6.5 Percent Unemployment, Surge In The Housing Market, Affordable Healthcare, Unicorns & Glitter
Unicorns & Glitter to the rescue!
Read on, trust me, I will get to what this means to your agency. . .
I’ve been traveling a lot lately and therefore watching a whole bunch of cable news. I go everywhere from Lean Forward to Fair and Balanced, with PBS sprinkled in.
I know first-hand that the sub-head I wrote is a whole ton of crap. Yes, even the part about Unicorns & Glitter, sadly. And the stark reality wasn't mentioned on cable news.
I live in Las Vegas, Nevada. The giant sinkhole of the Last Great Boom.
The reality is that the U-6 rate (actual unemployment including those who have quit looking) is 21.4 percent.
The reality is that the surge in the housing market is driven by, once again, speculators. That $600,000 home next door to me, that has foreclosed at least three times in five years, sold for less than $200,000 to a company that has a goal of 5,000 rental units.
The reality is . . . Affordable healthcare – the single greatest oxymoron ever. The bills get paid somehow, and whether it’s on the backs of the 20-somethings, or through higher average premiums (or taxes) for all, none of it really makes sense. Who does it make sense to? Perhaps the 12,745 individuals out of the 118,000 anticipated, who have signed up in Nevada as of the December 30 deadline.
The purpose isn’t to leave 2013 on a bad note. It is to enter 2014 on better note.
All of this ‘news’ points to one thing: get your act together.
Your agency. Your marketing department.
Stop all the waste that makes (or should make) you crazy.
- Eliminate the extraordinary overages in client hours (that you can’t bill)
- Communicate within – effectively and efficiently (get the documentation process out of email!)
- Know where every project is at any moment (and who’s working on it)
When your house is in order, you will have time to do stunning creative, attract more clients and hire amazing talent.
Be brutally honest with yourself about your agency or department, because those bullet points are the distractions that will keep you mired in 2013.
It's such mundane stuff I'm amazed I have to point it out. But then again, you're probably so used to it, you just assume it's part of being in advertising.
I’m not here to tell you how to do great creative. I’m here to tell you how to organize so you can.
So, by getting organized, you can affect change: reduce the U-6 rate: hire people so they can buy a house; and when you're more profitable, you can offer better healthcare than what's offered on the public exchange - another great way to attract top talent.
As for Nevada? A prosperous 2014. We get drones!