Warren Buffett – The New ‘King of All Media

Warren is on the loose…again, and he brought his check book.  What does the Oracle of Omaha know that the result of us don’t.  For one thing he knows a great investment, and that means something he can own for a long time.  That habit is not in vogue in todays fast trading world.  Warren is looking to own assets that will appreciate over time, while bringing in some great cash flow, year in and year out.  I remember those days, but then my idea of long range planning is “what are we going to do after lunch?”  Warren is worried about the next decade, not what’s for lunch!

Warren, really Berkshire Hathaway, bought most of the print units of Media General, sans the Tampa Tribune, which will stand on its own for Media General, or until they find a way to sell it off as well.  Media General got some great cash and a chance to stay alive for awhile, something many major media companies are trying to do.  Warren got all of these holdings at a good price along with the real estate.  The price is significantly lower than the multiples paid in the past decade when all of these media companies sold or recapitalized, and then the bust hit.  Media companies can still make money, if they are not mired in debt – that is what Warren knows.

With our transition to a digital media world, in progress as we speak, there is still room for print media in local markets.  I should qualify that and say ‘print’ is not really the operative word going forward, but news media leader in a local market with a print product is more to the point.  As the ‘voice’ of the community – their earned mantle – they can be important and profitable businesses.  Kind of like having gone through a takeover by a venture capital company.  Make it leaner, and meaner and you can still make a buck.  Lots of jobs will be shed, but then that is better than oblivion.

With this deal Mr. Buffett and Berkshire have seats at the table with Media General, as well as with The Washington Post Company, as well as a stake in The Buffalo News. He is quickly gaining influence throughout the industry by his unabashed belief in the continuing role of the newspaper in the community.  He provides both financial and moral support to an industry in need of both, and at a very critical time.  The biggest players like the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall St. Journal exist on a different plane.  They are national papers of record that large audiences look to, their issues are different. Local and regional papers have different needs and Warren understands.  With his purchases, not only does he have a seat at the table, but now he sits at the head of the table, and all eyes are on him.

Facebook is launching today what could be one of the truly huge IPOs with a value over $100B.  FB is one of the contributing factors to the demise of newspaper readership.  No they are not the main culprit, but more of a symptom of the decline of newspaper subscriptions.  The newspaper was the watercolor content provider for social currency up through the last 10 years.  If you wanted to be able to join the conversation at work, you read the newspaper.  TV was also a source of conversation with your friends and co-workers.  Now you keep in touch by digital means, texting and emailing…and the Facebook.  Newspapers, in this new age, have lost a lot of their relevance of social currency.  By the way it opened at $38 and has moved across $40 where it is as of this post.  Oh for the days when newspaper sales attracted half of the attention of the FB IPO.

Warren understands that the local market is the last great place to have a real chance to still have an open forum in the community.  There is still a chance in our ever growing social world that the local paper can have a real chance to drive that social discussion.  As in the past, this is not about altruism, it is about having a good earning business.  Newspapers will never command the high multiples when they are sold, because they will never be the monopolies of the past.  With low debt and reduced operating costs newspapers can deliver a return that a ‘buy and hold’ kind of guy like Warren can appreciate.  This strategy can be the one that can save local papers, and I don’t see much else that will.

Good luck Warren!  We are all pulling for you and your strategy for the sake of our industry, and our communities.  We’ll be waiting for more good news in the future.  By the way how about some love for Orange County – The Register is available, and I hear the price is too good to pass up.

The Wheel of Marketing Choices

The integrated imperative!  That’s where marketing is today.  Heed the headline, or perish. There really aren’t any options.  Over the last several years my clients and I have noticed that marketing has gotten harder to do well, we had fewer choices and those produced good results.  There are more marketing choices, channels and media options than we thought possible just a few years ago.  Choosing wisely and making it work across channels and markets – integration, is what it really driving our marketing world today…and to do it well is hard!

On May 10, Steve McKee, in Business Week, authored the article “Integrated Marketing: If You Knew It, You’d Do It”  He starts with the opening paragraph – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, is such a cliché that it has spawned its own cliché: If it ain’t broke, break it. Unfortunately, that’s just what many companies do unwittingly to their branding programs, playing into the hands of public enemy No. 1 in today’s marketing environment: Fragmentation.

The rest of the article made the case for integrating the marketing, mainly keeping a consistency of messaging across multiple platforms we all endure today.  It is a delightful read, and one that many of his readers commented on in a favorable manner.  For the most part I agree, but the key message he iterates is ‘integrated marketing is hard!’  Yes it is, and this is why so few are able to do it well, if at all.

The boomer generation grew up with tightly bracketed marketing channels.  You bought the best and then hoped for good results.  The good news is that your audience had fewer choices and they were generally on the receiving end – be it newspapers, television, radio or out of home.

That world doesn’t exist today, and everything is hard.  So many choices, and so many places for your audience to be hiding.  The digital world is wonderful with all of its options on both sides, but for the marketer it is tough to juggle all those balls.  Three key channel options for most, have now turned into 8 to 12.  On top of that it is now ‘social’ so your audience can talk back to you…and you better be listening, because they’ll carve you up if you aren’t.  Trust me, I have, and they have left scars for not listening and not responding fast enough.

The McKee article is a good read, and I implore you to look at it.  You should also read the reader comments which come mainly from industry participants, who mostly agree, but they also have their particular bents.  They are in agreement that ‘integrated marketing is hard.’  Yes it is, but there is no choice.  The world we knew was broken, and there is no going back.  Multiple channels, both analog and digital need to be attended to and used appropriately to reach your target ‘audiences’ (emphasis on the plural) if you are to survive.

Many of my clients have long histories, they love their new options, but still talk about how it ‘used to be.’  We commiserate, have a cup of coffee, and then get on with reality and plan how to cover their broad patch of media options.  All of this with careful attention to keeping the message consistent and true to each channel of their multi-faceted customer and target base.  It takes more time, and more money, but it produces better results.  Isn’t that what we are all looking for?  It’s a new world, and I love it!

What did they accomplish? According to most who care about the issue – not much.  Lots of posturing, and little action.  Retirement incentives for nearly 100,000 postal employees, a ‘study’ of dropping Saturday delivery, a return of $5.5B in ‘overpayments into the retiree health plan along with not having to continue the onerous advance payments they had been conscripted to do in 2006.  They would also allow the USPS to find some new revenue sources like the delivery of wine and beer which they are forbidden by law to do currently.

Wow – study Saturday delivery.  Oh, and they also sent a strongly worded letter to the Postmaster General not to do any post office or distribution center closings, please, until they got back to them.  Our top 100 legislators in the U.S., and this is all they can come up with.  Now it’s on to the House.

The House is going through its ‘due diligence with no due haste of any many.  With their view they also want to punt the issue down the road.  After having asked for bold solutions and suggested that the Postmaster General and his staff run this like a business, they are now saying ‘ wait a minute.’  It is obvious from their public comments that they in the House intend to do just that…for many minutes.

Notes have been passed back an forth Senate to House to USPS in a never ending cycle and now some news is coming out as of today that the USPS has agreed not to close any post offices for now.  The threat of closing many rural post offices was too much for all of the Senators and Congressman.  We’ll effectively deal with that after the fall election.  Surprised, not so much on my part.

The USPS has many problems, but the courage to create a ‘business plan’ that could stem their losses was not one of them.  They came up with one, but it meant pain, and we don’t do pain well in an election year on any house or on either side of the aisle.  Change will have to come in 2013.  But what kind of change do we really want.

It is absolutely true that we communicate differently now than in the past.  Old legacy media and forms of communications are being changed to newer digital forms.  Mail, newspapers, land line telephones are not the key means to reach out and ‘touch someone’ that they used to be.  Get over it, and move on!  We still need all of these to have total access to information and a free dialog that is so important to our way of life.  We need the USPS, but we do need to trim its costs just as newspapers have had to trim theirs to stay alive.  Let’s hope our national legislators have the real courage to tackle this issue and to help place the USPS on a solid footing for the sake of our future.  I’ll be putting out a Mothers Day card tomorrow, and I hope I’ll get a couple of Fathers Day cards next month – we need the cheer that only they can bring when you pull them out of the envelope.

The USPS is NOT a business, it is a real part of the American way of life, and I for one want it to stay, even if I don’t like all the grumpy clerks down at my local P.O. here in Irvine.  Heck, even I get grumpy once and a while.  I welcome your comments, email or even drop me a card in the mail.  Our friends at the post office will appreciate it too!

“Warren Buffett Says He May Buy More”

by Peter Kafka in  All Things Digital

Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, who owns the Buffalo News, the Omaha World-Herald and a big chunk of the Washington Post, told shareholders today that he may buy more newspapers. “I think there is a future for newspapers that exist in an area where there is a sense of community,” he said. “I think the economics will be ok, but it will be nothing like the old days.”

If there is one man who can set the direction for newspapers it could be the Warren.  He still sees the value because he see the total proposition, not just the bottom line.  In many of the recent sales of newspapers this kind of logic has prevailed – as in San Diego, Philadelphia, and the potential of Eli Broad buying the Los Angeles Times.  Money seeking influence.  I think we have found our new business model.  As the saying goes “Everything old is new again!

I am a child of two worlds, both the analog, now code for human side of things, and the digital, which is where the world is rapidly moving.  Often the two worlds don’t mix well together, especially for boomers like many of my friends and associates.  Having purchased one of the first iPhones (day 2) I am a card carrying geek, and that is how many of my friends, and family saw me.  The gadget king is at it again.  Now everyone in the family has iPhones, iPads and we Skype on the weekends with our family in Texas.  We’re bought in!

Though I have all the digital tools I earn my living by helping others integrate them into their lives, their businesses, and help them survive a  dark side of digital implementation…distraction, and a sense of loss of real human interaction.  The question of personal productivity and multi-tasking is also now open for discussion.  Not every gadget or digital process really makes us more productive research is recently finding.

That is why I loved this article by Jenna Wortham.  It captures the true sense of ‘surviving in a digital world by humans/analogs.  In 2008 my 20 year consulting practice branched in this arena and I became the Analog Sherpa.  My tagline was, and still is…”An Analog Sherpa for a Digital World.”  Now you can see why this article impacted me so much.

With the  bankruptcy of Kodak recently the challenge of surviving a digital onslaught is high, just ask daily newspapers – or the USPS whose volumes are about to send them down, at least for a re-tooling.

Where did Lomography come from? Lomography started 20 years ago in Austria, by a group of photographers and artists who stumbled across a cheap Russian camera called the Lomo that used 35-millimeter film. The Lomo camera produced unique and charming photographs that often contained artsy blurry streaks and were oversaturated with color due to the camera’s body design and construction.

Matthias Fiegl, one of the artists who went on to found the company started smuggling Lomo cameras back from Russia to Western Europe in the early 1990s and sell them among his friends and then host exhibitions to celebrate the art photographs.

In the age of skype, cheap digital video cameras Mr. Fiegl found something different – sharing actual prints with all of their unique flaws from the film and cheap cameras.  Retro was back, and suddenly it was different and cool.  People got hooked.  Now a large Facebook community is organizing Lomographer meet-ups around the world.  Instant is out, and unusal is in.  Waiting is a part of the attraction for the Lomographers.

They still use digital cameras and the iPhone – instant is not verboten, but the fun of seeing something later, and not perfect is even more cool.  The digital world and the analog world can co-exist side by side…and be cool at the same time.  There is hope for the Analog Sherpa in this digital world…and I’m still cool to boot.  Cool!

 Sam Zell – Tribune’s New Owner

Sam Zell, the new owner of the Chicago Tribune Company, has quite a reputation as a motorcycle-riding, cowboy booted swashbucker who came up the hard way.

He’s on the Board of Directors of Equity International.

He likes to take risks, according to Forbes and he’s #52 on the Richest list.

He’s the biggest landlord in America or was, in 2004.

He’s called the “grave dancer”.

He’s “salty to the point of crass”, according to the CJR.

He owns, at least in part, two baseball teams.

So what does this mean for the LA Times? Got any predictions? Send ‘em our way.

After a short run in which he fleeced nearly everyone in sight, including the employees of the Los Angeles Times where he used their money in an ESOP to fund a major portion of his purchase – Sam has finally met his match.

Judge Kevin Carey of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. ruled that Sam Zell should be the very last creditor to get money in any payout from the Tribune bankruptcy proceeding. The judge found that “Mr. Zell’s investment ranked dead last in the Chapter 11 payment priority competition, ‘at the bottom of Tribune’s capital structure,’” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Ouch…but it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy.  We wish you well Sam.  No, actually we don’t!  Go away and don’t come back again.  You will forever be the poster child for all those who hastened the demise of U.S. newspapers.

The deal was for primarily cash with AT&T receiving 750 million in cash, with a 200 million note on the backend. AT&T will maintain a 47% stake in the business, but Cerberus will handle all day-to-day operations. Cerberus has pulled a number of rabbits out of their hat in the past, but this one looks to be particularly difficult.

During its heyday through the 1990s the Yellow Pages franchise, which included AT&T and a number of other telephone companies, and even a number of independent publishing companies, had a wildly profitable business. Recently the business, as a print operation, has become a boat anchor.  Revenue was down 30% in just the last two years.  The goal for Cerebus is to help turn the business into a digital operation that will compete with a number of newer players including Google and Yelp.

It has been a number of years since my family has kept or used a printed Yellow Pages directory at home. Like so many our tendency today is to simply Google what we are looking for hit the return and we have our answers. If we are looking for additional information, we’ll take the time to go to yelp for additional feedback from users where have actually used the service were looking for. In Orange County, CA where I live, Yelp is helpful but certainly not the powerhouse that I found when I was working in the San Francisco Bay Area. There looking through Yelp was like reading a novel, and I discovered a number of incredible writers who took the time to elaborate on their personal experiences at the various restaurants and shops they wrote about.

AT&T will use the time and the money to help grow their electronic portion of the communications field. With their growing competition this would seem to have been a good move. Cerberus will attempt to do something I that seems impossible, but they have done the impossible before, and I’m confident they have a plan to do it again.  As a private equity firm they don’t have to meet the needs of the market and shareholders and that is critical for them to have the time and hard efforts to pull this off.

Good luck to both AT&T and Cerebus, we won’t hold our breath, but we wish you well. I wonder if Cerberus would also like to buy a few good newspapers, I know of a number that can be had for well under $950 million. In fact they might be able to purchase several former large newspaper-publishing groups for the same figure.  There is one that is headquartered in Orange County (Freedom) that I hear can be had for well less than a billion.

Is the end near for Groupon?

It’s been years since I got my first penalty flag for piling on, nearly 50 years to be exact.  Today I’m getting my next one.  I’ve had more than a few over the years, but this is a ‘fun one.’  Today I’ll take one for the team and talk about Groupon again.  Talk about penalty flags, they are setting records for their first year as a public company.  Like the targeting scandals in the NFL, they could be coming close to getting a death penalty called on them.  Time to stop and reflect on where they are now, and ponder can they save it before someone comes in and takes the ball from them.

Last week they were forced to admit that they had overstated their earnings in the latest quarter.  The CFO fell on his sword and was officially let off the hook by the CEO.  However, the investment industry doesn’t take well to these kinds of ‘mistakes’ and a drumbeat has come up with a chant looking for changes NOW, with a decree that this can’t happen again.

The market came on line at the same time and hammered the stocks on Monday, and yet again today.  The price is now well below the initial offering price, but the overall market value of the company is still strong…too strong actually, and this is the real problem for Groupon.

Groupon was started with a great idea – daily deals that would shake money from the pockets of the public mired in a recession.  They were sitting on their wallets and needed a real reason to open them back up.  Groupon started the ball rolling, created buzz in the market, and produced some amazing results for many of their client businesses.  Consumers fell in love the ‘daily deals’ and a new marketing segment was born.

It started so quickly, and the results were so strong for a number of advertisers, that many thought that this model would be the key driver for local marketing and would overtake all of the other media including daily newspapers.  Investors roared in with loads of cash.  Big money on Wall St. was looking for a place for high returns, and fodder for the mill on IPOs.  The die was cast and Groupon went public in a blitzkrieg not seen since WWII.  But then…the roof fell in, and here we are today.  What happened?

What happened is that the creative spirit that drove the design and initial rollout of Groupon has no depth or maturity.  The CEO Andrew Mason has been shown to have some great ideas, but no real management depth.  A real manager should have been brought in – they needed an adult.

Secondly, the infrastructure to account for all the transactions and dollars is woefully inadequate.  In these deals the money is collected up front by Groupon and then the remainder after the Groupon split, is paid back to the client company as they are redeemed.  So here’s the picture- lot’s of cash rolling in, and slowly rolling back out over time.  Sounds like a big bank that needs lots of financial controls – and there weren’t any, or at least, not enough.  I’ve dealt with this many times in my career in business and consulting, and this always leads to problems.  With all that cash on hand, you just have to feel wealthy and successful, but then the money has to rollout to clients and suppliers and the giddy ‘wealth effect’ sets in.  This is where Groupon is today.

And now the ultimate penalty could be coming.  The SEC, as toothless as they are, is now starting to investigate Groupon for having to restate their earnings.  It doesn’t look good for Groupon, especially in light of the fact that the SEC needs a win to help them in their fight to keep their funding from being cut further by Congress.

If having the SEC on your case is not enough, an influential segment of the blogging community is also coming after Groupon. Rocky Agrawal in his reDesign blog opens with “Groupon was forced to restate fourth quarter earnings, sending its stock down 6% in after-hours trading.  This surprised me as much as my $2 investment in the Mega Millions jackpot not paying off.”  Ouch!

Rocky picks apart the business model of Groupon and that it is neither a coupon or marketing company, but rather a receivables factoring company.  They are a sub=prime lender in effect, living off of one cash stream while they try to meet the spread on the other end.  I think he is spot on in his points here.  One thing for sure is that they are not the saviors of the marketing field, not newspaper killers.  Newspapers have committed suicide over the last several years and needed no one to do the job for them.

So what next.  Enjoy your daily deals.  Groupon or someone else will continue to provide them.  They work for many on both sides of the transaction, but not for all, as many complaints will show.  I think the real issue is that Groupon can survive as a business, just not as a publicly traded one.  A great idea, but a horrible timing in the rush to the public market.  Yeah, they are a sub-prime business and Wall St. yet again was at the ready to make the deals cause they get paid no matter what.

I’d be willing to place a small wager that in this game, like the housing markets they have bets all across the line – win or lose, black or red, and they know how the numbers work.  They will be the ultimate winner in this ‘daily deal’ at the expense of shareholders.

Is the Postal Service going downhill??

“Industries Fear the Ripple Effects of Proposed Postal Service Cuts” – Was the title of the article in by Ron Nixon in the New York Times yesterday.  It is a good statement of some of the key issues that are being taken up starting this week in Washington.  All sides are lined up to help shape the final outcome.  Today ,CCN Money  has picked up the story as well.  It seems that all eyes are on Congress as they take up the issue of “postal reform.”  All this while all the ears are on the Supreme Court as they take up the issue of ‘Obamacare.’  We certainly do live in interesting times.  As the pace of change and disruption our world picks up we must expect many more battles in the future to go along with these two. 

Congress has begun work on their vision for Postal Reform, if reform is what they really have in mind.  All of the various constituencies are lined up on both sides of the issue.  Some want more, and others want the USPS to do less.  On the plus side are the wine and beer lobbies that want to be able to use the USPS to ship their products, something the USPS is prohibited from doing by law.  On the negative side the insurance and banking industries are lined up to ensure that the USPS not move into their fields, as some in Congress has suggested they do to create more revenues.

Like the newspaper business which is also undergoing its own transformation, the USPS is a huge enterprise that employees nearly 600,000.  Beyond that the entire direct marketing field, including mailing companies, printers and direct marketers employees over 10 times that amount.  This is a big deal, and we need to get it right.  As was noted in the article the field supports over $1 trillion in annual economic activity.  It helped to put both of my sons through college, so it is still dear to me.

Nearly every business relies on the post office to deliver packages, advertise services and send out bills. This postal supply chain supports millions of American jobs in fields as diverse as banking, agriculture, media and manufacturing.  This is an urgent issue since the USPS is losing nearly $36 million a day.  As volumes of mail have decreased with former users now going to digital methods of delivery.  Even the USPS has said that it does not expect to get those missing volumes back in the future.

The USPS is also saddled with a Congressional mandate to pre-fund future retirements, the only government agency to have to do so, to the tune of $5.5 billion.  Relief from this mandate would cut the shortfall in half.  A sign that this is a big deal is the nearly $300 million spent over the last three year by those lobbying on all sides of this issue – both the USPS employee unions and industries who work in the direct marketing field.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has proposed closing half of the post offices, approximately 3700 and shutting half of the mail processing centers, 250 there.  Both changes, along with stopping Saturday delivery, would also help to bring down the shortfall.  In a world that has gotten to email and instant messaging for time vital business and personal communications, there would seem to be some wiggle room for printed mail – derisively called ‘snail mail.’  A big question is how fast do we need to be, especially if we want to price reduction, or at least fewer price increases.  And yes, the USPS is also asking for a 50 cent first class stamp.

Postmaster General Donahoe said in prepared testimony.  “If Postal Service were a private company, we would be engaged in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.”  The Senate is beginning the process now, and the House will begin deliberations, probably next month.  A key deadline for consideration is May 15, when a moratorium on closing postal facilities will expire.

Currently under consideration is a bill that passed a Senate committee in November that would tap the overpayment of the future retirement benefits, currently at $10.9 billion to pay down postal service debt (to the U.S. Treasury) and use up to $2 billion for incentives to get a number of long term employees to retire.  The USPS has also planned to open its own health care for employees in hopes of cutting their costs, but there is pretty widespread opposition to that from Congress and the employees.

The USPS is a legacy system with a long history.  Like so many of our other ‘legacy’ systems, including newspapers, they are in deep trouble with the change in the economy in our broadening digital age.  Change is great for some, though it sucks for others.  I live in both worlds, and yes, I still want things the way they used to be.  The question is how much am I willing to pay to have that.  We make those choices each day, and we are making those choices now regarding our postal system.

In the face of the current situation I have to applaud Postmaster General Donahoe and his staff, though that is a strange position for me.  I prospered under the USPS, and endured a lot of petty regulations as well.  They clearly understand where they are today, where the world is going, and have surfaced a plan that will help them to move forward under their current legal and financial burdens.  Congress has the keys to open doors for them to endure and preserve the current levels of service many still desire.  They also have the keys to the vault and say no more.  I compliment the PG for a real and thoughtful plan, and I hope our elected officials will make the right choices.  In the face of the coming elections later this year – this should prove to be good theater, and maybe even good politics.

I’d like to give Gary a new nickname – Prescient Pruitt, for knowing when it is time to leave.  The definition of the word  prescience [ˈprɛsɪəns] n – knowledge of events before they take place; foreknowledge [from Latin praescīre to foreknow, from prae before + scīre to know].  I think that says it all in the face of the current state of the newspaper business in 2012.

Not to say that Gary can take all the blame, there is enough of that to go around for all who failed to see the train coming down the track, but he was the big gun with the big check book who bought everything in sight, just before the bottom fell out.  With so many papers have been sold for high multiples, the debt they took on has helped to sink nearly all of them.  This in the face of a natural decline of the media in the face of the digital onslaught they were about to face.

I wish Gary well in his new role, I had a number of professional dealings with McClatchy when they were my client in the 90’s, and they were a class act.  From everything I have heard of Gary, he is as well.  Now he will have to help journalism from this new position at A.P. providing content (not news) that will flow through the presses and the digital screens of readers to keep real journalism alive.

There is much more to say about the state of newspapers and marketing – once they were a singular entity, but now more loosely linked – and where the state of media is going.  Newspaper revenues have declined to 1984 levels in 2012 – I know Gary did not see that coming – and digital revenues are screaming upward.  Can newspapers maintain their position of strength?

A similar issue faces the U.S. Postal Service – after great periods of growth for decades their volumes have declined, and they face major cutbacks and reorganization to remain viable and cost effective for mailers and mail recipients.  Both media are linked together in their future.  What do they need to do to survive, and the bigger question is – can they survive.  More TK!

Sometimes you see a chart that stops you dead in your tracks.  I saw one today in The Atlantic that graphically displayed growing and shrinking industries.  My sons both inhabit the top-growing field of the Internet…and I, still have my past linked to the bottom industry – Newspapers.  Ouch!

This is a great chart because it shows growth and size of the industry losses or gains in terms lost at a single glance.  I hope we can see more of these from the suppliers – LinkedIn Analytics.

As I deal with clients and prospects this will be part of my kit bag to help explain key opportunities, and the pockets of pain at the same time.  This is why the recession has been both so deep, and so persistent.  As employment shifts from the old sources to the high growth areas it is easy to see that needed skill sets must be transformed or much of the pain for those who have lost jobs will find it to be permanent.

It’s hard to think that having come so far in just such a short period of time that Yahoo is in so much danger.  Major cuts are being aimed their large products organization, as well as other arenas in which the company has lagged.  Like many in similar situations they are also cutting: Public relations and marketing, research, marginal businesses and their weaker regional efforts.

Yahoo struggling for some time just hired PayPal President Scott Thompson as its new CEO. Scott was most recently in charge of the large eBay online payments unit.

He starts next week, but big changes are coming fast.  Staff conference have already begun and an all-hands meeting on Yahoo’s main Silicon Valley campus is scheduled ASAP.

Thompson also hired Boston Consulting Group to help focus the company on “growth” initiatives and to find the best path for Yahoo going forward.

Scott appears to be looking for areas to quickly jumpstart Yahoo after a failed turnaround over the last round of turnaround leadership.  Cuts are likely, but the focus will also be looking for new areas to move into.  That what consultants can do for you, find the costs, and find the new directions.  Let’s hope that BCG has a great compass to find that new direction.

Adding to Scott’s woes is the news that Prabhakar Raghavan,the head of its labs unit will be departing for Google.  His research at Yahoo focused on search technologies, with particular interests in text, web mining, and algorithm design.

Sources said was spurred by the likelihood of major job cuts in his research unit.

Staff cuts will happen, and they could be significant.  Staff at Yahoo have been through this before, or their predecessors have, but the effect is still chilling, and these could be larger than ever before.  With 14,000 employees and a large contingent of software contractors not in that count, the ‘dead pool’ is significant, but costs must be slashed if Yahoo is to survive.

In a conference call to analysis Scott said “Our leadership is engaged in a process that will generate significant strategic change at Yahoo, but final decisions have not yet been made at this point. Beyond that, we will not comment.”

In other words, get ready for some big shoes to start dropping and very soon.

Whether we are talking about the USPS, newspapers or older digital media like Yahoo, the future will go the quick and nimble, and the adaptable.  There is no longer any ‘legacy’ left in media…’what have you done for me lately’ is now all that matters.

Facing great change and pressure the USPS has done a good job in creating plans to bring the service in line with the needs of the 21^st century, and stagecoaches are not in the mix. The Postal Service drafted its business plan with analysis from Boston Consulting Group and Accenture.  Based on my reading of the plan, they have gotten good advice, though it has not been well received in Congress, though nothing really is anymore…but that is another problem that modernization needs to impact.

In the last quarter of 2011 the USPS lost $3.3 billion.  The forecast for a full year-end is a $14.1 billion loss for the year ending Sept. 30.  The losses will continue, and continue to grow if nothing is done

First-class stamped mail has declined more than 50% in the past 10 years, from 52 billion deliveries in 2002 to 26 billion in 2011. According to an email from USPS representative Sue Brennan, the drop in mail has resulted in significant excess capacity.

Among the recommendations from the USPS, and their consultants in the new plan to cut losses are:

Rate increases – The U.S. Postal Service wants Congress to help it raise the price of a first-class stamp to 50 cents, an 11 percent increase, as part of its strategy to avoid annual losses as high as $18.2 billion by 2015.  The fact still remains for the USPS is that we are the least expensive postal service in the world- we could even say that we are under priced for the service that we deliver. A price increase would seem to be in line all things considered, including real value.

Staff and facilities reductions – Closure of a number of local post offices and half of the larger mail processing centers would save significant dollars, and would also reduce staff by over 35,000.  This would be a tough call in the middle of a financial downturn, and a national election.  Nine states will see eight or more processing facilities closed.  Almost half of the 223 plants scheduled to be shuttered are located in nine states, including mine.  For the most part, these states, which include California, New York and Texas, have the largest populations in the country.

Curtail Saturday delivery – The Postal Service says it would save $2.7 billion annually by cutting mail delivery to five days a week.  Those of us in urban areas are likely to see this as positive, but rural areas have tended to see this a problem.

Manage Their Own Health Care Benefits – The USPS states that they could save $7.1 billion a year by managing their own health-care benefits.  This, along with not prefunding pension benefits, would be significant, but are a large political football for both sides. The USPSwould have lost only $200 million if not for payments it had to make toward the $5.5 billion it is required by law to set aside for future retiree health benefits annually, something no other government agency needs to do.

Our transistion to a post industrial society is hell for those who still provide the bulk of our labor.  The USPS has dramatically changed over the last couple of decades and automation has made it a model for most of the world, but not even that is not enough well production volumes decrease.  Savings from automation aren’t there any more, and now we have to remove some chairs from the table.  Like newspapers, the transition is painful, but it is still inevitable.  The USPS plan is a good business plan, and Congress should adopt it for the most part.

I wish I could hear the Postmaster General tomorrow.  Unfortunately, I have a previous engagement with a client dealing with digital marketing issues and their competition.  Doesn’t it just figure – new media trumping old media once again.  I hope the USPS gets their way in the end.  The plan is real and reflects the medicine we all need to take now.  In an election year this will drag out and become another political football.  Shame on us for allowing that to happen.

I am on Facebook since 2008.  I joined so I could understand the dynamics of the FB since I was recommending it to my clients as something they should be using in their integrated marketing mix.  I might as well have been asking my clients, senior executives like myself, to strip naked and walk through the streets.  Their kids might do it, but they certainly weren’t going to.

“Social Media for the Unsocial Person” – what a great tagline for understanding the intersection of senior execs and introverts – older ‘quiet’ people – ‘my people.’  I fashed one recent morning with that thought in my head and wrote it down.  I thought that like myself, many don’t understand how they can use and have fun with social media.  Not wanting to express themselves in words, or divulge ‘secrets’ about themselves, there was something that could work – and in fact was working for me.

Over the last several weeks I have discovered Pinterest.  Like many of my ‘discoveries’ it came from my personal idea factory and digital brain trust – my family.  I don’t know who was first to invite me to Pinterest, my eldest son or my wife.  Both are huge on the net, and both have great writing and visual skill sets.  I love visual things, and color.  I dress with lots of color.  Thank God, my wife checks me each day before I leave or I would have been arrested by the fashion police for some infraction of good taste.

What I did find is that I liked what I saw and I immediately got into looking at all of the visuals, first in the men’s clothing category.  I started ‘repining’ and liking things…wow this is easy.  Then I started finding that others commented on my ‘pins’ and ‘likes’…maybe I do have an eye for these things.

As a male, I feel a little funny about being excited about something that has been heavily adopted by women.  About 82% of active users are female, but then women make up a majority of all social networking sites and spend 30% more time on sites than men according to Nielson.  So why does it excite me – again I am a visual learner.  I listen to audio books for pleasure, but always fiction, and mysteries and action are a majority of that.  I have an extensive business library, but few business audio books – they just don’t sink in for me.  This has been critical for my understanding of ‘me’ – give me images or go home.

Since Pinterest skews so heavily to a female audience as of now, what about a more manly version.  There is a new sites that offers men their own versions – I’m waiting for the scratch and sniff version myself.  These new sites is Manteresting and Gentlemint. Designed by men – we can now look at tool chests and bacon cheeseburgers among other interesting choices.  I’m full right now, and one big tool chest is enough for me, so I don’t think I’ll be jumping on this macho bandwagon soon.  This could be a real hard sell for men, so I think I’ll lurk for awhile and stick with Pinterest for now.

When you take a look at the female demographics – which are similar to other social media you might be scarred until you understand that women account for 85% of all consumer purchases – that includes everything from healthcare to autos.  Wow, a nice tight audience for your goods and services, and it is proving successful for a number of businesses who have jumped in.  Visuals sell products – my 30 years in the advertising field has been well spent – I finally learned something, and it has be reinforced.

What does all this mean – visuals excite, and visuals sell.  It’s a great new niche for many businesses to help them in their marketing efforts.  For those of us who really want to be ‘social’ it is painless and no need to bare our souls to others.  Like something, pin it, and it to your boards and others can share.  A great way to spend a few hours luring over goodies you would like to have, used to enjoy or didn’t know existed.

Pinterest is a great way for everyone, including those of us on the male side of the spectrum, to become ‘social’, now it’s time to check my Facebook page, though don’t expect any status updates – those I mainly keep to myself.  Introversion runs deep and ‘quiet’, but I enjoy seeing and hearing of my friends exploits – check out my ‘pins’ and you’ll understand me better – that’s all you get from me. Social media for unsocial people – that certainly describes me,  and my relationship to Pinterest.  Check it out, especially all you shy people.