I confess

I confess.  I enjoy reading People at the dentist.

But this morning I debated, briefly, whether to write about how hard it is for me to believe that in 2009 there are online advertisements for mail order Russian brides, or a common topic in several articles the Sunday New York Times, I went with the latter.

Often when I read the Sunday paper, there seems to be an improbably common thread throughout several sections of the paper.  This morning was no exception, and as I read the interview with Frank Luntz “The Wordsmith” he talked about the subtitle of his book Words That Word “It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear.” I thought that was a great expression that a lot of people miss.  Then as I got to the Sunday Styles section, there was an article about how successful People magazine remains as so many publishers struggle, and the article went on about how critical the cover is in selling magazines and how hard they work to find covers that appeal to the baby boomer generation as well as teenagers (specifically discussing a hugely successful picture of a 48 year-old former teenage star in a bikini).  As fluffy as the magazine is – appealing to such different demographics every week with one picture is hard work.

Then as I read the article in the magazine about Conan O’Brien replacing Jay Leno on The Tonight Show starting next Monday (set your Tivo), it talked about how Leno still does 160 stand up shows a year all over the country adding “it’s the best way to take the temperature of the country” and later talked about how one of the reasons Leno got that job over David Letterman was because he went out and met with many NBC affiliates in the “interview” process and Letterman did not (adding that the affiliates have a loud voice in decisions like that).   It was a pretty interesting article that talked about how different Leno and O’Brien are.

When I talk to organizations about what’s most valuable to them, one of the three pillars of my definition of value is brand or identity, why customers, partners, and employees choose them over another (the other two being linkage to key performance indicators, and whether there’s value in improving the performance of whatever is being discussed).  These three very different articles bring out three keys that I think a lot of organizations need to look at right now as this recession persists:

1) Like People magazine, be really specific about who you are selling to, and be sure that how you connect with them will resonate

2) To put a Luntzian spin on it – be very aware of what your customers are hearing you say, not just what you are saying

3) And in the case of Leno, stay in touch with your audience.  Don’t lock yourself in a room, or on a campus as the case may be for some companies, and think you know the “temperature” of your customer.

So get on with rethinking who you are talking to, what your message is, and what’s being heard.  And look at the calendar, I am due for a cleaning at the dentist.

-Ric