Blockbuster Gone Bust: Who knew? Everybody.

According to Market Playground, "It was only a matter of time. In a press release on Thursday, September 23rd, Blockbuster Inc. (PK: BLOKA, BLOCKB) filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in an effort to recapitalize its balance sheet and put the Company in a stronger financial position as it continues to pursue its strategic plan and transform its business model.”


Duh. Ask any American kid what Blockbuster is and he'll tell you that's where mom hangs out to get bad movies. Ask an Asian kid and you'll get a blank stare. "So you go there and pay money and they give you a movie, but you have to bring it back?" Right. Germany has automats to handle this function. I laugh, as I torrent my next blockbuster.

I recall somewhere in the mid 90s, being asked to pitch the Blockbuster business at the Leo Burnett Company in Chicago. Having also been working on the Nintendo business, I was keenly aware of what the online gaming market was becoming and how video game consoles, even at that time, had a land-line phone jack already built in, ready for the kids to connect. "Isn't this all going online?", I naively asked at a prep meeting, having gone through reams of insignificant data stating that the brick and mortar concept had at least another 20 years in it.

Hmm. Time flies. Seems as if we're already there. My old question was answered by a smarter-than-me account executive who told me that Blockbuster had determined that limited bandwidth would hamper online delivery for quite sometime and there was no need to worry about that. Until now, I guess. So hmm again. Sears created the catalogue, but lost the online business to Amazon. Sony created the Walkman but lost the personal music player market to Apple. And now Blockbuster has lost the home video market to Netflix and torrents. So what's the message here? The medium is the message here. The medium. Marshall McLuhan told us that. Too many years ago.

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II - a Macro to Micro and back to Macro Again Overview

Readers to my earlier post entitled "Low Tech Germany! Who Knew?" will be aware that my initial experience with the Xing network was reasonably less than positive. Joining in early December I found the sign-up to be a rather taxing experience and then once I got it up and running it just sort of sat there. Good news abounds since then though as Xing was just beginning to release a number of upgrades to bring it fully out of what I had described as Web 1.0 and into full Web 2.0 performance. But more than that, I was intrigued that Xing was up for any length of time with as much success as they had had considering the clumsy interface I encountered, so I decided to do a bit of homework. What follows, begins with a Macro overview of both services and then works into a Micro look into daily functions and overall usability from a user standpoint - with a pretty good understanding of where Xing is headed, at least, technically. And then back to Macro for the finish. So let's get started. For our Macro view I'm going to use a lot of data from Wikipedia, which yes, I know, I know, could be dodgy but it's some of the most current I've found at this time.

- Type: Public, (AG)
- Founded: Hamburg, Germany (2003)
- Headquarters Hamburg, Germany
- Members: 8.3 million (Source: Xing)
- Key people Dr. Stefan Gross-Selbeck, CEO, Ingo Chu, CFO, Burkhard Bluhm (Executive Board), Lars Hinrichs ...(Founder)
- Revenue: € 25.09 million (QI-QIII 2008) $36.15 million USD (Source: Wikipedia)
- Website: Click under "Xing Me" in the sidebar
- Alexa rank: 268 (Source: Alexa)
- Type of site: Professional network service
- Registration Required
- Available in: Chinese, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, ..Japanese, ..Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish





- Type Private. Funded by Greylock, Sequoia Capital,^[5] Bessemer Venture Partners, the
..European Founders Fund and Bain Capital Ventures.
- Founded: Mountain View, California (2002) Launched 2003
- Headquarters: Mountain View, California
- Members: 53 million (Source: Wikipedia)
- Key people: Jeff Weiner, CEO previously a Yahoo executive. Founder Reid Hoffman,
..Chairman of the Board. Dipchand Nishar, Vice President of Products.
- Revenue: € 11.77 million (QI-QIII 2008) $17 million USD (Source: Wikipedia)
- Website: Click on "LinkedIn" in the sidebar
- Alexa rank: 42 (Source; Alexa)
- Type of site: Professional network service
- Registration Required
- Available in: English, Spanish, French and German

So let's go through the big points: #1) Xing is a public company and LinkedIn is private. Basically, this makes Xing a whole lot more interested in generating income now as opposed to later with stockholders and quarterly interests to satiate. #2) Both sites were launched in 2003, so that makes them essentially the same age - in virtual terms. #3) Here's where things seem to go strongly in LinkedIn's favor - Members: Xing clocks in with a self reported number of members of 8.3 million members whilst LinkedIn sports over 50 million - 5 times that of Xing. #4) But let's not jump to profit conclusions by looking at member numbers. If LinkedIn has 53 million people and took in revenue of €11.7 million that (in a rough, not financially very accurate calculation) would be around 8 and a half cents € for the entire year or for the Americans out there, less than 12 cents for the whole year. Xing by contrast with just 8.3 million members brought in €25.09 million adding up to around 30 cents € for each member or 43 cents American per member - but wait, "All the members didn't pay, right?", you say. And that's exactly right. It's estimated that fewer than 10% of Xing members pay for a premium membership, but the point is, that they do pay, 6€ per month or so but that's coming from well less than a million members and it makes the site, very, very profitable. (Income from partner agreements and recruiter accounts on either site is not publicly available so can't be broken out here.) #5) On Alexa rank, LinkedIn pretty much clobbers Xing but with the financials already discussed, I don't think anybody at Xing is going to be breaking a sweat. We'll go through some more financials later and you'll see that Xing is certainly not afraid to spend a bit of that for growth. With a steady paycheck coming in, who wouldn't, considering the growth available in the market? The Alexa charts here indicate web activity for both sites - one for a few months and the the other for two years. LinkedIn is, on the left, the big wavy blue line and , on the right, the jagged red line - Xing is the rather tepid line at the bottom of both charts. I'll come back to these charts later but suffice to say, if I had a chart for financials, it would look somewhat like these two - that is if you reversed the Xing and LinkedIn captions. Xing is basically kicking LinkedIn's butt on the money front. #6) Our last big point here is in languages served. LinkedIn clocks in with 4 and Xing with 16? Yep, you read that correctly. Now I've been able to work through Xing pretty well in English but I will say that since it's German based, and well over 1/2 its members are from Germany that not everything works perfectly in English - for instance when you need help or want to sign up for another service - the forms are in German. How Xing manages the sixteen and counting little networks it currently houses inside their one, still not very big network, will certainly be something to watch - and they have an office in China. I'll get to that later as well. Could they breach China's Great Fire Wall?

So that's the Macro. In a nutshell LinkedIn is a helluva lot bigger in terms of members than Xing, but Xing is infinitely more profitable than LinkedIn. In this business scenario, who would you like more to be? Methinks a little bit of both of these guys would like to be the other. But I'm going to focus more on Xing today because I'm in Germany and it's my current fascination. So with LinkedIn pretty much kicking butt on membership how do you go about competing? Yes, both services charge for a premium membership (and I'm currently getting my Xing premium for free because I signed up enough new members) but LinkedIn is just way over priced for their premium services and I have a network large enough (Over 300) that I don't seem to need much of what they offer. Xing on the other hand, already has a loyal subscriber base, so how can you grow that? Enter OpenSocial.

Let's get a little more Micro. OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for web-based social network applications, developed by Google along with MySpace and a number of other social networks. It was released November 1, 2007. For all us non-geeks what does that mean? It means all those little apps that let you see a block of Facebook updates, or your friend's Tweets or latest blog posts - all in real-time. It enhances the user experience. And this was what Xing was missing when I checked in just a month ago. I had become reasonably addicted to all this seemingly senseless activity but when I first checked into Xing it didn't have any of that, and I missed it. To quote Xing's founder, Lars Hinrichs, "it is ostensibly more important for people to know what their contacts are doing than to follow the latest news events from around the world.” LinkedIn started to integrate OpenSocial APIs in 2008 so what did Xing do? They bought a site that already had them.

And even more Micro. Now for the princely sum of about $4 million in cash and stock, and a performance-based earn-out valued at between 0.5-2.5 million Euros payable over three years, I'd guess that Jason Goldberg wasn't too unhappy parting with his baby, SocialMedian, considering that I'd never heard of it and probably you haven't either, and from what I've seen it looked pretty much like a Digg or Mixx clone. But at USD $4 Mil and Euro change? Things could suck a whole lot worse.

But what Xing seemed to buy in SocialMedian, much more than just a working package of OpenSocial APIs was a real motivator in Jason Goldberg. from New York. As founder of Jobster, he had said that Monster.com had a "crap product" in their user experience (and he's right) but what's even cooler was that that comment got to YouTube, and you know what? It looks like he's exactly what Xing needed. If you're the challenger, you need to have a little piss and vinegar. The David vs. Goliath story is only a good one if you truly believe that Goliath is an asshole. If he's Shrek, it's just no fun. So for the whole of 2009, Goldberg worked in Hamburg with Xing implementing his self-stated "Ship it" mentality. "Make mistakes, ship it! That is not always in line with the traditional way of doing business in Germany, yet the team embraced it and lived up to it. I think it’s important to have an environment where people feel they can make mistakes; that’s absolutely critical for innovation. You also need to ship it, to get user feedback and improve your product according to the users’ wishes. If there is one thing I am most proud of regarding my year at XING, it’s how the XING team embraced ship it.", he said in an interview about his time at Xing.

And now to teeny tiny micro. All that hard work done, and it does seem that Goldberg was a real motivator, but I didn't see a bit of it when I signed up for Xing in early December of 09. Tons of work done in the back room and little of it visible out front, where it basically counts - a bit like dropping the ball right before crossing the goal line. For instance, the function for finding my Xing contacts based on my Gmail account never worked properly - and when I went through listing all my other social network accounts, there was no mention of their new Twitter interface or how to put it on my homepage. (Also no way to put my LinkedIn account, and I think this is a huge mistake. Rather than regard LinkedIn as competition Xing should realize that heavy users will have both accounts and at least canibalize their bigger brother for those of us who want them both. There's 45 more million qualified customers to hit. Easily.) Only later, after seriously digging into the site, and really searching features out, did I find out how to use them. Xing's homepage needs to do a lot better job of pointing out new features and encouraging usage every time I sign in. Things should be a whole lot easier than I found because I'm on everything from Digg to Mixx to Twitter, Facebook, Linked in and a few more and Xing's been the hardest of all for me to negotiate as a new user.

When Nintendo was my client at Leo Burnett, I learned a very important thing from their programmers. In that business it is said that when a new game comes out, way beyond the graphics or the storyline, that a kid needs to feel a real level of success inside of 15 minutes with it, or you have lost him forever. I can't imagine that most business people have much more patience than a twelve year old boy. Something to keep in mind, certainly. And how to do that? Well since I'm in that business, I don't think I want to give all my best consulting away for free so I'll just give a hint: 65% of the population are visual learners. Currently, I don't think there's a single social networking site (save for possibly MySpace) that makes good, productive use of this fact. I think there's a real opportunity here.

And now finally, way back to Macro. Having painfully negotiated Xing and gotten over 40 contacts, a number of groups and all my bells and whistles working, there's one thing that Xing does better than LinkedIn or Facebook ever have - and that's making real contacts. The deluge of party invites I get, and the actual events, even the shitty ones, are more than I've ever seen from my plethora of networks. Here's a network that actually works. That needs to be communicated much better. And that's where we get to the real bottom line. Scroll back up to those two graphs and look at the one that's a two year graph, and see how Xing, with the line way at the bottom, takes a tiny spike up at the beginning of 2009 (presumably due to the multi-million Euro purchase of networks in Spain and Turkey) and LinkedIn just goes through the roof. That's called buzz. And Xing could use a whole lot better buzz than I found when I arrived in Germany, their home country, and now my home country. Once they do that they'll get their bottom line buzzXing as well.

Post Script: I posted this late morning yesterday, Tuesday, and by mid afternoon had a note from staff at Xing and by evening a Twitter follower from LinkedIn. Maybe this blog's Google page rank moving from a 3 to a 4 over the weekend is having some effect. Think so? Nah...

For more on digital marketing and social networking see:

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II
Trial and Error: The New Normal
What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Xing vs. LinkedIn I
Low Tech Germany. Who Knew?
Advertising People and Blogs
How to Write the Best Blog in the World
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If Blogs Are Free Does That Make Them Worthless?
Detri-Viral Marketing II: The Top 10 Social Media Blunders
Bright Lights, Big Internet and the WWED
Saigon Digital Marketing Conference Successfully Avoids Plumbers Convention
A Tale of Many Marketing Conferences
Detri-Viral Marketing I: How Web 2.0 Can Go Against A Brand
Marketing Predictions for 2009
Barcamp Saigon 2008
"Ignore Everybody" is Born: A Plug for Hugh MacLeod
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market? Asia has Risen,
Into the Gapinvoid - Web 2.0 Social Networking Born 20 Years Ago

Workers of the World Unite - A recession re-imagined - The Individual Collectivist is Born

Lech Wałęsa (IPA: [ˈlɛx vaˈwɛ̃sa]; born September 29, 1943) was an auto mechanic and shipyard worker who became a Polish politician and a trade union and human rights activist. He co-founded Solidarity (Solidarność), the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union , won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995.^[1] I first became aware of Walesa in the late 80s as the leader of the Velvet Revolution, a non-violent workers revolution that helped bring Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to the end of the Cold War. This clipping - from somewhere around that time, impressed me for it's simplicity, directness and correctness in the face of uncertain futures. Here are a few other quotes from Walesa that I quite enjoy: On Work - “I'm lazy. But it's the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle because they didn't like walking or carrying things.” On America - “You have riches and freedom here but I feel no sense of faith or direction. You have so many computers, why don't you use them in the search for love?” On progress - “He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed.” On the opposition - “I got politics and economics moving and then others took over.” On talk - “I must tell you that the supply of words on the world market is plentiful, but the demand is falling.” Interestingly enough, I was not able to find the quote at the top of this page, my favourite still.

The way society functions, we are all encouraged to rely on institutions for security - basically, because they need us to function, but when those institutions fail, where are we to turn? I was asked recently if I had always felt like an entrepreneur, an independent, a free thinker at an early age and in reflection I had to answer, yes. Yes, of course. I'm adopted, so that put me solo from the git-go. I painted signs at 16, opened a video games parlour at 19 and was also a member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in the US from 1974-1976. In 76, I remember going out on strike with the union and watching the union management go from defiant, to defensive to defeat - not even amongst their own ranks could they summon a quorum - whilst management remained immovable. This told me quite a bit - and I also remember having a lemonade stand when I was 10. I proceeded on to university, being quite possibly the only man in the union who had a "Plan B" - actually, for me it had always been "Plan A" - the factories only being a way for me to have made enough money to have funded my education. Later, in the corporate world, I saw social behaviours that mimicked what I saw in the union organisation - the water cooler revolts, the drunken Monday Night Football declarations, the Xeroxed defiance of a populace to afraid to advance into management and risk becoming part of the problem. The black and white photo you see of the solitary worker is from those days - I have kept it all these years, kept in my daytimer as well, to remind me of how I saw myself at the time - an individual, but just another uniformed part of the masses that would board the rapid transit towards the building of a stronger America every day. I remember proposing an idea to my boss, Allan Klein at Leo Burnett, for our client Nintendo. I remember Allan listening, as if he had a more urgent meeting to get to and wrapping up the whole session up with the statement, "David, they haven't asked us for that". "I know Allan", I returned, "But isn't it our job to think and be proactive for our client, to make proposals?" "No, not really, David. Our job is to execute what we're told", he responded. It was well before that day, probably around the time I saved the B&W solitary man photo that I knew that, that kind of thinking was wrong, it was just on that particular day I understood fully that it was really wrong, and ultimately detrimental to the whole place. There was an obstacle in my path and nothing would ever grow there for me. It was time to kick it.

Brand Marketing Staff Training in Vietnam: The Pitch

Most of you are aware that I do Brand Marketing Training for Universities, Advertising Companies and Clients intensely involved in marketing but I thought I'd take a few minutes and explain exactly what that means and how it may benefit your company - especially in Vietnam.

I wish I could say that marketing education in Vietnam has been keeping up with the demand but alas all University programs fall far short of what multinational companies believe to be even acceptable entry level training, and the two private institutions that I'm aware of - ARTI: Run by the Vietnam Advertising Association and VietnamMarcom: A private institute, are primarily concerned with making a buck and don't employ any full-time foreign professors (yes, there are cost/profit issues involved) - but for any business that works on a multinational platform, the staff needs to be able to work with various people from various countries and I can provide an introductory coaching experience that's been successful across Asia and the United States as well - something no local institution can.

Many multinational companies in Korea, Japan and China are fond of offering corporate training for their staff's in Asia and in Vietnam it's no different. It's cost effective, builds moral and comaraderie within working groups and after a semester with me - trust me - they'll be ready to play in the big leagues with all the confidence, planning and big-idea-ness that it takes to win clients, bosses, friends and markets. Anyone who really wants to scroll through my CV can see my LinkedIn page but for the short version, suffice to say that I began in Asia with Leo Burnett Korea and ended up with my own agency, CarlsonCreative, Inc., in Seoul for six years that serviced British American Tobacco, Samsung, LG, Hyundai and the like. Do look at the LinkedIn page or contact me for more background detail. Following are a few examples of how this might work for your company, followed of course, by some basic financials.

EXAMPLES

a) BRANDING WORKSHOPS - Ask what a brand is in Vietnam and you'll get a thousand answers - many are right - most are not. My 15 week course at Vietnam National University previously, was extensive, but I have now boiled a 700 page textbook (The New Strategic Brand Management - Kapferer) down to an easily digestible short course with examples from the real world (Ogilvy's 360 Concept, SWOT Analysis, etc.) These days the concept of a brand has extended itself into social networking sites like FaceBook and LinkedIn and even to Twitter, YouTube, Mixx, Digg and the like. Thanks mostly to this blog I am now extremely well-versed in the Web 2.0 world and have a firm stake in it. I like to use the term Brand Provocateur to describe the ever-thinking marketer who is never afraid of exploiting whatever media will extend their brand's communication strategies. Our group at VNU was called BrandMasters and you can see some of our group in the photo to the right below on Teacher's Day.

b) TEAM BUILDING - Sometimes the concept of working across strategies (Sales/Marketing/Media/Research/Account Service/Creative) is foreign to Vietnamese employees. It's certainly not taught in the schools. With a group project over a number of weeks, team members get to work in a real-life format but with a fictional client, taking away the barriers of, "We've never done it that way", or "They'll never buy it". I use my own team's work on Nintendo as a case study in selling video games to an adult market - born out of a research study. Our efforts yielded 2 1/2 times the projected sales and were the forerunner of Nintendo's Adult Wii efforts today. The case study is now taught at Northwestern Illinois University's Kellogg School of Management , home of Philip Kotler, by Jana O'Brien of Right Brain Consumer Consulting, our Research/Media leader at Leo Burnett, Chicago.

c) PRESENTATION SKILLS - Some people should be speaking and some should be doing PowerPoint slides - others, something else. Everyone needs to know how they can best add to a successful presentation, and it's not always by being the best speaker - it's by focusing on strengths - and making them work for the team. This was part of my VNU course but also involves how we, at CarlsonCreative in Korea, beat Diamond/Bates 141 on British American Tobacco by commandeering and re-branding the library bar at the Ritz Carlton Seoul with our campaign theme line (Club Finnesse) for BAT's largest Korean Brand - as the venue for the actual presentation, complete with a grand piano player and bar staff service for non-alcoholic drinks and snacks - an out-of-the-box, but right on target presentation idea that drove the brand message home and won the account for a very small company. Jon Taylor, the President of BAT Korea and now CEO of BAT Russia can be available to provide a reference if necessary.

In any course where the participants are working in a second language there's quite a bit of English teaching that happens but that's masked by the task at hand and becomes an integral element of solving a problem - thus being less of a lesson and much more of a fun exercise.

COST

The course rate is $45 an hour and a suggested short course is 6 weeks with three 90 minute sessions per week. This fee includes my writing and customization of courses to individual client needs. That works out to around $1200 total and can invlove any number of staff - 5 minimum, and up to 10 max. I use a retainer fee of 1/3, a midterm payment of 1/3 and completion payment of 1/3 billing system. Other details and course options can be discussed per individual clients.

Do consider a training course for your company, if you're a manager - and if you are staff and think it would be helpful, forward this web page to your boss. It's amazing what can be accomplished in a short period of time, with a motivated and cared-for staff. If you just need cheaper employees, you might check here<.

For more on Creativity, Education and the like, check below:

"Do Our Schools Kill Creativity?" - Sir Ken Robinson
Brand Marketing and Staff Training in Vietnam
2009 Marketing Predictions
The Language Barrier - An Asian Business Conundrum

That Embarrassing 70s Show - I Was In It!

Oh dear. It's all about to come out of the closet - and I'm not talking about my gayness - although from this photo, you've got to wonder. Note particularly, my full-length denim jumpsuit (I'm on the far left) and my buddy's not-so-delicately-cross-hatched pants. Fucking hilarious, you've got to admit.

This photo comes from Sylvia, a really good art-friend during our freshman year in college and the dude standing next to me is my best friend at that time, Tom Nelson, or "Nels" as everyone knew him. I was known also as "Carls" at the time and together we composed a most deviant organization called "The Swedish Mafia", a clandestine cooperative dedicated to art, beer drinking, cigar smoking, classic car repair (we both drove junk piles of ever-changing make and model including Studebakers, Ford Mustangs a Buick "Invicta" and a Datsun) and the chasing of many women who were essentially bad for our mental health, although many times more than good for our physical health. From that was born another private club, "The Porker Brothers", but that's another story entirely. Tom now makes a "clean" living in custom homes.

In these days, we were both obsessed with getting through school (Black Hawk College in this photo) and finding jobs in the ad business (His mother was an art teacher and his dad had an advertising company of some sort) and Sylvia was a bit of a Tom-boyish art buddy of ours who was just really, really sweet and truly a good friend as well. Little did we understand that these days would pass quickly and this photo is probably the last time I saw or spoke to Sylvia. Until now.

Over the last year, since starting the blog and posting thrice weekly at least, my Internet presence has increased exponentially. Along with Facebook and LinkedIn, I'm pretty easy to find and any great number of voices from my past have popped up recently - and interestingly enough, primarily female - the account executive from my first TV shoot with Bozell & Jacobs in Dallas, the researcher and media woman who worked on the Nintendo Game Boy account with us in the early 90s, and another woman with whom I had an affair with at Leo Burnett. Oh, dear. If 25 year olds start popping up calling me "daddy", I'll start to worry. But that hasn't happened, yet. Yet. So there is definitely another side to being a Web 2.0 provocateur. A side that tax collectors, old enemies and older ex-girlfriends might find to use to exorcise antique angst. But that isn't what has happened to me at all - conversely, everyone I have re-met has been just so sweet and nice that it makes me wonder what kind of a guy I really have been? Even Tom and I are still in contact. Wasn't I supposed to have been a Porsche driving, cocaine snorting, advertising-creative-hero-in-his-own-mind, sort of asshole in all those years up the ladder? Well, we'll do a call-in show for that later. I'm sure we can find a guy I bullied in gym class - or maybe art class for sure. Are there art class bullies?

Thanks so much to Sylvia for this, and for letting those of us who have spent time in divorce court know that there is another side to that 50% figure. Sylvia and her husband in the photo, Jim, are still married. But no damn thanks for the fashion faux pas "outing". Damn that hurts!

Sweet Dreams III - Fragmented Fermentations

After a time in any exotic land the things one first found exotic become normal. That rooster on the sidewalk, the steetside barbers, the language - all part of a regular day now. Maybe now, only in dreams can I travel. I am already too far away in the real world. This is a collection of snippets, all from different days and different dreams over a period of six months - each seperated by a letter. (A) Dad is on a street with all old cars - one green Chrysler to be seen. If I look in the rear view mirror of one car, I can see all the others. (B) I travel with the Leo Burnett company to Germany on a Nintendo assignment. They are showing me a 10 year plan to move people into side businesses. There are drinks at a bar with cute girls and my old friend Patrick Scullin (C) Tom Kirkhart, my old college roomate, and his wife Kim are in a house with my old stereo. I can't find the volume and it keeps playing. Tom has 10 boom boxes and other stereo gear around. I can hear his voice as if it is not a dream at all. "Tom, we don't have a lot of room here", I say. I come to believe this dream is real because I can hear the music exactly as it sounds - and that's what wakes me up. (D) The lips are those of a very old lady - aluminum foil wrinkled into her 70s or 80s, yet smiling slightly and pleasantly attractive. I am drawn to them. They are my wife's from years ago, yet now years ahead. Too many years ahead. (E) The composite girl's pantaloons are like three layers of black silk swiss cheese, cut with bigger-than-hand-sized holes and layered so that not two holes match, making my maneuvering, from knee to crotch her minefield affair. But I persist. I persist until the warm milk of the target licks upon my fingers and they are invited in, one by one - cut to a miltary model of a battlefield with model tanks and a radio-controlled red truck as a comander barks, "Higher!". (F) I can hear the song "Courage" as if it is real...

For more Sweet Dreams Click below:

VI: I Woke Up Drunk Today
V: Homecoming
IV: All In A Mouse's Night
III: Fragmented Fermentations
II: Strange Dreams
I: White Huskies: Interpretation please?

The Language Barrier : The Asian Business Conundrum - Your best speakers are not always your best employees

I first heard this from David Miller, outgoing managing director of Leo Burnett Korea as I was coming in to the country as a managing partner with our office there.

"Your best speakers are not always your best employees", he said and went on to explain that as a new foreign manager that I would have an immediate withdrawal reflex and lean immediately on those who could speak English, bypassing a whole building full of people who could possibly solve my problem. And he could not have been more right. Foreign companies are absolutely classic at populating meetings full of elegant orientals who can certainly talk a good game, but are miserably inept at managing anything when the job gets back to the shop. And this can happen in two ways:

1) They are Asian of national descent but were raised overseas. In Korea they are "Kyopo". In Vietnam they are "Viet Kieu". And while western managers are just fabulously happy to have people like this on the ground, the locals can many times resent them because they didn't grow up in country, don't really know the culture, and talk funny. Additionally, can be perceived by the locals that the imports are getting a better deal than those who have fought for their country and don't deserve it - so they often have great difficulty getting anything done inside their native culture.

2) They are miserable managers. And therein lies a huge problem in Asian education, western hiring practices and any sort of management whatsoever here. The preference for excellent English over excellent thinking. Has anyone noticed that Putin never speaks English at a summit? Or that any other number of foreign leaders from everywhere from France to Argentina don't either, yet run perfectly solid countries with minimal crap over time - yet many African leaders with Indian and Pakistani ones thrown in, speak perfect English but have box-of-rocks countries that are rife with problems.

Back in the US you see it in a way that is almost comical, but common. At Leo Burnett we had an account manager named Bob Chen, who was of Chinese American descent, and had been put in charge of the Nintendo account, a one hundred year old Japanese company. No one seemed to be worried that the histories of Japan and China at war over thousands of years could be an issue but the decision was much more simple than that. In a 50 storey building with 2300 employees, we didn't have any Japanese. Rumour was that management was running around the office looking for "yellow people" before the pitch and Bob was what they could find. Close enough, right? Bob worked hard but he didn't really understand the business and certainly didn't know fuck all about Japanese management. There was another instance, in which Sony had expressed a preference for German design in it's ads - you know, real clean, spare, cold stuff, so a German designer was shipped in. What a nice guy, but the entire account staff just regarded him as an alien. America has just been fabulously insular forever whilst claiming to be a "melting pot" but that's been largely crap. Happenings this week are the first hope I've seen. Ever.

But the problem has now reversed itself for me. It's the local companies who plant good English speakers in front positions and then direct with old men and an opium pipe from the back room. Whenever I walk into a meeting and meet a room full of perfect English speakers, I am immediately suspicious. Not a one of them is a decision maker. They're props. Actors, TV talents. And the sooner indigenous and foreign companies alike realize this, the further they will come towards getting a great group of different people working together. Not myself or a one of us is going to be able to erase this prejudice, but as managers we can recognize it and take real big extra care to include everyone in the projects. I leave you with two examples from my initial assignment in Korea.

From Wild Wild East:

Jinook Kim was our motorbike delivery man at Leo Burnett. He was also a TV producer, but as the low cub on the totem pole, was stuck with delivering tapes, first to the censors, then to the TV stations at god-awful hours in the morning. But Jinook's boss was such a complete bum, that had acquired such an earned disdain from me that I came to rely on Jinook for anything of importance. His boss, a Mr. Park, had been trained at Columbia College in Chicago, arguably the top broadcast school in the city, and it was obvious that during his time in Chicago, he had done nothing but take the train from Korea-town, attend class, and go back to Korea-town and drink beer with his buddies at the end of the day. He could speak English but was creatively worthless, had never been to the Art Institute, a Sox or Cubs game and didn't even know who Al Capone was (I'm serious).

Jinook, conversely, couldn't speak a lick of English but spent his entire day in the office, while waiting to do his evening editing and deliveries watching videos. Hundreds of videos. I called him Tarantino, (he had no idea what that meant) because Quentin Tarantino taught himself to write and direct films by working in a video shop. Jinook had gone to a crappy trade school and was treated like dirt by the other Koreans. He was also paid less than even a secretary and was my lowest paid staff.

Over time I came to realize than Jinook's talents lie not just in his technical and creative ability, but in his negotiating skills in getting persnickety censors to approve stuff at 4am.

One day we had a huge issue with a Reebok commercial. The censors had rejected it because it featured Shaquille O'Neal having his head shaved to reveal a Reebok logo on the back of his head at the end. Harmless. But the censors had called head shaving "degregating to the human spirit" and refused to put it on air. We, of course, had just received the film from the US and put a Korean voice over on it.

Arriving the next morning, I was apprised of the situation and informed by Jinook that he had already created a solution. Remember, Jinook could speak no English to me aside from things, like video, movie and Speilberg.

He showed me the revised cut and my jaw dropped. It was fucking brilliant. "How, how, how", I said, "did you think of that?", I asked him. "Because, I know your mind", he said, "I know your mind".

Jinook had simply re-cut the commercial, using the same voice over to run the entire film in reverse, beginning with Shaq and a Reebok logo on his head, and ending with a happy Shaq and a full head of hair. Crisis averted. Censors appeased.

My second story comes from the same company and a different employee, a writer.

Ms. Lim, was regarded as our top writer and had a well earned reputation for churning out mildly humourous and engaging radio commercials for BMG music on artists as scintillating as Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, and we know where they are now don't we.

All writers and artists had their copy and ideas approved through me and it was usually done with Mrs. Woo, our department mom and creative director, providing the translation.

I reviewed the script and made a comment about changing the joke at the end and what I got what an obviously incensed Ms. Lim. "You no speak Korean", she belted, "You no read Korean. You no!", and she stormed out. As was sometimes the case, I just suspected that this issue world be referred to the president and he would over ride me, so I didn't loose much sleep over these cultural flairups.

The next morning I arrived in my office to find a wide ribbon of beautiful rice paper rolled and tied with a bow on my desk. I grabbed my coffee and sat down to open it. As I stretched it out, it was written with a simple black pen but in a penmanship that was elegantly Ms. Lim.

I am paraphrasing here and imitating her dialect but this is the general gist:

Dear David;

When you come here, I no have confidence for you.
You not Korean. You no speak Korean.
How know you Korean writing?
I mad to managers about give us you.
But last night, I thought about your idea,
and it is good one.

Thank you,

Ms. Lim

Ms. Lim and Jinook ended up on a film trip to Chicago later that year to make a television commercial for Kelloggs. We ate at at all sorts of restaurants, they visited my house, met my wife and generally had the time of their lives. They were the first Korean staff to have ever worked outside Korea. On the shoot, we had big, 10" plastic cornflakes so that we could shoot high speed film and get proper definition on the "milk spash" shot. Jinook wanted to take one home but we had to say no. Trade secret stuff. Koreans can copy anything, even plastic cornflakes. Jinook's salary was appropriately raised from $12,000 a year to $18,000 by the end of my tenure.

Jinook ended up being one of the city's top commercial directors, working for the best production company in Korea and may even have his own company now. Ms. Lim became the principal freelance writer for my company, CarlsonCreative, and enjoyed a stellar career as an advertising writer. Both of them learned to speak impeccable English.

And there is the moral in this story: Infuse your employees with passion for their discipline, reward them and let the benefits come back to you. The English will come as they want it to come, if you inspire and support them.

For more on Creativity, Education and the like, check below:

"Do Our Schools Kill Creativity?" - Sir Ken Robinson
Brand Marketing and Staff Training in Vietnam
2009 Marketing Predictions
The Language Barrier - An Asian Business Conundrum