Somewhere inside this whole mess with Charlie (”winner”) Sheen, producer Chuck (”my way or the highway”) Lorre, Warner Bros and CBS which stand to make/lose tens of millions lies some big business and marketing lesson.  I’m just not sure which one is the most interesting.

Biggest Two and a half Men Marketing Issues:  Vote for your choice

There’s the PR / damage control.  The threat of losing a major cash cow.  The impact of a tarnished key product that makes selling other products much easier.  The customer’s reaction to a drastic change in a popular product.  The disgruntled ex-key employee badmouthing you to anyone who’ll listen.

Wow…What a bonanza!

Do you mess with what works even if you hate it?

Two and a half Men was projected to earn CBS and Warner Bros. $250 Million in 2012.  Even with bad boy Charlie doing his thing, the money rolled in.  So, is it even a good idea to dump Sheen and bring in Kutcher – thereby messing with a tied and true formula?  Or should they have just canceled and built around something else?

What’s the damage to the show’s (or the network’s) brand?

CBS has been able to leverage the Two and a half Men brand to boost the value of shows it places around it.  Now that their dirty laundry has aired so publicly, will it be so easy to cross-sell other products?

How long will the ex-key employee (Sheen) remain a problem?

This is a nightmare scenario for any business owner.  What happens if your top employee – salesperson, engineer, executive – leaves and says nasty things about you to anyone who’ll listen?

These themes here should be familiar to any business: The loss or devaluation of a top product on the company’s finances, sales and marketing strategy.  The fallout from a poorly handled employee separation.

Good theater is watching something we can relate to – happening to someone else.  In the case of this production, the most interesting storyline is taking place off screen.

Frank And Jamie McCourt, the owners of the Dodgers are at war. Their irresponsible management of the team followed by a pugnacious divorce forced the commissioner of Major League baseball to step in and take over the operations of the team.

The way I see it, nobody was ever minding the store. The owners lived in an alternate reality and demonstrated sheer lunacy. They ran the business into the ground and nobody was watching.

Give someone else the keys

Such can be the case with family businesses. The owner reports to no one. Family distractions, being in over their heads, poor leadership skills and ego can produce horrible decisions. Who’s going to tell the emperor he has no clothes?

To avoid the pitfalls inherent in family business ownership decision making, get yourself a boss. Or at least make sure someone is looking over your shoulder.

Suggestions to protect you from yourself -

1. Build a trusted Board of Advisers and give them some real authority to veto bad decisions
2. Appoint an official arbitrator to settle disputes between family members quickly and in the best interests of the business
3. Find a great accountant and attorney and report to them on a monthly basis. Allow them complete access to your books and have them each conduct a surprise audit once a year.

Owners of family businesses are in the enviable position of having greater control over their lives. But you’re human. You make mistakes. You don’t know everything. You have family problems. And you have a healthy ego or you couldn’t run a business.

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Smart marketers know personalization

A recent survey of marketers around the country show that the benefits of personalized marketing – online and offline – has been embraced:

He’d traded up to a massive new bike from what he called his “learning bike.”  He wasn’t comfortable on it anymore as he was moving on to longer rides.  He needed comfort.  And didn’t want to continue to build confidence while gaining experience with his existing classic.

His friend’s wisdom – “yeah, learning is never comfortable.”

The story reminds me of what so many business owners must be feeling.  As technology influences customer mindsets and the ways they spend their time, owners and executives are forced to learn new behaviors. Learning means change – if only in the way you think.  And change is stressful.

Learning makes you venture into the unknown, pushing you out of your comfort zone.  But you know what can be even more uncomfortable?  Losing customers.  Missing opportunities.  Losing money.

A business that allocates a certain amount of its resources to testing new marketing methods and learning what works will lead the field when the economy ultimately recovers – and will maintain and extend its lead over time.

Got learning?

My partner Dave recently had trouble with his iPhone.  As great a gadget as the iPhone is, neither Apple nor AT&T Wireless offer insurance on the iPhone.  Best Buy stepped in offering the only insurance available on the product – serviced by its Geek Squad.

Oh oh…dead cow!

After 2 years of paying $11+ per month, Dave needed service.  He dropped it off at the Geek Squad – “it’ll be ready and back here by Friday.”  Friday comes…and an hour of voicemail hell later…”sorry, maybe tomorrow.”  Saturday…no answer at the Geek Squad all day.  He left a message with the store’s customer service to please call him back.  Sunday…another hour of the run around, “sorry, there are no deliveries on Saturday or Sunday.  Maybe Monday?”

“I didn’t even get a call from you guys, isn’t there a message for you?”  “Truth is we’re really busy, and there’s a whole pile of messages sitting on this desk.  We don’t look at them.  We just wait for the customer to call back.”

Okay – get the picture?  Now ponder this:

Best Buy is in the electronics business.  Why can’t they put your order status online for you to check?  Or shipping status?  Especially when the Geek Squad desk is too busy to even look at the pile of messages on their desk!

Best Buy promised a service that made them unique – but the promise turns out to be pretty empty.  That’s a dead cow.  That’s utter brand destruction.

The pursuit of perfection costs money…lots of money.  And the ROI on perfection is minuscule.

I was listening to an interview with a psychiatrist specializing in neurotic behaviors when she began discussing “pack rats.”  You know, people with an obsession to keep everything they’ve ever accumulated.  She described a case study wherein two brothers accumulated so much, and their surroundings became so cluttered – chokingly packed really – that they perished among the debris.

Pack rats are irrationally afraid that they might throw away something important.  They fear they might miss something.  It’s part of what the doctor called “the pathology of perfection.”

We often encounter clients with degrees of this pathology.

Usually it manifests in a such a microscopic attention to detail that they never actually do anything except proofread, wordsmith, scour lists, debate nuance, etc – even after a painstaking effort has already been completed.  They simply won’t sign off on a project to begin.

They believe that they are demanding perfection, when in actuality they are nearly guaranteeing failure.  Like any investment, marketing your business is a calculated endeavor.  It begins with a series of informed decisions, but no guarantees.  A program is begun, results observed, adjustments made.

Professional marketing management requires ongoing adjustments.  By definition, therefore, perfection is unachievable.  And the closer a program is to its inception – the farther away from perfection it will be.

Demanding perfection at the outset will only paralyze a launch.  Then, should a marketing adviser be able to convince a client to launch in spite of a client’s fears, the inevitable failures (that’s right, I said failures) of an early stage marketing plan may cause a client to get angry.  Deliver a series of “I told you so” and force a campaign shutdown.

This exactly at the moment that learning has first begun.

A mentor of mine often reminded me that failure is but one step closer to success.  Perhaps you’ve heard this old adage as well.  Being 50, 60, 70, or 80% correct at the start of a campaign is a fair beginning on the road to success.  The costs of trying to move too quickly from 50% to 80% are exponential.  It can create unending research, tension, delays, mistakes, loss of enthusiasm, paranoia and other negativity – often resulting in total loss.

Perfectionists will fail without ever knowing how close they may have come to reaching their goals.

He’s a retired physician with an inquiring mind and he shared with me an unsettling observation.  Watching coverage of the tragedy in Haiti, he recognized that people got more and more desperate as it passed the 3 day mark following the event.

The human body can go without food for quite some time before it really breaks down.  But without water, it’s only a matter of 72 hours and brain function is significantly affected.

“9 meals”, he said, “that’s all that separates us from our daily lives and a complete breakdown of society.”

Hours later, while working on a marketing blueprint, I thought about my cousin’s “9 meals” anecdote.  Our bodies need to be sustained with a continuous supply of H2O for survival.  We need food for sure, but in terms of our hierarchy of needs, water is king.

What’s your client’s hierarchy of needs?  What’s the one thing that your customers can’t live without?

Price?  Service?  The hottest technology?  Relationship chemistry?

Now think about it in terms of a marketing campaign.

What’s the one thing you need to monitor to know if you’re on the right track?  It’s different for everyone.

Regardless, it’s a fine line between survival and extinction.  Be sure you know where it is.

We’ve been operating for months as Burst Marketing and doing strategy and Burst campaigns for many clients.  But often, we advise firms with a new offering or business structure to do some learning following a “soft launch” to work out some of the bugs inevitably present in a new venture.

Burst Marketing brings lots of talented folks together under one roof.

And so many of them put me to shame in what they know.  So, why would I deprive our friends and customers of their fresh viewpoints on the marketing life?  It takes many hands to build a village.

And we’ll be bringing some complementary voices to this page.  We hope you find them enlightening.

I’m sure there are many talented people in your organization.  When customers and targets hear the many voices that make up your company – everyone can benefit.

Once you articulate a clear vision and your core message across your company…let those around you spread their wings.

You’ll see how they, and you, will fly.

It’s not hard to understand why.

The Great Recession has made everyone gun shy. Using temporary workers is a way to hedge your bet. Wait until you can be sure business is back before taking on the expense hiring full-time workers.

26% of America’s workforce are “non standard” – temps, contract workers, and part timers. And from a risk-control perspective it makes sense.

But here’s a question:

Is your business part time? Is serving your clients and customers a part-time gig? How about sales?

The danger of a temporary work force is that they may have no real investment in your Company’s success. Caring about the job is a paycheck thing, not a customer thing.

Investing to add a qualified member of your team or paying to have a specific task done or hours filled -

Which is the bigger risk?

Over the next few weeks, we’ll touch on what I believe are some of the trends to look for in business, marketing, the economy, and social dynamics – and how they may affect you.

But first 2009. Wow. Enough said?

I think most would agree that the economy was the story in so many ways. How many banks are there in the country now? 3 maybe? (ok there’s at least a dozen.)

Here in Albany, NY, we saw two democratic state senators switch to the other party – triggering the most embarrassing political fight I’ve ever seen or ever want to see – only to see them switch back and one of them raised to the leadership post. State government erupts while the cities, counties, and towns burn with unemployment and shrinking revenue.

Global warming / climate change takes center stage in Copenhagen and businesses worldwide do their best to wrap themselves in “green causes.”

2009 was also the year that social media supposedly came of age.

While foreign governments shut down the Internet in their countries, citizens ran through the streets and tweeted about what was going on with the help of surrogate computer users in other countries. Cameras showed our national leaders tweeting during the State of the Union.

Of course, 2009 was so much more – suffering and ecstasy. But there was more suffering I think.

What will 2010 bring? There will be a lifting of the economic haze that settled over our country during the last 2 – 3 years. Once that haze lifts off the ground, we shall see the new business landscape.

One topic will be demographics…the continued shift towards an overall older population…a relatively large younger generation raised online…and a shrinking middle class frightened by lots of things.

What else?

• Rising interest rates – but still no money to lend
• Trust first
• Conventional marketing comes back – but moves forward too
• And more…

2010 – ready or not, here it comes.

Posted by: Steve Banis

With news this week that the national unemployment rate has risen to 9.7%, there are, unfortunately, fewer of them. And it really says something when over 200,000 jobs lost counts as good news.

But things could be worse, much worse. For all the hoopla given the trillion or so dollar stimulus package, when all is said and done, the real heroes to emerge will be American bosses.

Those entrepreneurs, owners and managers who’ve had to make gut-wrenching decisions about others’ livelihoods while enduring their own uncertainly over how they will care for their families.

Hail Boss!

It’s these bosses who have seen their life’s work eroded. Who have watched the Internet steal their customers overnight. Who have watched overseas competitors drive prices down. Who have been forced to accept worse and worse health insurance for more and more money – affecting everyone in their companies.

And they know many of these changes are permanent.

They know that even when the economy stabilizes they’ll be forced to modernize their businesses and find a new formula for success.

Such is the plight of owning and managing a business.

So this Labor Day, let’s hear it for the bosses. Without them, there wouldn’t be any jobs at all.

Posted by: Steve Banis