#84: The Mooch, my hot take on a debate, the truth about managing, and the outfit of the GOAT
As we approach the end to summer, let me just say...
Summer is a state of mind.
1. Milking five minutes in office into fifteen minutes of fame.
The Mooch is speaking at Forbes 30 Under 30 event here in Boston and I find that utterly ridiculous.
As of writing this, so do over 50 people who have liked or RT'd my Tweet. Join them if you agree. Maybe it'll convince other business events not to normalize (and waste $$ on) attention-hungry exhibitionists.
"Paying Anthony Scaramucci to speak to a forum of business leaders legitimizes an embarrassing spin doctor at a time where truth matters most. What fees are you paying this failed investment banker-turned self-promoter? Your audience deserves better."
#SignalBoost
2. Five unspoken rules of being a manager that no one tells you about
My good friend Mollie Lombardi (business analyst and Parkinson's advocate) co-authored this FastCo piece about being a manager, shedding light on unspoken truths - my favorite type of content.
You'll:
1) Be in the spotlight, so use it wisely
2) Have more information about your coworkers than you want
3) Spend more time than you want on low performers
4) Become the designated explainer
5) Feel alone from time to time
Read more.
3. Russia and the Menace of Unreality
In this Atlantic piece from 2014, Peter Pomerantsev (soviet-born British journalist) exposes Russia’s domestic system of information manipulation:
“If previous authoritarian regimes were three parts violence and one part propaganda,” argues Igor Yakovenko, a professor of journalism at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, “this one is virtually all propaganda and relatively little violence. Putin only needs to make a few arrests—and then amplify the message through his total control of television.”
Read the below, and tell me it doesn't sound eerily familiar:
"In today’s Russia, by contrast, the idea of truth is irrelevant. On Russian ‘news’ broadcasts, the borders between fact and fiction have become utterly blurred. Russian current-affairs programs feature apparent actors posing as refugees from eastern Ukraine, crying for the cameras about invented threats from imagined fascist gangs. During one Russian news broadcast, a woman related how Ukrainian nationalists had crucified a child in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk. When Alexei Volin, Russia’s deputy minister of communications, was confronted with the fact that the crucifixion story was a fabrication, he showed no embarrassment, instead suggesting that all that mattered were ratings."
To put a finer point on it:
"The Kremlin tells its stories well, having mastered the mixture of authoritarianism and entertainment culture. The notion of ‘journalism,’ in the sense of reporting ‘facts’ or ‘truth,’ has been wiped out."
Read the full piece.
4. Stop banking your marketing savings
More than 60 percent of Fortune 1000 chief marketing officers claim that they cannot quantify the impact of marketing in both the short and long term. The challenge is underpinned by an entrenched, reactive mind-set when it comes to setting priorities and budgets - says McKinsey.
(You just use last year's budget, right? :) )
But zero-based budgeting approach (where everything spent is rigorously reviewed - every dollar considered) can "uncover opportunities for savings worth 10 to 25 percent of spending in certain categories."
But here's the piece I like best: rather than banking those savings, McKinsey suggests re-investing them in high-ROI marketing opportunities. After all, Marketing drives growth. When a company misses their Sales number, the answer isn't to cut Marketing budget - it's to figure out where the leaks are (message? process? measurement? market shift?)
“A well-executed reinvestment in high-ROI opportunities will deliver a greater return than 'banking the savings' will.”
Of course, this requires teams to have a grasp on what's working and what isn't - a key lesson my friends at Allocadia sheperd. Read more in this McKinsey piece.
5. Culture change requires a movement, not mandate
"A good organizational purpose calls for the pursuit of greatness in service of others. It asks employees to be driven by more than personal gain. It gives meaning to work, conjures individual emotion, and incites collective action." via HBR
6. There's a debate happening about a new study: search vs social traffic
Industry speaker Jay Baer recently promoted a Shareaholic study that claimed traffic from search was finally starting to eclipse traffic driven by social.
I was a bit surprised, believing that search had always eclipsed social traffic.
Yesterday, long-time maestro of search, Rand Fishkin (who is also speaking at Spiceworld this year), issued a challenge:
And his own data to validate his POV:
The full Twitter thread has more back and forth between the two.
I'm sharing this for two reasons:
I love a good debate, but most specifically -- I like how Rand stuck his neck out to defend the truth of his area of expertise. He's become a go-to resource on search, and takes that responsibility seriously.
Conversation between industry luminaries is a healthy medium by which to move industries forward, and by challenging a study, he's caused many to think. It's healthy skepticism, debated in public. Bravo to both he and Jay for participating in that dialogue.But the other lesson here is to be careful when using product data to represent industry trends.
Shareaholic analyzed only its own users for this study, "We source data from a network of opt-in websites that utilize our content marketing and publishing tools" and so the findings are skewed to begin with. That's fine, but the brand has a responsibility to position the study as such.
I'm a huge proponent of using surveys for thought leadership - they're helpful for benchmarking industries and valuable for buyers, but only when positioned in context.
When the Shareaholic team discovered their data showed: "a year ago, site visitors were much more likely to be referred from social networks" that should have been their first indication marketers may not take the study seriously.
It's just wildly off-base from prevailing wisdom -- search has always driven more traffic than social. I'm all for bucking the status quo, but not in a way that de-legitimizes the brand. It's irresponsible.
If you'd like to take on the role of brand-as-industry-analyst, fine, just sanity-check your findings with the market first. Take a beat and pause before issuing possibly misleading stats that skew accurate perspectives of the space.
7. Quote of the week:
"The game seems quite content to be played no matter what women wear."
Shonda Rhimes on Twitter, in response to French Tennis Federation President Bernard Giudicelli who reportedly said the tournament would be introducing a dress code "to respect the game" in response to a black Nike catsuit worn by Serena Williams.
(One worn to prevent blood clots.)
I especially love the hashtag.
Have a great weekend,
Katie
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