Get Back in the Box

Corporate Lesson from Douglas Rushkoff from his upcoming book, Get Back in the Box: "American companies are obsessed with window dressing because they’re reluctant, no, afraid, to look at whatever it is they really do and evaluate it from the inside out. When things are down, CEO’s look to consultants and marketers to rethink, rebrand or repackage whatever it is they are selling, when they should be getting back on the factory floor, into the stores, or out to the research labs where their product is actually made, sold, or conceived. Instead of making their communications less [Saatchi & Saatchi] and more [Craigslist], they should be reinventing their core enterprise.".... "That's when it hit me: What this fellow needed was not to hire companies who could market like craigslist but to be more like craigslist, himself. That is, simply understand what specific product or service he's really offering, and then do it as well and expertly as possible. That's not what he wanted to hear. No, he wanted a new marketing campaign to define his business for him, from the outside in." Excellent lesson.