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Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Prestigious Boston Restaurant Group Seeks Hands-On Marcom Juggler

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Does your portfolio include consumer brand marketing successes? Do you believe in social marketing?  Are you a versatile marketing generalist?  And more to the point: are you a passionate foodie?

Clarity client New France, the acclaimed diversified Boston-based restaurant group that includes L’Espalier, Sel de la Terre, and Au Soleil Bakery & Catering has asked us to assist in creating introductions that will lead to finding an exceptional, self-propelled marketing communications director for their organization. This is a hands-on position with a great deal of collegial expectation and professional exposure. This role is a critical pivot for the entire company and is being vacated by our dream client liaison who is leaving to pursue graduate studies. The fantastic rhythm that has been our rapport is a proven formula of success that New France and Clarity will be looking to continue. While honored to participate in this search, it’s a responsibility we take seriously.

The ideal candidate has at least 5-years of rigorous employer and agency experience and fits the expanded job description that follows this narrative. The base salary skews to restaurant industry norms but the professional upsides are obvious—you are working within an exceptional organization of international renown that doesn’t view these accolades with self-importance. All applications will be acknowledged; no calls please. Qualified applicants should send a PDF resume labeled with your name and companion, labeled cover letter that includes hyperlinks to two (2) work and writing samples that you explain in the letter no later than 5PM EST on Friday April 23, 2010 to: marcom@lespalier.com. Initial interviews will be conducted in May with finalists invited for in-person interviews. There may be a writing and quick design exercise for finalists. The hiring target date is mid-late May for cross training. New France is an EEOC compliant employer.

This is a great professional gig… working with quality people who create a distinctly special dining experience. They make the work fun.

Click here to download the expanded job description.

Posted by Loring on April 7th, 2010

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Tiger Woods: Image Redemption or Credibility Hypocrisy?

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When a CEO or public figure is in trouble, their crisis turnaround begins with words acknowledging their responsibility, a pledge to do better in the future, followed by deeds of contrition.

But no PR professional worth their salt would have allowed their client to hide out for three months pondering their crisis turnaround while watching their lucrative sponsors and customers defect in a groundswell of public animosity and disappointment. One has to assume that Tiger Woods was again his own boss and that the executives of Nike and Electronic Arts held their collective breaths at 11AM EST as they observed his tightly choreographed apology (read their response here).

“I thought the rules didn’t apply to me” was a theme throughout his empathy-drenched mea culpa, presented in a tightly controlled venue with only friends and (presumably) favorable media in attendance.

Therein lies the chasm in the credibility Tiger Woods seeks to reclaim.

He missed the mark for understanding that the “rules” for Tiger Woods, a global marketing icon whose very image propels or sinks companies and network ratings, ARE different. Take note: every major TV network (including YouTube and TMZ) broke into regularly scheduled broadcasts for this man and his statement. Does that sound like this was a regular guy with a regular story?

Tiger, if you truly understand that you don’t “get to play by different rules” then the timing and journalist protocol for your public statement would have been different; your police interaction would probably have been different as well.  Stacking your room called your sincerity into question. Being indignant about the media’s incessant speculation rings hollow when you left them to create the story you failed to correct. Your PR advisors and your own branding instinct should have told you that YOU extended this story, and did not shorten it.

Tiger, must we restate the obvious: You are a public figure. We can all agree that we don’t have a right to know your private marital conversations. As you said, your aggrieved (appropriately and elegantly absent) spouse summed up the reality of any executive crisis: “My real apology will not come in the form of words, it will come from my behavior over time.”

And now the TV networks, corporate sponsors, and the golf industry will move forward. America is kind to redemption, but loathe to hypocrisy.

Which will this be?

Posted by Loring on February 20th, 2010

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Attention All Pack Rats: Spring Cleaning Starts with the Office

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I’m doing a lot of learning from Plan A Professional Organizing & Design, a client a with some really interesting stories of how they’ve helped business owners across a myriad of industries better understand that underneath cluttered stockrooms and vacuous post-reduction workspace is time and money that can be reclaimed. So much of what we hear in a recession economy is the mantra of “doing more with less.” It is the current foundation for workforce contractions (aka layoff or downsizing) and shrinking payroll budgets. But if you have too much stuff, or your remaining staff is ambling by empty cubes, the truth is: you’re doing “less with more.”

This year is the season of change for businesses of all sizes — from GM to the Boston Globe to a suburban private physician practice. Staffs are being reduced with residual unused office space to cast a sobering if not paralyzing reminder that recession survival is fatiguing. Fear is rampant, depleting good energy from employees to the detriment of productivity. Add to this any company’s propensity to archive files over years — a practice that transcends industry or office footprint. I’ve come to learn that even with eco-friendly business practices, Clarity’s collection of magazine and newspaper subscriptions and client records can quickly over-accumulate if not managed.

Plan A’s insights have helped me to see the light. Mindful of their stories of the 8-employee company with over 20 staplers, I ventured into the office supply closet, perplexed about the small nation Clarity could outfit with 3M Post-Its. There were boxes of collected business cards that were destined for the CardScan database organizer. It will be liberating to empty the plastic bin accurately labeled “old technology” into the trash — after all I haven’t used my Iomega Zip Drive for probably a decade and Win 95 might as well be a Commodore 64, especially since my MacBook Pro is my current laptop of choice.

So in this season of spring renewal, consider scheduling a day for a good office excavation or compress your surplus space to fit your true staff needs and sublet the rest after appealing staging. Doing more with less really can feel and look good! Need inspiration? The organizing and space style experts from Plan A will travel anywhere in the US, including Hawaii.

Posted by Loring on May 15th, 2009

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Transitions and Change: Communications is Central to Leadership

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When we turn on the news or log onto our digital newspaper, stories of global conflict are inescapable, because “if it bleeds, it leads.” Yet despite this tumult, we cannot imagine a life without American democracy and our First Amendment. Both are the hallmarks of an egalitarian if not momentous election followed by another peaceable transition of power marked by a seamless White House inauguration.

Change in leadership is an increasingly commonplace occurrence in Corporate America, with the new occupants of corner offices a reality of mergers, divestitures and impatient boards seeking new thinking at the top. It’s the assurances and the willingness of a communicative incoming leader to embrace employees and customer constituents that encourages the most ardent of naysayers to take a “wait and see” consideration of their talents. The big ideas become an organic movement, and the new leader brings his employees and his organization’s customers with him.

If more CEOs employed listening when they assume a top job, they would learn that the customers of their organization, and the employer enterprise for which they are responsible, are bigger then they are. They would not be testifying before Congress, looking like the emperors with no clothes who are begging for taxpayers to excuse their decisions to make products that don’t last and for which there is a dwindling market. That’s called being “tone deaf” in business parlance.

All evidence is that President Obama has set a uniquely optimistic tempo for listening and inspiring. He has kept his sage friends close, and his “enemies” closer. His team unites seasoned experts and newcomers from both industry and government. There’s a lot to be admired in his charisma but even more to be emulated in his early stewardship of change for a vocal stakeholder population of some 303,824,640. (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html).

Posted by Loring on May 8th, 2009

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