Linda's Marketing Leverage Blog

JoePa: The legacy beyond the legend of Joe Paterno

Former Penn State Football Coach Joe Paterno

They buried former Penn State Head Football Coach Joe Paterno in Pennsylvania this past week. JoePa the Coach was forced from his position last fall due to allegations around improper sexual activities between a football assistant and underage boys. JoePa the Phenomenon never quite moved off the front page or out of vision of his loyal followers, even as he battled lung cancer the last several months.

Growing up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it wasn’t just death and taxes that were an absolute certainty, but also Penn State football with Joe Paterno. For nearly half a century, Paterno drove the Penn State football machine, with a big impact on the Keystone state. Major events and lives were scheduled around the Penn State schedule. More than even professional sports, Nittany Lions football defined Pennsylvania.

The old joke was the difference between Joe Paterno and God is that God doesn’t necessarily think he’s Joe Paterno. If Paterno was the deity, then Penn State football was the cathedral at which his loyal army of followers worshiped each fall weekend. They gave JoePa adoration and adulation and he in turn delivered outstanding results on the football field.

The details of exactly who knew what and told whom when are still to be worked out. It appears Paterno notified the university administration of the issue, but then allowed his assistant, Sandusky, to remain in a position where the behavior could continue. Was that enough? Not if the abuse continued. Not if you are committed to running one of the premier football programs in the country.

Much has been made of Paterno’s winning record and his stewardship of a program that was never hit by allegations of impropriety or wrongdoing, even as other top programs suffered NCAA sanctions.

Yet it appears that the young men who were abused were sacrificed to avoid any blemish on the Penn State football program. The end and the means were reversed and now, years later, the result is not just the arrest of Sandusky, but the disgrace of Paterno at the end of a long, successful career.

Over the last several months we’ve learned of former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s issues with sexual harassment charges and allegations of long-term extra-marital affairs, and of allegations of abuse by a Syracuse assistant basketball coach. These incidents come after the painful revelations of decades of molestation by young boys at the hands of the priests who were supposed to protect them in the Catholic Church.

What’s common is the pattern: Men in power taking advantage of people who trusted them, and the system protecting the status quo.

Whether the individuals charged were coaches, business executives, or priests, the trappings of power and prestige let these events go on much too long. On a systemic basis, we need a better way to deal with these issues: when they occur, as well as when they’re uncovered, and to prevent them from occurring in the first place.

I don’t believe Joe Paterno ever condoned the sexual behavior of his assistant, but his failure to take action legitimized the activities and allowed them to continue for much too long. Edmund Burke said, “All that’s necessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.”

Joe Paterno was a good man who unfortunately chose to do if nothing, not enough. His legacy includes this sad footnote to an outstanding career…let’s hope it will serve as a great lesson moving forward.

Just a Moment for Marketing: Those Pesky Airline Customers

Linda asks: Get rid of your customers?? What message are you giving your customers; you need them.

Be Poised to Takeoff in '12

To thank our friends and clients for their support throughout the past year, we'd like to share our insights on what we've learned from the past year, and trends that we think may impact your business in 2012.

Please join us as our guest for the Be Poised to Takeoff in '12: Top of the Year Teleseminar on Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 1 pm PST.

This teleseminar will cover:

• Key learnings from 2011: The best and worst of this past year and how you can leverage these in your business in the coming year
• Ten for '12: Ten important trends that will impact your business in 2012
• Performance PowerBoosts: Five powerful ideas you can use to drive your business forward this year, starting immediately.  

As a special holiday thank you to our clients and community, we are offering this teleseminar ($49 value) at no charge. Use coupon code TOPYEAR2012 for complimentary registration.

 

This teleseminar is designed for businesses, consultants, professional services firms, and anyone who wants to use marketing to break away from the pack in the coming year.  

 

Join us on Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 1 pm PDT. Use coupon code TOPYEAR2012 to attend at no charge.

Last year's Top of the Year Teleseminar was quite popular. Because space is limited, and seats are available on a first come, first serve basis, please reserve your space in advance to ensure you are included.

Register now.

Absolutely, Positively a Problem: Fedex, you've got some work to do

By now, you may have already seen the video of the over efficient Fedex driver who pulls up to an address, takes a computer monitor, and throws it over the fence to the recipient's driveway--all captured by a perfectly placed security camera.

Fedex promptly apologized and said the driver in question was "no longer working with customers."

That would be fine if it was only one driver. However, unless he's been working on my route for the last few months or he has a clone, this is NOT an isolated incident.

Don't get me wrong: I *love* Fedex--packages get where they should be when they're supposed to be there, they're easy to track, and most times things show up in one piece. However, over the last several months I've had Fedex delivery people dump packages in the *middle* of my long driveway, where I just managed to avoid running them over at the last minute or ask people coming down the driveway to carry the package for them.

I've tried to alert Fedex about this, but when I call I get a call center agent in some distant place who apologizes profusely and says she will make a note in my file. There's no way to talk to the people at the local distribution center who would know exactly who has been on my route, dumping packages out of the side of the truck. I don't feel confident that this won't happen again--especially after looking at this video.

There are 2 customer service problems here, Fedex. The first is obvious--your delivery people need to be trained to treat the packages they carry as if they were their own and not like hot potatoes to be dumped as quickly as possible.

The second is more subtle. It's not easy to communicate with you about the delivery experience. Make it easier for us to get to the right person and file a complaint when something goes wrong. The best recourse should NOT be to post a video to the Web (with over 5 million hits so far!).

We've told you what's wrong. Let's absolutely, positively see some improvement, Fedex.

 

 

Just a Moment for Marketing: The Schizophrenic Marketer

Create one single integrated marketing strategy, for all of your marketing needs.

Over and Out (Back) Part 2: More Travel Tidings from Kiwi Land

A few thoughts from my travels throughout Australia and New Zealand during the last couple of weeks...

• Airport security differs dramatically not only from country to country but from city to city within Australia and New Zealand. In some places, we not only walked right from the terminal to the tarmac without screening, we weren't even asked for ID. In others, we had to put computers through xray machines, and between countries liquids were limited. However, it was only right at the gate to the flight home to the US that we were asked to remove our shoes and have them checked for explosive residues. 
• Security in hotels in Sydney and Auckland, however, is much more stringent. A keycard swipe is required to move the elevator and your key allows you access to your own floor only. Talk about Big Brother watching your movements!
• We saw small, benign Occupy encampments in most cities we went to, including Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney, Dunedin, Auckland…but not Queenstown. Maybe the group in QT was so small we missed them, or maybe people in Queenstown are so busy occupying themselves with all the great things there are to do in that town that they don’t want to spend time sitting in a tent in a park hunkering down and just plain occupying.
• It's nearly impossible to sue people in NZ. As a result, there are no long legal waivers to fill out when partaking in the 200+ outdoor activities in and around places like Queenstown, including zorbing, bungy jumping, skydiving, etc. I wonder if the injury rate is any different here. It didn't feel any less safe because of less legal paperwork.
• We drove nearly 1500 km in NZ. It took quite a bit of conscious thought to remember all the things that change when you’re driving not just on the wrong side of the road, but on the wrong side of the car, too. But it took less than a minute to get in my car back home and settle comfortably back into driving on the right side of the road (from the left side of the car)
• It's nice to be in a place where service employees don't expect a tip yet provide excellent service anyway. What a novel concept!
• It's fairly easy to stay in touch from halfway around the world, if you want to, but it's more expensive than we're used to. Bandwidth is limited in many places and cell phone coverage works differently in each country, even with the same carrier. User beware!

Just a Moment for Marketing: Climbing the Wrong Mountain

You need a good solid marketing strategy before you execute marketing programs.

 

A Tale of Two Elections: Learnings from New Zealand

While Republican presidential primaries are underway in the US, New Zealand just completed their national election yesterday.

In many ways, the two countries are quite similar: Both are democracies, born of British heritage originally. Both are facing recessions and the aftermath of big government spending. Watching the post-election interviews last night, it was obvious that politicians pretty much look and sound the same the world over. (One interesting note: All the party leaders interviewed sounded as if they'd won the election. It wasn't until the commentators noted how poorly that party had fared, that it became obvious this was mainly a lot of spin.)

The differences, however, are interesting. While the US is a direct democracy, New Zealand is parliamentary. Citizens vote for parties rather than individuals; the parties then from coalitions to form a ruling majority.

That means that all the signage and ads plastered around the country the last couple of weeks focused on parties, not candidates, and each party had a clearly staked out position. Labour appears to be totally out of favor at the present and ACT, the party that seems closest to the US tea party in sentiment, didn't do well at all. Even though John Key appears to be a popular leader, he was not the focus of the National party messaging. In fact, his name and face never appeared.

[Presidential elections in the US are in actuality a two-part system, since voters choose electors who in turn cast votes for the actual candidate. However, the electors are pledged to a candidate not to a party and voters focus on the individual candidate.]

National elections here are held on a Saturday, not a weekday, probably to make it easier for people to vote without impacting work scheduled.

While there are issues with this approach to elections, It was a refreshing change from the ongoing set of primary debates we see in the US from the party out of power. Since the differences between many Republicans aren't that distinct or very different at all, we focus on Michelle Bachmann's lack of preparedness, Herman Cain's 9-9-9 and Rick Perry's inability to keep more than 2 thoughts in his head at any given time. We don't even have a good forum for additional pary candidates like ACT or Greens.

Is there a right or wrong way to do this? No, but it's a relief not to be subjected to the two year long beauty contest we've chosen to elect a key leader of the free world.

 

All Black: Swans, Sheep, Rugby Players

New Zealand is still celebrating its World Cup rugby championship last month. It's impossible to go anywhere in this country without seeing some AllBlacks flag, banner or momento. Players are featured in print and broadcast ads and even as part of the safety videos for Air New Zealand.

It's good to be All Black if you're a rugby player, but not necessarily so if you're an animal. Nassim Taleb wrote a book called The Black Swan about how we don't believe in the existence of the highly improbable (like the black swan) until it appears and we are confronted with evidence to that effect. In New Zealand today, in spite of a country devoted to animal and land conservation, it's still legal to hunt black swans (which were brought over from Australia), but not the more ordinary white kind.

In many cultures, the "black sheep" is the one that stands out--it doesn't belong with the rest of the flock, it's seen as being worth less. New Zealand is known for having 10x the number of sheep as people.

What I've learned here is that changing the diet of the black sheep to a richer feed makes their wool much lighter--to the point where they look just slightly darker than the rest of the group. It's a better fate than that of the black swan. Still one wonders why it's so important to lighten up the wool when most of it is dyed for clothing anyway. Merino wool is highly prized and not inexpensive to purchase and it comes in just about all the colors of the rainbow.

Then there's the possum. Depending on whom you talk to, it was brought to New Zealand for its fur or to help try and control the rabbit population. Unfortunately, the law of unintended consequences set in. There are twice as many possums as sheep and the number keeps rising. They eat up the natural vegetation and destoy habits for local animals, which may be why it's said many New Zealanders feel the best thing they can do with a possum is run over it with their car.

Things to Be Thankful For...

Although it's Friday afternoon in New Zealand as I write this, it's still Thanksgiving Day in the US. A few thoughts on what I'm thankful for this year:

• Family, friends, colleagues and clients--all of whom add to my life in very many ways.
• Health, fitness and wellbeing.
• Great food--which isn't necessarily turkey (this year it was chocolate).
• Freedom--to say, do and act as I believe without fear of reprisal.
• Technology--which allows me to stay in touch and involved from halfway around the world. Or not, as the case may be.
• Music--which keeps me sane.
• My ability to build a business doing something I love: Helping others use marketing in creative, innovative and effective ways.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.