Harding Place

Give Up?

Perceived and Posted by Jerry Schwartz

Give much? Give at all? Not as much as you should? Or could? Chances are, if you are reading this, you are not. Why not?

It’s not. It’s not always better to give than receive. Certainly, the feeling changes with the table’s side you’re on. Definitely, better for both sides than doing nothing.

Do reasons and feelings matter, anyway? From a purely financial standpoint, there are the tax break for the giver and a revenue gain for the givee. Products or services are not exchanged. There’s no transaction for the transfer, only a temporary thought to treasure for a not too tangible, often timely, sometimes transparent tactic.

Whether emotional, religious or business, the reason is unimportant, really. Philanthropy is necessary. Really! We’re not dealing with judgment day, here. But if that works, then write that check. From my standpoint, the reason to give is because you can. Some people are, well, less fortunate, unfortunately. For many reasons, they will never see a fortune. Speaking of fortunes, Fortune magazine figured that Bill Gates’ new found filanthropy was forged to fend anti-trust fears Microsoft had faced in the U.S. and Europe. So what?

I grew up in the 1960’s. After all those college protest marches for injustices, we settled down to making money. A Republican was a 1960’s liberal who is successful in business. Amazingly, 50 years ago, nobody did anything philanthropic unless they were wealthy, like Mellons and Carnegies. Everyone else barely survived the Great Depression. It took their children to make a difference, not just make a living. Now in our 40s, 50s and 60s, we are in careers where we can effect great change. And we do. You see it on energy drinks and granola bags, sure, but you also see more mainstream philanthropy, too. Revlon sponsors runs for cancer. Panera Cares let’s you donate bread ($) instead of buying it. And while the entertainment industry has long donated time and talent, “We Are the World” and, separately, the Live Aid Concert, both in 1985, both raising money for Africa, clearly started a phenomenon.

Recently, I saw the movie “Robin Hood,” about the fabled Sherwood Forest socialist who famously stole from the rich to give to the poor. What a great name for a 501(c)(3), the Robin Hood Foundation! You’ve got to love the unabashedly honest double entendre. The organization was founded in 1988 by hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones. This year’s fund-raising gala generated $88 million and highlighted the actor Michael Douglas of the movie “Wall Street.” I want to hire the publicist who timed the movie sequel’s publicity with this event and the financial reform bill.

New York’s a helluva town. Probably no other city boasts philanthropy as an entire industry rather than an act of conscience. You know it’s an industry because it has its own vendors. Every night there are dozens of fund raisers. The hotel, catering, flower, limo and public relations businesses float on this island of goodwill. Honoring leaders, there’s $2 million for Lincoln Center, $2 million for the Legal Aid Society, $600,000 for Catholic Big Sisters. The 13th annual Women & Science Luncheon recently attracted 400 and raised $1 million and it all started with some lunching ladies handwriting notes and dialing friends. Today, technology sells tickets and raises money. EBay’s PayPal friends even the smallest non-profits. Texting generated $3 million for the Red Cross Haiti quake effort in the first 31 hours, up from Katrina’s $400,000 four years earlier.

Staggering. Corporations can deduct donations of up to 10% of their pre-tax net income. The average actual amount is less than half a percent. Yes, less than .05%. No, this is not about a redistribution of wealth. Nor, the Lord’s work. Just incrementally more would make a huge difference. Loews Corp. heiress Laurie Tisch, 59, says she’s been “doing this [philanthropy] since third grade.” She never thought otherwise.

Singer Alicia Keys, 29, is co-founder of Keep a Child Alive, which provides AIDS and HIV medicine. She recently suggested we put the money used to bail out Wall Street into eliminating extreme poverty. U2 lead Bono says, “Fame is a currency. You must use it well.” Sports greats use fame very well. All professional teams and leagues have formal projects and programs. Their individual and team donations, activities and other support are noteworthy for a remarkable lack of publicity. Famous players, from Jeter to Beckham to Woods, unfamously have foundations. So do actors, directors, TV stars and authors. Clearly, the measure of a man is what he does when no one’s looking. An anonymous quote?

Problem with growing up in the 1960’s was “Corporate Social Responsibility.” After World War II ended, entities emptied endless effluents and excrement into the environment. That, and sunbathing with baby oil and reflectors, probably knocked 10 years off boomer lives. The real problem, for public relations, anyway, was the buzzword. Corporate Social Responsibility was over-reaching and under-performing, though well-meaning. Its evolution from that period of revolution created few solutions and many delusions. Now, the term is trite, if not archaic. Cause marketing is, too, because. . . .

We needed a new timely buzzword and that is “strategic philanthropy.” It means giving for a reason. Strategically, certainly not anonymously. Not altruistically. Not religiously. Nor even generously. Strategic philanthropy is giving for a purpose, an ulterior motive, an expectation of a higher return and, again, not the Lord’s work. We’ve actually analyzed, evaluated and recommended programs for clients seeking to grow businesses or repair images using strategic philanthropy. Certain celebrities give for similar reasons. And that’s okay.

Years ago, we thought it was simply good to give back and we did. Bling bags and boxes, pretty pointy pins, sticky smiley stickers and little lapel labels – seemly symbols of selflessness seriously but silently shown. Recently, someone dear to me said, “Nah, you’re doing it for business reasons.” Business is a good reason, not drug money nor blood money. Giving back because you have a lot is a worthy reason. No need to feel guilty. Can’t possibly spend it all, even if you try to die poor (good book title).

Bill Clinton is a “global philanthropist.” Everyone else is mostly local, like the chapters we join, run, write or live. Being on boards, going to galas, reaping raffles, purchasing program pages, co-opting committees are how we make friends and influence others. People like to play with people like themselves, who give themselves and of themselves. And there are many of us -- bankers, brokers, barristers and businessmen bartering benevolence for bucks. At least we’re giving. Quomodo Latine hoc diciture?

Pro bono’s a great concept, a great Latin term only great lawyers could create. The best firms require a minimum hours per partner per year. The best of the best do it anyway. We like “low bono” – doing good work at break-even prices. We are not a non-profit. Years of pro, low, slow and no bono and the result was less than sunny. In frustration, strategically and creatively, we created PRoBono to combine needs, wants and requests. With PRoBono, we formalized the act of giving by taking on selected small non-profits – that desperately need help – at minimal cost. A formula keeps programs and expenses under control. Beneficiaries have included Angel Flight and New York Scores.

Beyond this, our philanthropy is huge, if I can inspire, for a firm our size. Hundreds of kids get toys yearly through our collective collecting. Hundreds of trees have been planted in Israel through our many donations honoring births, deaths and mitzvahs of friends and family. We reimburse staff attending selected local cultural events, including three times the suggested donation for lunchtime concerts at a neighborhood church. With full agency support and participation, staff have staffed soup kitchens, built school bookcases and raised money for animals of Katrina (a pet project). And we give extra days off for eleemosynary work. Academically, we have instituted internships with interested institutions, allied with alumni activities, and two of us have taught, too.

I love the word eleemosynary. Better than parsimonious.

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Indigenous Consumption

Perceived and Posted by Jerry Schwartz

Splitting the atom 65 years ago almost split the world forever. Now, the Internet is bringing communities, if not the whole world, together. Without splitting hairs, some call this globalism.

On the other hand, capitalism is a better term. Certainly, it is an attractive economic and social order often resulting in another “ism,” materialism. No surprise. People like to live well. Pretty jewelry, big cars, nice homes. They don’t call them goods for nothing. The production of goods and services is for something -- economic growth. Fun and profit are byproducts. So, buy products!

A thousand years ago, peasant life sucked. As feudalism declined, capitalization flourished. It developed slowly after the middle ages, then rapidly transformed Western Civilization through the 20th century, giving rise to industrialization, computerization and now “Internetization.” Materially, it’s all about monetization. Arguably, there is a higher pursuit, “the Lord’s work.” Actually, poverty still sucks.

Gimme a good war, Mr. Roosevelt, maybe a trade war, even a cultural revolution. Wars are how different countries balance their socio-economic goals. Great change often results, often for the good and the goods. Civilizations usually advance. Certainly, healthcare does. So does tourism, based on all my friends vacationing in Vietnam, recently, who resisted serving there 40 years ago.

Great change is happening now. There is a huge shift in the world’s balance. The sun is rising, again, in earnest, this time led by China. In fact, many Asian countries are posting double-digit growth. Singapore recently reported record expansion. South Korea’s credit rating hit new highs. The difference now is Asia’s emergence as both a producer and a consumer. Large concentrations of wealth are building up and the challenge is multi-national and multi-platform. Multi-denominational, too. For decades, suburban Jewish families consumed Kosher Cantonese on Sunday nights and now Chinese families are consuming diamonds -- $2.2 billion worth from Israel alone.

Clearly, the world is opening up. There’s no going back because the opportunities are huge. Large numbers of people in Pacific Rim countries are rising from great poverty to a new social order that includes Tiffany’s and Mr. Softee. You are not gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen the Internet. A recent study noted that China, with nearly 400 million users, is far more connected than we are, surpassed only by Japan, in time spent on the Web.

And that’s China’s conundrum. How do you move a 3,000-year-old culture, heavily agrarian, smoothly into the 21st century? Not easily. China is like a big time machine, trying to transport 1.3 billion people rapidly to global centricity. Actually, the time and speed problem is common, particularly on unpaved roads to success. Driven by boredom, curiosity and ambition, youths on farms and fields, as much as in mountains and deserts, want more and they want it fast.

Beyond the ancient social need to connect, the Internet is instant entertainment and knowledge. Billions literally are flocking to the Web for movies, music, games and information. Centuries of thirst and hunger fed in a click. Yes, Mr. Disney, another mouse. . . for another screen. Comically, South Korea is the world’s largest supplier of animation.

Of course, an educated population gives rise to horrible capitalist desires, like shopping. Amway, for example, sells $3 billion in cosmetics and household products in China alone. Consumption brings money, power and access to the Web’s greatest benefit, community (no, not pornography). Connectivity enables communities to organize quickly, giving rise to social movements and unrest in minutes instead of generations. A different Tea Party, Mme Pei-Lin.

With so many countries now linked to China’s future, this raging “Asian Contagion” is surprising the West by its broad, rapid spread. Incidentally, China, which invented the rocket, wants to help us with manned space exploration. Occidentally, in Europe, it takes 11 countries to produce three times China in goods and services. In Argentina, the top export is soybeans (not wine) and China and India are its largest markets. Accidently, these countries are interdependent on salad dressing. And we all thought the problem was the value of the Yuan and all those shirts and shoes made there and sold here. Incrementally, China’s current demand for foreign commodities is helping foreign currencies and economies. A Yuan is contagious.

Countless articles, books and speeches raise the roar of the Eastern Tiger. Europe will grow 1% this year and the U.S. 3%. China will grow nearly 10%. The 2010 Bloomberg BusinessWeek annual ranking of Most Innovative Companies, shows 15 of the top 50 are Asian. There were only five four years ago. Importantly, China’s fertility rate is declining, as its inflation rate is increasing, like much of Asia. Healthcare and pensions are next. More change.

Complicating and driving the change is the Internet with all its transparency. Technology is not a shortcut to progress, it is progress -- high-speed, broadband and worldwide. We once laughed about tribesmen riding camels with cell phones. Now, we smile about peasants driving Geelys with GPS systems. We think it’s cute that “American Idol” is top rated in Singapore. Cute doesn’t describe Samsung’s 85% of the LED TV market in America. BTW, Lenovo will tell you Oriental is PC. LOL.

Calculators weighed a pound and cost hundreds 25 years ago. Today, they cost a pound (U.K.) or are even free. We prophesize about the iPad and its glorious future, yes, but a simple cell phone tied to the Internet creates jobs, sells products, completes transactions, connects peoples, searches information and creates a global party line. In India, as elsewhere, texting is the center of life and commerce. Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child, while noble in trying to reach two billion children, could be replaced by an inexpensive versatile mobile handset, with fewer components, less cost and no politics. Many people have less access to a good toilet.

Starbucks sees Asia as its biggest coffee break. Japan is the company’s largest market outside the U.S. South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand are not far behind. China is set to surpass Japan in bean sales and screen sales. And you know one reason for the popularity of coffee in the land of tea? Internet marketing. Very powerful in a region where young people consume everything online on phones, from product promotions to contests and events. Plus, information travels rapidly, virally on blogs, bulletin boards and instant messaging. Mainstream Google’s mainland difficulties are mainly awkward steps to a global market economy. And that’s where Asia is going. It’s called “indigenous innovation” and even South Korea, home to two top cell phone makers, banned iPhone sales last year. It’s also called nationalism. It’s also practiced here.

Clearly, the creation of exciting new products like the iPhone and iPad, the spread of broadband and the decrease in prices through innovation and low cost providers will lead to world peace. Eventually.

It’s as American as Apple. Bye.

# # #

It’s Time

Perceived and Posted by Jerry Schwartz

Wasted on the young? Mark Twain had it wrong. Youth is wasted on the old.

Anyone under a certain age knows exactly how to use their youth. Whether sex, drugs or rock ‘n roll, what better time to enjoy life? This is especially true when you are not raising children, paying a mortgage or holding a job. Testosterone, crime and hearing decline as the years increase.

The real problem is attitudinal, not chronological. For some reason, we want numbers on young and old, but there are no numbers. Wikipedia does not say we are young until the age of 30 and then suddenly we are old. The bible doesn’t either, but with Moses living until 700 everyone else seems, well, child-like. Then again, in the 1960s everybody over 30 was old and untrustworthy. The Beatles sang about reaching 64.

My daughter once called me immature when I was about 50. I thanked her for the compliment. An old friend -– or should I say, long-time friend? -– seemed ancient when he was 20. And he was . . . errr, cantankerous, a trait we associate with the elderly. My grandfather seemed old when he was my age now. My father passed away at 58 -- way too young.

And that is sort of the point. We define age relatively. We compare, analyze and evaluate character traits and measure them against time, physical appearance, or expectations. In the most common examples, he acts like a two-year-old, she dresses like a teenager, she’s prematurely gray, or he walks like an old man.

Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner aside, throughout most of history, people died young compared to today. If a sabre-tooth tiger didn’t get you, pneumonia or some other enemy did. Middle age in the middle ages was probably 25. In the post-industrial period of the mid-20th century, middle age was 45, which was not true -- dying at 90 was not common. Today it is (see my previous blog on the subject). Incredibly, Ponce de Leon was only in his late 30s when he went looking for the Fountain of Youth.

Tales of a Fountain of Youth have existed for thousands of years. Alexander the Great went searching for it in his 20s, 300 years before Christ, but died at age 32 without finding it. Still others continue to pursue it through cosmetic exploration, a nip here and a tuck there. Liposuctions and face peels are near record levels. Hair dye sells by the barrel. Teeth and hair implants are implanted in our psyche as common as tonsillectomies were a generation ago.

Given that at 60 you may have as many adult years ahead as you have behind (no?), the thought of staying, feeling and looking good for that long is daunting. Brightly colored walkers and designer drip bags are not going to do it. Dating unthinkably younger people isn’t, either, no matter what your friends think.

Every article written about not-so baby boomers these days, as the first turn 65 next year, highlights longevity. A recent Wall Street Journal story on the “Health & Wellness” page said, “If you are fit in mid-life, you double your chances of surviving to 85.” That age group is now the fastest growing segment of the population. A recent similar New York Times story, on the “Personal Health” page, referred to the obvious health and wellness benefits of exercise. Look at all the ads to stop hair loss and weight gain, zap lines and spots or brighten smiles and outlooks. People are buying this.

And the list goes on, to include menopause, muscle tone, diseases and divorces. Aging is a huge industry. There are countless philosophers, articles, books, speeches, expos, courses, products and services. Eldercare and elderlaw are hot new fields. We will live so long, no one will retire for fear of outlasting our savings. As a result, in 20 years, the afterlife will go from an after thought to an after tax matter, too.

And, oh, the vanity of it all. Aging boomers, trying to stay or act young, have made orthopedists wealthy, repairing worn knees, dislocated shoulders and crooked backs. Arthroscopic surgery is the new cocktail party conversation. The three little scars are badges of courage.

Ever wonder why the wearer doesn’t see the fake hairpiece, the badly capped teeth, the asymmetric nose. . . let alone the ugly tie or too-bold plaid? We see what we want to see. Mirror, mirror on the wall, the truth be told, what’s not so fair after all. Actually, the secret to eternal youth is looking right back at you. Problem is most of us detest detection of our complexion upon inspection in our reflection. Love is blind.

So, for all would-be Dorian Greys out there, some things really work. Informal research has turned up a few non-surgical non-cosmetic solutions to aging. If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, then behold —

• How do you dress, frumpy? Still wearing old clothes because they’re still too good to throw out? At the same time, avoid hand-me-ups from your children

• How do you carry yourself? Ever notice how old people often let their bodies just droop? Posture counts for a lot. Stand straight, shoulders back, head up. Unless there’s a physical reason why you can’t.

• How do you eat? Assuming you are not on a diet for medical reasons, is everything baked and dry, or poached and unimaginative? You are what you eat. And no early bird specials and no drooling.

• How do you speak? Waaay tooo sloooow? In monoootones? Mumble much? If you are not outright boring by nature, practice speaking clearly and firmly. Modulate. Enunciate. And smile.

• What do you speak about? Pains and illnesses? The grandchildren? Life the way it used to be before iPods. Work at staying current. It’s called news because it’s the plural of new. Practice on shallow people at cocktail parties.

• Where do you live and hang out, where old people go? Are you excited by Pinochle or Canasta? Mahjong is hot, again, kids.

Honestly, we make ourselves old, then we complain about it. For some reason, between 45 and 55, we balance half glasses on our nose tips, sprout facial hair, pull our pants up high and start driving Buicks. The alternative is not pierced ears and ponytails on grandpa, but something in between.

And that’s kinda where most of us are, not in the middle but in between. We are “tweensters.” As Life magazine used to say, referring to its competition, Look magazine, “Consider the alternative.”

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The Forest Thru the Trees

Perceived and Posted by Jerry Schwartz

Crisis communications. Why are so many “experts” trying to do it? If there were five pharmacies on one block and you wanted to start a new business, would you open another pharmacy? Of course not, too much competition. Not a strategic move, but what can you expect from grandstanders who initially advised Tiger Woods to be forthright and admit his mistake. Had he listened, what would he have said after the 3rd, 5th and 15th affair popped up, “I’m sorry, again and again and again”? The best thing he did was hide for several months. The best thing Walgreens did was acquire Duane Reade. So much for competition.

Globalism. Now, there’s the hottest new sector for PR firms, widely overlooked. This is not the globalism of old, it’s different. At G.S. Schwartz & Co., we define globalism two ways -- inbound, referring to foreign companies doing business in the U.S., and outbound, referring to American companies doing business overseas. The globalism I’m expounding here is inbound. Everyone has at least one client offshore and probably not in an English-speaking country. Some of us have a lot more. In fact, inbound globalism is exploding, or is about to.

For 50 years, as the dollar has declined, yes, more and more foreign companies’ products and services have been sold in the U.S. Once upon a time, “Made in Japan,” meant poor quality. Then, in the 1960’s, Nikon changed the game with its precision cameras and gradually foreign-made meant quality. We went from enemy to envy as German and Italian housewares occupied American cabinets. Few products manufactured by foreign companies today are even made in their homeland. Amazingly, their national flagship auto brands have major plants in the U.S. Who would have thought, Toyota in Kentucky? Actually, less and less is made in Japan because it’s too expensive. Most everything these days seems made in China, which itself is getting more expensive. Where’s the next low-cost producer, Antarctica?

Years ago, only multi-billion dollar corporations, like IBM (nee International Business Machines), were international. “Global” wasn’t even a popular term back then. “Multi-national” and “world-wide” were more common, though both sound slightly archaic today. Even the word “foreign” is so, well, foreign. Then, along came and went Global Crossing, a billion-dollar telecommunication company cobbled together and disassembled almost overnight. Today, global crossings can have sales of a mere few million dollars by using the Internet and networks of dealers and other resellers to reduce staffs and overcome cultural obstacles. Few people use the terms “wholesalers” and “distributors” anymore. Storefronts are brick and mortar. We input and download. We “cc” without carbon paper.

A favorite science fiction film is the original 1975 version of “Rollerball” starring James Caan, where corporations fight on a playing field instead of countries fighting on a battlefield. It’s not plastics, Benjamin, it’s economics, certainly not politics, more likely heretic, as marketing moves goods and services from one regime to another.

The opportunity for PR firms, this phenomenon of inbound business, is due to several factors that will continue for the next decade:

• A distinctly capitalist tool, the power of public relations is understood by everyone everywhere. Even monarchs have ministers of information and they know credibility increases as governmental control decreases. They also all know the cost

• The dollar is cheap, so it has never been more cost efficient for companies over there to come here. And they love coming here, literally, which is good for all of us. At the very least, it shifts the balance of payments and makes PR more affordable for them

• Despite China’s tremendous growth, surpassing Germany and about to out-do Japan, the U.S. remains the #1 market for both business-to-business and consumer products and services. And it’s a big, rich market by any standards, particularly the middle class

• English is spoken everywhere by clients, by the media and by all sorts of influencers. That’s why there are call centers in India and not China. Incredibly, French once seemed destined to become the global language of business. Everyone studied it in school. Despite the numbers, Spanish was for emerging markets, another newer term rarely used in those days. It seems like nothing is third-world anymore

• Technology, including computers and cellular phones, has simplified and improved communications. Some of us still remember dialing an operator to place an echo-filled foreign call. There were no emails nor faxes, but there was Telex

• Other countries have emerged as leaders in certain sectors, but they are too small for their industries to grow exponentially. Companies in places like Japan, Netherlands and Vietnam, particularly publicly-owned businesses, have found new growth in the U.S. Ever wonder why many Dutch speak four or five languages?

Consider, for all its technology prowess, the whole country of Israel has only 7.5 million people as compared to 8.3 million in the city of New York alone. The Negev is not a major market and terrorism kills tourism. Besides, how much orange-flavored kosher chocolate can they sell before intellectual capital becomes the leading export? Many Israelis also speak four or five languages.

Speaking of New York, there’s little manufacturing anymore on this small island off the coast of America. We are the world’s media and financial center almost by default -- and PR center, too, for all the same reasons. It’s a good time and place to be, almost equidistant from one side of the world to the other. Sure, Hong Kong and London are serious competitors, but they can’t print money like we can. The dollar is still the reserve currency. Also, clients want their PR agencies near the media and Wall Street. G.S. Schwartz & Co., for example, has only one office and it’s in Manhattan, yet we have clients in China, Hong Kong, England, Ireland, Holland, Israel, Moscow, the Caribbean and Argentina, in addition to cities across the U.S. Fully 25% of our business is offshore in some way -- all inbound and a real trend. Definitely, not a fad. Certainly, more tangible then “reputation management.” Our first client of 2010 was based in Los Angeles but the next three were offshore. They came here because we can walk down the street and demo a product live to a reporter or investor. Hard to do if you’re an agency based in Tulsa.

As for Woods, “crisis experts” need to see the forest through the trees.

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PAIN IS GAIN

Perceived and Posted by Jerry Schwartz

Pants pockets pulling. Jackets just joined. Collars closely clasped. Belts barely buckled.

I hate that feeling. Most of us do. Losing weight is so much cheaper than tailoring or buying clothes. Less expensive than a shrink. Less anxiety than the gym. Less is more, more or less.

About 20 years ago, I found a formula, protocol, regimen or lifestyle that has kept my weight and wasteline roughly the same between ages 40 and now 60 as they were between 20 and 40.

Inside every thin person, formerly overweight, hides a fat person who sneaks out once in a while. You can feel chubby cheeks on your chair’s seat. Bending moves memories slightly over your belt’s top. Mirrors reflect folds that are hard to face.

In a world where weight weighs heavily on those weary from worrying about the way they look, we watch and wink wondering what if, instead of what was or why not, we could wear whatever we want. Wow!

Stripes instead of plaids. A-lines better than tubes. Straight collars over spreads. Solids rather than patterns. Natty not nubby. Dips not dollops.

Public relations is often as much about personal presence as it is about publicity. Perception is reality. Reality is not image. Image is important. There’s no second impression if you don’t pass the first. Should judges judge jerseys before juries? Should Docs don dark duds? Silver sailor suits should be suitable, upon reflection, but what would happen to navy blue? Dark blue jerseys are slimming.

I was fat once, 20 pounds heavier and two inches shorter than now. That was in my young teens. Baby fat, they called it. Years putting it on, at that age and stage, losing it was fast and easy. Forty to 50 years later, dropping pounds is harder. Blame changing metabolism and gravity. Same weight, unevenly and unfairly distributed. Poor eating habits and minimal exercise don’t help, either. Some things you can control, others you can’t. Fear of being fat again is a powerful dietetic. The little fat boy inside is always whispering in my ear, jiggling as my jacket’s joiner jams. Jeeze!

Years of reading, experimenting with diets and exercise have created a system that works. Works for me, anyway. Endless studies show dieters who exercise lose more weight than those who don’t. Who pays for such stuff? Other studies say dieters who avoid high-fat and high calorie foods lose more weight. Duh!

Sounds like the key is not consuming more water or fiber, eating fewer candy bars or drinking less alcohol. Nor is it walking a mile or two every day, doing crunches or golf minus the 19th hole. Mulligan’s are high-calorie whisky-based linaments.

The answer to less flab is more self control and less food. Some activity and not some dessert. Veer from the volumes of vacuous verbiage. Don’t buy diet books!

Okay, at 62 with a 22-year-old’s waist and want, how do I do it? Here are my rules for life’s roles by eliminating rolls. The goal, here, is NOT to be NBC’s Biggest Loser. This is for increasing self-satisfaction and self-esteem over long periods of time. So, for the fridge door --

• No rolls or any other bread. Never met a thin baker and, besides, these are empty calories -- pain is gain

• No desserts. Nothing. The problem with fruit is that it raises your anticipation. You always want more

• Wine, even good wine, red or white, only one glass per day. Period. While one is high-calorie, the second is a game changer. Drink bad stuff so you want less. Then, you’ll savor the good stuff slowly

• No sauces, gravies, emulsions, oils, dips, au jus, glaces, dressings

• Soups and cheeses are forms of fat, one liquid, one solid, both fattening. Not good

• Eat all the lean animals, fishes or birds you want -– the new zoo menu. But, no panko on or in

• No sodas, ciders, juices, sports drinks, energy drinks or green bulls, let alone red. More bull is more bull and more calories, all empty

• Eat all the veggies you want, but not fried or sauced, preferably boiled or s teamed. Raw is good. Potatoes are not. Learn to like hot, spicy Asian. The Cold War is long over.

• Try all veggies for one full day every week. Good for the heart and soul. Better and easier than one day of nothing as some suggest

• The healthiest meal of the day is usually the worst, breakfast. Do not eat eggs, bacon, muffins or toast. Do not drink orange juice or even look at home fries, especially out-of-home. Most non-sugared cereals and skim milks with fruit are good. A slice or two of toasted multi-grain should satisfy your carb cares. No butter. Period

• Find new foods. Sometimes, novelty can replace calories. Snack on edamame, jicame, pomegranate, kiwi and star fruit. Technology gives us sweet things year ’round from everywhere. IPods have no seeds.

Some people eat to run. I run to eat. Any exercise accomplishes four things

1. Aids weight loss
2. Flexes joints and muscles
3. Increases tolerance for pain from non-exercise activity (like getting up in the morning)
4. Provides cocktail party conversation, as in, “I ran two miles today and feel great.”

Even a little exercise works, but you do it regularly, daily. Walk when you can ride, trot when you can walk, move when you don’t have to. Hide that TV remote along with your driver’s mocs. Get that coffee yourself. Tie your shoes without bending your knees. Photocopy your own papers. It figures or figure it out. It’s your figure. Buy a pedometer, if you must.

Worst of all is kidding yourself. One more bite, one small piece. A nibble. A taste. Starting next week, next month. More tonight, less tomorrow. Two small pieces are less fattening than one bigger one. Eating someone else’s food is less fattening. Early in the day’s better than late at night.

Smart advice is don’t eat dumb (raw or half-baked). Find a balanced diet. Offset a big breakfast with a lighter lunch, an expense account meal with a fruit salad deal. One day on, another day off. Adding weight takes time, losing it takes more. Give in less. Eat smaller portions, too.

And, wait.

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Death and Deletion

Perceived and Posted by Jerry Schwartz

Forget science and statistics. Obituary pages of The New York Times are evidence that people clearly are living longer. Rarely a day goes by that prominent people buried on those pages aren’t regularly, if not commonly, in their 80s and 90s.

Many, in fact, are people we thought had already died years ago. A movie star, sports great, pious politician or celebrity executive out of the headlines for so long, they go unnoticed by TMZ. Perhaps it’s considerate, or vain, of them to have hidden so well that we remember them the way they were. . . at their peak of popularity. Incredibly, invisibility is their final publicity stunt.

A client, a prominent trusts and estates attorney, offered that one reason people populating the Times Obit page seem to kick the bucket at riper older ages is that most are successful enough to live their lives better and longer and die better and slower. The rich are different – they can afford to take care of themselves and take healthcare for themselves in a way that others can’t. Good food, good exercise, good resorts and spas . . . good doctors and publicists, too. “Accidents happen” is an epitaph.

Like the widely anticipated annual Academy Awards tribute to film industry’s luminaries lost in the last year, newspapers long ago recognized the attraction of death to sell subscriptions. Whether on the front page or in a dedicated section, obits are the first thing spouses fight over reading each morning. And, like the decline in classifieds, the Internet is killing obits. “In Memoriam” ads are terminal. The situation is grave.

Social networking speeds social mourning. And global mourning is as much a phenomenon as global warming, as word of an important death spreads as instantly as everything else online. Wherever they are (or were) and you are, news of someone’s demise reaches everyone equally with the intensity of an election won, record broken or overlord overthrown. Digital deaths stoke our deepest information needs faster than old-fashion gossip, rumor or any other word-of-mouth. As defunct Life magazine said, “Consider the alternative,” referring to its main competitor, Look magazine, also gone.

The intensity of online all-the-time has changed relationships forever. Tough for séances, the rich, famous and powerful feel close even when they are not. Nobody mourned a princess like the world mourned Diana or – 15 years later and a Tweet faster – a prince like Michael. Year after year, innovation after innovation, shiva after shiva, the dead are increasingly bereaved by strangers as though they were family and friends. As a result, some, like Elvis and Marilyn, are wanted more dead than alive. Forbes ranks them high on the list of biggest deceased earners. At auctions for their effects, it’s not morbid to bid more.

Year-end media reviews endlessly everywhere in the final weeks of December and first weeks of January always focus on those who departed during months past. We cry over ‘em. We sigh over their promotional photos in faux leather wallets and cheap picture frames. Whether for 15 minutes of fame or 15 years, this year’s hit list seems unique and large (perhaps no more than other years). “Omigosh, I forgot,” we’ll all think as we recall Soupy Sales, Budd Schulberg and Gertrude Berg. “Didn’t so-and-so die long ago?” No, only minutes ago.

Facebook lets us know strangers faster and better than flesh and blood. Life’s little details and death’s, too. Everything posted. The feeling is intimate. The experience is intense. The information is overload. Like love, actually. And their departure is equally painful. Worse than a cancelled column or TV show. If you can “friend” someone, you can grieve a virtual void. Rest in peace.

Watching the 25th Anniversary of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame show on HBO, recently, I was reminded of a time before MTV and MP3. Vivid images of rockers in rockers. Now more than cultural clichés, they are old family and friends, some with comfy names like mommas and poppas. And not just old, they are dying. With no Internet or safety net, groups like Crosby, Stills & Nash are no longer Young. The Bee Gees are down to two Gees. The Four Tops are three. As The New York Times said in a recent editorial, “Stayin’ alive [are] kinda dumb words to live by . . .” We don’t invite third-parties into our lives, we “engage” them. And we’re devastated by their deletion.

Boys in silver balloons float by and crash. White House gatecrashers enter and float by. They are only Tweets and IMs filling a virtual vacuum. Faster, wider and deeper than any news fit to print. For an instant, a YouTube video virtually vaults some unknown to fame and just as quickly they’re gone. No memorial. Not even a screen ghost. Millions of impressions, no lasting impression. A unique visitor’s unique visit. Web sites become gravesites. Digg it.

We mark time by deaths as we do by births and other milestones. Long ago, Hallmark discovered this and created cards for all of life’s anniversaries. My dad passed away 30 years ago. At 61, I’ve outlived him. I’ve now been without him longer than I was with him. Still feels like yesterday. Will he leave a message in my inbox? No, but he lives on as my password for Flickr. I press enter and remember only good times.

We also mark time by our peers and, for a large chunk of us, our peers are baby boomers, too. Wildly unthinkable, at 50, many of us are only half-way through our lives. As centenarians increase faster than septuagenarians, we need bloggers and tweeters to remind us of our mortality. Somehow, the over-publicized untimely deaths of Farah Fawcett at 62 and Patrick Swayze at 57 are shocking until we Google the finales of, say, Gary Cooper at 60 and Clark Gable at 59. Lines for their funerals ringed blocks. For Diana and Michael, lines ringed the globe.

There’s a very poignant Billy Crystal movie, “Memories of Me,” where his father, played by comedian Alan King, is a hack movie extra, whose lack of celebrity and success upsets and embarrasses the son. And when the father dies, at the end of the film, every real nameless extra you’ve ever seen lines up at the funeral to celebrate their peer and memorialize a good friend. Paraphrasing an old scriptwriter, life is a stage, so make sure you get a good seat.

Unstaged British scientist Jerry Morris was the first to show – 60 years ago – that exercise extends life. Never heard of Jerry? You can email him a birthday wish when he turns 100 next May. There’s a ghost of a chance he’ll make it.

Death, taxes and the Internet.

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New eBooks To Show Movies

Perceived and Posted by Jerry Schwartz

Kindles burn at temperatures much greater than Fahrenheit 451. Should be Centigrade. The debate over eBooks gets even hotter.

Throughout history, old media never disappeared when new media appeared. They changed. Newsreels didn’t kill newspapers anymore than TV didn’t kill radio. The Internet won’t kill newspapers, either. Even illuminated manuscripts changed . . . into valuable artwork. Like the evening news, at the end of the day it’s the content, not the medium.

Personally, I like Barnes & Noble’s new Nook, or at least the name. It’s up there with other silly branding mistakes like Apple, Google and Twitter. Whatever happened to good old products like Pan Am, Ipana and Oldsmobile? Obviously, names have some value. At $259, the wireless Nook is hot and sales are unexpectedly back ordered, probably until Nook 2. Clearly, consumers love eBooks, particularly passionate book buyers. Symbolically, so do publishers like Random House with Kindle igniting sales of Dan Brown.

Crazy industry, though, book publishing. Gives big advances to writers. Sells new books at a loss. Takes back unsold books. Publishes hundreds for one or two successes. Never spends a penny on marketing till one is successful, then spends a penny. Why are so many successful foreign authors “over there” so widely unesteemed and unsold here? Apparently, books don’t travel well. Tough business. Tough to read.

Most books are still printed the way Gutenberg did it in 1439. Pagination finally showed up 100 years later. Most improvements have been for productivity to deliver millions of Harry Potters, like magic, to the computer generation (unbelievable). Believe me, the monks who wrote manuscripts back then were nun-too-happy with new technology. Neither are today’s union printers.

Someone, not sure who, claimed if the Internet came first, we’d all say, “Hey, look. We can print out this stuff.” Yup.

Everybody wants to be an author, though. Certainly, less risky than launching a digital device or operating a book store. Plus, you get immediate cache at cocktail parties and future cash from a movie deal or licensing. Almost forever. Your grandchildren never have to work. Your birthplace and country home become museums with tours on podcasts. Your autographed first editions get collected. All this without getting dressed in the morning.

The book business will survive as will the newspaper business. They’ll change with The Times and the times. These industries need to harness technology beyond the speed of printing pages. Trucking one copy to East Flatbush finally will make no sense because it makes no cents. Long entrenched institutions, like lunches at Michael’s and parties in Tribeca, will somehow change, too. Breakfasts are briefer and cheaper, anyway.

Will eBooks cannibalize sales of printed books? Amazon says eBook owners buy many more books than before, up to three times more. Sales also increase with iPhone apps that enable in-store user reviews. The spread of digital TV recorders has shown people actually watch more TV and – unexpectedly and incredibly – more commercials. Network ratings are up. The Boston Globe, a very old and highly regarded newspaper, has seen its circulation drop in half to about 260,000, yet its web site gets an extraordinary five million unique visitors a month.

In addition to smartphone apps, all digital books – mobile or desktop -– offer exciting new possibilities. Some call this “augmented reality.” A click will take you from pages of Petrarch to pictorials of Pompeii. Or a video of Mario Batali cooking. Maybe pop-up coupons for pasta makers at Williams-Sonoma. The magazine industry is aggressively experimenting with it. McGraw Hill is actively marketing it with a college product called Connect. Digital fiction is next, with an optional movie on your Kindle. Nice touch.

Book jacket art may end up the biggest beneficiary, despite its predictable death by digital. An old client was a leading printer of music album covers when “vinyl” provided a 12-inch canvas. He collected them. Brookstone sold pre-fabricated frames for hanging them. Eight-track cassettes, tape and CDs really hurt them. Downloads finally killed them. But, of course, paid downloads are up in the face of declining disc sales. So are prices for original album art. Norman Rockwell illustrated magazines. Quick, name one or two book jacket designers.

Grandma, mom’s mom from Russia, never learned to read, after 70 years in this country. Never became a citizen. Love knows no boundaries. She was a great story-teller, almost better than TV’s Mr. Rogers.

McLuhan was sort of right -- the TV replaced story telling. As children, as we gathered in front of the old DuMont (with Kindle-sized screens) the way village natives gathered around a bonfire to hear vanities of the tribal chieftain. People don’t view computers quite that way. Nobody gathers around the monitor. In fact, there’s rarely a Dell in the living room, but this is changing with WebTV.

Like the music, TV and motion picture industries before it, the book industry will finally embrace digitization. Digital is not another version of print, it’s more. Whether smartphones or dedicated devices, it’s all about how readers interact with a book. Digital also provides authors with new visibility on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other wildly popular social media. Bibliographies provide links to other sites, no longer pedestrian footnotes. Reading is richer. Publishers, too.

Google’s internationally unpopular goal will be realized – all books online. A global electronic bookstore with full texts, not snippets. A prominent prep school outside Boston now has a fully digital library. Other schools have all but eliminated printed reference material. Annotation is dying !

As you’re reading this, a price war for top books among the industry’s online giants is generating big sales. At prices often lower than wholesale. Maybe some of this technology thing is nothing more than a marketing issue – poor point-of-purchase, lousy packaging, minimal promotion, high cost. Is $25 for hardcovers too high? In Europe, bookstores and online sellers peddle books at prices fixed by the publishers. In Germany, where Gutenberg lived, discounting is outlawed to protect small merchants and publishers.

Pricing drives technology. My clunky 1980s Bowmar calculator at $350 is now the size of a credit card and free with magazine subscriptions. Smartphones and flat screen TVs have seen sales rise as prices drop. Same with eBooks. What’s needed are new business models with a choice of purchase, rental and subscription plans. The biggest beneficiaries are consumers. They love the big selection and low price. Also, the interactivity, accessibility, portability and customization. What type size do you prefer?

The industry’s biggest fear is that lower prices will erode the inherent value of books. Maybe, maybe not. A 1776 printing of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” recently sold for $62,000. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” sold for $168,000. But a perfect print of a great French impressionist is barely worth the cost of its paper. Owners of prints are paupers. Owners of rights are not. Old book plates are valuable, calendar pictures are not.

Digital is not paper in the same way that Starbuck’s Instant isn’t coffee. Then, again, reading SparksNotes for your book club isn’t reading, either.

Click, click.

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Candy Apple Red is Dead

Perceived and Posted by Jerry Schwartz

Last summer was the summer of Woodstock, actually the 40th anniversary of the original, seminal event on Max Yasgur’s farm in upstate New York. The occasion of this long-expected, anti-climatic reunion has been used as an explanation for the “new” popularity of all things retro from the 1960’s. (Hippie costumes seemed everywhere on Halloween.)

See, I’ve barely analyzed this topic and already the above first paragraph shows the power and influence of public relations, the flaws of memory after four decades and the widespread use of generalizations by civilians.

First, the retro thing is not new and has been going on for some 30 years or more. Second, Woodstock didn’t take place in Woodstock, New York, but in the nearby town of Bethel. Third, what most people remember as the 60’s, really was mostly in the early 70’s. I still remember crewneck Shetland sweaters, Bass Weejun penny loafers and buzz cut crewcuts in no less a power center of the coming flower generation than Boston in 1968. Hash was still corned beef.

We went home in the Spring of ’68 only to return in the fall to the first sprouts of facial hair, the flair of bell bottoms and the sniff of Mary Jane. The eternal peace symbol was created long before, in 1958, by a graphic designer for the British nuclear disarmament movement. Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, not long after playing – sans ‘fro – in Little Richard’s band in 1965. Kent State was 1970.

The retro thing probably began first in the 80’s when, 10 years out of college and a few paychecks later, people longed for the cars they drove in the mid 60’s, the Mustangs, Cameros and Firebirds, that were killed off by the 1970s oil embargoes and VW bugs painted psychedelic orange and green.

Also, along about that time, Ralph Lipshutz saw gold threads in the old waspy tweeds of Yankee New England after years of non-conformist polka-dots, beads and rose-colored glasses. “You can look like old money, too!” shouted the young Bronx-born designer and he defiantly changed his name to Lauren.

All those classic horn-rims and herringbones simply looked better in Austin-Healeys and MGs than behind the wheel of a Chevy Super Sport with four-on-the-floor and dual exhausts. The beginning of the American automobile industry’s destruction probably started then when carriage trade meant more than horsepower.

Prior to all this, nobody wanted retro anything. Why aspire to the chrome and Formica look of the fifties, the olive drab of the forties or the thread-bare look of the thirties? We wanted a new look, not a hand-me-down lifestyle. So, Army-Navy stores started selling turtlenecks. Werner Erhard started selling new age philosophy. And Bob Dylan started outselling Bobby Rydell. Somewhere along Route 66, salsa out sold catsup and pizza was American pie. So much for nostalgia.

New technology helped spread new thinking. Color television was widely available and at lower prices by late 1960s. Stereo had fully replaced high fidelity. Movies were changing, too, and all these media were changing us. No more Dirk Bogarde in wet trenches or Humphrey Bogart in wet trench coats. Gone from the theater were the likes of “Gone with the Wind.” Fellini, Bergmann and Kurosawa replaced Houston, Ford and DeMille. The classic western was replaced by the art film and with it a cultural lifestyle based on history was replaced by anything avant-garde.

Arguably, really arguably, two things at this point other than Ralph Lauren contributed to the popularity of the retro look -- cheap travel to Europe and the movie “Bonnie & Clyde.” Huh?

As now-defunct airlines, such as Pan Am and TWA, fought for market share in 1970, fares to Europe dropped to a not-believable $199 roundtrip and, with Frommer’s $5-dollar-a-day guide, there was every reason to explore the stuff of history books. Retro was reality. French vineyards, Tuscan hills, British Cotswolds. So quaint, so charming. We saw Europe’s battlefields a mere 20 years after World War II – a refreshing change from Vietnam’s mind fields at Columbia, Harvard and Berkley. It was a chance to see Grandpa’s homeland and live the French you learned at school or Italian you heard at home. Capishe?

Whether it was James in an Aston or Marcello in an Alfa, we were evolving from “Easy Rider” to riding an easy lifestyle that would force us one day to look back. We quickly went from a patina to a shine, from charming to old fashioned in a blink, and never trusted anyone over 30. Maybe too quickly we rejected black and white TVs, Hush Puppies, Ramblers, Wiffle Balls and spaldeens, but also quickly missed them. After a mere decade, we made the “Official Preppy Handbook” a bestseller in 1980 – 30 years ago !

Oddly, Japan in that decade exploded on the economic scene and not only acquired our buildings but acquired our taste in foods, art and apparel. As things were made less and less in America, Japan was buying more and more J. Press. They liked the look so much, they bought the venerable New Haven-based haberdashery (now, there’s an old-fashioned, if not archaic, word). Even Brooks Brothers sells more there than here.

Then came the movies reinforcing retro’s renaissance. The preppy look, that died with JFK, was resuscitated in 1970 with Erick Segal’s “Love Story.” We applauded those wonderful stripped suits and fedoras in Bonnie & Clyde as much as the script. Stars like Warren Beatty, Ryan O’Neal and a young graduate named Dustin Hoffman made us long for a simpler time and place when a pack of cigarettes, a gallon of gas and a slice of pizza all cost 25 cents each. Candy apple red was dead.

Suddenly, retro is metro and we lost nothing in the process. In fact, we gained a lot. Brick and mortar instead of glass and steel. Cashmere instead of polyester. Granite instead of Formica. Leather instead of real Naugahyde. Books instead of CliffsNotes. Real, instead of . . . almost real. What were we thinking? It wasn’t disposable, it was despicable.

Slowly, nostalgic became analgesic. Certainly, not anti-septic. Definitely not anti-establishment. Clearly, established. Antique goods and modern prices boomed. Art Nouveau was, well, nouvelle, and restoration outdid renovation. Grand Central Station was saved.

Prell, Doan’s, Gold Bond, Old Spice, Animal Crackers, Peeps, Good Humor, Oreos, Ivy League, muscle cars, comic characters, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, three-piece suits, horn-rimmed glasses, classic, traditional, remakes, revivals, reprises, retreads – R E A L I T Y.

The Wind in Sales: IR and PR Earn Their Keep Because Market Influence Today Belongs to Mastering Engagement, Not the Science of Finance

Reprinted from Bulldog Reporter’s IRAlert www.iralert.com

Perceived and Posted By Jerry Schwartz

Amazingly, people still wonder why the stock market moves up and down. It's really nothing new—more buyers than sellers…or vice versa. Usually, the movements are in anticipation of future news and events, often looking out six months, more or less, often not fighting the Fed, commonly after insiders make their move, sometimes when short sellers cover positions, regularly too late when too many stories have already appeared in the press, always when P/E get too high or too low. Rarely surprises. There are bulls and bears debating over the market's direction just as there are Republicans and Democrats debating healthcare reform. In the same publication, one columnist says the rally's over while another writes about hidden values. One day the market is running out of steam and three up days later, it's headed into new territory. Everyone is always prognosticating because everyone wants to call the market and be right. Fortune tellers attract curiosity, while forecasters attract subscribers and advertising, or deals and investors.

But, what really moves the market and individual stock is consensus—most people believing Apple is overvalued, Microsoft is overlooked, Home Depot is under-appreciated and Amazon is just appreciated too much. Not everyone appreciates this. The latest game is forecasting revenues, not predicting profits. Companies cut costs like red herrings over the last eighteen months. Naturally, earnings went up. Cutting costs is easy, as stronger than expected earnings this spring and summer showed and fueled the market. Richard and Mimi Farina sang a song some 40 years ago about being down so long, can't tell when it's up. Or, up too much. Or, down too much. Does anyone really know?

Increasing revenues is another matter. Ask any venture capitalist, LBO king or takeover specialist trying to pay for an acquisition by slashing expenses. Only so much can be gained from inventory restocking before driving sales organically becomes vital. That's not the same as growing top line by acquisitions. The musical chairs of stripping and bailing is a common strategy. Banks' willingness to lend only prolongs the dance until the party's over and the deal goes bad.

“Rev Revenues” is my new buzz word for the economy, the 2010 version of 1978's “Whip Inflation Now,” a stupid lapel button promoted by an old Republican administration. If the fancy financial guys were the drunken sailors of the recent decade's losses, marketing executives are true captains of industry, the wind in sales, who were regularly thrown overboard. Yes, that includes public relations, advertising, sales promotion and others who don't understand flash trading, derivatives and currency swaps, but know how to catch fish. Typically, they're the first ones to go in a recession, because they are the spenders and, besides, old habits die hard. Not only does marketing generate revenue—in good times and bad—but it is leading the movement to social media, a true global change, exciting consumers and investors to search out new sources and reasons to buy goods and services…and stock like never before. The appeal is clear: all that stuff at their fingertips, a click away, including healthcare policies and proposals.

Yes, those people in the offices between the corners are mobilizing public opinion. They are using their creative juices to build loyalty and connect with consumers, investors and voters. Today, power and influence belong to those who have mastered the art of engagement, not the science of finance.

Yale economist, Robert Shiller, recently wrote about the phenomenon of publicity, referring to it as a huge feedback loop of stories and news. He said the market is unpredictable because stories change and the process is complex. More simply, he said, when stocks headed down last winter, there was a proliferation of negative stories. Duh! In his defense, he's only an economist, not a publicist.

Part of the problem is too much information, more than ever before from more sources than even before. Schiller was right when he called it “noise” and referred to the “modern mathematics of chaos theory.” But he failed to blame the sheer volume of stories hitting consumers and investors from so many traditional and, now, new media. Whom do you believe? What are the filters? Where is the truth? How else can you explain the market's decline when productivity is reported at its highest level in six years? Or, its rise when unemployment hits a 26-year high?

Never before have IR and PR been so important, if only to control and harness the flow of ideas and information. It's really not that different from needing lawyers to unscramble and interpret laws created, in the first place, by lawyers. Sometimes, this leads to new revenue and profit sources.

Investor relations is not widely loved. Uncertain times like these make it understandably hard to value. When the market is bad, management says nothing we do will help. Conversely, when times are good, why do they need IR? Sounds like a reasonable bet to me—spend a couple hundred thousand dollars to potentially impact hundreds of millions in market cap. Plus, management gets a hardworking, moderately compensated executive to deal with shareholders, the SEC and pesky reporters. The problem is probably mostly our own fault. At the exact moment IR was distancing itself professionally from PR, publicity was having a greater impact on stock prices. At the exact moment, good shareholder communications was the goal, flash trading took over. At the exact moment we were mourning the death of fancy printed annual reports, social media bursts on the scene changing the entire definition of timely disclosure. Dow Jones and Reuters are slower than a Tweet. Annual reports are history books in a world of future shock.

Really bright economists and analysts join really bright editors and reporters to simultaneously say the market's going up, going down or, worse, going sideways. Every era has its business trends. In the 1950s, it was the entrepreneur who built whole industries on the backs of two wars. The 1960s saw the rise of the MBA. The 1970s created conglomerateurs like Royal Little and Harold Geneen. The 1980s enjoyed a number of star CFOs such as Jerry York of IBM and Chrysler. And if the 1990s was a time for CIOs, why not CMOs and other marketing pros in the 2000s? See, sweet? Without marketing, there would be no revenues to finance big factories that employ workforces that require HR departments that all contribute to incomes that enable style purchases that rev revenues and finally move stock prices. We earn our keep.

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Synz of Change

 

Perceived and Posted by Jerry Schwartz

Is the sign on the road that says “Deer Crossing” for us or the deer? Obviously, deer can’t read. Perhaps, they can laugh.

Is the sign on the building that says “Seeing Eye Dogs Allowed” for us or the dogs? Dogs can’t read, unless they went to the same school as the deer, so logically the sign is for us. But why would we care unless we were blind, but then we couldn’t read it.

Walking quickly through Grand Central Terminal, a sign on the way up to a restaurant warns “Don’t Sit on the Steps.” Most people regardlessly sitting on the steps are Asian tourists. Probably, they don’t understand English.

Signs are our guideposts. Guideposts are our signs. They are verbal and non-verbal emblematic indicators that signal news, events, places, purposes and activities. They signify the significant or they would be irrelevant. As I’ve grown up, I’ve grown impatient with signs of irrelevance, meaningless signs. My theory is that sign-making is a job somebody gets stuck doing, not something you sign on to do. Calligraphers don’t seek careers with the highway department, do they? But often they become graphic designers, some even become web designers. The 1960s peace sign was created for a 1950s nuclear disarmament movement by a professional designer. It can be generated in HTML by typing &#x262E.

Perhaps it’s human nature not to read or believe the content on signs. We often drive through them, the way we ignore tags and labels. Many consumers never remove the white cloth tags on the bottoms of chairs and mattresses for fear of going to federal prison. Why do we always push when a door says pull or vice-versa? One spray in each nostril, open other end, don’t open til Tuesday, open ’til midnight. We’re closed . . .yes, sometimes we are.

Jay Leno built a regular Monday night feature on his show, known as “Headlines,” which covers more than headlines, to include one-liners and many signs. Favorites have included signs that are oxymorons, such as “Mandatory Volunteerism” and “Elevated Subway.” Fun ones are “Drive-Thru Colo-rectal Exams” and “No Peddlers,” a sign misinterpreted as no biking allowed. Most likely, the latter was written by the sign-maker who thought “D.C.” stood for “Duh Capital.”

Can there be invisible signs? Is that like being blind-sided? It’s not blind-sighted. Besides, ASL sign language is for the deaf.

No entrance, line forms here, single file. Paper here, cans and bottles there. Call, don’t call. Walk, don’t run. Quiet zone, 50 MPH zone. Oh, the many signs we ignore, intentionally or not, or mis-read. Is it rebellion, stupidity or information overload. Maybe there are too many, even one word long. Regardless, they’re a sign of something, not nothing. Synz. Cynes. Pseynes, Tsi-nz.

One Hispanic woman saw the wristlets on her newborn twins and thought the doctors had thoughtfully named the boy and girl, Molly (male) and Femolly (female). Imagine the awkward moments when they grow up, when their names are called out in school, when they marry, when they sign important documents.

Words have never been worth more money. The price per word has skyrocketed in recent years as compensation for movie, TV, book and software deals have reached new heights. Michael Eisner was right, content reigns. And when it reigns, it pours. Except for sign-makers, they don’t make much. They’re just plain poor. Hand-lettering when English is a second language produces “stopp.” There are few proofreaders and no spell checkers on the road to success. It’s not journalism or even symbolism, though it may be heresy.

Last month, I saw the much-publicized movie “Angels & Demons,” a film that absolutely underscores the skyrocketing price per word. It’s one of those films that a publicist can appreciate if only for it’s extreme promotion, right down to stimulating stories on travel to Italy and launching investigations on the History Channel. It’s also a story about the power of signs (segni in Italian) and symbols. The story ends with the Vatican manipulating all the news about a series of murders… a sign of being cross? The signs were real, their interpretation cinematic and the story was Dan Brown’s fiction. Tom Hanks plays a symbologist, a sign studier not a maker.

Previous movies and books see signs as important keys to the past or future, abbreviated communications tools like so many computer emoticons. The sign of the anti-Christ in the form of three sixes in “The Omen.” M. Night Shyamalan’s movie, “Signs,” “The Seventh Sign” with Demi Moore, and others. In Yasmina Reza’s award-winning play, “Art,” which became a movie, three characters sit on a sofa and debate the meaning of a blank white canvas as a sign of what?

I saw Reza’s new play, God of Carnage, recently, which was great, which was at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, which was the former Royale Theater in New York. Lotta sign changing and, more than hand-lettering, there are the lights. Broadway lights. Different than street lights. Different than lights on New York’s Jackie Robinson Parkway and the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. Ya think the Royale family was upset over the name change? What about the Triboro and Interboro families? Who decides these things? Who changes Shea Stadium to Citifield? Who changes Idelwild Airport to Kennedy? Who changes the history books? Why change all those signs (and who pays for the changes), anyway? All different signs, not necessarily brighter.

I love you but….. he’s very business-like… she has a great personality… convenient lower floor apartment… intensely flavored…. openly direct… sprightly… calculating… attractive… full-figured… ambitious… learning disabled… height challenged. Sign-onyms

But still, signs, words or labels – oh, please.

A couple of years ago, a company specializing solely in computer emoticons – one of many businesses like this – wanted to hire us to promote their online signs. Their offer of stock instead of cash was a real sign, a sign of the times. We said no. They said it was a sign of our insincerity. We said, no, again. We have checks to sign. We had to resign.

Signs of economic recovery. Little, green shoots sprouting through the market’s floor. A dependable sign is the significant drop in initial unemployment insurance claims. Housing’s decline is stabilizing a little here and there, as is consumer spending. Companies are lean and that signals stronger profits. More signals still needed. We have all signed on.

I need to sign off.

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