MarkPenn.com

By MARK PENN
Published April 19, 2011

While The King’s Speech was a great movie, it was also a great example of how to advise a CEO or other important leader. As the story unfolds, Lionel Logue, the King’s speech therapist, goes from the unwanted outsider to the trusted adviser through a process that dates back to Joseph and the Pharaoh. The relationship is based on trust, respect, a proven process, evidence-based advice and confidence. These are the same essential elements of advising a CEO, and all of them are illustrated as the movie unfolds.

Lionel teaches the King a few lessons in humility and self-respect. However, he also teaches all of us who get a chance to advise influential people just how to form that special relationship. The movie also underscores that just as important as having good advice is being able to deliver it in way that those you advise can hear it and use it.

Tony Blair said to me one day when planning out his third re-election campaign – “I feel like I am standing in front of a locked door without a key.” The point of that process was to help him find the key to his most difficult problem. And that is what Lionel did – he did not solve the King’s problem; rather, he helped the King find the fortitude within himself to overcome the obstacles standing in his way.

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From Firm Voice, a Blog from the Council of Public Relations Firms

Is your firm thinking of going global? Is it already there? More and more US firms are opening up offices around the world, and the trend should only intensify next year. Nearly a quarter of Council members have offices overseas, while several others belong to international networks that provide clients with global reach and local expertise.

To round out 2010, we spent some time reflecting on what it takes these days to succeed in global markets. Three chief executives and leaders in our industry, Burson-Marsteller’s Mark Penn, Hill & Knowlton’s Paul Taaffe, and Waggener Edstrom Worldwide’s Melissa Waggener Zorkin, sat down with us to discuss what has worked for their firms in developing markets across the world, what the big challenges are, and what firms should do going forward as they expand into developing countries.

When asked about local differences in public relations practice, our CEOs related that US firms tended to help clients in emerging markets enter Western markets and develop more strategic communications. As Taaffe remarked, “We’re partially in the position of educators. Many local clients don’t understand the different kinds of PR specialties. To their great credit, they’re trying to learn, and they’re trying to figure out what it takes to tap developed markets.” Penn agreed, noting that like many US or European companies early in their histories, firms in developing countries are expanding first, and only putting in a communications infrastructure along the way. “In many countries, there’s a tradition of not talking to the public or to media, and so their notion of what PR is becomes pretty slim. We need to help them understand that public relations isn’t about just media communications, but about a broader strategy.”

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Penn Schoen Berland and Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn has been named the winner of the Consumer Insights category in the 2010 Atticus Awards for his book Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes, PSB announced today.

Open exclusively to professionals working in WPP companies, the annual Atticus Awards honor original published thinking in communications services. Winners receive a cash prize, and many recognized publications are reprinted or excerpted in WPP’s annual Atticus Journal, which will be released in November 2010.

The Awards were judged by Simon Clift, consultant and former chief marketing officer at Unilever; Rik Kirkland, principal and director at McKinsey & Company, and Judie Lannon, editor of Market Leader. Other entrants in this year’s Consumer Insights category included publications from WPP agencies Millward Brown, MVI, and Mindshare.

“I’m deeply honored that Microtrends has been recognized as one of the outstanding examples of WPP’s thought leadership from the last year,’ said Penn. “At Penn Schoen Berland and Burson-Marsteller, much of our work is predicated on the belief that companies must understand and respond appropriately to small shifts in behavior – as harbingers of tomorrow’s big shifts. We are gratified that WPP and the judges of the Atticus Awards have endorsed that perspective.”

The Atticus Awards specifically recognized the paperback edition of Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes, by Mark Penn with E. Kinney Zalesne, published in June 2009 by Twelve.

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By MARK PENN Published June 1, 2010

President Obama’s political career and clout have never been in a more perilous state than this week as he faces mounting crises, plummeting poll numbers, and solutions that remain just out of reach.

The list of problems has become almost endless — the BP spill is becoming Obama’s hostage crisis, and will likely hit 100 days without a solution; unemployment remains stuck at nearly 10 percent; either from desperation or isolation, Israel has created a new Mideast challenge; Iran has enough nuclear fuel for two nuclear bombs; north Korea is threatening south Korea; the deficit is exploding and the healthcare bill remains unpopular. And these are just the top level problems; as a result, administration press briefings sound somewhat like the old theme song from “Car 54, Where Are You?” — a show from my childhood. And Voters across the country are wondering if they underestimated the value of experience and crisis management as important attributes for their president.

Despite this litany of growing problems, the president spent just 3 hours in New Orleans before heading off to a weekend vacation, attempting to move the traditional Arlington Cemetery Memorial Day ceremonies to Chicago, where they were rained out, filling up the Drudge report. Equally surprising was the White House decision to wait three months to answer questions on the Sestek job offer, and then do so on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend.

So what’s a president to do facing these problems and midterms around the corner?

First, almost all of these problems are about substance, not style, branding or even communications. They can’t be addressed with press conferences and panels. The public is looking for direct and immediate action, thought out and taken by the an administration that acted boldly when it took office to prevent a possible depression.

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Rub-A-Dub-Snub! Are Leaders Scrubbing Up?

By MARK PENN, US debates expert
Published April 23, 2010

If the first election debate spawned a new political catchphrase – “I agree with Nick” – the second debate in Bristol saw the line abandoned.

After watching Nick Clegg’s popularity soar in the last week, both David Cameron and Gordon Brown sought to use the foreign affairs debate to show why they don’t agree with the Lib Dem leader, on a range of policies from the Euro and immigration to Trident and nuclear power.

They had to restrategise, and they did.

Mr Brown and Mr Cameron had to wake up to the changed reality of an electorate tired with the old and fascinated by the possibility of new.

Mr Cameron had to show that only he represents real change and Mr Brown had to show that Lib Dems are a risk to future prosperity.

They both did better, but Mr Clegg still stands as a real force in the election and as someone who can mobilise young people.

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By MARK PENN Published April 20, 2010

The prediction that passage of health care followed by an impressive agenda of global nuclear and Wall Street regulatory reform would lift up the administration by showing aggressive leadership seems to be one of those strategies that looks good on paper but so far has not worked in practice.

President Obama’s ratings remain below 50 percent in the Gallup tracking and in most other polls. The prophesied bump from health care never materialized, and the polls show most Americans still oppose the health care plan, believing it will increase, not decrease, the cost of their care.

The administration’s calculus that unpopular legislative success can translate into big November wins simply doesn’t add up. Unless the administration finds a new path and a new strategy, they’re facing potential electoral retribution on a scale unseen since 1994, when sweeping GOP victories seriously constricted President Clinton’s legislative options.

To hold on to his majority, the President needs to make course corrections — It’s time for a new kind of bold from President Obama.

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UK Leaders’ Debate: Lessons For Next Time

By MARK PENN, US debates expert
Published April 16, 2010

The first UK election debate brought with it a real sense of interest and expectation.

Would there be a knock-out blow? Would any of the candidates slip up? How would they cope with the intense scrutiny and interrogation under the hot TV studio lights for 90 minutes?

At the end, many viewers may feel their expectations weren’t quite met.

There was no “you’re no Jack Kennedy” moment and none of the candidates lost their way.

In fact the only one who seemed really flustered by the experience was ITV’s host Alastair Stewart.

Yet there is still much to learn from the performances of the leaders in the first debate.

And it may well shift the political sands – it will take a few days to see how the real polls shift, but Labour may find itself with deeper problems, pecked upon from both the left and the right.

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The Washington Post asked Mark Penn and other political experts whether the Republican Party would win in November with a negative strategy.

MARK PENN
CEO of Burson-Marsteller; adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign; pollster and adviser to Bill Clinton from 1995 through 2000.

The Republicans have made a living out of running tough, negative campaigns and presenting “no” as a strategy. It’s not really a strategy but a substitute for good ideas. Perhaps the best example of that was when Newt Gingrich shut down the government to stop Washington spending. He thought he would be welcomed as a hero. It backfired big-time — the public wanted progress, not partisanship.

They did a lot better with the Contract for America. That played to their strengths of lower deficits, smaller government and lower taxes — themes that if backed by good policies have typically been their best cards.

While there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the health-care bill, talk of repeal rather than select fixes misses the mark and again puts Republicans down as the party of “no,” not of constructive bipartisanship and action.

And the voters who will decide the election — the vital center — are the ones most likely to want to see results over insults.

Today’s Republican leaders in Congress still have only a 36 percent approval rating in CNN polling, even if they are creeping up in the generic horse race. The swing electorate today likes neither the Democrats nor the Republicans in Congress, and that can make for some extreme volatility between now and November. It is the party that wins them over with ideas that is most likely to go home with their votes.

Many years ago I worked on a successful campaign based simply of the slogan of “Ya Basta” — enough. Today, Americans have had enough of enough. They want something more.

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Obama should learn from Clinton, political strategist says

What the Obama presidency needs now is “a good dose of Clintonism,” the chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign said today.

Mark Penn, who first went to work for the Clintons in 1994 when then-President Bill Clinton hired him as an adviser following the Democratic Party’s dramatic losses in that year’s midterm elections, said Obama faces many of the same challenges President Clinton faced 16 years ago.

Clinton bounced back from those losses with “some small things like balancing the budget, reforming welfare and creating 24 million jobs,” Penn said during a talk at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service.

Clinton learned from the 1994 losses and began “moving the country to the center in a way that people felt the president was listening to them,” Penn said, adding that Clinton’s successes could be traced back to the fact that he had clearly defined strategies.
“As you recall, President Clinton had a very clear economic strategy,” he said. “Elements of his economic strategy were popular; some were not so popular. He believed in expanding trade, he believed in expanding investment in infrastructure, education — math and science. He believed in closing the federal deficit. Those three elements were a strategy that everybody understood.”

Obama should follow suit, according to Penn…

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By MARK PENN
Published November 17, 2009

Is President Barack Obama governing from the left or from the center? It’s a question no one quite seems to have a clear answer to. The post-ideological positioning that worked so well during the campaign is not proving as effective at holding the electoral coalition together given the mounting pressures of governing.

During the campaign, Obama nodded to the left on the Iraq war and civil liberties, but he also sent signals to the center that he would operate in a generally bipartisan manner, pursue the Afghanistan war vigorously and not raise taxes on 95 percent of all Americans. Centrist voters are looking to see that these promises are kept.

While the White House communications have been stellar overall, the echo chamber out there has left some uncertainty about important issues in the voters’ minds. Is the administration for or against waging the Afghanistan war on an all-out basis, including taking down the Taliban? Are jobs or regulating Wall Street its top priority? Should the insurance drug companies be reined in or an accommodation reached?

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