Steve Yastrow's Blog

May increase suicidal tendencies

Steve Yastrow — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:46:10 +0000

I’m organizing my day with my normal tools: laptop, notes from yesterday, a bowl of cereal, and the news on the TV. Suddenly, a commercial for a bipolar depression medication comes on. Since I have a friend with this disease, I start to listen to the ad, which, in the first 15 seconds, seemed compelling. However, the last 45 seconds was overpowered by a voiceover delivering a long list of medical warnings. If you’re a teen, you may commit suicide. If you’re elderly, it may decrease your dementia. If you play golf left-handed, it may increase your slice on dogleg par 5’s.

Compulsory medical warnings on TV commercials are stupid. They are unnecessary. These warnings are based on the fallacy that advertising is the deciding factor in creating purchase decisions. It isn’t, especially for these kinds of products. The purpose of pharmaceutical television advertising is to get you to ask your doctor, or to encourage you to tell a loved one to ask his doctor, about the medication. The doctor is responsible for diagnosis and prescription. MSNBC and ABC aren’t. If we can’t trust the doctor to deliver the warnings, then he shouldn’t be prescribing.

And, these warnings are a pain in the you-know-what for the 99% of the people watching the commercial who don’t have Restless Leg Syndrome, or whatever illness is being advertised. We have to listen to a litany of unappetizing side effects and, let’s not kid ourselves, we’re all paying for it. The ad I saw this morning was a :60, and it could have easily been a :30 if it didn’t include warnings about orthostatic hypertention and hallucinations. CNN made some cash, but the rest of us lost out – I’m sure AstraZeneca’s pricing model includes amortization of these premium advertising costs. (Here’s an idea for reducing the cost of health care … maybe Harry, Nancy and Rahm are factoring this into the calculations they are working on right now …)

Advertising is an ever-smaller part of the input to purchase decisions. Come on FDA, get with the times.

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Improvise your success!

Steve Yastrow — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:43:41 +0000

Last Thursday, I was watching Whose Line Is It Anyway?, as Wayne Brady invented a song, on the spot, like no one else can. Drew Carey would throw out a musical style, the audience would yell out topics, and Wayne would instantly compose and sing a song, with perfect rhymes, double entendres, wit and humor.

That got me thinking a lot about improvisation, which has been a big part of my life since I started playing guitar at age 12. Improvisation became a theme a few more times throughout the weekend, inspiring this week’s newsletter, Improvise your success.

Improvise your success connects, chimpanzees, bonobos, The Second City, jazz and my second book together to create this message: Improvise!

There is a place in business for policy and programming, and there are many places for improvising. So what do you think? Is improv important to your business success?

Newsletter link: Improvise your success

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The water hose and the rain cloud

Steve Yastrow — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:27:57 +0000

The disciplines of marketing and sales need to unlearn their most fundamental principle: That marketing and sales are about disseminating information.

The accepted views of marketing and sales look something like this: Marketing is a rain cloud, showering information down on the marketplace. And sales is a water hose, spraying information at specific customers.

Marketing is not a rain cloud, and sales is not a water hose. If you get people wet, they will duck. They will not listen.

Marketing and sales are not about spraying your stories at customers. They are about creating engaging stories in your customers’ mind, stories in which you figure as an important character.

Stop showering your customers with information. Start engaging them in conversations

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Tear up your elevator pitch

Steve Yastrow — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:14:10 +0000

Yes, tear up your elevator pitch. Tear it into little pieces. Want to know what to do with the little pieces? Read today’s newsletter, Tear up your elevator pitch.

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Stop telling stories

Steve Yastrow — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:57:24 +0000

Sales and marketing are not about telling stories. Sales and marketing are about helping your customer create a story, in his mind, in which you figure as a prominent, clear, vibrant character. If your customer tells himself a meaningful, motivating story that includes you, he will be much more likely to get more involved with you, and take actions that improve your business results.

Stop telling stories about yourself. Instead, figure out how to make yourself part of your customer’s story.

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Does your marketing department get it done?

Steve Yastrow — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:10:11 +0000

Today’s newsletter is the sixth article in my series on determining how effective your company’s marketing is. We’ve looked at results, customer actions, customer beliefs, the customer experience, internal branding and senior managment’s meddling in the marketing process.

Today’s issue is titled Does your marketing department get it done? Does it?

Whether you work in a marketing department or with a marketing department, you know what a busy profession marketing is. Everyone is always working hard, juggling multiple priorities, trying get everything done. So what’s the key variable, how hard you work? No …

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Success is Self-Inflicted

Steve Yastrow — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:03:58 +0000

I was listening to an executive explain his company’s dismal results to a group of people: “The recession of 2008 and 2009 caused us to have our first year-over-year sales decline in the company’s history.”

“No,” I thought as I heard this. “The economy didn’t cause your poor sales results. You had bad sales results because your customers didn’t buy as much from you.”

Be careful about inferring causes for your business results. All you know for sure if your sales decline is that your customers paid you less money. But you may not know why.

Of course, the economic situation may have been one reason that this company’s customers purchased less. But to reflexively assign blame to the recession instantly leaves the company off the hook. Was it only the economy that depressed sales, or was it something the company did, or did not, do that affected customer behavior?

Maybe the economic situation just exposed how weak the company’s customers’ loyalty is. Or that this company is not as agile as its competitors.

The direct drivers of your results are, for better or worse, the actions your customers take. There are many things you do that affect how your customers act, many (most) of which have a stronger influence than external factors.

Success is self-inflicted.

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Does management allow its marketing professionals to succeed?

Amanda Cullen — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:53:12 +0000

In today’s entertaining newsletter, Steve challenges companies to evaluate how effective they allow their marketing department to be. He describes common ways that companies get in the way of their marketing department, with such titles as the “Yellow Hubcap Syndrome” and the “Halt! Who Goes There! Defense.”

Chances are, every reader will see that his company sometimes falls prey to at least one of these problems. We’d love to hear of your experiences and advice in the comments.

Read the newsletter: Does management allow its marketing professionals to succeed?

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Err on the Side of Share

Steve Yastrow — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:29:59 +0000

Companies are often very careful about who has access to information. Distribution lists are carefully considered. Columns are deleted before printing. Approvals are required before sharing data.

Sometimes these rules are breached, and sensitive data falls into the wrong hands.

But … what do you think does more damage in your company, information getting to too many people, or information not getting to enough people?

I think most companies have this backwards. Don’t be so careful. Give more access, not less, because information helps people decide and act. In most cases, you are causing more damage by protecting information than you are by sharing it.

Err on the side of share.

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Free Ebook: Encounters - The Building Blocks of We Relationships

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Does management allow its marketing professionals to succeed? In today’s entertaining newsletter, Steve challenges companies to evaluate how effective they allow their marketing...
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Internal Marketing

Steve Yastrow — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:00:04 +0000

Today’s newsletter, Do you focus on internal marketing?, is the fourth in a series that focuses on how to evaluate if your company is doing great marketing. In this issue, we focus on a very important, but often overlooked, audience for your marketing efforts: The people who work in your company.

Read the newsletter and ask yourself, Do you focus on internal marketing?

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Free Ebook: Encounters - The Building Blocks of We Relationships

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Is your company doing good marketing? How can you tell if your company is doing good marketing? That question is the...
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