Love it, well done!

I'd Frank Abagnale him. Set up a consultancy to help expose financial fraud and use a reformed bad guy who has seen the light to catch new bad guys. Play in to the economic events of the past several years and come out hitting hard as one the few who can protect companies and countries from financial shenanigans likely to initiate another economic Apocalypse.

Nice post, I call the phenomena you describe SST - Super Short-term Thinking. As both you and Julie point out organizations fail to factor long-term brand building into their business metrics. Yet clearly the most successful businesses engage in long-term branding and are often praised for their efforts. So why the delta between what is known to be true and what behavior occurs with our clients. I believe our industry needs to bear part of the blame here. We have failed to create and sell a set of metrics that CEOs can use to justify the resources we demand. Steve in your example of the tech infrastructure replacement - I'll bet half a year's billings whatever provider sold your client that infrastructure deal - had a terrific ROI package that went with it. I'll bet the other half the ROI - was about as accurate as a chimpanzee throwing darts at a board to produce a weekly temperature guide. Ed would occasionally refer to me as a "Process Freak" and while we all had a good chuckle at that; it was smart on his part because it showed prospective and existing clients we were process focused. For all the strides PR has made as a profession I think we still get failing grades on process.

Steve, I've very much enjoyed my few sojourns onto the comedy stage; with folks clapping and showing their appreciation after the shows, telling me, "You're Great," and "How can we hear more.." Whereas in PR bosses look at my work and say things like, "Yeah, that's funny." You hit a HUGE issue, business measurement comes down to a couple big buckets; is a business healthy and is it happy? Executives devote a tremendous amount of attention and resources to the healthy part; utilization, financials, revenue models, share price, etc... Happy? Another story and much more difficult for executives and staff to wrap their heads around. For my money the untapped gold mines within organizations are in the happy fields, not the healthy ones. Health is important however, we devote far too many resources to this part with very little chance of huge returns. Every wonder why a seven-man SEAL fire team can implement national policy half a world away from executive management supervision and yet a 40 person sales department at head office can't produce an accurate quarterly report on time? Simple, one are a team and the other is a collection of individuals - and no amount of spreadsheeting is going to change that - only team building can.

Interesting article Steve, while one person's experience does not a trend reveal, it may nonetheless support one - I recently met with a PR agency executive and had a wonderful meeting; our conversation actually got down to the tactical level of how I planned on implementing some of my ideas for the well-known firm. Only to be asked by a close friend in the industry who, like yourself, is extremely well connected and knowledgeable about our collective leadership, "Why I would even have bothered to meet with this particular executive, since she would never hire a male for such a senior role." Ack, I suppose, for now, I'll need to become accustomed to gender bias and discrimination. What's a boy to do, after all.

Ouchy - but bang on points Deb. There's a similar restaurant in Toronto with a hot sauce wavier. Of course the good news if you have a heart attack there, it's free - assuming you survive the three year wait for treatment.

It's disappointing to see the brand in such distress, though not a Catholic, it saddens me to see some billion or more folks feel so distant from their faith. This week the Pope announced he's embarking on Twitter campaign to "Save" Lent. Or Lemmings, I'm not sure which. Unfortunately my best guess is that, like so many organizations, Holy Mother Church will employ their Twitter account as merely another form of push-message or supply-side communications. Rather than seizing the opportunity to bring folks closer together and ultimately bring the brand more inline with their stakeholders' needs. It's a shame so many brands fail to grasp the myriad organizational benefits that the socialized environment has to offer. It seems that post Vatican II where the idea was to have a much more engaged laity, the exact opposite has happened. And now the Church will probably join those ranks of brands I've begun referring to as suffering from Anti-Social Brand Disorder. Simply put any organization that continues to use technology and communications tactics to keep stakeholders an arm's length rather than bringing them closer exhibits Anti-Social Brand Disorder. Steve

Okay Deb, no doughnuts. I do remember the MacDonald's case and also remember shaking my head at the time. I agree with Juile but, we have a long and litigious history in America of wanting what we want and then wanting someone else to pay for the negative consequences. The thing attached to any "right" is a responsibility. If folks we're willing to "pay" for their own follies I certainly wouldn't object. But the truth is, even with our private health care system, many of us wind up paying for someone's right to eat that burger. Through increased insurance fees to lost productivity to having to pull extra time in the office to cover for the consequences of someone's rights. I'm more than willing to pay for another's right to free speech, or to worship as they see fit or not at all, or for our right to vote and many others. In fact I've served time in uniform to help pay for these rights. But somethings need to be paid for by the consumer. I know first hand, I used to smoke and quit, was grossly overweight and lost nearly 100 pounds - and the simple fact is, my right or not, I cannot smoke or overeat - because my family, friends, clients, business and even my Country pays for my bad behavior. It's not right and it certainly isn't my right to force others to pay for my excesses. It's the same reason I oppose government programs to buy meth for children. Perhaps the restaurant should introduce a medical wavier form all patrons must sign prior to putting another nail in their coffins. Or as you mentioned, as we have here in NY, at least display the calorie and nutritional data of what we're about to exercise our rights upon. Right and responsibilities are complicated and it can be difficult to see where a right becomes a personal indulgence.

Great observations Steve, as usual. I wonder if the social media environment doesn't lend itself to the LemmingItis you describe. Much of social media is more akin to a fast-moving stream of data whizzing by us at quantum speeds verses any real actionable information we can consider at leisure and within some context that provides value and meaning. It's rare to find the few minutes to read a blog while monitoring your twitter feeds, piniterest updates, FB timeline, Diggs, Tumblrs and Stumble Upons, to name a few. I believe there's a sense of not daring to turn our backs on the constant feed babble we're subjected to least we miss that one crucial item over the day that seems important. I've long advocated for more information and less data but, it's a tough sell in the social media rapids. Which reminds me, I need to re-Tweet a bunch of useless data and write a blog post about Lemmings.