It's the holy grail for every business, whether you're a freelancer, a start-up, or an established brand. How the heck do you stand out in a crowded market? Awesome product functionality or a niche specialty may only get you so far as a differentiator. So instead of marketing your product benefits, try communicating what you're thinking: your personality, your ideas, your attitude. Communicating your thinking—thought leadership marketing—can be really effective in resonating and engaging with your target audience.

Of course this is nothing new. We've always made brand choices based on what businesses think. That's why we fly Virgin, drink Starbucks, ride a Harley. We get what a brand stands for and we either line up behind it, or we run a mile.

Here's the opportunity. There's a long tail of small businesses right down to the one-person work-at-home enterprises that spring up by the hundreds every waking hour. This is where the marketplace is at its most abundant: similarly qualified, similarly positioned, similarly priced, smart boutique businesses. Creative agencies, digital companies, copywriters, web developers. Who do you pick if there's only a cigarette paper between their offerings? You pick the woman who demonstrates her expertise via her weekly blog; the business that provides a monthly video update of industry news; even the business owner who posts a daily picture of her products on Instagram. In sharing their expertise they're also giving an insight into their personality. So let's redefine the genre here: "thought leadership marketing" doesn't just have to be about publishing academic papers or writing posts for the Harvard Business Review. It's whatever content works for you, your business, and your audience. A blog post, a tweet, a newsletter, a video sharing your business tips, even a blackboard out on the street communicating your "Thought For The Day."

Back in 2008, Tom told the audience at the Inc. 5000 conference "If you're not blogging, you're an idiot". He was right. And he'd probably say the same today about Twitter. Because together with LinkedIn, Google+, (and whatever next month's hot new platform is) we have a bunch of tools available that provide a free platform for thought leadership.

The good news is that communicating your thinking does not discriminate on size: instead of s/he with the biggest budget wins, it's who can demonstrate the original ideas or the fresh thinking. So if you're a freelancer or small business, why aren't you blogging? Why don't you put your thoughts out there, why aren't you shining a spotlight on your DNA? Don't assume it doesn't matter—customers want to deal with experts and they need to see evidence of that. There's no point making claims about how innovative your business is if you can't back it up, if you can't prove you're living and breathing it.

King Of Shaves is a shaving brand that's become a success in the UK and is now entering the US market. Founder Will King may not have Gillette's ad spend but he plays out a David vs Goliath tale, competing with the big guys via Twitter and social media. Will is doing more than selling razors and shaving foam; he's engaging with his audience 1-to-1 through storytelling and giving advice to the entrepreneurial community. That's how he—and his business—stand out.

Don't miss out on the thought leadership marketing opportunity. Remember, you don't have to be the biggest or the best to stand out; you just need to have something interesting to say.

A cover story in last Monday's New York Times describes the online advertising practice of "retargeting," also known by its euphemistic synonym, "remarketing." Retargeting is the cookie-enabled practice of showing people banner ads based on their past browsing behavior.

In one sense, retargeting is the panacea we all hoped for in the early days of the Internet boom. I remember giving speeches in the early '90s, describing how the "information superhighway" would make advertising less irritating to consumers because they would only see ads for products they want. I imagined my entire neighborhood all glued to the same TV show, but with different ads showing up on our screens during one commercial break. At the same moment a pizza delivery coupon from my favorite Italian restaurant was printing out of my TV set, a coupon for Children's Tylenol was printing out of my neighbor's because he had purchased a Robitussin formula for kids that morning at Walgreen's.

You can make a very good argument that retargeting is good for consumers because it reduces the unwanted advertising clutter thrown at them, and my interest in this topic has less to do with Internet privacy or any sort of need for government regulation of the tracking of online consumer behavior. I'm more interested in understanding where personalization crosses the line from customer convenience to customer turn-off.

Imagine if you got on an elevator and saw a slick salesman waiting for you. With a big smile and an outstretched hand, he greets you by name, comments on the hotel you stayed in last weekend, and starts talking about the relative merits of the three cameras you were considering during a shopping trip the previous day. He produces a chart showing a comparison of the three cameras, with the particular features you are interested in shaded to highlight them.

Would you be more likely to buy from this guy, because he understands your so well and knows what you've been doing, or would you be press the button of the nearest floor so you can escape quickly?

For all of the possibilities retargeting offers to benefit both customers and marketers, companies risk becoming "that sales guy" if they are not careful. I'd worry less about the ethics and more about the effectiveness.

Here's a simple rule of thumb: What would you think if a friend did it? We appreciate if our friends buy us personalized birthday presents or recommend particular books because they know us well. But even a friend can become a stalker if he starts to follow you too closely.

You can find the video in the right column of the front page of tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 1 minutes, 55 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Strategy: The Story is More Powerful than the Brand.

Howard-Hilton-Herb. Howard Schultz, Starbucks founder, visits 25 stores a week. Master hotelier Conrad Hilton says his only advice is "Don't forget to tuck the shower curtain into the bathtub." Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher says his only advice is "You have to treat your employees as your primary customers."

My translation, more or less "all you need to know to succeed":

Stay in touch. [Howard]
Sweat the details. [Hilton]
Put your people first. [Herb.]

KRP

K = R = P
Kindness = Repeat business = Profit

LTYA

Listen.
Say "Thank you."
Apologize.

If you can become a full-fledged "professional" listener and master the arts of appreciation and apology [accountability], you will be 75 yards down the 100-yard path to success.

WDYT

What.
Do.
You.
Think.

"What do you think?" = Arguably the four most important words in business/leadership success.

RR

Resilience.
Relentlessness.

The successful person's "top 2" key traits.

RFA

Ready.
Fire.
Aim.

Vigorous action-relentless experimentation = [Only] effective foundation of progress, personal or organizational.

FFF

Fail.
Forward.
Fast.

(This is RFA's necessary handmaiden.)

ROIR

Return On Investment in Relationships.
Medium- to long-term: Relationships = Everything.
Hence: Purposeful investment in relationships is the most important "ROI."

C(I)>C(E)

Internal customers are more important than external customers when it comes to execution.

And, of course, always to be repeated in this space as my "signoff":

EXCELLENCE. Always.
If not EXCELLENCE, what?
If not EXCELLENCE now, when?

Zappos 10 Corporate Values

1. Deliver "WOW!" through service.


2. Embrace and drive change.


3. Create fun and a little weirdness.


4. Be adventurous, creative and open-minded.


5. Pursue growth and learning.


6. Build open and honest relationships with communication.


7. Build a positive team and family spirit.


8. Do more with less.


9. Be passionate and determined.


10. Be humble.

I suggest stealing intact!

I call it "Return On Investment in Relationships." It outstrips standard "ROI" by a mile in the long term—and, for that matter, the short term.

Here's a take on R.O.I.R. from Harry Markopolos, author of No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller:

"The financial industry is a business of contacts and relationships. No one ever buys a product and says, 'That product is the sexiest thing I've ever seen. I don't care who's selling it.' Generally people do business with people they trust and like, or people who are recommended by someone they trust."

This is not news.
But it always bears repeating.

So: Over the weekend, consider in detail your R.O.I.R. strategy for next week, the next month, maybe the rest of the year. This is an idea that deserves careful and continuous thought, not a catch-as-catch-can attitude. You'd work for months or years on a plan for a new bridge. Well, R.O.I.R. is your "bridge to success."

NB: Markopolos is the quintessential "quant"; i.e., this is a geek pushing relationship power, not a used car salesman.

(Above: Ice-tea season. Fresh mint.)

This, KRP, began as a 140-character Tweet:

K = R = P
(Kindness = Repeat business = Profit)

Kindness:

Kind.
Thoughtful.
Decent.
Caring.
Attentive.
Engaged.
Listens well/obsessively.
Appreciative.
Open.
Visible.
Honest.
Responsive.
On time all the time.
Apologizes with dispatch for screw-ups.
"Over"-reacts to screw-ups of any magnitude.
"Professional" in all dealings.
Optimistic.
Understands that kindness to staff begets kindness to others.
Applies throughout the "supply chain."
Applies to 100% of customer's staff.
Explicit part of values statement.
Basis for evaluation for 100% of our staff.
Starts with the boss/bosses.

Q.E.D.

(Above, after a long Vermont winter, there's nothing boring about a Dandelion.)

No matter how good your product is, no matter how good your marketing and sales are, no matter how cool your ad agency is ...

Your external brand can never be stronger than your internal brand.

In other words, what your customers think of you can never be better than what your employees think of you. At least not for very long.

It's impossible to fake out your customers. Our world has become very transparent, and your customers can see, clearly, right into the soul of your company. If you want your customers to have clear, compelling, motivating beliefs about who you are and what you do for customers, you must ensure that your company's employees have those beliefs. Otherwise, your marketing and sales promises will not resonate with the reality of being your customer.

I often ask executives if they can name one person in their company who does have some effect on the customer experience, even if that effect is indirect. No one has ever been able to name one person. (Although someone did once mention the character in the movie Office Space who covets his stapler and is relegated to an office in the basement. 'Nuff said.) Yet few companies invest adequately in building the brand inside their company. They figure it's covered by the training budget or, more frequently, they just don't do anything about it.

There is a clear connection between what your employees believe about you and how much money you make. Are you investing enough in your internal brand?

Most people think of 50 First Dates as a romantic comedy. Not me. I think it is a business movie.

Isn't this what it is like to do business with most companies?

Continued reading 50 Million First Dates...

Posted by Steve Yastrow |

A case in point: the firestorm that has followed Whole Foods Market founder and CEO John Mackey's recent Wall Street Journal piece on heathcare reform. Whatever you think of the merits of President Obama's proposals, or the UK's National Health Service (please, no more folks!), you can't argue with the fact that over 16,000 people (and growing) have signed up to and are actively rubbishing the Whole Foods business on Facebook as a result. Using social networking sites to respond to the actions of businesses and their leaders is a phenomenon that is here to stay.

Goodness knows what it would have done to the career of the fledgling Sir Richard Branson when he was building his Virgin Group. Some of his public outpourings and political affiliations early on might have proved fatal to Virgin if Facebook, Twitter, and the like had been around at that time. I do think it is good to get insights into the personality of the people who are running our iconic businesses. Sadly, I suspect that Mr. Mackey and his ilk will be a bit more careful with their personal opinions in future.

The performance difference between these two benchmark airlines could not be clearer, and yet their media treatment belies this. Ryanair gets regularly pilloried for its relentless efforts to cut its operating costs, simplify its processes, and find novel ways to charge passengers for "extras"—like using the toilet in flight! BA, on the other hand, continues to get a largely sympathetic press as it tries to persuade its staff to take less pay, in one form or another, to offset their declining numbers and mounting losses.

So, which airline is setting the better example of contemporary business excellence? Which is doing the best overall job for its customers? Which of them gives the best indication of the way forward when it comes to leading businesses out of the current economic mire?

For those of you who haven't come across Ryanair yet, live wire CEO Michael O'Leary is certainly no Herb Kelleher and whilst they have copied much of Southwest's original business architecture, the airline has none of Southwest's personality and style and most people agree that their customer experience sucks.

Personally, I hate flying Ryanair. But there are no prizes for guessing with which airline my wife and I have chosen to fly when we go to Spain for our summer holiday in three weeks' time.

Customers today have less money to spend, more choices, and more uncertainty that paralyzes their decision making.

How do you connect with your customers at a time like this, when they are spending less, scrutinizing more, and rationing the number of times they say "yes"?

The current economic havoc makes it more crucial than ever that you recalibrate your marketing process away from the marketer-centric, advertising-based, get-the-word-out, capture-eyeballs, chest-beating, "look at me" old world of marketing, and design your customer interactions around the way people actually evaluate you: by considering the way all interactions with your company blend to tell one, cumulative, clear, compelling story. I call this Brand Harmony.

You cannot fake out today's customer with a clever promotion. You cannot wow them solely through advertising, except maybe in extreme Aflac Duck/Geico Gekko situations. Customers' antennae are up, searching and sensitive, and they will see around empty promises the way we saw that the old west town at the end of Blazing Saddles was just a movie set facade.

Examples of brand dissonance are in front of us every day. You see a Verizon TV commercial touting the network, and have a dropped call 10 minutes later. You receive mail from an airline telling you they "value your business," and then they charge you a $150 penalty to change your flight. After speaking to a salesperson at his tradeshow booth, you read his brochure and realize that the written message has very little in common with what he said.

You cannot move customers' minds, feet, and wallets unless your create Brand Harmony through the entire course of your interactions with them. You have to be more careful about your marketing investments, especially in the midst of this economic mayhem, as your customers are more careful with their purchase decisions.

Here's an easy way to improve the sense of Brand Harmony you create for your customers: Block off a conference room at your office for the next week. Cover the walls in paper. Next, grab your colleagues and a bunch of markers, and map out the touchpoints customers have with your company throughout the course of their relationships with you. Look for pockets of dissonance. Look for places where the story doesn't flow, or where it contradicts itself. Look for places to improve the way you communicate your story, with a focus on improved Brand Harmony. I'm confident you will have the same experience I have when I do this revealing exercise with my clients: You will quickly spot ways to reduce dissonance and increase harmony.

For example:

• Does the message your salespeople communicate during a sales call match the message in the brochure they leave behind at the end of the meeting?
• Does the purchase experience on the web complement the purchase experience on the phone or in a retail store?
• Do your collections people call customers and ask for money with the same brand values that your customer service people use when they talk to customers?

You'll also find opportunities to communicate better ... and, most likely, spend less, as you notice expensive efforts that really don't tell your story.

For example:

• Do you really have to advertise in that trade journal every quarter, "just to keep the editors happy"?
• Is the annual Christmas card mailing, where seven of you perfunctorily, hastily, and sloppily sign all the cards, the most effective way to touch your customers at the end of the year?
• Would there be great value in a personal call to customers the day after a product or service delivery to see how they feel about it?

Then, start making improvements—today. Brand Harmony is more like a dimmer switch than an on/off switch, and you can start readjusting the way your company interacts with customers, touchpoint by touchpoint, starting now.

Remember, "integrated marketing" is not something marketing people do. It's what your customers do. If you want your customers' attention—and love—create an entire set of experiences that they can "integrate" in their minds into one clear, compelling story.

Go ahead, recalibrate the way you interact with customers. Now, more than ever, in this time of economic discontinuity, uncertainty, and scrutiny.

[This is part five of a six-part series. You can find links to parts one through four at Steve's website, Yastrow.com, or read more by Steve.]

Consider this: Your customers are living in a totally different world than they were a year ago. I don’t care what business you're in, your customers have new things to deal with, new ways to make decisions, and new uncertainties in their lives. Their worlds have been reset.

So, (I ask again) what’s your story?

How has your brand story changed?

Have you assessed, with intense scrutiny, how your story has to evolve to match everything new in your customers’ lives, the new ways they make decisions, the new things they care about, the new ways they behave?

Have you recalibrated your brand story so that it will interest and motivate your customers, with their new perspectives?

What compels and motivates your customers is different now, so let's discuss how your brand story must change.

I’ll start this discussion with a harsh, but true, point: Your customers don’t care about your story. They care about their own stories. Now, more than ever, it is critical to elevate your branding perspective beyond the "Look at me" chest-beating that characterizes so much of marketing, and focus on a way to make it easy for your customers to bring your brand story into their lives.

For this reason, recalibrating your story requires you to address this incredibly important question: "What do I want customers to think about me, now, considering all the changes that have happened in my customers' lives?"

Imagine a customer raving to a friend or colleague about your company, saying how she needs you more than ever in this time of economic turmoil. What would you want to say? What do you want your customer to think about you, right now, that would compel her to do more business with you?

I did this exercise with a client last week. We had the top managers from the company in a room, with the purpose of recalibrating the company's approach to customers in these crazy times. This company sells a business-to-business service, and in recent months has noticed that its buying contacts have become paralyzed with fear, panicked that each purchase decision could lead to a job-losing disaster. We imagined one of these buyers raving to her boss about my client's company, describing the kind of results they were producing for her and why she needs them now, more than ever. We imagined what she could say, with passion and conviction, that would represent undying loyalty to this company at a time when her job has become difficult, challenged, and scary.

By doing this exercise, we quickly identified opportunities to recalibrate the company's brand story, focusing on issues that were much more important than last year's brochure headlines.

What do you want your customers to think about you? This is your most important branding question. My observation is that most companies aren't addressing it. They're "tweaking" last year's ads and sales pitches, ignoring one of the most important facts that faces us all:
Our customers are different, so our stories better be.

[This is Part 4 of a 6-part series. To read the other entries in the series, you can find them at these links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. You can also read more by Cool Friend Steve Yastrow at his website, yastrow.com.]

At 70% market share, the iPod is the big, bad marketplace monster, dwarfing the Zune with its 3% share. (SanDisk has a 10% share of digital music players.) The article quotes one Zune owner as saying, "I probably wouldn't buy an iPod," for that reason that she is "a little bit anti-Apple." Public radio host Jesse Thorn is quoted as saying that he was put off from owning an iPod by seeing so many "self-satisfied people carrying a ubiquitous object."

I have a great idea. Maybe Microsoft can take the film from Apple's famous 1984 IBM-bashing TV ad (Remember the days when "IBM Compatible" was synonymous with "It runs on Microsoft DOS?") and repurpose it into an anti-Apple ad. "Don't let those big bad guys at Apple take over your world. Be a rebel! Go with the cool, hip, anti-trend underdog ... Microsoft!"

Sorry. I have a hard time imagining people embracing a Microsoft product because it is the counter-culture, anti-trend answer to the imperial, controlling Apple monolith. Maybe Apple will become what Microsoft is, but Microsoft will never become what Apple was.

First, a restaurant I frequent that earned a deserved reputation for its wine list was out of several popular reds. The manager's directive to the employees? "It doesn't matter, they [customers] will just order something else." My note: It does matter, and maybe they will order their wine somewhere else.

Second, my health club started using a cheaper detergent and the towels are scratchy. And they lowered the temperature of the pool by five degrees. Since the people who made those decision don't actually work out at the facility, or overhear the talk in the locker room, I can understand their belief that "it doesn't matter."

Third, standing at the counter of a premium-priced golf course, I overheard a customer complaining to the pro that the round was excessively slow and the rangers (whose job it is to police the pace of play on the course) didn't seem to feel they could do anything about it. The customer said he wouldn't be back. The pro just said, "Oh well, nothing we can do about that," as if losing one customer doesn't matter. But, it doesn't matter only if there is an endless supply of golfers waiting to get on this course. There aren't. By the way, don't expect to see that golfer's buddies at your course, either.

Lastly, perhaps a small thing, but it is a case of the disappearing amenities at hotels. Sure, I can carry my own Q-tips, and if I want more than one cup of coffee, I can call room service. But I notice they haven't lowered the price of the room. And pardon my cynicism, but I have to believe that the option they offer of not changing the linens every day is based more on a desire to cut costs rather than saving the earth.

In my mind, a brand is built on a historic value proposition that builds a certain loyalty. If you start messing with the perceived benefits, those adjustments can't do anything but hurt the long-term interest of the business. I understand the need to be frugal, but I wish decision-makers had a better sense of what matters in the customers' eyes.

Am I just feeling a little grouchy today? Or have you noticed this as well? At what point is the brand compromised?

Here's how I define a We relationship: When your customer never thinks of you without thinking of both of you. A customer can think that your company is wonderful, as in "They do a great job." But, when your customer can't think of you without thinking of her relationship with you at the same time, then you've achieved a higher level of connectedness.

Example: There are 8 diners near my house that I can choose for a breakfast meeting. They're all pretty good. But I can’t think of one of them, Rhapsody Café, without simultaneously thinking of my connection to this restaurant, and my relationship with Ramon Abarca, the owner. Early on, after I first started visiting Rhapsody with clients and associates for breakfast meetings, Ramon began to acknowledge me and offer to find me quiet tables for my business conversations. He showed interest in me, and, over time, we had conversations and got to know each other. These short conversations were relationship-building encounters, and, as I heard his stories, I became interested in his success. Now, it's impossible for me to think of Rhapsody Café on its own, without, at the same time, thinking of my good times there and how Ramon and his team have made me feel comfortable. That’s a We relationship, and Rhapsody Café gets a disproportionate share of my business.

Consider that your customer thinks about your product only a small portion of the time. But she thinks of herself all day long. When she can't think of you without thinking of both of you, you have connected yourself to what she really cares about: herself.

How often do you experience this kind of We relationship?

[See Steve's book on this subject.—CM]

Across town, the same day, another Dallas-based airline, American, had its annual meeting. It was picketed by a clutch of its pilots union members.

Asked repeatedly about his success secrets at SWA, Kelleher has always had the same and sole reply: "You have to treat your employees like customers."

As many point out, it's a little more complicated than that. I'd hardly disagree. On the other hand, I know Mr K reasonably well, and I am convinced that he is dead serious, and that the spirit encompassed by his one-line answer is, indeed, the airline's most prominent point of differentiation. I remain to this day repeatedly surprised by the regularity with which my typically businessclass-flying friends praise Southwest, starting always with employee attitude.

Three, or 37, hearty cheers for Herb Kelleher—and for the pilots union as well.

(I am directing you to another Special Presentation previously posted: "Putting The Customer Second." You may recall that we had a hot and heavy discussion when I took this topic on.)

The article builds on the masterful work of Fred Reichheld, and features his invention, the "Net Promoter Score." There are numerous ways to measure it, but somehow one has to end up with a single number: NPS. In (very) short, the NPS is the percentage of customers who are wild about you (pretty damn happy or better) and would recommend you to others minus the percentage who are neutral or worse about you—and, hence, would not go out of their way to sing your praises to their pals.

There are a million twists—e.g., Brain Training—LearningRx, with 66 franchises, has developed an NPS for every employee—with high impact on their performance and pay.

Tom Peters on Corporate Social Responsibility from Tom Peters on Vimeo.

[If you'd like a PDF transcript of Tom's message, you can download it here: Corporate Social Responsibility]

While on my speed walk yesterday, I passed through the Equinox Hotel parking lot—Manchester VT. They are undergoing, under new owners, a massive renovation. The contractor is Bread Loaf Construction, probably VT's best, out of Middlebury.

Bread Loaf folks aren't as smart as they think, as I see it. That is, they apparently don't know it's mud season. Every contractor's truck in the parking lot—and the FedEx and UPS trucks, too—confirmed the "mud ball" image I just pointed out.

Except for Bread Loaf's. There were two BL trucks in the lot, both sizeable pickups. Both, in BL tradition, painted fire engine red.

And neither—and here I do not exaggerate—had the tiniest trace of dirt or mud or even dust.

Later in the afternoon, I was having a long interview with a top dog at the ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day, and, not surprisingly, the topic turned to branding. Out of my mouth, unbidden, popped "Branding is a squeaky clean bright red contractor's truck in mud season in Vermont." In fact, we talked about the fact that branding is, well, about ... Everything. On the one hand, that's not very helpful. On the other hand, it reminds us that nothing, absolutely nothing, is irrelevant to individual branding—or branding of a construction company in VT or Megacorp Inc. As a quote from David D'Alessandro, in Career Warfare, goes, "It's always showtime."

(I know, I know—I should have taken a picture. Sorry.)

This promotional video for (our Cool Friend) Dan Pink's new book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, is pitch-perfect. It's hip, it has a sense of humor, but most importantly it captures the energy and the message of the book. Dan might as well have thrown down the gauntlet. The challenge is not whether you can create a splashy video for your new book or product, it's whether you can communicate quickly and effectively the distilled essence of its brand. Don't forget, it has to be compelling enough for your friends to want to share it.

But what IS it about the Beatles brand that 40 years later it can still generate this kind of attention on Planet Earth?

At a seminar we presented this week, our client's marketing director asked his audience of twenty or so business-to-business bankers the above question at the start of his presentation on their brand. After several brave attempts from his audience, the presenter explained the answer he had got from Cadbury's advertising agency when he asked them how they had sold the drumming gorilla approach to Cadbury at their first pitch.

Their first point was that TV viewers these days won't and don't accept their viewing being interrupted by ads. They either don't watch them, or, worse, switch channels. So, to have any impact, the advert itself had to be entertaining. Secondly, this advert was focused on restoring the Cadbury brand reputation, not their chocolate. It shows a gorilla taking great pleasure from playing the drums, Phil Collins-style. Having got the audience's interest, and a full eighty or so seconds into the ad, they get to the tag line about the joy of eating Cadbury's chocolate.

This may be ho-hum stuff for many of the aficionados of this blog, but the advert (and the explanation thereof) certainly grabbed the attention of that seminar audience. It helped them think afresh about how their work brought their bank's brand to life in their dealings with staff and clients.

Has the approach worked? Well, it got my attention when I first saw it, and I bet I know what the last advert on Saturday night will be just before the whole English population watches the Rugby World Cup final—come on, England!

What a double-edged sword the BBC's management faces. On the one hand, the integrity of the corporation must be one of its most precious assets and lapses of trust cannot be tolerated. Yet on the other hand, their people (employees and contractors alike) are facing unprecedented professional competition. Attracting audiences has never been tougher, and it is easy to see how such pressure drives people into situations of experimentation and risk-taking. Tom's axiom SAV (screw around vigorously!) comes to mind.

Whilst I am certainly not in favour of sloppiness or lax standards, I am in favour of innovation and creativity. My main worry in this situation is that anxiety about public criticism will lead talented people within the BBC to play safe. What a pity that would be, as I, for one, would hate to see the BBC marginalised.

But this double-edged sword applies to any organisation that can find the public spotlight trained on their actions. Risk assessment these days often seems to me to end up meaning that organisations play far too safe—for example, the ultra-cautious attitude that many schools in the UK now take towards children's venture expeditions. (Many of them simply don't offer such expeditions any longer.)

So, is it possible to have a risk-taking large organisation, or is that an oxymoron? Who knows of any large organisations that have grappled with this dilemma successfully?