by David Heitman

Editors around the country have the perplexing conundrum of choosing which page of their newspapers to run the Tiger Woods story. Sports? Business? Main news? Lifestyle? The gossip column? All of the above?

Tiger—along with the sad story unfolding around him—is the object of convergence. He is relevant as a sports icon, a celebrity, and a brand endorsement machine. This same trend toward convergence is also seen in as unlikely a persona as Ashton Kutcher. An actor of minimal accomplishments, but with 4,000,000+ Twitter followers, he recently made the cover of Fast Company magazine. The cover story describes his savvy ambitions for digital conquest through a convergence of Hollywood movie production, a traditional ad agency, social media, and consumer product sponsorship.

“The program,” says the Fast Company article, “is a collaboration between Katalyst (Kutcher’s production company); Slide, a Web company founded by Max Levchin of PayPal fame; advertising titan Publicis Groupe; and Nestlé, which owns Hot Pockets. It has been a huge hit, with millions of reposts of the videos on Facebook, each one reaching an average of 65 friends.”

The focus of this effort is viral marketing for Hot Pockets—yes, those crusty, over-processed, handheld, food-like pouches as seen on TV. This is viral marketing supersized by Kutcher’s star power and social media engineering at its best.

Tiger’s and Kutcher’s stories point to the larger version of convergence: that of the four great power centers of the American economy: Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Madison Avenue. This grand convergence is made tangible technologically by the increasingly blurred lines between the computer-phone-television-radio.

Yet another form of convergence is taking place in Comcast’s takeover of NBC—the convergence of the means of distribution and the means of content production. (You gotta have something to watch on your converged media device, right?

The ultimate implications of convergence for marketers aren’t entirely clear, but some guidelines are emerging:

1) Think cross-platform with all new marketing initiatives. Before you kick off a campaign or launch a new product, think carefully about whether an iPhone app, social media, billboards, or crop circles are your best media. The combinations are endless.

2) Don’t wait too long to sail the seas of convergence. You won’t get a new multi-platform marketing initiative right the first time, especially with all the new emerging technologies. Better to learn by doing on some lower risk efforts, than wait for the perfect timing and knowledge that may never come.

3) Creativity rules. Creativity of concept and expression are the only real guarantee of getting traction and differentiation.

Gotta go…my Hot Pocket’s almost done warming in my iPod-microwave-radio-lawnmower.

Two Minutes for Entrepreneurial Leaders
by The Creative Alliance Founder and CEO, T Taylor



In 1950, my Dad and some of his buddies enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. These poor kids would escape a hard life in the coalmines of western Pennsylvania to a world of travel, discipline and sacrifice.

I always looked up to my Dad. Like so many young boys growing up in that golden era, Dad was my hero. He told me that real military heroes were the ones that never made it home from war. After 20 years in the service, he had had only achieved the rank of Master Sergeant. But he was always great leader in my eyes.

Dad wasn’t a General, or a famous athlete or movie star. But his men and everyone I knew respected him for his honesty, hard work, and character. When he wasn’t away
on long military assignments, including Vietnam, he would spend time with me, playing catch and teaching me how things worked.

I was born with a clubfoot, so I had a hard time walking or running. When I tried out
for the High School basketball team, I was the first kid cut, and laughed off the court.
It was devastating. So Dad turned our parking lot into a basketball court and put me on
a strict regimen of practice. He trained with me almost every day, including when we had to shovel off the snow in winter.

Exactly a year later, I made the starting varsity team.

After playing countless hours of basketball together, I was surprised that he never came to any of my High School games—except one. In about the third game left in my senior year, someone pointed him out to me, sitting in the stands. Later, after the game, my coach told me I broke the school record—in assists. Dad said that even though I didn’t score a point, I was a “chip off the old block.” I couldn’t have been prouder than if I had scored 50 points.

I later found out that Dad couldn’t attend my games because he worked a second, night shift as a security guard to pay for my college.

My brothers followed his lead and became Army officers. I became an artist and
worked as an art director for my friend’s new company, called CareerTrack. For the
next 11 years I helped design and produce professional development seminars on communication, management and leadership.

In a nutshell, I learned two things: one, that most seminar trainers teach on what they need to learn themselves; and two, you may remember just one thing on any seminar
you attend—if you’re lucky.

Author Leonard Sweet said recently that there are over 10,000 books on leadership alone. That’s a lot of information and advice. But think about it: what do you remember about leadership? I can only think of one thing: my Dad. And mostly because of what he did, and not necessarily what he said. He always led by example.

His advice was simple. Whenever I had a major problem or faced a crisis in my adult life, I called Dad. “Work on yourself first,” he would always say, “that’s the only thing you can control.” He’s 78 now, but just the other day he said that he didn’t know what to tell me to do—but he knew me, and he had faith in me that I would do the right thing.

Classic Dad material.

Yesterday my youngest son asked me to help him in a difficult situation. I said, “Just
be yourself. You’re a good leader, and I know you’ll do the right thing.”

And I know why he will.

by David Heitman

Clive Thomspon, in a recent column in Wired magazine, said the following:

“Even as a two-man upstart, Google had an audacious goal: ‘to organize the world’s information.’ Tiny Microsoft envisioned ‘a computer on every desk and in every home.’ Facebook aimed to track ‘the social graph’ of the planet, and eBay wanted to create an entirely new global marketplace. Big goals produced big results.”

He goes on to lament the not-so-innovative innovation taking place at many start-ups.

Jim Collins long ago lauded companies that hinged their hopes and treasure on BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals).

While it seems that the recession has chilled much of that kind of bravado, to lose sight of mind-bending, company-focusing, brand-enhancing ambition is the wrong way to proceed.

Every company, every non-profit, every insititution thrives best when it’s focused on delivering the absolute best of something, and refusing to be commoditized.

That “better-than-anyone-else-at-_________” commitment fans the flames of employee loyalty, customer affection and analyst/media interest.

Often referred to as a Unique Selling Proposition (USP), we’ve come to prefer the term Differentiating Value Proposition (DVP). Rather than focus on trying to “sell” people, we find more substance in the idea of delivering a unique value in a unique way to a unique audience.

That kind of focus allows any organization to be first in its category or, as Trout and Ries would advise, to create a new category to be first in.

We’ve been blessed over the years with attracting and retaining clients that desire to become and have the capacity to actually be the best within their respective categories. Often our work entails helping company leaders put a finer point on their DVP, (the greatest compliment we ever get is “Hmmm. You’re making us really think about this one…”) and then creatively marketing that differentiation in ways that resonate with their audience.

But before we can be very useful, it all starts with the client’s commitment to be the best and reach some ambitious goals.