AIG’s “Special Call”

So AIG is having an analyst call on Monday.  Word on the street is, they are going to say everything is just fine, don’t worry about the fact the stock has dropped like a rock to $11 mid day Friday, a drop of about half the value.  This is what Bear Sterns and Lehman’s did and look what happened to them.

 

Unlike Bears, I don’t think AIG is too big to fail; there is a big difference here between Fannie and Freddie or even Bears and AIG.  AIG is a collection of companies under one roof, not truly a company unified as one entity.  In fact, AIG has two options, raise capital, which I don’t think is a smart idea if you are an investor or sell off assets.

 

Frankly I’m for the break up of AIG; it is too big and has too much fat and too many people getting paid a lot of money to do nothing of much value.  Taking away the perks and the corporate pork by breaking the company up into smaller ones will make the better parts, stronger investments for those willing to invest.  Having seen how some of those divisions work, I wouldn’t hire them for my team, they sit around too much, at least the management level.  It is a recipe for poor performance.  When the markets were good, so was AIG, this is when you see the real metal of a company and they are failing.  Really the stock is a reflection of this stagnation management style.  Sure the workers in many divisions are good but the management is not and who calls the shots, not the workers.  So some think this is a blip, no, going from $60 to$11 is not a blip.  I said this before, there are some serious fundamentals wrong with this company and they are not fixing them just putting their head in the sand and pretending they don’t exist.  That is not going to help, so break up the company, it’s the best option for investors to get some gains out of this. 

 

Of course odds are that management will fight this course of action tooth and nail but it is the more logical point of view for the investor, to break the company up and reap the profits.  The fact is, AIG is so big and spread out that in down markets like this where financials are getting hit hard, AIG’s diversity works against it.  As a corporation, it needs to think about the investor, what’s best for investors is clarity, sell off divisions and make it clear what business AIG is in.  Until then, every negative hit to financials, AIG is going to feel.

 

BTW, thanks to AIG for breaking the one day corporate record on this blog.  In a 24 hour period, you had more hits than any other corporation to this blog.  I didn’t realize your marketing being so bad was such a hot topic.  I was just skimming the surface, I was thinking of actually showing you how to fix it, but why give you something for nothing, not like your stock is worth zero, yet.

AIG Stock and Marketing Connection

Here and on message board, for two years I said AIG was going down.  I predicted $30 per share; it’s been in the low $20’s for a few months now.  Back when I said it was going down, it was in the $60’s and way over priced in my opinion.  Something that I find interesting is how, as the stock price goes down, the amount of marketing AIG does, has gone up.  Is there is a connection?

 

As I said two years ago in a previous post (you can do a search and find it on here), marketing isn’t going to save AIG, especially with the commercials they have going on right now.  This series in which they use kids, I don’t know who came up with that but it’s in the running for the worst ad campaign of the year!  I could get a couple of sugar buzzed high school kids to brain storm better ads.  Nobody sits there and say “oh, honey how cute!  That little kid is talking insurance and financial needs, let gets some AIG products!”  The commercials are just so off base.  The kids ramble on, you know they have no clue what they are saying, just reading a script and it mono tone.  Just bad all around and I’m sure they are not seeing an ROI on these ads that justify the expense.

 

 

 

Then you have AIG American General, ok, a little better but still just nonsense.  This commercial catch attention for 5 seconds, then, mass ADD kicks in and we zone out and focus on something else.

 

 

 

 

As I said in my previous post, marketing isn’t going to save you AIG because you don’t get marketing!  The only commercial series with potential is these facts commercials like this one.

 

 

 

 

It’s nice, good work on the crew that did the filming, I like it.  But AIG misses the punch.  It’s like, yeah, adds 8 years to my life, and what’s that have to do with you AIG?  Nothing as far as I can tell because you don’t make the connection and I’m not doing your job and doing it for you.  So nice graphics, bad follow through. 

 

I think AIG is so close to their own products (or totally clueless, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt) that they can’t tell, the rest of us don’t sit around thinking about their products all day, we have a life and insurance is a side issues in our lives.

 

So AIG, since I know you come to visit my blog any time I post about you, here’s my challenge, I can fix your marketing, if you guys actually want marketing that works instead of just pretending to do marketing, here’s my email: Edward@echenard.com.  Seriously, since you are here reading this, why not figure out how to make money with your marketing because I can tell you have not caught up to the times in marketing.  $40 lose in share price proves that, so seriously, send me an email and chat.

The Van Gods

I have to say I like this commercial, maybe because I used to listen to that song when I was younger. I know that there has been a lot of talk in the marketing circles about this commercial and if it hit the mark or not. There are too many factors in the market to say if it has or not, but the elements of the commercial are interesting.

You have a song from 1977 and references to the 70’s pop culture. The target market for such cars has been the soccer Mom. Now only those over 30 are going to get the references in the commercial, anyone under 30 probably doesn’t get it. So already they lost a good portion of their market.

Plus the elements in play, I don’t know of today’s soccer Mom’s want to remember the 70’s “Van God” or be associated with them. The husband might be another story.

Either way, I give Honda credit; it’s a creative commercial for something that is generally extremely boring. Who pays attention to mini van commercials anymore, and yet there is more buzz on this one commercial than has probably been generated by all of the commercials on mini vans in the last 5 years. So, Honda got something with this, it got buzz.

Years of Experience, Not All are Equal

When read a job ad, 99% of the time I see a listing that says “must have X years in ABC.” This is often done to weed out the field, but it really is showing that the people that create these ads don’t really understand the dynamics of career progression. Not all experience is created equal.

Now I know I’m going to offend a number of people with this comment. Not all business experience is the same. Take for example marketing. A person with 5 years in a corporate marketing role has about the same hands on experience as a person in a start up with 2 years experience. I know that is not a popular opinion but hear me out.

Large corporations often have you in a rotation or locked into a role. You are in channel marketing or branding or product marketing or marketing communications and that is what you do for that time. So you spend 5 years doing product marketing. That’s really all you know, but marketing is a sum of its parts, you are not truly able to be a marketing leader unless you have done all the pieces of marketing. In a start up, you do them all because you have to. So you get a better understanding (assuming you did it correctly) how it all comes together, how channel and branding work together and product and communications. So in a short amount of time you have a broader background and often with more hands on experience.

If you have been in both, you understand what I’m talking about, if you have only been in corporate, you really have no idea what you are missing. I think we should all start out in small companies in our careers, it’s the best way to really learn business because you have to do everything and often and get good at it. In corporations, a lot of people can coast or stay in one area for years. I know people who have been in the same job for 10 years, just plugging away and they have little idea what distribution is doing or sales or finance. In a start up, you can’t afford not to know.

So really, we should not judge experience as the same, as a company, it would be good for you to rediscover the art of the conversation and talk to candidates again and learn who they are. The ROI is there.

Finding Obama

I was enjoying my evening at home when one of the Get Out the Vote people came by. He was obviously a democrat. A young college kid full of ideals that the party he was working for doesn’t actually support.

So I let him give his speech and inform him that I am registered and always have been and that I always vote, even in off years when we have no major races but still have issues to vote on. He then asks me if I am a democrat, to which I tell him, “I do not belong or support the two major parties.” That line usually works at stopping the telemarketers.

Then this kid asks me “if I have found Obama yet.” Found Obama? He said “have you heard his message and his calling for all Americans?” Ok, at this point, the kid just sounded like some brainwashed cult member and frankly I find it creepy. Not because of what he said, but because this was the fourth one who was saying very similar things in a very similar way.

Where I live is not a battle ground state so we don’t get a lot of political traffic. But I really do wonder what kind of Kool Aid they are giving people to go around acting like they do about Obama, a community organizer with no record to speak of, other than Oprah saying she likes him.

I decided not to have fun at this kid’s expense by grilling him about his beliefs on Obama, after all, anyone who would brave the mosquitoes probably doesn’t deserve the kind of question I’m famous for. But it does raise the question, is the Obama campaign about glitz and nice sounding phrases that inspire? Because when I took the time to look into this guy’s very thin record, I was reminded of what his friend of 20 years, Rev, Wright, said about Obama, that “Obama is just another politician.” And if you look at his record, I mean really look, you will see, Rev Wright may have said some things people didn’t like, but he was correct about his take on Obama.

If this is the best the Democrats can do for a candidate, just another politician?

Remember everyone, these two parties told us free trade would give us more choices as consumers. I suggest you take that same philosophy and adopt it to who you vote for. There are more parties than the major two, take a little time and find them and vote for them. Voting for these two major parties is like going back to the same bad restaurant that always screws up your order, jacks up the prices and never has anything good to eat. Time to try the lunch special else where.

Sign of the Economic Times

I read this article and had a good laugh. We all know gas prices are hitting many businesses hard, but even brothels are experiencing an economic slowdown as a result of the high gas prices.

I honest can say, that was not one business I thought of when I was thinking of businesses impacted. But it is interesting to see the ways in which all types of businesses are seeking to keep customers coming in during these high gas prices times.

Read Article Here

4th of July

I think the 4th of July is a humanity celebration. Just so happened we Americans started it. I know most people think about the day off they get or the fireworks and all the fun sales. For some overseas they think of the negatives of the US the things they don’t like about us, the consumerism, the war, or whatever they find a reason to blame us for their own short comings. But I like to remember this day was started because a bunch of people had the guts to believe in ideals that have stood up over time. Ideals worth fighting for, worth believing in and worth striving to express to their highest potential.

Freedom to be who you want to be and having the right to pursue that. Our politicians have forgotten this for sure, communist have never understood this and many dictators and socialist can’t stand others having it. But I think it is important for those of us who can, to live these ideals to our best and show that it was and still is the best idea for living that anyone ever came up with.

A world with the spirit of America is really a world will never have that same spark of hope, of vision, of believing we can have the pursuits laid down by our founding fathers as rights we all have. Not rights because some government gave them to us, but because we are human beings we have these rights. So many have forgotten that we have these rights, I still remember and I know many others who do as well. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, these are rights given to us by a higher power that no government can take from us or have the rights over.

If you are an American, it is your obligation to live these words of the declaration, as a citizen of this great nation, it is what you have been tasked with to live up to the ideals people fought to ensure you would have. If you are not an American, I hope you can find some way to live these ideals in your home country. Simple yet profound in everyway, the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A simple 10 word sentence that can change the world for the better.

Inspiring Success

A recent conversation with a friend caused me to ponder the meaning of success. By modern measures, he is a successful guy, big house, high paying job, vacation anywhere he wants, family, etc…, yet he told me of how he feels like a total failure and it makes him feel that way even more when people say how successful he is. By modern standards, he is successful, so why does he feel like he is not?

I had to divorce myself from the usual line of thinking to get to the answer on this one, but some how, our definition of success has altered over the years. Truly looking at the world of business and media influences, if we are not perfect and perfect is an ever changing definition, we are a failure. I remember in school being told “if it isn’t an A grade, it might as well be an F.” Meaning, nothing less than perfect was to be tolerated. In a way this kind of sums up what success has become today for many. It is why you see billionaires caught stealing, or other so called successful people doing some rather stupid things, because they know they are not perfect and it really bothers them and then they do something stupid.

That very day I was watching a show on CNBC about the new wealthy. The interesting thing was, the net worth of these people were $50 million or more, and yet they didn’t feel successful, they wanted more, they could buy pretty much anything they wanted yet it wasn’t enough. They had to get more because the bar was constantly being raised and they had to keep up. As one guy put it, when he was growing up, having a million dollars made you rich, today, you can’t give up your day job with a million dollars of net worth.

Modern day definition of success has a healthy dose of failure in it. I think this is from a misconception of what success and failure are and their relationship to one another. Take Rush Limbaugh, he was a failure just as long as he has been a success. It is when he stopped caring what the opinions of others and did things his way, did he get the rewards of millions. Now the New York Times saw him as a failure and even that his drive not to be a failure was the point of his success. However, I think for Rush and having been there myself, failure helps you define success, but it is not the root of it.

Rush had true failure, after that, you are not afraid of failing. Many people today have run away from failure their entire lives and have no concept of it. It hurts, it’s humiliating, it’s humbling and after a while, it has no power over you. Why be afraid of failure again once you have had it, you know the worst and you get up and go on and you stop bothering with the should have or could have comments of others and just get in there and do what you know is best as you see it.

Look around, the really successful people in live had failure and got up and moved on. They don’t run from it. The people who rise up and crash, they ran from failure and will fail because they run from it and you can’t run your whole life.

In the end, I think we have a somewhat unhealthy definition of success by many people. One that does not equate success with running away from failure is needed in more quarters. I know I have worked with companies that fear failure or anything out of their norm and it cripples them to a point that it threatens the very survival of the business. They are successful at running away from failure that eventually they also run away from the success they need to stay in business.

How to Really Solve Global Warming

I was trying to catch up on my reading this weekend and spent a lot of time on magazines that I have sitting around. I have converted most to the digital format, because they tend not to stalk me by phone if I have the digital version of the publication, and second, it’s a lot easier to clean out my inbox than it is to carry a stack of magazines outside. It gets heavy after a while.

As I was reading, I noticed how doom and gloom the predictions of global warming are getting. Apparently we will have no land left in 10 years and we should all learn how to swim. Or how the Bush administration caved in to extremist environmentalist and froze solar power research because we might ruin the environment by stepping on the grass. Of course there are a million people out there with their own ideas as to how to fix the global warming issue and their idea is the only idea as far as they are concerned. But the more I look into this, the more I realize, those most invested in the global warming problem are the least among us to be listening to. Here’s how I came to this conclusion.

Look around the world, you will notice something in common, countries that pay the most attention to the environment have two things in common, citizens are free and they are wealthy. Poor countries are more focused on basic needs, the environment is not on that list of needs. China is not a free nation, so it doesn’t focus on the environment (yes they claim to care but really go and look, that is if your eyes don’t burn from the pollution in the air).

A lot of the people invested in global warming want the government to control things, tell everyone what to do, but history has shown that the real way to help the environment is to help people become wealthy, then they have the money to be worried about the environment. Take the current situation, 10 years ago when gas was around $1 a gallon, many people were against off shore drilling and anwar. Now, the majority of people are for it. Why? Simple economics, when you have to spend $4 a gallon, that adds up fast and that leaves little for other things, so many Americans are focused on basic needs, not the environment because they do not feel wealthy anymore.

Capitalism is best for the environment, not socialism, not communism, but capitalism. Look at China, it is a communist nation, and the worlds largest polluter. Socialist countries are not much different, it is when people are free to make money and enjoy money that they can afford to be concerned about the environment. So things like wage depressions through outsourcing, H1-B visa abuse and illegal immigration are all actually bad for the environment. When wages are held down, people make less and are therefore, more concerned about basic needs than the environment.

When I say capitalism is the answer I don’t mean the Bush style of the rich get richer, I mean everyone has to! It is nice that the rich can afford nice things but the vast majority needs to be able to. Then we have to replicate this to other nations as well. When people are wealthy, they can afford to be concerned and when incentives are in place to put in the effort to find new ways of doing business that are cleaner, then we have a winning formula. This idea that some how the government is going to get us to be green is just nonsense. People, not governments, change the world.

Reflecting on Stress

I found myself with more free time this month than I had expected. As a result, I have been catching up with my reading. It is funny how many books I have laying around un read or half read, just waiting for me to finish. The really interesting aspect is how often I buy a book months in advance and later, seemingly at the right time, I get around to readying it. Kind of cool how that works.

Lately, I have trying my best to relax and unwind; the funny thing is how this actually stresses me out. It is interesting how the things that are suppose to help free us, often are the things that cause us to be trapped in some way.

So there I was, working out, meditation, taking walks in the woods along the river, taking afternoon naps, engaging in hobbies, etc… But all this was stressing me out! I found myself captive to my choices. This was odd, isn’t this suppose to help me relax, not cause more stress? So this got me thinking, in work I find that people often get burned by the very things that they think will free them. Could this be happening to me too?

In business, I see people do this all the time, they play politics, only to get destroyed by it, they play it safe only to lose to faster competitors, they take advantage of people only to be taken advantage of. We do this to ourselves all the time. I remember when a Chair, I saw hundreds of companies, all claiming to be different and unique. They were more similar than anything else because they focused on the same thing, fear of failure so that’s just what they got, failure. So what happens?

What happens is, we become the very thing we identify with. I’ve heard people say “everyone play’s politics here,” next thing you know, that’s what they are doing too, they may say they hate it, but they are doing it none the less. So there I was, trying to avoid being stressed and yet I became what I was saying I didn’t want.

In the end, I came the conclusion that most people are never truly in control of themselves. We jump from one thing to the next to find a solution to “save” us. Businesses do this too, every new fade comes along to save them, I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this, I shake my head at it. It doesn’t work! In time resentment is the outcome. This is no way to live nor run a business.

So what’s the answer? I would say, but I really don’t care for the hate mail. It’s not bad or anything it is just not what most people like to hear nor do I think most people are ready for it. I guess if you are ready, you already know or will know by your own methods, so I will leave you to explore on your own. All I will say is, for the vast majority, you will have to give up your usual ways of finding solutions, but I don’t’ think that is so bad, most methods don’t actually work anyway.