August 31, 2005

Nikki, you know what they say...Be your brand!....and you are. You're knocking people's socks off every day. We were in Asheville last weekend and saw their version of Skirt! If it were a man, I'd say it had penile dysfunction. (By the way...what's the female equivalent?) Worry not, you've got it ALL together.

But let's get to Topic A...

The Storm

Most of us in Charleston lived through Hurricane Hugo, and it was devastating on many levels. What kept this community going, what gave it hope, what enabled us to dig into our psychic reserves and get done what needed to be done, was the community's leadership...specifically Mayor Joe Riley. He kept communicating a message of strength, reason, courage, caring, and hope, while being 100% straight and honest and true.

I am appalled at the leaders of New Orleans fatalistically likening their city to Pompeii. (Only days ago, we passed the anniversary of the fall of Pompeii, that glorious city that disappeared one morning in 79 AD when the lava from Vesuvius engulfed it entirely.)

This is not 79 AD, and New Orleans is not Pompeii. It may FEEL like the end of the world, but it is not. In tragedies such as this horrible storm, people feel helpless. They have lost their belongings and their bearings. They feel as though they have no lifelines. They feel without hope.

Communications becomes more vital than ever. This the moment for leaders to be strong, courageous, and optimistic. The reserves and resources of this country are enormous. And we can not and will not let a storm - even one this horrendous - bury one of our great cities.

If I learned anything from Hugo, it was that leaders need to be out there with calm, consistent, constructive messages of strength and hope. At no time are the skills that we have in our business more relevant than they are in a crisis such as this. Let us hope that the elected officials who are so understandably overwhelmed by this great tragedy pull themselves together and earn the right to be called leaders.

Directors Cut

We watched a directors cut of "Dressed to Kill" the other night. It went on too long and too self-indulgently. Oh, it's still a brilliant movie, but the goodness was milked too much and too long.

And that made me think how important it is to have more than a director deciding what we ultimately see in the theater, and - in our business - why it is so very important to have teams of people working on projects so that they edit one another and make our end product the best it truly can be.

Daniel Goleman and others talk about the value of working in teams. And I always say I don't want to be the brightest person in the room...and neither do the great people with whom I work. The best ideas, the best work, and the best results are accomplished collaboratively.

Leave it to any one of us by ourselves and - even if we're brilliant (as director Brian de Palma most certainly is) - you'll end up with something less lean and focused and impactful than what you would have gotten from a team.

We say there are "no boundaries" in our company...that people collaborate across the board. They do. And that enables us to give our clients something much more resonant than a "directors cut."