Brand Marketing News

Top 10 at Domestic Film Box Office, Weekend of Jun. 14-16, 2013

Marketing Charts, Stats, Facts & Trends — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:31:22 -0400

Content in Rentrak Theatrical box office updates is produced and/or compiled by Rentrak Corporation and its Box Office Essentials theatrical box office data collection and analytical service.

- Marketing Charts, Stats, Facts & Trends

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Four Tips for Turning Be-Backs into Sales

DMM Daily Tips — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:13:43 -0400

The typical dealership already possesses every asset necessary to sell more vehicles. Sometimes the exception is the correct attitude toward be-backs and appointments. By right attitude, the question is: how and in what ways should a dealership engage with customers and show gratitude to the business opportunities that have chosen to return to the dealership? READ MORE

- DMM Daily Tips

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Dealership Profile�Branhaven Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram

DMM Daily Tips — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:46:49 -0400

For this month's dealer video marketing profile, I interviewed Paula Sullo, internet director of Branhaven Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram, which has been family owned and operated for more than 42 years. Paula has been with Branhaven for more than 15 years, and she grew up in the dealership learning all aspects of the dealership process from service to sales. READ MORE

- DMM Daily Tips

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Tweets Containing Vine Uploads Seeing 'Surprising' Engagement Rates

Marketing Charts, Stats, Facts & Trends — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:31:22 -0400

Marketers on Twitter are warming to Vine, and it appears that consumers are too. TechCrunch recently pointed out that Vine climbed past Instagram on the Google Play charts to take the mantle as the top social application, and has also noted that Vine shares on Twitter have surpassed Instagram shares. Now, new data from Socialbakers [...]

- Marketing Charts, Stats, Facts & Trends

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Barbarian Group Wins Inaugural Innovation Lions Grand Prix for Its Cinder Coding Platform

Adweek : Advertising & Branding — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:44:38 -0400

CANNES, France—Nine years after winning its first Cannes Lion, a gold for Burger King's "Subservient Chicken," The Barbarian Group has secured an even bigger prize: the Grand Prix in the inaugural Innovation Lions contest for a software-development platform it built for creative coders.

The platform, Cinder, "provides a powerful, intuitive toolbox for programming graphics, audio, video, networking, image processing and computational geometry," says its website.

Andrew Bell, the lead architect for the software, recently told a digital graphics blog: "Cinder began life as the in-house creative coding framework for The Barbarian Group. We originally developed it in conjunction with our Magnetosphere iTunes visualizer, to help us port Robert Hodgin's music visualization experiments out of processing. Soon other Barbarians got involved, which has been one of the huge advantages we've enjoyed—having TBG's awesome development staff hacking on it has really accelerated Cinder's development."

He added: "A beginning C++ programmer knows there are dark corners to avoid, but he's not quite sure what they are. And someone who's written as many C++ bugs as I have knows all about those dark corners, knows his own deep, personal failings as a coder, and wants a library that prevents him from having to ever worry about them again. I'm actually pretty proud of how close we are to that goal with Cinder."

Three other Innovation Lions were handed out tonight. (There are no golds, silvers or bronzes in the category, but simply Lions.)

Product development studio De-De, a spinoff from Droga5, took home one for Thunderclap, its so-called "crowdspeaking" platform that "allows a single message to be mass-shared, flash mob-style" in social media.

Yota in Moscow picked up a Lion for its YotaPhone, a smartphone with screens on the front and the back—a high-resolution liquid crystal display on one side and an electronic paper display on the other.

Getin Noble Bank won a Lion for creating a debit card with a mini-keyboard and a display that shows your account balance.

The Innovation Lions, the 10th new category at Cannes added in the past eight years, are designed to reward new technologies and innovations—in the festival's words, things like "innovative platforms, apps, tools, programs, hardware, products and radical software which allow brands and creatives to communicate with their customers in a new way, or which stand alone as significant innovations in their own right."

- Adweek : Advertising & Branding

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Ogilvy Adds Two More Grand Prix�in Outdoor and Media

Adweek : Advertising & Branding — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:44:38 -0400

CANNES, France—After winning the Promo Grand Prix on Monday, Ogilvy & Mather picked up two more Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions festival here tonight, with its Paris office earning the top prize in Outdoor for its IBM billboards and Amsterdam topping the Media Lions with an innovative campaign celebrating life and love for funeral-insurance company Dela.

OUTDOOR GRAND PRIX

Ogilvy Paris's outdoor campaign consisted of three billboards that function as a bench, a shelter and a ramp over stairs. Those small improvements to the cityscape serve a metaphor for IBM's larger effort to make cities smarter through technology. The ads wonderfully embody the brand promise, and represented just a starting point—they urged passersby (and the much larger audience that would see the work online) to visit people4smartercities.com and submit their own, presumably larger ideas for civic upgrades.

OUTDOOR LIONS

U.S. agencies won two Gold Lions, one Silver Lion and four Bronze Lions in Outdoor.

One gold went to Draftfcb in Chicago for a Sharpie Ultra Fine Point markers campaign featuring sketches made on microscopic objects. The other gold was won by Saatchi & Saatchi in Los Angeles for its Toyota stunt in which a Tundra pulled the Space Shuttle Endeavor. See both campaigns here:

Alma DDB in Miami won silver in Outdoor for its "Glad Tent" effort for Glad Forceflex bags. And the bronzes went to Anomaly in New York for a Converse campaign; La Comunidad in Miami, also for Converse; Young & Rubicam in New York for Land Rover; and JWT in New York for Macy's.

See the Media Lions Grand Prix winner, and all the U.S. winners from the Media Lions category, after the jump.

MEDIA GRAND PRIX

Ogilvy Amsterdam's Grand Prix-winning Dela campaign—themed "Why wait until it's too late?"—urged ordinary people to say something wonderful to someone they love, while they still can. It aimed to position Dela as a company that not only believes in a dignified farewell for everyone, but in people being there for each other today.

Ogilvy executed the idea across a range of media channels. It made TV spots using hidden-camera footage of people's public expressions of love; newspaper ads with the single word "Lieve" (meaning "Dear") at the top, encouraging people to fill in the rest of the page with letters to their loved ones; personalized outdoor posters; and live speeches on a specially commandeered TV channel.

The work helped Dela become one of the 10 best-known brands in the Netherlands, with its insured capital growing by 50 percent. "But the best result is that Holland grew a bit more beautiful," Ogilvy says.

MEDIA LIONS

U.S. agencies won two Gold Lions, two Silver Lions and four Bronze Lions at the Media Lions ceremony tonight.

The golds went to Carat in New York for its "Thank You Mom" Olympic campaign for Procter & Gamble; and Starcom MediaVest Group in Chicago for its "Save 11" work for Allstate. SMG also won a bronze for the "Save 11" campaign.

Picking up silver were Leo Burnett in Chicago for Secret deodorant's "Meanamorphosis" anti-bullying campaign; and Draftfcb in New York for Oreo Daily Twist.

The other bronzes were awarded to Digitas in New York for American Express's "Small Business Saturday"; Grupo Gallegos in Huntington Beach, Calif., for its "Bedtime Stories" campaign for the California Milk Processing Board; and MediaCom in New York for Volkswagen's "Beetle Shark Cage."

- Adweek : Advertising & Branding

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Who Are 'Upscale Latinos'?

Marketing Charts, Stats, Facts & Trends — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:31:22 -0400

Pay attention to 'upscale Latinos,' says Nielsen, calling them 'the most influential segment since the baby boomers.' In partnership with the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA), Nielsen has released some data concerning this demographic, which accounted for 29% of the Hispanic population last year but an outsized 37% of its total spending power. Defined [...]

- Marketing Charts, Stats, Facts & Trends

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DM9 Jayme Syfu Wins Mobile Grand Prix for Turning Cell Phones Into Textbooks

Adweek : Advertising & Branding — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:30:01 -0400

CANNES, France—The Philippines, which before this year had won just one Gold Lion and a handful of silvers and bronzes, nabbed the Grand Prix in Mobile here tonight for an inspired campaign by DDB-owned DM9 Jayme Syfu that turned old cell phones into school textbooks.

The Philippines lacks the resources to migrate heavy physical textbooks over to tablets and e-readers, as more developed countries are doing. But the country does have plenty of old mobile phones. Over a six-month period, DM9 and Smart—the country's largest telecom—worked with textbook authors and publishers to translate schoolbooks into 160-character text messages, programmed them into thousands of surplus SIM cards, inserted the cards into old handsets and branded them as TXTBKS.

Thus, even the oldest analog phones became a new kind of e-reader, and old SIM cards became a new kind of textbook.

The most honored U.S. campaign was The Martin Agency's immersive "Clouds Over Cuba" effort documenting the Cuban Missile Crisis for the JFK Presidential Library and Museum. That campaign picked up a Gold Lion, a Silver Lion and a Bronze Lion.

The U.S. picked up four other silvers and four other bronzes.

AKQA in Washington, D.C., won a silver and two bronzes for its "WWF Together" campaign for the World Wildlife Fund.

The other silvers went to AKQA in New York for its "Mobile Orchestra" holiday card; R/GA in New York for MasterCard's "Miyamo"; and Mirada in Los Angeles for its iPad app bringing to life the MirrorWorld series of young-adult novels by Cornelia Funke.

The other bronzes went to Brooklyn creative collective Raul X Mihai X Mihnea for its "Instagram Menu" for New York restaurant Comodo and AKQA in New York for its "Fly Delta" app for Delta Airlines.

See a gallery of some of the winning U.S. work below.

- Adweek : Advertising & Branding

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iCrossing Hires Moxie And Razorfish Vets

Adweek : Advertising & Branding — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:25:50 -0400

A steady stream of new business means more hands needed on deck for iCrossing. The digital agency today is announcing it has hired industry mainstays Christine Bensen, most recently at Moxie Interactive, and Sabine Cummins from Razorfish in newly created roles.

Eighteen-year veteran Bensen will lead iCrossing's burgeoning display advertising accounts—which, per the New York shop, have doubled in client spend since 2012—as national svp of media strategy. She's been consulting iCrossing for the last year but has joined full-time. Bensen exited her position as evp of media and analytics at Publicis Groupe's Moxie around 17 months ago.

"She's been very data driven throughout her career," said Jonathan Adams, iCrossing's North America media lead, told Adweek. "I'm entrusting her with a strategy group, which is directly tapping into her experience building solutions for brands. She has a decade, easily, of working with name-brand clients that she can draw from while helping create strategies across digital disciplines—display, video, social, paid and natural search, analytics, what-have-you."

Cummins is managing media for iCrossing's Midwest clients like Deerfield, Ill.-based Beam Inc., while leading the agency's Chicago and Dallas offices. She worked a similar regional position at Razorfish while based in the Windy City during the last two-plus years.

Adams from iCrossing called the digital business opportunities in America's heartland states "a gold mine."

"Our Dallas and Chicago offices are full-service," he explained. "Some of our best clients are in the central region."

With these moves, iCrossing looks to facilitate recently acquired client work from the likes of Pep Boys and the previously mentioned Beam. The digital agency has grown from 550 to 900 employees since Hearst bought it three years ago.

- Adweek : Advertising & Branding

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College Students Own an Average of 7 Tech Devices

Marketing Charts, Stats, Facts & Trends — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:31:22 -0400

The portrait of the tech-obsessed college student may have some grounding in reality. According to the latest College Explorer study from re:fuel, the average 18-34-year-old college student owns 7 tech devices (6.9 to be precise), up from 6.4 last year. The laptop computer is the most commonly owned device, by 85% of the college student [...]

- Marketing Charts, Stats, Facts & Trends

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The Public/Private Cooperation We Need on Cyber Security

Harvard Business Publishing — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:14:00 -0400

Not that long ago, cybersecurity was an issue for the back room. Now, it's made its way to the boardroom and the Situation Room.

In February, President Obama issued an executive order aimed at protecting critical infrastructure, adding the administration's voice to those of Congressional members and corporate leaders in the national conversation on cybersecurity.

Just as government and industry coordinated the telecommunications response after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the order enlists both public and private entities in assuring that critical infrastructure is continuously monitored and protected from attack.

Cyber threats are growing in intensity and scale. We've seen significant breaches at government agencies and in private businesses, including leading financial institutions and large U.S. media companies. Recent allegations of the theft of top-security information connected to the development of sophisticated weapons and air defense systems have only heightened concerns about the security of the nation's networks.

The public and private sectors need to work together to protect critical assets with confidence and trust — helping manage the risks we know, and getting ahead of those we don't.

There are two primary areas of concern. The first focuses on the concept of enhanced public/private information sharing and developing standards. The second is crafting a cybersecurity framework that addresses risks across government and industry — and to do so quickly. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) wants a preliminary framework in place by the end of this summer, with a final set of guidelines ready to go in February 2014.

The response to today's cyber threats can't be limited to Washington. Cybersecurity isn't just about compliance with laws and regulation — it's about guarding businesses from the increasing dangers of persistent threats. As importantly, an effective cybersecurity framework has to overcome barriers to continued economic growth — creating an environment that protects and nurtures innovation.

Certainly, the environment is complex. Critical industry sectors from energy and banking to transportation and health care answer to different government agencies or regulators. Therefore, it is imperative that any designated corporate cybersecurity officer sustain strong working relationships with appropriate government stakeholders.

It's encouraging that many business leaders understand the threat. A growing number of corporate boards are demanding regular updates from CISOs or CIOs on their states of readiness. Corporate executives should be asking themselves: how can public and private organizations work together most efficiently; how should a productive relationship develop between the two sides on key cybersecurity issues; and how can threats be addressed while protecting intellectual property and individual rights to privacy?

It is critical that the public and private sectors work together to build a cybersecurity framework that takes into account the very legitimate business concerns of maintaining individual privacy obligations, securing corporate proprietary information, and safeguarding competitive positioning, while promoting an efficient exchange of information.

Not all attacks rise to the level of a Page One headline. In fact, many breaches can damage businesses in significant ways without triggering news attention. Vandalism of websites to full-fledged short-circuiting of networks lead to theft of intellectual property, fraud, and in the most extreme cases, threats to corporate survival.

Take, for example, the energy industry: According to one recent Congressional report, the computer systems that drive the U.S. electric grid are under frequent — even daily — attack. That survey of corporate officials found striking examples of ongoing attempts to steal critical information; one company reported experiencing 10,000 attempted attacks a month.

Every C-level executive has a role in stemming the tide of cyber-attacks. It's not the responsibility of the CIO or even the CEO alone; COOs, CFOs, CROs, CPOs, and the corporate board should be equally invested in sharing active responsibility for the effort. A comprehensive corporate cybersecurity strategy is required.

To that end, all business leaders should adopt the following four steps:

Understand the challenge: An organization's threat profile must be top of mind for all leaders. Creating ongoing monitoring methods and finding resolutions to reporting challenges would allow executives to see well ahead of the curve. Risk intelligence is perhaps more valuable in 21st century business than conventional business intelligence.

Establish accountability: Company management should be requesting quarterly reports on the organization's most pressing cyber threats, to ensure that executives develop, track, and chart metrics which would enable them to quantify the impact of any intrusion. One designated leader, whether the CIO or other senior-level executive, could serve as the nexus for all cyber activities.

Coordinate efforts: A unified approach needs to be exactly that — unified. Assure that cyber security is well-managed not only through company headquarters, but all along the supply and value chain. Developing an effective national system to secure our critical infrastructure requires the coordination of key elements: protocols, sharing of sensitive data, and IT strategies.

Communicate: Government regulation and corporate risk management activity is at a high level. Cyber security officers should maintain regular communication with their industry associations and government contacts to make sure that industry perspectives are heard. Given the pervasive, business-critical role of IT and value of high-tech assets, the case for increased transparency and dialogue among stakeholders has never been stronger.

Nationally, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars on detecting, neutralizing, and recovering from cyber-attacks. There is perhaps no more important financial aspect of running a business these days than data maintenance and security.

While the cost of building an effective cyber defense system could be high, the cost of not doing enough may be even higher. One thing is certain: cyberattacks won't stop while we discuss how to build a protective network, who should run it, and the price tag for implementation.

The solution starts with cooperation across public and private lines, and collectively putting the greater good — America's national security and economic competitiveness — at the top of our priority list.

Data Under Siege
An HBR Insight Center

- Harvard Business Publishing

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R&D chief's spring-cleaning sweeps through Merck labs

Latest articles from Medical Marketing and Media News — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:08:17 -0400

Roger Perlmutter has begun to trim the fat off Merck's lackluster pipeline.

- Latest articles from Medical Marketing and Media News

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How to Revitalize Your Dealership Today�Part One: Leadership

DMM Daily Tips — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:06:00 -0400

Many car dealers today have lost their enthusiasm and zest for the car business. Nothing is more frustrating for a dealer than not knowing what to do to keep your dealership on track and your employees happy. READ MORE

- DMM Daily Tips

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The Key to Selling More Cars: Understanding Your Buyers' Path to Purchase

DMM Daily Tips — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:59:31 -0400

If you're looking to increase sales, strengthen your dealership, and improve your bottom line, it's critical to understand your customers' path to purchase and which channels you need to leverage to get them there faster and easier. After all, the journey your customer takes before purchasing a new or used car involves more options, influences, and decision-making factors than ever before. READ MORE

- DMM Daily Tips

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Battle-Tested Tips for Effective Explanations

Harvard Business Publishing — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:01:00 -0400

You probably know the famous scene in the movie Glengary Glen Ross where Alec Baldwin's character tells his team to "Always be closing." I wish it were that simple. These days closing the deal, or even getting close, comes with more prerequisites — the biggest of which is understanding. People will not buy what they do not understand. Quality explanations are the key to getting prospects to become customers. I suggest a new motto for today: "Always be explaining."

We rely on explanations so often that we rarely consider how to make them better. Our explanations just... happen. Unfortunately, these organic explanations can fail, especially when we're explaining a complex idea. Often the problem is what Chip and Dan Heath, in their book Made to Stick, call "The Curse of Knowledge." We ourselves know so much about our product or service that we can't imagine what it's like not to know. The curse causes us to make inaccurate assumptions about our audience's level of understanding. The terminology and references that sound right to us come across as confusing jargon to others, and our explanations fail.

Understanding the basics of explanation can serve as a remedy for The Curse of Knowledge and help us think differently about how we explain ideas. This is especially true in the sales process. Whether it's on the convention floor, in the executive suite, or during a product presentation, honing your explanation skills convinces your audience that you understand their needs.

As a professional explainer — I've worked with LEGO, Ford, Intel, and Dropbox to make ideas, products, and services easier to understand — I've spent the last decade digging into why business explanations so often stymie customers and send prospects running. What I've found is that most people have never considered what makes an idea easier to understand or how to approach the process of explaining ideas.

To help, I've provided seven tips to create effective explanations that will work for prospective customers:

1. Make Your Audience Feel Smart, Instead of Making Yourself Look Smart
We want others to think we're smart because in most cases that's rewarded. But when it comes to making an idea easy to understand, simple trumps clever. Fancy vocabulary and extensive background information might impress customers — but, more likely, will just confuse them. Stop trying to look smart and start making your audience feel smart by building their knowledge and confidence. Dazzle them with clarity; it's another kind of brilliance.

2. Explain the Forest, Not Just the Trees
Focus only on features and you'll miss an opportunity to invite your audience to see the big picture. Prioritizing the details of this year's coolest product features isn't an explanation. Customers won't care about the bells and whistles if they don't understand why your product exists and why it matters to them. By zooming out and focusing on context at the beginning of an explanation, you can build a world around your product that enables it to make more sense.

3. Add Details Sparingly
Has this happened to you? You're meeting with prospects about a new product and it's obvious that they just aren't getting it. They stare blankly and stop asking questions. No problem, you think, you can still bring them around with a few more points. It's a tempting move. After all, sometimes one small detail turns that lightbulb on, right? It may seem counterintuitive, but more information won't help someone who's already confused. Imagine being lost and having someone give you directions that include every possible route and landmark to your destination when all you want to know is north or south, left or right. The antidote to confusion is often less information. Don't add detail; come back to one or two big ideas you know they'll understand. Once their heads are nodding again you can proceed, but with caution.

4. Write Less Copy, Use More Visuals
Prospect not getting it? Write more marketing copy, right? No. Jon English said it best: "words are not enough." We're communicating in the YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram era to audiences who are more visually literate than ever. Though often more difficult and expensive to produce, infographics, videos and diagrams can do the heavy lifting of making explanations work. For example, the popular crowdfunding platform Kickstarter encourages every new project to use a video to explain their idea. The company has established that projects with video have a better rate of success (30% vs. 50%). Videos offer potential funders a simple and compelling way to understand a new idea and why it matters.

5. Remember Your Audience is Human
If you think stories are for campfires, not your state-of-the-art product, then you're forgetting that your audience is human. Stories provide a way to see how a product works in the real world, with real people. And you don't have to be a storyteller to make stories work. In fact, the most effective stories simply illustrate a person in pain who found a solution and now feels relieved. These simple stories offer a way for the audience to empathize and imagine themselves solving similar problems.

6. Focus on Why
The best explanations answer one question: why? Why does this idea, product or service make sense? Why should I care about it? Why does this matter to me? By answering the "why" early in a meeting or presentation, you create a foundation for understanding on which to build more complex ideas. Think of an explanation like a recipe. Recipes are usually focused on "how" to create a dish. The list of ingredients and instructions work, but you may not know why. By understanding why yeast and baking powder are used, for instance, you can start to see the process from a new perspective and make the next dish your own.

7. Your Job is to Inform Smart People
No one likes to be talked down to, and if you approach explanation with the wrong attitude, it can be destructive. Science writer Steven Pinker once shared advice he got from an editor concerning condescension. She told him to treat his audience as if they are as smart as him, just not as informed. Use this important point to set the tone of your explanation. Your job is to inform smart people, not help the slowest people catch up. Remembering this will help you achieve an informative, not condescending, tone.

Follow all of these steps and you too can enlighten clients and win prospects. The first real step in creating great explanations is realizing that improvement is possible. You can become a better explainer and use explanation skills to solve problems and motivate others to care about your message. By employing the tips above, you'll be well on your way to making explanations that work.

- Harvard Business Publishing

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Data is Worthless if You Don't Communicate It

Harvard Business Publishing — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:00:00 -0400

There is a pressing need for more businesspeople who can think quantitatively and make decisions based on data and analysis, and businesspeople who can do so will become increasingly valuable. According to a McKinsey Global Institute report on big data, we'll need over 1.5 million more data-savvy managers to take advantage of all the data we generate.

But to borrow a phrase from Professor Xiao-Li Meng — formerly the Chair of the Statistics Department at Harvard and now Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences — you don't need to become a winemaker to become a wine connoisseur. Managers do not need to become quant jocks. But to fill the alarming need highlighted in the McKinsey report, most do need to become better consumers of data, with a better appreciation of quantitative analysis and — just as important — an ability to communicate what the numbers mean.

Too many managers are, with the help of their analyst colleagues, simply compiling vast databases of information that never see the light of day, or that only get disseminated in auto-generated business intelligence reports. As a manager, it's not your job to crunch the numbers; but — as Jinho Kim and I discuss in more detail in Keeping Up with the Quants — it is your job to communicate them. Never make the mistake of assuming that the results will "speak for themselves."

Consider the cautionary tale of Gregor Mendel. Although he discovered the concept of genetic inheritance, his ideas were not adopted during his lifetime because he only published his findings in an obscure Moravian scientific journal, a few reprints of which he mailed to leading scientists. It's said that Darwin, to whom Mendel sent a reprint of his findings, never even cut the pages to read the geneticist's work. Although he carried out his groundbreaking experiments between 1856 and 1863 — eight years of painstaking research — their significance was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century, long after his death. The lesson: if you're going to spend the better part of a decade on a research project, also put some time and effort into disseminating your results.

One person who has done this very well is Dr. John Gottman, the well-known marriage scientist at the University of Washington. Gottman, working with a statistical colleague, developed a "marriage equation" predicting how likely a marriage is to last over the long term. The equation is based on a couple's ratio of positive to negative interactions during a fifteen minute conversation on a "difficult" topic such as money or in-laws. Pairs who showed affection, humor, or happiness while talking about contentious topics were given a maximum number of points, while those who displayed belligerence or contempt received the minimum. Observing several hundred couples, Gottman and his team were able to score couples' interactions and identify the patterns that predict divorce or a happy marriage.

This was great work in itself, but Gottman didn't stop there. He and his wife Julie founded a non-profit research institute and a for-profit organization to apply the results through books, DVDs, workshops, and therapist training. They've influenced exponentially more marriages through these outlets than they could possibly ever have done in their own clinic — or if they'd just issued a press release with their findings.

Similarly, at Intuit, George Roumeliotis heads a data science group that analyzes and creates product features based on the vast amount of online data that Intuit collects. For his projects, he recommends a simple framework for communicating about each analysis:

My understanding of the business problem
How I will measure the business impact
What data is available
The initial solution hypothesis
The solution
The business impact of the solution

Note what's not here: details on statistical methods used, regression coefficients, or logarithmic transformations. Most audiences neither understand nor appreciate those details; they care about results and implications. It may be useful to make such information available in an appendix to a report or presentation, but don't let it get in the way of telling a good story with your data — starting with what your audience really needs to know.

- Harvard Business Publishing

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Reinvent Your Company Through Culture

Harvard Business Publishing — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:00:00 -0400

In both C suites and boardrooms, discussions about business performance usually center on topics like market momentum, M&A opportunities, capital management, and productivity enhancements. While these factors are important, in my experience they are best leveraged when employees are engaged, aligned, and motivated to win.

In the course of leading six successful turnarounds and transformations at Schering-Plough, Pharmacia, Pharmacia and Upjohn, Wyeth, and two operating units within Novartis, I've learned that culture can be powerfully leveraged to enhance long-term success. Yet many executives don't make culture a priority. It was this disconnect that prompted me to write my recent book, Reinvent: A Leader's Playbook for Serial Success.

Every individual on every team in a company can strive, together, to deliver beyond what is deemed possible. For employees to do that, they need to feel a powerful sense of purpose, reinforced by a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous learning.

In 1997, when I first took over as the new CEO of Pharmacia & Upjohn, the company had just undergone a merger that had gone very bad. One reason was a disjointed leadership structure — comprised of three "business centers" in Stockholm, Milan, and Kalamazoo, Michigan, and one new "management center" in Windsor, near London — that had been negotiated as part of the 1995 merger. Internal tribalism was hurting the company.

To align and motivate employees to work together, we eliminated all four centers and created one new streamlined operation in New Jersey. We also shrank the corporate management team by half. This also helped us get rid of a few "culture resisters," senior people who opposed constructive change. Pharmacia & Upjohn made a startling turnaround and then merged with Monsanto in 2000 to triple its size to a $52 billion market cap.

These are some of the steps that helped me reinvent through culture:

Set clear expectations
Show the path of the journey, set an ambitious strategy, and get a mandate for change from the people, so they become ready to make the necessary sacrifices.

Role model positive attitudes and behaviors
Leaders, starting with the CEO, must consistently act with the same business authenticity that they want to see in their teams.

At all the companies I led, we published five or six behaviors we all expected of each other so that we could share, learn, innovate, and grow as individuals and as members of a team. I remember visiting our Schering-Plough team in Seoul, South Korea, in 2009 and was impressed with how well our local team had built ownership and resonance with this list of behaviors. They told me they wanted to do this because they sensed authenticity within the top ranks.

Build trust
Trust in the senior leadership team is an important indicator of organizational health. To build trust, CEOs must actively show employees that they make fair decisions, value people, and value good work.

This also means valuing integrity. When I joined Schering-Plough as CEO in 2003, the company was in trouble with authorities over alleged marketing practices. We subsequently cut the commission structure, and I had to face 3,000 employees, most of them unhappy, at the national sales meeting.

I knew my methods were controversial, but I wanted these employees to consider themselves medical information providers, not just commission-driven sales representatives. I told them, as their new CEO, to walk away from any sale that would undermine their integrity and encouraged them to choose long-term trust building over short-term financial gain. Many were surprised at the resulting standing ovation.

The meeting was a game changer. We went on to deliver 17 consecutive quarters of double-digit sales growth.

Execute via a high-performance culture
A culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous learning leads to powerful execution. Leaders should keep encouraging employees to take ownership of both the problems and the solutions.

In 2004, when Schering-Plough had to go into a clean-up mode after severe compliance challenges in manufacturing and marketing, our compliance team, led by Brent Saunders (now CEO of Bausch+Lomb), put mirrors throughout the global network of sites with a phone number to call if they witnessed any wrongdoing. The mirrors signaled our new culture in which employees looked at themselves in fixing compliance and turning the company around.

In today's era of accelerating — and even lurching — change, culture can still lead to unexpectedly strong performance. The good news is that while it requires time, commitment, and a strong CEO leader, a high performance culture can be built into almost any business. And serial success can follow.

- Harvard Business Publishing

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Pay-for-delay deals can go on, Court rules, but not without legal risk

Latest articles from Medical Marketing and Media News — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:52:50 -0400

The Supreme Court split the baby on "pay-for-delay" settlements, allowing them to continue but opening manufacturers that make them up to lawsuits.

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IMS spots $200B opportunity to trim wasteful drug spending

Latest articles from Medical Marketing and Media News — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:45:04 -0400

For a country bent on healthcare cost control, findings represent both threat and opportunity. Nearly 8% of the nation's total healthcare outlay could have been avoided.

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BtoB's Leading Edge virtual trade show set for June 20

BtoB Magazine - News Feeds — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:26:08 -0400

New York�BtoB will present its annual online trade show, Leading Edge, on Thursday, June 20. READ MORE

- BtoB Magazine - News Feeds

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