Here’s an interesting interview with a woman who, although women have been driving trucks for a long time, is still a pioneer. The stats don’t lie. Women continue to comprise a low single-digit percentage of this nation’s driver workforce. There is absolutely no reason for this to be the current state of the industry. Check out the Women In Trucking Association for more info.
I’ve noticed a subtle debate taking place in the business world (call it a dialogue for now) about e-mail — how we write them and how much they can/should communicate. E-mail is a great invention. Remember the days before e-mail? To many people all forms of written communication existing before e-mail became irrelevant the day they first logged onto “cc:mail” (or whatever archaic application showed up on their IBM PC way back whenever).
The prevalence of e-mail has been challenged over the years by other forms of electronic communications such as paging, chat, texting, micro blogging, etc. But, let’s face it, e-mail still rules in business. It satisfies a number of needs: it provides us with a tool for nearly instantaneous communications and it allows us to communicate with just about anyone, including perfect strangers (without the invasiveness or apprehension of in-person or phone conversations). We can fire-and-forget without the “on-the-spot” performance anxiety of voice mail.) And, best of all, we can scan messages quickly and weed through the noise just as fast, helping to make our days and our lives more efficient.
The sheer volume of information we can share via e-mail is astounding. To some this is a curse. But as time passes and the business world slowly forgets about artifacts like memos, handwritten letters and personal stationery, this exponential increase in information becomes the norm. Again, is it a blessing or a curse? (By the way, handwritten communications are still with us — when was the last time everyone at the office signed a happy birthday e-mail??)
E-mail, despite its value to humanity, has its share of problems too. To start, there’s lots of junk. Thank god for that imperfect yet still highly valuable tool that lets us send messages directly to our junk folders. It can also be impersonal. I, for one, used to like getting the occasional handwritten note on personal 
note paper. E-mail can become an obsession for many people. Everyone knows at least a dozen “CrackBerry heads” who can’t keep their hands off their cell phones when they know they’ve got messages waiting. We also know the people who leave a meeting and say, “Let me run to the office and grab that document,” only to return in fifteen minutes because they couldn’t resist checking (and answering) e-mail. E-mail can be annoying, but it’s a way of life at work. Our cultures and behavior are greatly influenced by e-mail and the velocity of information it generates.
But, e-mail’s biggest flaw is in the way it can fail to communicate — the one thing it was invented to help us do better. E-mail messages often create gross misunderstandings between two parties. I’m not referring to lack of good writing skills. Although prevalent and the subject of a future post, this problem has existed since we learned to paint on cave walls, e.g., “Thor, the buffalo goes AFTER the stick figure of a hunter!!” Actually, what I’m talking about is tone. The Wikipedia entry on tone defines it as 1. the manner in which the author uses words to convey a mood or, 2. the pitch and pitch changes in words of certain languages. Tone provides emotion and inflection to language. Without it we’d all talk like Keanu Reeves. Over time the tone we use becomes our verbal fingerprint — our own individual stamp on the way we communicate. Tone is uniquely human, just like language itself.
If used haphazardly, tone can misrepresent, hurt feelings and light the spark that leads to general mayhem. Unfortunately, since we are human (right?) we often get tone wrong when we speak to one another. However, when communicating verbally, our messages, and the tone they carry, are fleeting. We want to say something and we say it. Words come and go often faster than we can process what was said and how we said it. We (mostly) don’t get hung up on poor tone. In-person or on the phone we receive other important cues, such as visible stress levels, competing conversations, crowded environments, etc., that help us explain away unsettling or misplaced tone. When communicating verbally we also have the instantaneous ability to correct tonal errors, such as, “What I meant to say was this …” or “Sorry, that was the wrong tone.”
What about written communications? Is tone important here? Yes! Novelists, essayists, copywriters, reporters, speechwriters and anyone else who writes for a living knows the importance of tone. Pulitzer Prizes have been won by writers who used tone more than language to convey their stories. Think Hemingway. Even when casually writing a letter or a note inside a greeting card, we seem to understand the importance of tone in our message. So why then, readers, do we have such a hard time getting tone right when we compose e-mails?
Ever send a report to a client or a boss via e-mail and receive a message back like this:
“I got your report. Call me.”
Very efficient. Very articulate. Hard to miss both the message and the call to action. But if you’re like most people (me included) it’s not what the message says that bothers us, but what we think it may (or may not) mean. What is this message really telling us:
A. “I got the report you sent me and read it. I like it a lot and would like to tell you that in person.”
B. “I got the report you sent me and read it. I like it but have a few questions about it.”
C. “I got the report you sent me and read it. You’ve missed the mark and we need to go over it again.”
D. “I got the report you sent me but have not had the chance to read it yet. Let’s go over it together.”
E. Any other interpretation driven by the insecurity, fear and self-hatred created by our deeply flawed human condition.
Here’s one I received just the other day. Nothing else in the e-mail:
“Where are we with the project? I need to answer some questions around here.”
Immediately I gulped and began to doubt things I knew to be the truth, such as the project is on time and under budget, we have received clear direction and positive interim feedback just a few days ago, we have been communicating progress biweekly as previously scoped, I’m a good guy, husband and father, my parents love me, my fly is zipped, etc. Of course I dropped what I was doing, called the right people internally, learned what I needed and “penned” off a response that resembled a full status update. Hit the send button.
Received a message back:
“Thanks. I was just wondering what may have changed since Tue so I have the latest.”
Sigh.
So why don’t we pay attention to tone in e-mail and why do we read tone into an e-mail that is devoid of it?
Because that’s what we do. We can’t help it. And seriously, God help us as a species if we begin not to care. We got the big brains and have been trained over eons to use it. We are creative creatures and interpretation is one of the things we get to do differently than every other animal. It’s a privilege really.
Let’s go back to this this earlier example:
“I got your report. Call me.”
What if, instead, it was written like this:
“I liked your report. Call me.”
It’s a simple word change resulting in a dramatically different tone. Now our brains are interpreting the requested call to action not as a negative event, e.g., a beatin’, but rather, any number of constructive, positive events. We still don’t know exactly what the content of the call will be, but we feel a lot better about making it. Life is good. We are motivated. Even if the e-mail called out a flaw in the report, we still have a better sense of what to expect and that is way better than the great unknown.
There’s an entire field of thought about how the business world spends too much time drafting and reading e-mail, and how the prescription for curing this waste is to write short, curt and to-the-point messages. I am all for spending less time drafting and reading e-mail, and agree with most of this thinking. Notice, however, the value that was added by changing a single word. No efficiency lost. Indeed, I believe it created it. Ignoring tone when drafting e-mail messages may seem safe but the very lack of it can create obfuscation and delay.
And we don’t have to be Hemingway when we draft e-mail messages either … wait … let’s see …
“It was all as I had left it except that now it was spring. Can discuss at 3:00 EST. Will send meeting request.”
Not bad.
-Dave Goldberg
Wall Street gave us two notable stories yesterday. Both were reported on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Both are reminders that there is an ebb and flow to everything in the world. What goes up must come down, and visa versa.
The first was the Dow hitting the 10,000 mark.
This is an important indicator of the direction of our economy. Is it the be-all end-all of economic indicators? No, not at all. Does it make us all happy? Indeed it does. Most American’s have no idea why, but that doesn’t really matter. If Americans get confident that the universe is heading in the right direction, then it will. The Dow
has been through 10,000 before. Last time, however, it was heading the other direction. Remember that? October 6th of last year. Talk about fear! And before that? December 2003 (going up)…May 2002 (going down). From a fundamentals standpoint 10,000 is utterly meaningless. But it just might be the thing we’ve all been waiting for - the thing that gets cars driving off dealers’ lots, airplanes full of tourists heading to Cancun and trucks full of merchandise heading down our highways.
The second thing that happened yesterday was the sudden death of Bruce Wasserstein.
Wasserstein was the commensurate M&A deal maker a la 1980s (think RJR/Nabisco, Texeco/Pennziol, etc.) He ran the practice
at Frist Boston, then formed Wasserstein Perella (the shop everyone wanted to work for…and for good reason. 
Yesterday wasn’t quite the end of an era (do you think we’ve seen our last over-priced mega-merger?) But I did pause for a moment when I saw the headline. When I ran marketing for BankBoston’s capital markets and investment banking group, Doing Deals was required reading. If not for Bruce and his cohorts a decade earlier, books like that wouldn’t have been written. He helped define an industry and an era. Some think back on those times (and more recent, similar times) with scorn, but history is history and there are always lessons to be learned. He died at 61 worth well over $2 billion. He looked 80.
-Dave Goldberg
This is a post about the three basic rules of crisis communications and how a week just doesn’t go by these days (or so it seems) in which we aren’t witness to either complete disregard for, or blatant violation of, these PR basics.
The rules are:
1. Tell the truth
2. Tell it all
3. Tell it now
Easy to remember. Easy to say. Not so easy to follow, evidently. I haven’t cared much about some of the more recent and notable examples of companies, politicians and athletes (and their PR firms) who don’t seem to know or remember these rules because, frankly, a Governor disappearing on the Appalachian Trail or to Argentina or to the moon or wherever with his mistress just isn’t that interesting to me.
That was until last week. Last week was a sad one for Red Sox Nation. Boston Red Sox DH, clubhouse leader, ninth-inning hero, and all-around mensch David Ortiz was implicated as a user of performance enhancing drugs in the 2003 investigation led by Former Secretary of State George Mitchell. Big Papi was on the list! NOOoooooo …
[pause here to gather myself]
See, I’m a sports fan. Among professional sports I am a baseball fan first. And to me there is only the Boston Red Sox. I am a lifelong citizen of the Nation. My family is multi-generational that way. My grandfather, an immigrant to this country in 1919, embraced baseball and the Red Sox almost immediately as a way to Americanize himself. Both my parents grew up in Western Massachusetts, a stronghold of the Fenway Faithful. My wife’s family is from Boston’s South Shore … ’nuff said. If nothing else, damn it, my kids are going follow suit. My first live experience with professional baseball was at Game 2 of the ‘75 World Series (my father, grandfather, cousin and me — Sox lost 3-2 with a long rain delay. Didn’t care. At all.) We live in Red Sox country and most of us at KG Partners are fans. Yes, sadly, we have a few followers of the soulless, evil empire (the one with the new soulless, overpriced stadium a couple hundred miles southwest of here). For this we make them feel pretty bad about themselves. That’s a matter of policy (see chapter three of our employee handbook).
Speaking of the Yankees, the same thing happened to Alex Rodriguez earlier this year. That was a big deal too, but it was tempered by the fact that most baseball fans already see A-Rod as, well, a punk. Guilty before proven innocent. That’s what happens when you go on “60 Minutes”, deny it, then get caught and have to admit it. Manny Ramirez, Papi’s teammate and partner in their 3-4 power combo for all those years was also implicated in the same leak last week. But, nothing but a collective yawn could be heard in New England after that news (Manny left Boston last year on not-so-friendly terms with fans and was caught red-handed for steroid use earlier this season.) 
But Ortiz? How could this be? He’s one of the good guys. A straight shooter, right? Never pimped his run around the bases no matter how dramatic the homer. Never mouthed off. Never complained about playing hurt. It is very, very (very) hard to become a “favorite” sports figure in Boston, but Ortiz was able to pull it off — something to do with helping his team win not one, but two World Series titles after an 86-year drought.
Now they have me. I’m paying full attention to this scandal. I rifle each morning through three newspapers for more reporting and analysis on the story, watch local, national and cable news, scour the Internet … maybe waiting for the report to be rescinded by The New York Times (riiiiiight). And, did I really think the hometown hero would actually stand up and: a. tell the truth, b. tell it all, and c. tell it now? I was kinda hoping….
Back to Earth.
Only David Ortiz (and maybe his lawyers and suppliers) know for sure what he did or did not do. It’s simple - he either did or he didn’t take steroids. It’s one or the other. No third choice. David Ortiz, just like every other player in the same situation, has only two options: tell the truth and come clean, or don’t. If he took steroids but says he didn’t then he’s lying (see rule #1). If he didn’t take steroids, then there’s really no lie to be told and he should volunteer to take an immediate drug test and be done with it (this is close to what he suggested to the media about steroid use in MLB before the season began this year … oops).
But here’s the thing: at a point in any crisis — which happens in about the amount of time it takes a baseball to get over the Green Monster — what really happened doesn’t quite matter. 
At that point, we all assume he did it. In fact, we’re sure he did and we get more convinced every time he opens his mouth and says something other than, “I didn’t do it and I will take a test right now to prove it.” Or, alternatively, “I did it, I’m sorry, and I will take a test right now to prove that I am now clean.”
Either way, this is how a PR crisis moves to its conclusion faster and with a much better result for all. That way we will all re-learn how to feel good (even great) about him, Baseball and ourselves. Any statement, especially the long ones, that says anything else only prolongs the issue (we want it to go away), ensures that the media will pay closer attention for a longer time (again, make it go way), and makes it harder to dig out of a reputational hole.
This is an issue that sports, government, business and our free-press society will be dealing with for a long time. Crisis victims and perpetrators alike all wish the media wouldn’t dwell on their misfortunes, mistakes and mismanagement as much as it likes to. We can help ourselves, however. Remember the conversation with your mom or dad when the baseball, Frisbee or, in my case, basketball went through the window? Even on that level we knew the outcome could be either unhappy but quick, or really unhappy and really long. It all depended on our choice to tell the truth, tell it all and tell it now. Or not. How soon we forget.
-Dave Goldberg
Hardened criminals. Wounded soldiers. Cute puppies.
It’s one of the most incredible ideas. Ever. And a PR opportunity that you could wait an entire career for. Our client FetchDog, a fast-growing purveyor of dog products, dog advice and all-around good karma for dogs and owners, hooked up with Puppies Behind Bars (PBB), a non-profit that teaches prison inmates to train service dogs, specifically dogs that help rehabilitate returning soldiers with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), TBI (traumatic brain injury) and other injuries.
Q: What would happen if FetchDog sells a special Chewy Shoe toy … that looks like the sole of an army boot … that’s made by Vibram, the company that actually makes army boots … that’s colored red, white and blue … that raises money to train more dogs, rehabilitate more inmates and relieve the pain of more wounded soldiers?
A: Dog Tags, an almost inconceivably good program that actually makes us all feel a little better about the world we live in, and makes a number of very special citizens of our Republic feel a whole lot better, period. And not in some hard-to-imagine, theoretical way, but in a real, demonstrative and profound way. Money from every Chewy Shoe toy sold from the FetchDog catalog or on the FetchDog website goes to PBB to fund Dog Tags. If you don’t believe me, here’s a clip on Oprah.com — it’s a portion of a 20 minute segment from the show Oprah dedicated to the cause on May 15th, featuring longtime dog enthusiast and supporter Glenn Close. Watch it and the other Dog Tags clips on Oprah’s website or the PBB website, and let me know its impact on you.
KG Partners was thrilled to do this work for FetchDog and on behalf of PBB, an effort that also produced coverage on PeoplePets.com (literally the “Facebook” for dog owners), Military.com (the resource for service members, military families and veterans), and dozens of other outlets. We used a combination of traditional media relations and social media practices (here’s the SMR — social media release) to bring this story to life in a way that earned hundreds of millions of high-value impressions, started the Chewy Shoe toys flying off the shelves, and got thousands of dollars (and counting) flowing into this impressive program.
- Dave Goldberg
What it is about February?
I was walking into my office last week - head down against the cold wind taking short, low center-of-gravity steps over ice - pondering this question. I’ve pondered it before. It was a question submitted to me in February 1992 by a fellow graduate student while I was in business school. During my second year at Boston College (more specifically the Wallace E. Carroll Graduate School of Management) I wrote a regular column in the Graduate Exchange, BC’s monthly graduate student newspaper. The column was called “Just Ask Dave” for which students were urged to send in questions for me to answer, whatever they be. The question in question was this: “Dave, why do I feel so down this month?” I thought I’d present my answer exactly as it appeared in print seventeen Februaries ago (there were neither blogs nor the Internet back then). I think the answer still (mostly) holds up. Here goes:
I don’t want to depress anyone but…
February is one of those painfully inevitable things in life that, if given a choice between it and let’s say…well, I really can’t think of anything worse right now. February is a dirty trick. It is the abyss in the annual progression of time. It is an odd, little month. Cold. Cruel. Dark. Let me explain:
There are twelve months in a year (no real new info there). But, eleven of those months have, at the very least, some small amount of redeeming value. February has none. February is about nothing, it adds nothing, it is, in a sense, nothing.
Now, I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “Dave, what about Valentine’s Day?” True, this day is unique in that it allows one to overtly express love for another. But I believe that it was invented as a way to prevent mass hysteria. You see, in February one is needful of such an artificial “device’ to keep one’s sanity and get through the month (why do you think it falls exactly in the middle of the month!?) What about the Winter Olympics, don’t they happen in February? Well, let me tell you a secret: Nobody cares about the Winter Olympics! What about the New Hampshire primary and the start of the presidential election process, doesn’t that happen in February? Gimmie a break! This year that’s making it even worse. I could keep going - Black History Month, the birthdays of two truly great presidents, etc. Worthy all. But all completely and unfortunately overwhelmed by the meteorological, psychological and biological realities of the month.
Let’s get technical. February is not the coldest month, that title belongs to January. And February doesn’t have the shortest days either, that would be December. So why does February seem like the coldest, darkest month of them all?? Because in December winter is fresh and playful and the holiday season brings joyful glee to all, and January is a time for new beginnings, promise and optimism. Moreover, we give thanks in November and in October we are blessed with a glorious, refreshing change of season. In March we get the occasional warm spell, a fleeting breath of Spring if you will. There are April showers, May flowers, and June through September are just plain great. And then, there’s February.
For those of us in the Northern latitudes, by February we’ve been without a warm-on-your face sun for the maximum number of months prior to the beginning of Spring. By this point our tans have yielded to a strange, tired shade of gray. The hair is brittle, the skin flakes, and the attitude? Well, it sucks.
February is also random. Think about it this way: the other months are arranged with elegant symmetry - some with 30 days, some with 31. So what happened between January and March? It’s as if Pope Gregory XIII (the inventor of the modern calender) found himself with 28 left-over days after distributing all the others among the months. So he said to himself, “hmmm, I guess I’ll just stick them here toward the end of Winter where maybe no one will notice.” Why didn’t he put them between July and August? I don’t know about you but I could use another 28 days of summer. Alternatively, why didn’t he just allocate them equally among the other eleven months. Surely no one would have noticed them that way. To prove this theory further, once every four years we have to add one more worthless day to the year. And where do we find it? At the very end of an already worthless month, that’s where.
But don’t feel too bad because it’s almost over. Even though March 1st is really no different than February 28th, there is one very important thing to keep in mind: it will no longer be February! Spring can’t be far away and Summer just beyond that. Life can begin again <end>
After seventeen years I believe a brief postscript is in order. Since moving further north from Boston it now seems as if it is March, not February, that has the hardest-to-take weather. In addition, my youngest daughter was born in February and I have come to appreciate winter sports and, therefore, the Winter Olympics. So maybe I overstated it all way back then as a grad student…something I will try to remember the next time I slip on the ice.
- Dave Goldberg
…Don Fibich, Creative Director.
pronounce that “fibik”.
Don is the product of a national search we conducted for a CD. You don’t get to do this too many times so we were going to be very particular. We wanted deep experience (both the big- and small-agency type). We wanted someone who has worked with established brands and the up-and-comers. We wanted expertise in all forms of communications and in how to put them together into a winning program. We wanted someone who respected both the creative process and the get-the-work done process. And, we wanted someone who fit…with our agency, our culture and our clients. Above all, we wanted talent (you know, the stuff we get paid for). It was a tall order. Don is 6′5″…we grabbed him.
But enough of me talking about Don. This video is me asking Don a few questions about his vision as a CD. I snuck up on him…the best way to do these things. Feel free to drop Don a line at dfibich@kgmoment.com to say hello.
-Dave Goldberg (pronounce that “gold-berg”)
This is not a photo of Alex, another principal at KG Partners, but from this photo you can learn a lot about him. It’s a motorcycle. With a gun. And it has something to do with WWII. The end.
This is Dan, one of the principals at KG Partners. He’s on a very important conference call with a client (doesn’t his new iPhone take clear pictures?). Following this meeting, he has to run to Boston for another very important meeting. Dan has a ponytail. That’s cool, especially if you’re a web guy. Dan also forgot to shave today. That’s kinda cool too, again, if you’re a web guy. The two together? So, Dan is a pony-tail wearin’, no shavin’, iPhone usin’, important-meeting attendin’ web guy living in Portland, Maine … that’s cool!
