I've Been Ayn Randed

Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce.

― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged   

Three years ago, a state senator introduced a bill making Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged required high-school reading in Idaho (he called the facetious bill a "statement" aimed at Idaho's board of education).

I've met more than a few otherwise intelligent people brainwashed by Rand's callous twaddle.

The hour is long past due to shelve Atlas Shrugged with dusty gems like Malleus Maleficarum, Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race, and Mein Kampf.

Revered by aristocrats, Rand's 1957 book isn't merely some silver-fork novel. It's a monomaniacal screed pushing an elitist view.

My insuperable wealth means I'm superior.

And there's insuperable wealth behind the drive to foist Atlas Shrugged on American teenagers.

Since 2002, the California-based Ayn Rand Institute—underwritten by oil barons, bank presidents, hedge-fund managers, and Silicon Valley CEOs—has shipped over 3.2 million free copies of Atlas Shrugged to the nation's high schools and colleges.

Aiming to "spearhead a cultural renaissance that will reverse the anti-reason, anti-individualism, anti-freedom, anti-capitalist trends in today’s culture," these friends of laissez faire have, in addition, shipped teaching lessons to 30,000 teachers.

Teachers, please don't fall for it.

Don't be Ayn Randed.

DM Rocks

Last year, Canadian ethnographer Arnie Guha studied ad consumption.

First, he analyzed videos of the movements of recipients' eyes as they scanned direct mail (DM), email and ads on Facebook. Then, he analyzed two weeks' diary entries made by the recipients.

Guha concluded: DM rocks. Among his findings:

Direct mail is part of consumers' daily routine, "a routine so engrained and imbued with sentiment that it is often ritualized." The daily mail sort takes about five minutes and happens in the same part of the home. Consumers open and read personal mail first, and set aside direct mail that begs to be read for later. This ritual "presents a unique opportunity for brands looking to form relationships with new customers," Guha says. Email and Facebook ads, in contrast, are consumed without ritual.

Direct mail is valued. Consumers are far more likely to notice, open, read and enjoy direct mail than digital ads. They consider it less interruptive and a good way to make them feel valued. “In an age where person-to-person communication is being phased out, it is good to know some services still come from the hands of another human being," Guha says.

Direct mail is preferred. Consumers are more likely to associate feelings of happiness, excitement and surprise with direct mail, while finding digital ads annoying, distracting, disruptive and intrusive. That means direct mail isn't just for response-driving, but for deepening customer intimacy and communicating brand values.

Direct mail is "art." Consumers keep direct mail, display it in areas of the home, and share it for months at a time. Catalogs are kept in the living room; mailers and coupons on the fridge; menus in the kitchen drawers. Digital ads, in contrast, simply vanish.

Direct mail is a go-to source of information and inspiration in the early stages of the buying journey. Consumers in all age groups respond to it by making both planned and unintended purchases, in-store and online.

LEARN MORE. Check out The 3-Minute Guide to Direct Mail.

Social Spend Soars. Results Don't.

What's wrong with this picture?

CMOs are spending more on social media marketing without a proportionate return, according to The CMO Survey.

As a percentage of marketing budgets, social spending has tripled during the past seven years, up to 12% of budgets from 4%.

At the same time, CMOs don't see the ROI.

Nearly half (44%) say they cannot prove the impact of their social spend; and fewer than 5% say social contributes very much to their companies' performance.

Glassdoor: Better Job-Seeker Tool Than LinkedIn?

Gary Slack provided today's post. He is chief experience officer of Slack and Company, LLC, a leading global B2B marketing strategy and services provider based in Chicago.

Glassdoor really is coming into its own as a terrific tool for job-seekers of all types—college students looking for internships or full-time jobs and anyone and everyone looking to change jobs or careers.

The platform used to be mainly for checking out what current and former employees anonymously say about their employers, but the site now does double duty big time as a repository of jobs—getting as much monthly job-post traffic as LinkedIn does.

Some interesting things about Glassdoor:

• The average company rating on Glassdoor (on a 1-5 scale) is 3.2. In my experience, any company that’s at 3.6 or above is doing pretty well.
  
  
• Caveat emptor with companies 2.6 or below—and, yes, there are plenty that do that poorly. They probably should be quarantined. But don’t pay too much attention to a company’s rating if it only has a handful of reviews—say 10 or fewer.
  
  
• Companies that have thousands of even tens of thousands of reviews and are at 3.6 or above are doing a pretty good job by their employees. When they’re above 4.0, like Google is, that’s just amazing.
  
  
• Glassdoor tells us their research shows prospective employees going to the site put more stock in reviews and ratings of current vs. former employees. Makes sense.
  
  
• Look at how raters rate the company’s CEO. And whether they would recommend the company to a friend and whether their overall feeling about the company’s future is negative, neutral or positive.
  
  
• You also can learn a lot about prospective employers from their company pages on Glassdoor—usually much more robust than company pages on LinkedIn.

You still need a strong LinkedIn profile more than ever, but consider making Glassdoor your first stop on the way to a first job or a better career.

That Old Black Magic

Whoever Americans elect as president next week, I hope she has a witch as her top aide, as does South Korea's president. We're going to need that old black magic to get well.

Writers need black magic, too; and editors are its source.

In his new memoir, The Accidental Life, Terry McDonell quotes Norman Cousins, the longtime editor of Saturday Review, on the art of editing:

Nothing is more ephemeral than words. Moving them from the mind of a writer to the mind of a reader is one of the most elusive and difficult undertakings ever to challenge the human intelligence. This is what being an editor is all about.

Editors are advisers, coaches, cheerleaders, therapists, parents, midwives and—as Cousins implies—sorcerers.

They're also missionaries, as Robin Lloyd, contributing editor for Scientific American, says:

My motivation as an editor is clear, compelling communication for the reader. Delivering that is my first job. Readers are looking at every word for an excuse to bail out—to stop reading a story. My job is to prevent that and to keep them reading this story by focusing on clarity, pacing, logic, arc, and sparkling prose.

Above all, editors are match-makers, pairing willing writers with willing audiences.

That means an editor must be conversant in many fields; sense which topics are ripe for coverage; and know which ideas, words and phrases will keep readers reading.

No mean feat.