outreach to voters by a politician in the history of the world.
“Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” said the late Jesse H. “Big Daddy” Unruh, speaker of the California State Assembly.
Since 2007, the Obama campaign has built a database of 3.1 million supporters and raised more than $700 million, surpassing what all the candidates from both major parties combined collected in private donations in 2004.
It doesn't matter whether you like Obama, hate Obama or are somewhere in between. If you are in business—any business, consumer, B-to-B or nonprofit—and do not monitor how this extraordinary organization communicates with its constituency and prospects via e-mail, you're a damn fool.
This guy is a great communicator, and we can all learn from him.
January 5, 2010 From Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense
After 50 years of advertising—writing, designing, placing and analyzing the stuff—the most important thing I've learned is this:
I cannot judge good advertising; it judges me.
Slate.com reader opinions, at right “IN THE NEWS,” don't matter. If the ad works—brings in orders, donations or inquiries at the budgeted return on investment—it's good. If not, it’s bad.
Never forget the legendary Anacin commercial that was offensive to millions, ran for years, sold tons of product and cured a zillion headaches.
If an ad is successful, our job is to analyze it, figure out the elements that make it work and then steal smart.
I have absolute contempt for ads whose ROI cannot be measured.
Quite simply, the perpetrators are wasting money and are traitors to their stockholders.
December 2009 From Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense
I'd always admired golfing great Tiger Woods for three reasons: (1) his brilliance on the golf course, (2) his impeccable elegance, and (3) his tightly controlled and shadowy personal life about which I was delighted to know nothing beyond the fact that he lived in Florida and owned a megayacht.
Initial reports out of Florida on Friday, Nov. 27, by the usually reliable Associated Press described Woods as being seriously injured in a car accident. As so often happens, the pathetic, aggressive media—more anxious to get it out than get it right—got it dead wrong. He had minor facial lacerations and was released from the hospital later that day.
"Media is the plural of mediocre," said Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jimmy Breslin.
When I read that the Woods’ Escalade sped out of the driveway in the wee hours of the a.m., hit a fire hydrant and ended up hugging a tree with Woods unhurt, I assumed it was some kind of domestic spat and thought no more about it. This was none of my business.
But quickly the story began to grow legs and snowball. The world watched transfixed as a reputation, a marriage and a billion-dollar enterprise imploded.
Being a businessperson, my thoughts were (and are) continually with Woods’ sponsors—Nike, Gatorade, Accenture, Gillette and the others—who were paying $105 million a year for pure excellence and got themselves a serial adulterer.
How should the Woods organization have dealt with them?
November 24, 2009 From Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense
Under normal circumstances, a letter announcing that Amazon.com is trashing its BookSurge self-publishing imprint and renaming it CreateSpace would be a big ho-hum.
But I just signed a deal with BookSurge to publish “A Treasury of Takeaways,” goodies from the past five years of this e-zine.
On the surface, everything about BookSurge seemed wonderful, right down to the splendid logo—an open book that looked like a soaring bird in flight.
Alas, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos—the Web marketing genius who created the world’s greatest distribution and marketing system for books—is a lousy talent picker. He turned his publishing arm over to amateurs.
Every person in business should study this transition gone sour, make a note of the broken rules and avoid making the same mistakes.
November 10, 2009 From Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense
Of the eight key copy drivers—the emotional hot buttons that make people act—the most mysterious is exclusivity.
I never really understood exclusivity until Bernie Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme put a spotlight on it. As Laurence Leamer wrote in The Huffington Post:
It was an honor having him handle your fortune. He didn't take just anybody. He turned down all kinds of people, and that made you want to give the man even more of your money. When he took your fortune, he told you that he would tell you nothing about how he achieved his returns. He was a god. He had the Midas touch.
Web sites have been built on this exclusivity thing. Among them: Gilt.com, RueLaLa.com and HauteLook.com. They offer to “members only” the same upmarket designer merchandise sold by Saks, but at deeply discounted sale prices during specific time periods.
Saks is fighting back with an exclusive online “private event” that the CEO of HauteLook.com calls “the new way of retail.”
It ain’t new.
Saks is engaging in a technique as old as the hills. It’s called good, ol'-fashioned, time-tested, accountable direct marketing.
October 27, 2009 From Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense
I grew up wearing blue serge.
In the autumns of my youngest years, my parents would drive me to Best & Co. in Garden City, Long Island, and outfit me in blue serge for church and birthday parties—short blue serge pants with matching Eton jacket (no lapels), white shirt with big Eton collar and red tie. In the spring, same kind of thing, but summer weight.
When it came time to get my first pair of long pants, I was driven to Brooks Brothers on Madison Ave. in New York City, where I have been doing business since 1942.
It was a big deal when I got my first pair of blue serge long pants. My mother cried.
When I started going to dances, I would get tuxedos at Brooks Brothers and white dinner jackets for summer.
When cash was tight because of Andover bills in 1949-1953 ($1,400 tuition, room and board), we sometimes shopped at Rogers Peet on E. 42nd St.
Both Best & Co. and Rogers Peet are kaput. Brooks Brothers is a survivor.
But it won’t survive much longer if it continues to spend vast sums of money sending out blue-serge letters.
October 13, 2009 From Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense
This is not about whether the Obamas were smart or dumb to go to Copenhagen, Denmark, and pitch Chicago as the 2016 Olympic site.
No question, they should have gone, joining King Juan Carlos of Spain, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of Japan and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
President Obama was damned by the Republicans for going and mocked by the Republicans for not closing the deal. But he would have been more severely damned and mocked—and blamed—had he not gone and the U.S. lost out.
What’s more, the president was gone for one day, and he is a fair multitasker. Last I heard, Air Force One has a telephone and video conferencing systems onboard, so he didn't have to relinquish the presidency to Joe Biden while he was aloft. In addition, he tended to foreign policy by having a 15-minute meeting with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, chief U.S. honcho in the Afghanistan war.
The real embarrassment was Chicago being eliminated on the first ballot with a pathetic 18 votes out of 94.
What happened?
I got the clue the following Sunday on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
