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Top of Mind Thursday – October 31 2024: Seeing Ghouls Everywhere
It’s Halloween—a time when ghosts and goblins appear to scare us and excite us, 
children come knocking in costume for treats, and creative adults let their imaginations run wild.
But the scariest ghouls this year are not showing up on your door step asking for candy. Regardless of which candidate you support, the other side is promising nightmarish results if their candidate loses.
We’ve heard all kinds of extreme claims: Haitians are eating pet cats and dogs. Puerto Rico is a garbage territory. Taxes will go up and the economy will tank. Even that the other party is controlling the weather and targeting hurricanes at their opponents.
If the election is close, it may take days till all the ballots are counted and a winner is declared. Both sides are likely to appeal the result if they feel they’ve been short-changed. Poll workers have been threatened, and lawsuits are ready to be filed accusing someone somewhere of not holding a fair election.
There’s only one thing scarier than all this and it’s not having the right to participate in an open election at all.
In many countries, like Russia, elections are a sham, with the winner predetermined and the results actually rigged. In others, like Iran, there is no election at all. In still others like Lebanon, a government is chosen that has no power and operates at the whim of terrorist organizations.
The democratic process is not perfect, but it’s better than the alternatives. But nothing is guaranteed. We only have the right to choose our leaders because we continue to exercise that right and keep our democracy strong.
Enjoy the candy and costumes this evening. Then get thee to a voting booth (or return a paper ballot). Leaving the choice to others could have truly ghastly consequences.
Check out our marketing leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
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Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday – October 24, 2024: Clear as Mud
It’s less than two weeks before the US presidential election and most of us are more than ready for this to be over.
Here’s the only poll you won’t see quoted in the news: Regardless of the candidate preferred (or one not yet chosen!), 100% of Americans are tired of campaign news, ad, texts, and—yes—polls.
Donald Trump started his campaign almost immediately after losing the last election four years ago. Kamala Harris came in only a couple of months ago, after Joe Biden dropped out. Since then, we’ve seen debates, town halls, rallies, ads, texts, and 1:1 interviews. We’ve heard pundits and experts debate what each candidate is doing right and wrong, which voters will like/dislike the message, and what that candidate’s chances are of winning.
Theoretically, this should all be over in 12 days. But right now the election is too close to call. With extra safeguards put in to placate those who fear election interference, it will take longer to count ballots, and in some states, polling suggests the winner of the electoral votes will be decided by an extremely slim margin.
That means we may not have an answer as to who hits the magic 270 electoral vote number on Election Night, or even for a few days afterwards. Then, one of three things will happen:
- One of the candidates will win in a landslide.
- Trump wins by a slight margin.
- Harris wins by a slight margin.
Option #1 is the most straightforward, but it seems highly unlikely, if the polls are anywhere near accurate.
If we hit Option #2, I expect Kamala Harris to do the right thing, acknowledge her defeat, and move on—for better or for worse—to another four years of a Trump presidency. Unless, of course, there appears to be evidence of election tampering by the other side.
If we wind up with Option #3, all bets are off. Trump’s team has been preparing for four years to challenge results he doesn’t like. There will be lawsuits and challenges, and possibly a repeat of the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol—or worse. We would be in uncharted territory.
How do we avoid this? Get out and vote. Encourage everyone you know to vote. The more people who vote—particularly in the battleground states—the more likely we can get margins big enough to show a clear winner. Anything else will be a muddy mess.
Check out our marketing leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
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Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday – October 17, 2024: Prescription for Failure
| This week, Walgreens announced they will be closing anywhere from 1200 to 2000 drugstores within the next three years.
This is not much of a surprise. For awhile, it looked like there was a new Walgreens opening up on every corner. Did we really need that many drugstores (not to mention all the CVS stores and other chains!)? For awhile, Walgreens complained about theft being a major factor in their store profitability. Then last year, they backed off—saying it was not nearly as big a factor as they had originally noted. As a long-time Walgreens customer who swore off using them for anything last year, I can tell you exactly what the problem is: customer service. Or, more accurately, total lack of it. For decades, we used Walgreens because they had an excellent nationwide system for filling prescriptions and enough 24/7 locations to make it easy to pick up those scripts. But for the last few years, there were never enough people in the store to serve the customers, particularly in the pharmacy. When they began to close locations, prescription orders were moved to other locations, without adding staff to compensate. It was impossible to reach someone who could help by phone. Going to the store meant standing in an interminable line, just to find out the status of your Rx, which usually then meant waiting till they decided to eventually fill it. The clerks in the pharmacy were extremely overworked and likely underpaid, as they were surly at best and more often obnoxious. The breaking point was when we asked the status of a prescription that should have been filled days earlier and a clerk yelled at us, “It’s somewhere in that pile of hundreds of unfilled prescriptions. How should I know where it is? And no, I have no idea when it will be filled!” We moved to CVS, which has built up a nationwide system and actually delivers prescriptions to customers. They aren’t the paragon of customer service, but working with CVS is an order of magnitude better than Walgreens. Lines move fairly quickly. The pharmacy seems to be well-staffed, and the people there actually smile and look glad to be helping you. Walgreens, let me help you out here. You have a bad case of ignoring and maltreating your customers. The prognosis is grim: This could be fatal if not treated promptly. It’s time to change your habits and start running a healthy operation. Treat your employees right and insist they treat their customers right too. Otherwise, all the interventions in the world won’t cure what ails you. Check out our marketing leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
Let us help your business rise to the top. linda@popky.com |
Top of Mind Thursday – October 10, 2024: In the Eye of the Storm
Hurricane Milton hit Florida with a wallop last night.
This may have been the strongest hurricane to hit Florida in a century. It’s too soon to add up the damage, but roofs were torn off buildings, entire towns were flooded, cranes toppled off of buildings, and millions are without electricity and will be so for some time.
This comes only two weeks after Hurricane Helene hit the Southeastern US, causing severe damage in some of the same areas.
Extreme weather events appear to be happening more often and with more intensity as our global climate changes. Sadly, the political climate appears to be just as turbulent and intense.
No sooner did impending storm warnings appear than some politicians started spreading unfounded rumors about a lack of federal funding (not true), delays in getting funding to states based on their political background (refuted by local governors), and even that “They” who can control the weather had the storm “geoengineered” in order to harm Republicans (not even physically possible!).
At a time when people are hurting and need all the help they can get, these accusations spur mistrust and fear. As a hurricane survivor myself, I know that Mother Nature is the great equalizer—she doesn’t hit one political party or ethnic group or religious denomination any more than any others. Water seeks its own level—and those in its way are inundated.
When disaster strikes, we need to come together to help those in need—not propagate this kind of nonsense.
Florida will dry out and recover—with help from government, nonprofits, and private organizations. But what kind of storm is brewing offshore for our country? There is no FEMA to rescue us from our political mis-steps. It’s time to come together to do the right thing for everyone—before the next big storm hits.
Check out our marketing leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
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Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com