One of my best friends, introduced me to a fascinating consumer strategy: boycotting. Her family has a long and storied history of boycotting that began the day that her father was denied help by attendants at a Shell gas station. The year was 1948 and her father and his friend were ice fishing on a cold winter day. Her father fell through the ice, but luckily his friend was able to pull him out. They set off on foot for help, and the first place they came to was a Shell gas station. They asked to to use the phone, but the Shell attendant yelled at them to leave. Her father eventually got help, but he never forgot the way that Shell abandoned him in his hour of need. And so he began the Shell Boycott, and he taught his family to boycott with loyalty and honor. On one particularly memorable family outing, he drove right past three Shell gas stations despite the fact that the car was running on fumes. A boycott is a boycott, regardless of convenience. To this day, when the family feels that an injustice has been served, they boycott.
I first heard this boycotting tale during the spring of my first year at business school. I was still recruiting for a summer internship (even as a first year, I was a late bloomer), but I had a couple of promising prospects. One of those was a marketing role with a major fast food company. Because I wasn’t a local candidate, I had several rounds of phone interviews. For the first round, I spoke with a recruiter and for the second round, I interviewed with several marketing managers. During my second set of phone interviews, they put me through the wringer. I wasn’t asked a softball question like what my favorite brand was or asked to provide an example of what I thought was a poorly designed advertising campaign; no, I was calculating breakeven ROI in my head (Excel wouldn’t load quickly enough since I still had Crystal Ball installed on my computer – rookie mistake). I held my own, though, and managed to crank out the numbers. At the end of the interview, I was given a decision timeline.
The requisite two weeks passed, and still I heard nothing. I called the recruiter to touch base and she was very apologetic as she explained that management had been away for Fastfood-a-palooza. Because they had been busy crowd surfing to french fry chants, they hadn’t had a chance to review intern candidates, but she promised that they would make a decision very soon. Another two weeks passed, and still there was nothing but silence on my end. At this point, I realized that a decision had been made and the decision was no. However, I was irate that nobody had even bothered to send me a generic email update. I had spent close to three hours on the phone interviewing with members of their team and countless more hours doing interview prep; the least they could do was acknowledge me with a polite decline.
I was only a first year so I hadn’t yet developed the thick recruiting skin that I have now. My baseline assumption was that companies would treat me as a valuable candidate whether or not they ultimately decided to bring me on board. By the middle of my second year at business school, I adjusted my ideas regarding recruiting, and I began to assume that companies would decline to get back to me if they had decided not to move forward with my candidacy. I found myself pleasantly surprised when I would actually receive the polite refusal email. “How thoughtful,” I would find myself thinking. “It was truly considerate of the recruiter to send me a three sentence email to inform me that they had decided to make an offer to another candidate. Gee, all I did was set up calls with a couple of alums at the company, research the company online, travel cross country to get to company headquarters, and interview all day with members of the team, all on my own dime.”
As an applicant, I generally felt powerless; the companies seemed to hold all the cards. However, I eventually realized that perhaps that wasn’t the case. I relayed the story of my silent rejection to my friend and she listened thoughtfully. Then a wide grin stole across her face as she gleefully announced “BOYCOTT!” and proceeded to explain her family's tradition of boycotting.
Admittedly, the boycott would have a rather limited financial impact as I never really ate much fast food to begin with, but that detail is beside the point. The main goal that a boycott would accomplish is a psychological one. Namely: I am not purchasing your products because I was disinclined to do so in the first place; no, I am rejecting your brand in order to relay the message that your company sucks at life.
Unfortunately, when you are interviewing with as many companies as I am, and summarily boycotting all products made by those that rejected you, you quickly find that shopping becomes a challenge. I can’t buy half of the products in grocery stores, and the deodorant category leaves me in dire straights. I am a stubborn human being, though, so I pressed on and made substitutions as necessarily to support my boycotts.
A severe blow was dealt to my boycotting strategy when I was rejected by one of my favorite retail stores. I began to rationalize that perhaps I could make an exception. Just because they didn’t recognize talent didn’t necessarily mean that I had to cut them out of my life entirely. We could still be friends, right? My enthusiasm for boycotts collapsed completely the day that one of my favorite cosmetic brands refused me. There was NO WAY that I was going without mascara and skin toner.
I hang in head in shame, knowing that I do not have the boycotting fortitude of my friend's family. At least my teeth will be minty fresh, my skin glowing, and my hair shiny. Disgrace looks good on me.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Push It Real Good
The story that I’m about to share is a trading urban legend dating back to circa 2000.
It was a dreary morning and one of the clerks was braving the rain to get to work. He was just walking out of the parking garage when the CEO of the company pulled up in his Porsche.
“Hey, I’m running late. Park my car and bring the keys down to me on the floor.”
And so the CEO jumped out of his car and headed into the Merc, leaving the clerk to park his Porsche. Having no choice, the clerk slid into the driver’s seat, and Salt N’Pepa’s “Push It” immediately hit his eardrums. The song was blaring. Thinking it was the radio, the clerk went to change the station. But it was not the radio. No friends, it was a CD (remember this was back in the dark ages before iPods).
Yes, the CEO, a white guy in his mid thirties, had been rolling around Chicago pumping some serious jams. Push it, push it real good!
After hearing this story, I was no longer intimidated by my boss. Sure, he might yell sometimes, and he understood trading at a level that I could never hope to come close to, but at the end of the day, we were really the same. We both liked Salt N’Pepa.
It was a dreary morning and one of the clerks was braving the rain to get to work. He was just walking out of the parking garage when the CEO of the company pulled up in his Porsche.
“Hey, I’m running late. Park my car and bring the keys down to me on the floor.”
And so the CEO jumped out of his car and headed into the Merc, leaving the clerk to park his Porsche. Having no choice, the clerk slid into the driver’s seat, and Salt N’Pepa’s “Push It” immediately hit his eardrums. The song was blaring. Thinking it was the radio, the clerk went to change the station. But it was not the radio. No friends, it was a CD (remember this was back in the dark ages before iPods).
Yes, the CEO, a white guy in his mid thirties, had been rolling around Chicago pumping some serious jams. Push it, push it real good!
After hearing this story, I was no longer intimidated by my boss. Sure, he might yell sometimes, and he understood trading at a level that I could never hope to come close to, but at the end of the day, we were really the same. We both liked Salt N’Pepa.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
What I Really Learned in Business School
I had begun my second year of business school in high spirits, but recruiting began to rain on my parade almost immediately when I returned to campus. Apparently, the fact that I didn’t receive an offer at the end of my summer internships was considered a huge black mark against me, even though the company hired exclusively on an as-needed basis. Why didn’t anyone tell me that I would be penalized for interning at a company that didn't have a formal MBA recruiting program?
Fortunately, business school had equipped me with the ability to handle just such an issue, even though I may not have realized it at the time. At first, I broke into a cold sweat every time that a professor looked in my direction during class, certain that a cold call was headed my way. It usually was as business school professors seemed to have an uncanny ability to detect fear. One minute I’d be minding my own business, flipping through the case and trying to look like I was really busy taking notes on all of the professor’s brilliant insights, and the next minute the professor would swivel his head in slow motion to where I was sitting, locking in on his next cold call target. At that moment, I had to make a critical decision: should I boldly make eye contact in the hopes that my confidence would persuade the professor to move on and seek out the true weak gazelle or should I double down my efforts to concentrate on my notes, just daring the professor to interrupt my learning? The scientific method confirmed that it actually didn’t matter what I did; in general, once a professor had made the decision to cold call a certain student, that student was getting called on period.
As much as I may have dreaded cold calls, I must admit that they prepared me to think on my feet. In other words, cold calls forced me to learn the fine art of bullshitting. Didn’t read beyond the first paragraph of the case? Randomly select one of Porter’s Five Forces and expound upon why supplier power is important in a particular industry. Came up with a number that’s not remotely close to the professor’s solution? Identify an input that you are positive is correct and explain how you calculated it.
Business school had taught me how to be resourceful and creative. Reality was irrelevant; all that truly mattered was how you spun it.
Fortunately, business school had equipped me with the ability to handle just such an issue, even though I may not have realized it at the time. At first, I broke into a cold sweat every time that a professor looked in my direction during class, certain that a cold call was headed my way. It usually was as business school professors seemed to have an uncanny ability to detect fear. One minute I’d be minding my own business, flipping through the case and trying to look like I was really busy taking notes on all of the professor’s brilliant insights, and the next minute the professor would swivel his head in slow motion to where I was sitting, locking in on his next cold call target. At that moment, I had to make a critical decision: should I boldly make eye contact in the hopes that my confidence would persuade the professor to move on and seek out the true weak gazelle or should I double down my efforts to concentrate on my notes, just daring the professor to interrupt my learning? The scientific method confirmed that it actually didn’t matter what I did; in general, once a professor had made the decision to cold call a certain student, that student was getting called on period.
As much as I may have dreaded cold calls, I must admit that they prepared me to think on my feet. In other words, cold calls forced me to learn the fine art of bullshitting. Didn’t read beyond the first paragraph of the case? Randomly select one of Porter’s Five Forces and expound upon why supplier power is important in a particular industry. Came up with a number that’s not remotely close to the professor’s solution? Identify an input that you are positive is correct and explain how you calculated it.
Business school had taught me how to be resourceful and creative. Reality was irrelevant; all that truly mattered was how you spun it.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Who Are All These Shiftless Human Beings?
Since graduating from business school last June, I’ve basically been living the life of a suburban housewife, minus the husband and kids. I spend my days sipping café au laits, picking up dry cleaning, grocery shopping, doing laundry, unloading the dishwasher, attending yuppie exercise classes at yuppie suburban gyms, and on very rare occasions preparing elaborate meals. I have yet to pick up the habit of watching bad daytime TV, but if I really applied myself, I’m sure I could make it happen.
Of course, I haven’t fully caught onto the concept. I’m fairly certain that most suburban housewives do not take conference calls on speaker phone while driving to the gym, nor do they obsessively check their BlackBerries while in line at the grocery store. That being said, my flexible Monday-Friday schedule more closely resembles that of a suburban housewife than that of a young professional.
I was in the middle of a rather typical weekday morning when all of a sudden, it occurred to me to wonder why all these other people were meandering about Target at 11am on a Wednesday? I will make the blanket assumption that all the women with children in tow are stay-at-home moms, but what about everyone else?
Who are all these shiftless human beings? Like you, the 40 year old man picking up a bag of dog food. And you, the 25 year old woman perusing the greeting cards.
I have come up with several theories:
1) Like me, perhaps these other people have just finished school and they are in the middle of a slow transition back to the real world.
2) Maybe everyone else is unemployed. I mean, we are in the middle of a nasty recession.
3) Wait no – all of these people are on vacation. But if you’re on vacation, why in the world would you be in a Target in the northwest suburbs of Chicago? Shouldn’t you be on a beach drinking something with an umbrella in it or navigating a foreign city while getting into hilarious language barrier related hijinks? Perhaps because of budget concerns, they’re on one of those super lame staycations, in which case I would argue that you could come up with better things to do on your precious time off. Why not hop a train into the city and hit up a museum on a free day or explore Millennium Park or do one of the many other things in the city that are completely gratis?
4) I suppose that these people could simply work jobs that aren’t the typical 9-5. Maybe they work in retail? Or they trade during European hours? Perhaps they are reporters who have to be ready to cover breaking news at any hour of the day? Or they are teachers enjoying summer break? Maybe they are nurses who work the night shift? Or trust fund babies? (Although once again, why in the world would someone with a sizeable trust fund be hanging out in the suburbs of Chicago? Have we learned nothing from Gossip Girl? Lucky rich girls and boys prance around Manhattan and Paris, not the Midwest.) Most likely, they work for the CIA and are protecting national security by patrolling the aisles of Target.
Of course, I haven’t fully caught onto the concept. I’m fairly certain that most suburban housewives do not take conference calls on speaker phone while driving to the gym, nor do they obsessively check their BlackBerries while in line at the grocery store. That being said, my flexible Monday-Friday schedule more closely resembles that of a suburban housewife than that of a young professional.
I was in the middle of a rather typical weekday morning when all of a sudden, it occurred to me to wonder why all these other people were meandering about Target at 11am on a Wednesday? I will make the blanket assumption that all the women with children in tow are stay-at-home moms, but what about everyone else?
Who are all these shiftless human beings? Like you, the 40 year old man picking up a bag of dog food. And you, the 25 year old woman perusing the greeting cards.
I have come up with several theories:
1) Like me, perhaps these other people have just finished school and they are in the middle of a slow transition back to the real world.
2) Maybe everyone else is unemployed. I mean, we are in the middle of a nasty recession.
3) Wait no – all of these people are on vacation. But if you’re on vacation, why in the world would you be in a Target in the northwest suburbs of Chicago? Shouldn’t you be on a beach drinking something with an umbrella in it or navigating a foreign city while getting into hilarious language barrier related hijinks? Perhaps because of budget concerns, they’re on one of those super lame staycations, in which case I would argue that you could come up with better things to do on your precious time off. Why not hop a train into the city and hit up a museum on a free day or explore Millennium Park or do one of the many other things in the city that are completely gratis?
4) I suppose that these people could simply work jobs that aren’t the typical 9-5. Maybe they work in retail? Or they trade during European hours? Perhaps they are reporters who have to be ready to cover breaking news at any hour of the day? Or they are teachers enjoying summer break? Maybe they are nurses who work the night shift? Or trust fund babies? (Although once again, why in the world would someone with a sizeable trust fund be hanging out in the suburbs of Chicago? Have we learned nothing from Gossip Girl? Lucky rich girls and boys prance around Manhattan and Paris, not the Midwest.) Most likely, they work for the CIA and are protecting national security by patrolling the aisles of Target.
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