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Top of Mind Thursday Memo Archive
Top of Mind Thursday – January 16, 2025: It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over
Yesterday, there was much fanfare about a ceasefire agreement between Israel and 
Hamas that would bring home at least some of the people held hostage in Gaza for 15 months.
The proposed agreement was troubling in many ways. It called for 30-50 terrorists imprisoned in Israeli jails to be released for every hostage returned. It said those people could not be re-arrested—even if they committed additional acts of terrorism. It didn’t specify which hostages are still alive and which are deceased. And it called for the return of only 1/3 of the people still held hostage.
Hamas operatives were cheering in the streets, because the deal was so favorable to them. Yet, Israel was willing to go along with this to get at least some of their people back. Biden and Trump praised the deal, as they both want to see this situation resolved and off their plates.
This morning, it appears Hamas is changing their mind. They want to choose who is released from Israeli prisons, and they are insisting on some of the worst offenders—those responsible for killing hundreds of innocent people. Not surprisingly, Israel said no dice. We have a deal (based on a proposal made last May!). You need to stick with that agreement.
While it’s not clear yet how this will work out, it exposes something many of us feared: You can’t negotiate with terrorists who change the rules on an ongoing basis. You can’t expect people who have a different moral code (one which says it’s acceptable to sacrifice your women and children for the cause) to act the way we in the West expect. When the stated goal is the annihilation of an entire people (pushing Israel from the River into the Sea), steps toward reconciliation and peace are suspect.
The hostages still being held in Gaza—dead or alive—deserve to come home. Their families deserve to have closure, one way or the other. But until the world recognizes the absurdity of the situation and puts pressure on the terrorists to comply with their own agreement, nothing will be resolved.
It ain’t over until the pressure is on Hamas to make it so.
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
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday – January 9, 2025: Too Hot to Handle
On Tuesday, a set of wildfires exploded across Los Angeles County, burning thousands of homes and displacing hundreds of thousands of residents.
Two days later, the largest fires are not in the least bit contained, and new fires are erupting several times a day.
California is no stranger to wildfires, but this time is different. There are two main reasons: the presence of hurricane-strength winds gusting up to 100 MPH, and the fact that Los Angeles has had no rain whatsoever for more than 8 months.
In these kind of conditions, before firefighters can get a structure fire under control, embers are blown for miles into dry brush that acts as tinder and ignites a new fire. Furthermore, aerial firefighting efforts must be curtailed under such windy conditions. Luckily, wind conditions have calmed down considerably today, allowing firefighting efforts to resume from the sky. Thousands of fire personnel from throughout the state and surrounding states have also come to join the effort.
The devastation is already of epic proportions, and this isn’t anywhere near over. Yet, in the midst of this catastrophe, accusations are flying like embers, accusing government officials of being unprepared or sabotaging fire suppression efforts.
In one of the more bizarre conspiracy theories, pro-Hamas groups are actually saying (with a straight face!) that there’s a connection between homes burning in California and fires in Gaza. (Reality Check: There have been no wildfires in Gaza, and embers don’t cross oceans and continents.)
The truth is, our weather conditions are becoming more and more extreme. Just like North Carolina had never been hit with hurricane damage like they received last year, Los Angeles had never before seen 100 MPH wind gusts in a bone dry January. Fire hydrants likely went dry because never before had there been so much demand for so much water at once—not because of some nefarious public works scheme.
Instead of trying to throw around accusations, we’d all be better served by recognizing that these extreme weather events are no longer Black Swans. We can’t turn the clock back on what’s happening in LA this week, but we can start to plan better for more such events in the future.
We have the choice of dealing with heated discussions about future events now—or getting scorched by the next weather disaster coming our way in the future.
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
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday – January 2, 2025: So What’s New With You?
Yesterday was New Year’s Day. Welcome to 2025.
We tend to put a lot of expectation on the start of a new year. We create resolutions to change our habits, start new activities, stop old ones, and make long-awaited changes.
But after a fairly short period of time, just about all of those resolutions fade away. We go back to our old way of eating, exercising (or not), and we slink back to the same old grind. In the old days, we did need to remember to write the correct new year on our checks, but who writes checks any more?
The problem is things don’t change because the calendar turns a page. Things change because we change, and we change because we decide that either the old way is no longer working, or there’s a much better upside for us if we try something different.
So this year, instead of making a list of resolutions that aren’t likely to be any more successful than those you made last year, stop and think about what really needs to change. Ask yourself if you’re ready to put in the effort to make those changes stick.
And, if the answer is, “Probably not,” skip the New Year’s resolutions bandwagon. Instead, think about what new things you might be ready to take on later in the year, then think about what needs to happen between now and then to make that effort successful.
Just know that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. Try a new approach instead. You’ve got all year in front of 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
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday – December 19, 2024: Thing Aren’t Always What They Seem
Last week, CNN aired a segment where their correspondent, Clarissa Ward, helped free a man from prison in Syria following the downfall of dictator Bashir Assad.
The man acted as if he had been imprisoned for months and was another victim of Assad’s brutality. However, it soon became apparent he was actually part of the Assad regime and had only been held for a short time because he had supposedly extorted money from his colleagues. By the time this became public knowledge, the man had disappeared into the wind. Whoops.
The man who assassinated the CEO of United Healthcare was first thought to be a former insured who had suffered because of the company. It turned out although he had significant health issues, he was not a UHC customer and he came from a wealthy Baltimore family. He also may have intended to kill other insurance executives. Whoops.
In Gaza in November, there was outrage when a staff member of the World Central Kitchen was killed during an Israeli raid on Hamas operatives. Yet, last week it was revealed that the man killed had taken an active part of the massacre on Israeli civilians in October 2023. Not only that, but WCK then fired 62 employees who were found to have ties to Hamas. Double whoops.
With technology that allows news to be reported almost instantaneously, it’s difficult to determine if what we’re seeing is accurate. In today’s environment, one news source picks up another’s reporting, then this is repeated again and again on social media, and the inaccuracies become embedded in our minds. Meanwhile, by the time the truth comes out, the media have moved on. Or, like in the case of the Syrian prisoner, it’s too late to fix the error.
We need to step back and allow stories to unfold in more detail before jumping to a conclusion when a breaking news banner comes across the screen.
Too often, what we think we see at first is not the full story.
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
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com