Match-Up vs Mismatch

High ideals, the Vision Statement, our Mission... perhaps a company aims for the stars, but the reality just fails to match up. There's a mismatch between what marketing says and what the company does. It's all too common.

Making fine statements raises fine expectations and when there is no correspondence, the result is great disappointment. Disappointment is only the initial reaction. Once the bad feeling sets, that company will PERMANENTLY lose trust.
Trust is precious. Trust is the difference between winning and losing.
Trust has to be won, and never lost. Especially in this day and age of instant information sharing, when you lose trust:

• Your channels will shun you or even shut you out
• Your customers complaints will just ooze through the social net or perhaps even spread virally
• Your products and services will lose value
• Your market share will shrink

Trust is won through integrity, consistency, and honesty.

Push cannot withstand long without a corresponding pull. Marketing can only initiate, it's your match-up from your integrity and quality that has to carry the load. More importantly, if both (push and pull) do not grow together, the company will not be able to grow at all. Pull can be initiated by effective branding and sustained marketing, but alone it will not sustain if your products/services fail:

• To meet needs to do what you have claimed
• To provide value for spend
• To be available/reach your customers cleanly on demand
• To provide decent margins in distribution
• To be reliable

 Identify the problem areas and deal with them. Be open and responsive to your  clients/customers/channels. Just maybe, you aren't getting the right feedback from your market, or your marketers are fudging things so you think it's all minor, all handleable. Keep cross checking.



Open loops have to be closed! Rather than promptly sorting the issue out, marketing too often task themselves with papering over the cracks. When there's a mismatch between the projection and the reality, it doesn't take long for the reality to win out, and you have become a creator of new pain, when what you had set out to do was to be a solution provider!

On a larger front too, Marketing is often misused to mask the reality by creating a finely crafted image. The public perception is strongest in fields like politics, but we can even observe this phenomenon in large industry groups like Big Pharma (+insurance+medical practice), where incredible amounts are spent to maintain the status quo through the projection of an image of solid science and trust BUT now the public has become (justifiably) sceptical.

Another startling recent example is the interaction of industry with environmental concerns and the high volume promotion of the concept of sustainability. A sub topic here is the denial of industry related phenomena like Global Warming/Climate Change. Relying on a big spend on marketing to stave off the inevitable can only produce a small delaying rear-end action. When such large groupings (de facto institutions) lay their foundations on myths, the consequences can be disastrous to nations and even to the world.

The older word for 'mismatch' is cheating.

Why then do we dupe people? Oftentimes it's the easy way out and perhaps there is a pressure to get started with what you've got, and iron out the kinks as one goes along. With industry groupings, they have invested 'too much' to consider backing out now. Unfortunately, there's a generic impression floating around out there (a marketing myth) that marketing alone can keep the issues at bay. We let ourselves dupe ourselves. We can be easily convinced that our pretty pictures, fine words, cute/emotive vids, fine packaging, etc. are enough. But, I assure you, if that's all you've got, it is NOT.
Instead let what you project coincide with the reality that you create AND make what you create match-up.

Be brave, be ethical, walk your talk

Originally posted on LinkedIn #Pulse as Match-Up vs Mismatch

Guns N Roses

It used to be that the worst we could do was to kill off a few of our own species by instigating nasty but localized disasters...


think: Chernobyl, Hiroshima, the Holocaust, Cambodia's Killing Fields, Bhopal, WW1, Iraq...

with a little minor 'collateral damage' thrown in such as loss of habitats and some consequent reduction in biodiversity.

Global evils are a relatively new creation of mankind.

It all started somewhere in the 1950s when we created enough nuclear firepower to completely destroy all life on earth.

Now, that's definitely global!

Of course, TODAY the United States of America can be proud of having the ABILITY, and all on their lonesome, to destroy a hundred earths.

Russia may have more, or less and China? Then there's Israel, India, South Africa, Great Britain, France, Germany, Ukraine and now Brazil too and maybe a few others.

So, let's say, for the sake of argument, that's another few hundred worlds worth... and now we know why the forward thinking astronomers are so excitedly looking for habitable earthlike planets. We have to do something with all this 'globalicidal' firepower, something extra-terrestrial.

Well, when we do get started, (on using all of that lovely firepower) but hold on a minute, what if we don't majestically unleash?

It's six of one to a half a dozen odds on that the other global reality that we have produced will get us later if not sooner. That's the reality where we pressed an anonymous red button a while back and without ever realizing it.

We never had intended any such harm, nonetheless, we are well on our way to warming our own little globe so much that it will destroy all of life - at least life as we now know it.


The exciting part of that is that it does give evolution a fresh start, and maybe (just maybe) something as purely self destructive as humankind will not result the next time round. But then, it is nature, "red in tooth and claw"(1) that we are talking about! Heaven forbid, It could even be worse - maybe, we're not so bad after all?

So, this is not ultimately about survival. It looks like sooner (odds on), or later (also odds on), we will most certainly cease to exist, by our own hands desist forever.


So, it certainly is now about what we are going to be doing in the meantime.

I think it would be nice if we could go out in a blaze of glory. I really do think that here is something that despite our dark side we can perhaps manage. What I suggest is that knowing we're going to go, if only for a few short instants, let's try for a change not to do any more harm to any others for whatever little time we have left.

Now, is that such a big deal?

Think of posterity.

Think of what some species in the year 3,000 is going to find as they sift through the archaeological dust. Era after era of nastiness, wars, destruction, one-upmanship, weapons of destruction and then weapons of mass destruction and then wars based on spin about WMD that never existed, and then... peace.

Peace,

did I hear someone say

PEACE????

And the Ngobel Prize in History for the year 3,001 goes to - #$(*&%)@@*!!!, for the discovoverery of "Peace"...

"The History of Peace"

A richly and horrifyingly illustrated guide to the heroic end of what can only be termed as the most unimaginably uncivilized species to have ever gained intelligence.

It all began in the year 2007, when the species Humanus selfdestructivus realised that they were soon to no longer exist.

#$(*&%)@@*!!! finally succeeded in translating the digital data after almost 300 years of deciphering in base 2, and the result is the publication of a truly remarkable document that has been miraculously preserved. The story recounts how, when this realisation of imminent and irrevocable demise suddenly spread on the WWW, the entire Humanus selfdestructivus decided, mysteriously, and courageously, to spend their last years alive on the planet Ge, in PEACE...



(1) Canto LVI, Alfred Lord Tennnyson, "In Memoriam"

BIODIVERSITY versus Global Warming

A lovely new tool for comparing up to three different blogworld variables is available on icerocket and I used it to see how biodiversity was doing in comparison to global warming in the blogosphere.

The result was disheartening. Folks are much, much more worried about a crisis that is yet to come than they are about an ongoing and potentially much more devastating one - loss of BIODIVERSITY!

I AM A BIT AT A LOSS. How does one convince people that we are losing species permanently on a daily basis? Once stable ecosystems are endangered and will be irrecoverably lost if we don't start taking immediate action. Once a species is lost it will never be regained and once an ecosystem is damaged by species loss, that ecosystem is doomed!

Here are the actual stats as of May 18th, 2007:

GW = Global Warming, B = Biodiversity and E = Endangered Species

Trend Terms......Posts per day..........Average %.......Total posts

GW.....................1,353.91................. 0.1791.............121,852

B..........................53.16....................0.0069...............4,784

E..........................96.30....................0.0127...............8,667

That's at present something like 25 times as much activity on GW than it deserves and biodiversity needs to get 50 times stronger...

Any Bright Ideas?

The minute you start getting concerned about bioinversity and start blogging on it and doing something about it, these stats will surely improve.

Biodiversity - The Inverse Main Point

The blogosphere is full of much talk of environmental issues.

GW (or global warming) seems to take the cake for popularity. The fear factor and much media hype are partly responsible for the focus on GW even though one admits that the overall concern may be a very valid one.

But, for the biosphere, what are the real issues and environmental concerns?

If I had to pick the one greatest concern it would be the growth of

bioinversity / the loss of biodiversity.

I prefer the previous term as more descriptive of what is actually happening - species of all sorts are disappearing once and for all.

It is frightening. Bioinversity means that ecosystems will die, for
the interdependencies are huge.

We won't notice the changes
overnight but our children,
and theirs in turn, will curse us as
the blindest of fools!

Aligning with TERROR

"To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom--and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required--not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." from JFK's inaugural address!

That America no longer exists...

"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia...we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." (Paul Wolfowitz, then under-secretary of defense, way back in 1992)

In the context of the future of our world, alignment with perpetrators of war will result in terror. Just yesterday India's Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh , issued a warning that India was going to be targeted by terrorists. He went on to say that he had reliable information that our nation was riddled with secret terrorist cells that are just waiting for a chance to create mayhem. I have no doubts as to the origin of that"intelligence" and even less doubt that it will soon be backed up by some attempt to drive us in fear to the neocon doorstep!

Here then is the NEOCONONIAL vision for Asia

Common sense should tell us that those who find it easy to kick their 50-year-old most favored ally + bosom buddy (Pak) out overnight are not fit to be considered as potential friends.
I like Manmohan Singh and he has been a good Prime Minister - so far. But, the day that our government decides to align with the creators of 'the war on terror' is the day that we destroy India's security. There will be no peace of mind, there will be no peace. We will henceforth become paranoid for that is the price of being allied to:

A country that is willing to do anything in order to hegemonise the world's oil supply...

• A country that 'renders' human beings to torture.
• A country that raises taxes for the poor while lowering taxes for the rich.
• A country that promotes racial profiling.
• A country that maintains prisons outside its own jurisdiction deliberately to avoid due process.
• A country that believes it can preemptively strike anytime, anywhere.
• A country that denies its own citizens of the freedoms guaranteed by its constitution.
• A country that spies on everything including what its own people do.
• A country that hires mercenaries to do its dirty work.
• A country that provides its ally with cluster bombs to murder civilians.
• A country that is committed first to its corporations and considers its citizens as the fodder of big business.
• A country that allows thousands to die in a hurricane because they are poor.
• A country that lied to create a war.
  
• A country that encourages global warming.
  
• A country that systematically coerces other nations to either support it or shut up.
• An administration that repudiates the Geneva Convention and is desperately trying to legalise torture
  

I and all those that love our nation - and our world - would not want to have anything to do with such as these.

Whatever inducements the U.S. has used, whatever be the cost of refusing their allures, please say NO!

We have always been non-aligned, let's stay that way.

"We in this country, in this generation, are -- by destiny rather than choice -- the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore that we may be worthy of our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time the ancient vision of 'peace on earth, good will toward men.' That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain"

Let's pray that the most powerful country on today's earth does come back to its roots and regains its sense of equilibrium!