The Ten Commandments for Business Failure - Don Keough [53]
Two business school professors once came to me and asked, “Based on your global experience, when is a good time to start a new business? What are the preconditions that you look for?”
If you believe all the fearmongers, there never is a good time to start anything. Something is always wrong. There are always holes in the business model, always problems lying like land mines just beneath the surface.
But if you believe in the essential creativity of entrepreneurs, then almost any time is a good time. As to the preconditions, simply ask: “Are there people there? Do those people eat food and drink beverages? Is there some kind of economic activity going on? Is there any means of exchanging goods and services? If so, that is a good place and a good time to start a business!”
If you are optimistic, you can afford to be patient. Coca-Cola has, in its long history, been completely shut out of several places for a time: all the Arab countries, China, India, and Cuba. We are gratefully back in all of those lands except Cuba, and the Cuban account books are still open and I’m sure the current leadership of The Coca-Cola Company expects to return.
To aspire to any kind of leadership in business you simply have to be an optimist.
That’s why my association with Coca-Cola has been such a joy. Through the Depression of the 1930s, through World War II, through other dark times in our nation, this product has always represented the brighter side of life. If it is nothing else, Coca-Cola is a bringer of glad tidings.
It was in that spirit that my associates and I approached our advertising in the bleak year of 1974.
What a time! President Nixon was named a coconspirator in the infamous Watergate case and resigned in disgrace. The Mideast oil-producing countries embargoed oil shipments to the United States. Gas shortages popped up all over the country. There were bloody IRA terrorism attacks in Belfast and London, even at Harrods department store. We had our own homegrown terrorism, such as the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by some group called the Symbionese Liberation Army. India developed the atomic bomb. And we were still trying to pull out of the Vietnam War. In short, it was not a good time for America.
Therefore, it was the perfect time for Coca-Cola to be optimistic. Our marketing director, Ike Herbert, and I discussed the issue and he asked our advertising agency, creatively led at that time by Bill Backer, a remarkably talented individual, to create a theme that might help raise the sagging spirits of the country. Backer put together a wonderfully uplifting series of commercials with the title “Look Up, America.”
The advertising triggered a wonderful response. People took the time to write us letters of appreciation. It demonstrated the unique role of this unique brand, Coca-Cola, in the American psyche. Coca-Cola had an ability, in a small way, to influence the national mood. With that ability came responsibility. It was the responsibility to never do anything in our marketing that was in bad taste. We had an obligation to consistently demonstrate our faith in the future.
To aspire to any kind of leadership in business you simply have to be a rational optimist.
One optimist in a sea of pessimists can make all the difference.
Aristotle contended in his treatise De Anima in the fourth century B.C. that there are five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. There has been agreement on that number ever since. I believe there is, however, a sixth: the ability to sense a mood. Call it intuition or insight or sensitivity, whatever you want to call it, those who are successful have it. Great marketers have it. Great political and business leaders have it.
They know what the prevailing mood is and, when it is negative, they sense how to change it.
Some years ago, the Coca-Cola bottling business in the Philippines, which had always been a strong business since the end of the Spanish-American War, began a downward