Credit: Flylice

I used to work with this biz dev guy who was a negotiation genius. He also used to say how his ability to understand the other guy’s position was both his biggest strength and his biggest weakness.

On the one hand, he could anticipate where the other guy was coming from, and craft his pitch around that. On the other hand, being able to empathize made it that much harder to press his own point when he knew that the deal he was trying to strike just didn’t make sense for the other guy.

More recently, I worked with another biz dev guy. He was kind of an unlikely candidate — polite, soft spoken, and respectful.

He also had an unlikely philosophy: no matter what, always keep pushing until someone says “no.” After pitching, he’d keep following up, over and over again, letting nothing discourage him until the other guy said “no, we don’t want to work with you.”

Advertising uses both of these approaches. First, it tailors a campaign around a particular demographic. Then it repeats its message over and over and over again until it sticks.

But I think the lesson extends to a lot of other things in life — whether you’re a marketer, an activist, or just someone who’s trying to cope with office politics.

Understanding the mindset of the people you’re dealing with lets you anticipate their reaction and tailor your approach accordingly. But it’s just as important to never stop pushing. Because even if someone means well, they have their own sh*t to deal with. So if you want to get things done, you just have to keep pushing for it until you either get your point across or they tell you to f*ck off.

The difference between Marketing, PR, Advertising and Branding

I’ve been thinking about how marketing, advertising, and PR all play distinct roles, and how they come together to complement one another. This is what I’ve come up with so far.

Marketing is about filling a demand by developing a product or service.

Branding is about giving that product or service a life and story of its own (maybe a story about how it fills that demand).

Advertising is about establishing a dialog with customers and prospects by telling that story.

And public relations, well, I guess that’s about teaching that story to the general public.

This is why social media can be very, very scary. It lets people share their version of your story. They can remix it, mash it up, and even add to it by telling the story of their own experience with your brand.

But does that mean you shouldn’t tell your story at all?

I had these thoughts while weighing the image above against something that Al Ries wrote in AdAge:

Advertising is focused externally and attempts to set up a dialog with customers and prospects. Marketing is focused internally and attempts to set up a dialog with top management in order to develop a product or a service “with a story.”

Without a story, no advertising, no matter how brilliant, is going to work.

If you’re not trying to fill some demand, there’s no story to tell (and no real brand). And without those things, you don’t really have anything to advertise. So you have to have a story to tell, even if it might get hijacked, remixed, and mashed-up.

But what do you think?

It’s been a busy week in the world of newspapers. While publishers continue to watch their revenue streams dry up, entrepreneur Steve Brill, former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz and cable guy-turned-investor Leo Hindery, Jr. think they have the answer: an online paid-content model.

In any case, both these events have generated a considerable amount of opinionated dribble, and wading through it all, I’ve come across a few perspectives worth considering.

• Newspapers must grow their online news market share. Can they?: Writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, Martin Langeveld explores how news consumption patterns have shifted online, but newspapers are in no position to charge for online content, so they’re just going to have to become “digital enterprises.”
• Don’t blame Google for newspaper woes: A former newspaper man himself, Alan D. Mutter puts the newspapers who repine about Google in their place by reminding us that “newspapers actually had a head start over Google. But Google “got” the web. And newspapers didn’t. That’s not Google’s fault.”
• Steve Brill wants to try charging for content online… again: Also writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab, Matthew Ingram of the Globe and Mail casts serious doubt on Steven Brill’s proposed paid-content model by asking “whether readers want to pay for any of the content that Brill and his partners want to lock up, regardless of how easy they make it.”
• Why Newspapers Shouldn’t Buy What Steven Brill Is Selling: Ryan Tate of Gawker points out that Steven Brill’s paid-content model isn’t so much about publishing as it is about micro payments, and companies like PayPal are already doing a very good job of handling that (suggesting that if micropayments could save newspapers, PayPal would be even richer than it already is).
• Should Newspapers Charge for Online Content? To Answer This Question, You Have to Consult a Lawyer: Peter Scheer looks at the Steven Brill’s paid content model from an even more practical standpoint, noting that “Copyright does not protect ideas or facts, just the way they are presented” — suggesting that it wouldn’t be worth it because newspapers would have to entangle themselves in litigative mire to fully protect their paid content.
• Newspapers: No Bottom in Sight: Ashkan has a great little clip from CNN about newspaper ad revenues, putting all the debate above back into context.
• This Sounds Familiar: The Death Of Newspapers… 91 Years Ago: A poignant reminder how this isn’t the first time newspapers have been in trouble, and it probably won’t be the last — suggesting that the sky might not be falling on the presses after all.