If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.

What the media call Gingrich’s “baggage” concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking points that we will no doubt hear, again and again, over the next weeks and months.

But how much weight should we give to this stuff when we are talking about the future of a nation?

This is not just another election and Barack Obama is not just another president whose policies we may not like. With all of President Obama’s broken promises, glib demagoguery and cynical political moves, one promise he has kept all too well. That was his boast on the eve of the 2008 election: “We are going to change the United States of America.”

Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster.

Internationally, it is worse. A president who has pulled the rug out from under our allies, whether in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, tried to cozy up to our enemies, and has bowed low from the waist to foreign leaders certainly has not represented either the values or the interests of America. If he continues to do nothing that is likely to stop terrorist-sponsoring Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the consequences can be beyond our worst imagining.

Against this background, how much does Newt Gingrich’s personal life matter, whether we accept his claim that he has now matured or his critics’ claim that he has not? Nor should we sell the public short by saying that they are going to vote on the basis of tabloid stuff or media talking points, when the fate of this nation hangs in the balance.

Even back in the 19th century, when the scandal came out that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock — and he publicly admitted it — the voters nevertheless sent him to the White House, where he became one of the better presidents.

Do we wish we had another Ronald Reagan? We could certainly use one.

But we have to play the hand we were dealt. And the Reagan card is not in the deck.

While the televised debates are what gave Newt Gingrich’s candidacy a big boost, concrete accomplishments when in office are the real test. Gingrich engineered the first Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 40 years — followed by the first balanced budget in 40 years. The media called it “the Clinton surplus” but all spending bills start in the House of Representatives, and Gingrich was Speaker of the House.

Speaker Gingrich also produced some long overdue welfare reforms, despite howls from liberals that the poor would be devastated. But nobody makes that claim any more.

Did Gingrich ruffle some feathers when he was Speaker of the House? Yes, enough for it to cost him that position. But he also showed that he could produce results.

In a world where we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available, the question is whether Newt Gingrich is better than Barack Obama — and better than Mitt Romney.

Romney is a smooth talker, but what did he actually accomplish as governor of Massachusetts, compared to what Gingrich accomplished as Speaker of the House? When you don’t accomplish much, you don’t ruffle many feathers. But is that what we want?

Can you name one important positive thing that Romney accomplished as governor of Massachusetts? Can anyone? Does a candidate who represents the bland leading the bland increase the chances of victory in November 2012? A lot of candidates like that have lost, from Thomas E. Dewey to John McCain.

Those who want to concentrate on the baggage in Newt Gingrich’s past, rather than on the nation’s future, should remember what Winston Churchill said: “If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost.” If that means a second term for Barack Obama, then it means lost big time.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM

Article source: Creators.com

 

Every time I turn around there is something new and better on the horizon in digital marketing – new hardware, new software, new tools, new channels, new targeting opportunities, new tracking capabilities, new providers, new pricing models, new ad units, new everything. If consumers are overwhelmed by choice in this fast moving marketplace then marketers are doubly so.

Consumers adopt along a well-documented bell curve, while smart marketers watch and follow that consumer curve. In our current environment, there are many overlapping curves to watch, and placing your bets on which ones have staying power or will achieve the uniqueness or scale that makes them attractive to marketers is extraordinarily difficult – and risky.

The risk to marketers in all this change takes many forms. Jump too fast to trial a new offering, channel, or approach and you may get ahead of the consumer adoption and have inconsequential or too highly segmented, early adopter-only participation. Wait too long, however, and you might lose the opportunity to stand out or capture incremental value. Of course, all things in marketing being relative, your risk and potential reward depend on your business goals, competitive environment, and target audience demographics. Groundbreaking ideas, whether in a category, in the industry, or even just within your own organization may bring some advantages but it also introduces uncertainties.

How to manage marketing risks:

• Work with proven providers. As trusted partners roll out new offerings you can quiz them on the readiness of those offerings and even perhaps participate in beta trials.
• Don’t bet the farm. When trying a new approach or effort make it part of your test budget first with rigorous metrics for success.
• Set expectations. If you don’t know what the impact will be – say so. Inventive marketing requires some stomach for the unknown.
• Watch progress closely. Build in out-clauses and other stop measures that may limit the bleeding on something that isn’t working, but make sure you have the appropriate metrics tracked and have allowed enough time to truly assess results. Look outside of expected results to see if there are unintended impacts either positive or negative from your new efforts.
• Make sure you are doing it for the right reason. If this risk doesn’t have an associated and large enough potential reward, then reconsider.

The internal, operations side of the business is a whole different set of risks. New tools and other first-time efforts exact a hefty toll in training and trialing, whether for an agency or for a corporate marketing department. Processes all down the line may be impacted by a seemingly minor change. Multiply that across all the tools and relationships that have the potential for regular change and you may induce staff fatigue around a constant state of transition.

If you swap out key partners, processes, or tools too often within your organization you risk never really maximizing your expertise in an area. It simply takes time to learn to excel at our complex tasks. On the other hand, if you don’t keep current with the latest tools, knowledge, tactics, and opportunities on behalf of your clients or brands you will be obsolete quickly. So how do you make the right changes, offering enough stasis and stability to your practice to support excellence while staying on top of your game?

• Evaluate whether the incremental benefits offered by the change make the investment worthwhile. Include a time frame, if you can, in which you are likely to be able to benefit from the transfer.
• Don’t be swayed by emotion or competitive pressure. Do an objective evaluation of the features, functionality, costs, and benefits as they relate to your specific situation. Use an outside consultant to help you make the go/no go decision if you can’t detach from the emotion.
• Reach out to your networks for feedback.
• Bring the teams impacted by the proposed change into the conversation. Assess how attached they are to their current state of affairs and if they are likely to resist or embrace adoption efforts.
• Designate a leader for the change process and have them develop a transition plan with associated costs and timetables and report back on them regularly. Track training and adoption time in a separate category from other work so you can really see the cost.
• In early change state, consider creating at least one super user who is responsible for training internally and assumes an overseer role to limit errors.
• Learn to look at the ripples created by change efforts across an organization and prioritize how many you will attempt in any one time period even if they are not directly related. Err on the side of caution. Better to successfully navigate fewer evolutions then to suffer from taking on too much at once.
• Don’t necessarily consider it an either/or situation. You may be able to add incremental capabilities or tool sets and still keep the old for a time period if that does not multiply costs unacceptably. That way you can trial something first with a subset of staff or projects/clients and spread out some of the learning time and the risk.
• Don’t be afraid to change course in the middle. If it truly doesn’t feel right for your team, is not as promised, is overly taxing on the organization, or more costly then you anticipated don’t wed yourself to a disaster. Allow yourself the option to reconsider or postpone.

In the end, “better” is often a very subjective term that needs to be weighed against your organization’s mission and business goals, and carefully balanced with your ability to execute. In this age of newer and better we can easily get caught in a hamster wheel of perpetual change. It is a rare and valuable skill to be able to separate the new and better from the just new.

Article source: ClickZ

 

It’s what many business owners have feared most: the economy may be headed down without ever really having gone back up from the 2008 downturn.

What can you do to make sure your business thrives even if the economy goes down the tubes again? Here are 10 ideas, from marketing and business-wealth expert Thor Harris, president of the PR firm Percepture and some from moi:

1. Look for opportunities. As weaker players falter, you could see a chance to gain market share. Move into new markets, add new products, or consider acquiring a floundering competitor to gain their customer list and territory.

2. Reconsider your products. Is what you’re selling what customers need today?  If not, it may be time for a change. Update your products, add new flavors, or bundle them into groups to offer more possible ways to buy at a better perceived value.

3. Revisit your packaging. If you sell physical goods, ask yourself if your packages look appealing and current. If not, it’s a good time to refresh your packaging. It gives you an opportunity to promote the product with a new angle.

4. Reconsider your pricing. The ideal is not to cut prices, but to find ways to strengthen your offering at the current price. For instance, could you offer a bonus product or service to make the product more irresistible?

5. Seek new alliances. Harris has a great tip here: Ask your attorney, accountant and other business professionals you use to refer you business. Tell them you’ll do the same for them. Promise them a commission for referring you clients. Do the same with your current clients. Let them know you offer a referral bonus.

6. Ramp up your marketing. Others will pull back, so you’ll get more visibility for your advertising dollar. Take advantage of free social-media marketing tools and learn how to get the most out of them. Harris recommends upping your knowledge of LinkedIn in particular.

7. Improve your cash flow cycle. Could you trim inventory? Get better terms from vendors? See what you can do to manage your cash and keep it in your account longer.

8. Expand your network. Harris says networking is key when times get tougher. Set a goal of attending two in-person networking events every week — and not ones focused on your industry. Mix it up and get to know new people in other sectors who might be customers, or refer you business.

9. Refinance. If you have business debt that’s in more than one lump — an equipment lease here, a credit line there, a racked business credit card — now’s a great time to explore whether you could reorganize and get better terms with a single loan or credit line. Even reorganizing onto one card that’s offering a zero-interest balance transfer could help cut expenses. For loans and credit lines, interest rates will probably never be lower.

10. Don’t burn out. Harris recommends taking one full day a week off, no matter what.

How are you preparing for a possible second round of recession? Leave a comment and tell us your strategy.

Article source: Entrepreneur.com

 

Small companies are getting savvier about using Groupon.

For many businesses, the coupon service comes with hefty caveats. Offering a deal through Groupon can bring in a torrent of new customers, entrepreneurs say. But some complain that the customers are mostly bargain hunters who don’t come back unless there’s a new deal on the table. And some businesses grumble about giving Groupon a big cut of sales from coupon purchases—about 50%, on average.

Now a growing number of entrepreneurs are finding ways to better manage their coupon offers—and the customers that come with them. Some are pushing Groupon for a bigger slice of revenue on coupon sales, while others are reorganizing their operations to better handle the flood of customers. Perhaps the biggest change: Businesses are using Groupon as the starting point of a larger strategy. They use coupons to get customers in the door, then keep them around by offering membership in company price clubs and other deals.

Tasty Returns

Business owners say this approach does a much better job of building loyalty—and costs a lot less than offering discount after discount through Groupon. At Gelato Spot, a Scottsdale, Ariz., ice-cream seller, owner Thomas Plato offered coupons through the service in April and July. When customers redeemed the coupons—$10 worth of gelato for $5—Mr. Plato asked them to join the company’s loyalty program to receive more special offers through text messages. The move, which Mr. Plato devised with marketing firm Cellit LLC, kept customers coming back, he says. And he can pocket all the revenue from the discounted sales—a much better deal than he gets from Groupon, he says.

David Wachs, president of Cellit, argues that small companies need “ongoing conversations” with customers, not coupon offers. Groupon is best used “to drive new customers in their door,” he says.

Meredith Boggess, co-founder of St. Louis baby-gift company TheInitialBaby.com, ran 14 Groupon promotions between the summer of last year and this March. The strategy brought in lots of customers; the company processed more customer orders in July 2010 than it did in all of the previous year, she says.

But TheInitialBaby hasn’t run a Groupon promotion since March and doesn’t plan on another this year unless Groupon offers to target customers in a more lucrative market. The plan, says Ms. Boggess, is to let the coupons out there “run their course, and then try and do our best to translate the Groupon clients we’ve gained since last summer into regular clients.”

For instance, Ms. Boggess and her associates have created email lists to target different customer sectors. “We identified items people bought more regularly and offered people on our lists special discounts for those,” she says. Typically, she says, each email blast “generates five to 10 new orders, often more.”

A Seamless Transition

Dana Spinola, owner of Atlanta-based clothing store Fab’rik, says she has another strategy for dealing with Groupon: getting ready for the flood of responses. She recently launched her second promotion through Groupon, and this time, she’s offering shorter redemption periods and hiring more staff. “There is a huge rush at the start, then it will die down and then there’s a rush towards the end before they expire,” she says. “I wanted to keep the promotion period tighter this time to plan sales and events around the promotion more effectively.”

Ms. Boggess of TheInitialBaby says she and her partners were also caught off guard by the strong response to their first Groupon deal. After plenty of late nights and early mornings, they streamlined their operations to better handle the workload. They also tweaked their offers to get a better profit margin. Their original deal gave $40 in credit for $18 in purchases; later deals gave $35 for $17.

Some entrepreneurs also say it pays to do tough negotiating with Groupon. Mr. Plato of Gelato Spot says hardball tactics—such as playing Groupon against rival coupon firms—paid off. In his first deal with Groupon, he says, he got 60% of the revenue instead of the usual 50% or so.

Groupon says the split in revenue depends on a set of factors, including the size of the market, the number of vouchers available and how many they anticipate selling. Beyond that, a Groupon spokeswoman says the company will work with businesses to come up with the best coupon arrangements for them “as long as the fine print isn’t too restrictive or unappealing.”

She agrees that merchants need to maintain communication with coupon customers and adds that Groupon can recommend strategies for doing that.

Limor Elkayam, founder of daily deal-site aggregator Dealery.com, likes the in-house strategies small companies are using. But as with any coupon offer, she says, businesses must make sure they make up for the initial discount with long-term repeat business. “The owner needs to figure out what number works for them and not just offer up the store for free,” she says.

Mr. Espinoza is a London-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal Europe. He can be reached at javier.espinoza@wsj.com.

Article source: Wall Street Journal

 

One of the ideas that is very familiar in our current world is the notion of a competition.  Many times, this is most prominently demonstrated in sporting events such as the Super Bowl or the Olympics.  In these types of competitive situations, there is a small number of ‘winners’ and many ‘losers.’  In this environment of a ‘zero sum game’ there is only one championship and there can only be one winner.

Unfortunately, many people equate the ‘zero sum’ competition of sports to the realm of economics and opportunity as well.  Politicians frequently refer to the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of life or the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in an attempt to embed the notion that one person’s success must necessarily come at the expense of somebody else.  There is most certainly some competition for customers and markets within the economy, but there is a much more powerful creative phenomenon that many people do not fully understand.

The world of voluntary transactions is vastly different from the world of athletic competition due to one key characteristic.  When transactions are voluntary for both sides, the only way that business takes place is if both people are made better off.  The reason that this conclusion can be made is because people who are not made better off by a particular deal have the option to walk away.

This simple principal holds the ultimate key for creating a life of success.  When you provide something for somebody else that has a value in excess of what they pay for that product or service then you have made their life better.  When they pay you for that product or service, it creates profits that make you better off.  (Note that if either of these cases are not true, either side can simply choose to walk away and seek business elsewhere)

Another highly important aspect of this principal is the notion that you do not need to take anything away from anybody else to become successful.  You only need to provide a product or service to your customers that is sufficiently valuable that they voluntarily part with their money in exchange for what you provide.  Instead of thinking in terms of competing for job opportunities, think in terms of providing a value to your employer that vastly exceeds your compensation.  Instead of thinking in terms of timing investment markets to ‘cash out’ at the opportune time, think in terms of investing in ventures that provide a valuable service to everybody with whom they do business.

The competitive mind is one that thinks in terms of how resources are distributed.  The creative mind is one that thinks in terms of how resources can be increased.  The competitive mind is jealous of what other people achieve.  The creative mind is inspired by what other people achieve.  The competitive mind thinks of ways they can get more.  The creative mind thinks of ways to make more.

Each of us has both the opportunity and responsibility to create our success.  In order to do so, we must develop the maturity to see through the limitations luck and coercive entitlement that grant rewards to some and deny them to others, but do nothing to generate value.  In the end, the only question that remains for each of us to answer is what we are doing today to create success.

 

One of the criticisms frequently leveled against private industry by the political class is that it is a “winner takes all” environment.  The output of competitive markets is often blamed for the disparity between the “haves” and “have not’s” of society.  However, there is another critically important “winner takes all” effect that needs to be understood.

Consider the fact that in most political elections, the winning side typically garners somewhere between 50% and 55% of the votes.  Because of this, they subsequently claim to represent “the will of the people” due to their success in claiming a narrow majority of the votes cast.  However, almost every election leaves a significant portion of the population unrepresented by the winner . . . regardless of who that winner happens to be or which political party they represent.

The effect created by this phenomenon is an extreme “winner takes all” situation where the winning side of elections can use the power of government to force their will on the side who loses.  This is demonstrated very blatantly by authoritarian regimes where the winning party (frequently running in a rigged election) enforces its policy on the populace without opposition.

In contrast to this situation, consider the interplay of a free market where each consumer can make their own choices.  If a particular person desires to purchase a green vs. blue tie, there are a multitude of profit seeking business entities who are more than happy to satisfy your preference.  If you are concerned about animal cruelty, you have the choice to purchase your food from farms that go out of their way to treat their animals well.  The characteristic of free markets that many people find unappealing is the fact that many other people make choices that they do not personally agree with.  In these cases, they often seek to force their will on the populace through the political process.

On balance, do we really think that our interests are better served by a government that structurally ignores over 40% of the electorate?  Is it really better to use the power of government to enforce the will of a narrow majority onto the whole population?  Or is the populace better served by a free market where competition for revenues and profits creates choices for consumers?  The specter of inequality is frequently cited as the driving motive for government action, but pause to consider all of the other things can be done with the authority of government?  Thomas Jefferson was believed to have expressed the sentiment (later iterated by Gerald Ford) that a government big enough to give you all you want is also big enough to take away all you have.  It is most certainly true that we should be careful what we wish for, because it may not be quite what we were hoping for if we get it.