As a growth officer in my early career with the mad men and women of McCann Erickson, my mom could never quite grasp what I did for a living. But, when we pitched, won and delivered the phenomenon now globally known as Priceless for MasterCard, she could finally brag to her friends at my Aunt Rose’s kitchen table.

From the moment the very first television commercial appeared (You remember it, right? “Two tickets: $28. Two hot dogs, two popcorns, two sodas: $18. One autographed baseball: $45. Real conversation with 11-year-old son: Priceless.”), Mom told practically anyone who would listen that I wrote and executed the entire campaign single-handedly. My role, in fact (promise not to tell her) was that of the Pitchman.

In one of the industry’s most hotly-contested advertising accounts, dozens of agencies’ pitches were winnowed down to two contenders. In a surprising twist, MasterCard declared that the agency with the highest score in consumer testing would win. The heart-wrenching result: Our Priceless campaign did not test well. In an act of courage, and confidence, the MasterCard team awarded us the business anyway. When I asked Larry Flanagan, who went on to become MasterCard’s celebrated CMO, about their decision to award us the business for the Priceless campaign, he said, “We bonded because McCann Eriksson understood the deep desire of the MasterCard customer, but they understood MasterCard’s deep desire, too.”

We all make pitches every day — for that highly-prized account; to a client who’s reluctant to accept your scary proposal; for a skeptical CFO to loosen the purse strings; or for a wary new team to believe in you. Here’s what I’ve learned about winning pitches like these:

1. You need to understand that behind every decision lies a hidden agenda.

There are no magic tricks or hypnotics to persuade people to do what you say. Rather, behind every decision the average person makes to buy something — whether a product or service, your argument or an idea — is an unspoken emotional motivation. I call this the hidden agenda. Tap this, connect to it — and you will have people saying yes.

2. You need to do your emotional homework to find the hidden agenda.

To find the hidden agenda, you need to identify your audiences’ wants, needs and/or values. Too many pitches are lost because the people undertaking them think — erroneously — that the business matters at hand are the only relevant issue. Deep desires, often unspoken — like the desire to be recognized, to feel appreciated, to create something, to be admired, to lead, to feel safe and secure — are fundamental to any business decision. The business issue and the hidden agenda are intertwined.

Read Full Article in Harvard Business Review.com

Good luck.

Calvin Wilson
Founder and CEO
Upstart: Business and Management for 20-40 Year Old Professionals
calvin.wilson1@verizon.net
http://twitter.com/Upstart__Nation

When it comes time for a meeting, co-workers can be deadly. Discussions get hijacked. Bad ideas fall like blunt objects. Long-winded colleagues consume all available oxygen, killing good ideas by asphyxiation.

Co-workers wander off topic, send texts, disrupt decision-making or behave in other dysfunctional ways. Even the best leaders can resort to desperate measures to keep the discussion on track: chocolate rewards, Elmo dolls and ice-cold rooms.

Multitasking at meetings is such a given that unless a leader sets a “no devices” rule or schedules “tech breaks,” nearly everyone texts or sneaks a peek at email during meetings. And yet, that is nothing compared with real sabotage.

Naysayers are the ones who “whatever you bring up, it will never work,” says Dana Brownlee, founder of Professionalism Matters, a corporate-training company in Atlanta. One of her strategies is to take serial naysayers to lunch before meetings to let them vent and try to reach agreement. Once the meeting begins, she sets ground rules, requiring anyone who complains also to offer a solution.

Another problem personality is the silent plotter, Ms. Brownlee says. “They may be the quiet person sitting in back, but as soon as the meeting is over, they’re over there by the Coke machine, planning your demise,” she says. She makes a point of calling on plotters during meetings to try to draw out their feedback.

And for the toughest offenders, ramblers, Ms. Brownlee sometimes puts an Elmo doll in the center of the meeting table and tells participants, “Anytime anybody in the session thinks we’re getting off track, pick up the Elmo doll.” This allows co-workers to express frustration without interrupting, she says.

Read Full Article in Wall Street Journal.com

Good luck.

Calvin Wilson
Founder and CEO
Upstart: Business and Management for 20-40 Year Old Professionals
calvin.wilson1@verizon.net
http://twitter.com/Upstart__Nation

It seems everything Rockstar Games touches turns to gold, from the Wild West gunslinging in Red Dead Redemption to the gripping adult drama in L.A. Noire. They even made table tennis cool.

Their next project proves a bit tougher: resurrecting one of the beloved franchises of the PlayStation 2 era.

It’s been nine years since video game players last visited a new adventure starring Max Payne, the New York City police detective known for slowing time to artfully dodges bullets and wipe out groups of enemies with ease.

Fortunately, as Rockstar shows with the release of Max Payne 3 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, their lead character isn’t showing signs of age. Developers have made clever use of Max’s signature technique while injecting gorgeous visuals and a captivating story.

No longer working as a detective, Max has become a broken man. Having lost his wife and daughter, he copes by throwing down scotch and popping painkillers like Skittles. He manages to pull himself together enough to take on private security work, protecting Brazilian businessman Rodrigo Branco and his wealthy family.

The plot hops between Sao Paolo and New York, flashing back to how Max met Raul Passos, the friend that hooks him up his security gig.

Max Payne has a lengthy history with video game players, dating back to his 2000 debut for PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox. His last fresh console adventure would arrive in 2003, titled Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne.

Read Full Article in USA Today.com

Good luck.

Calvin Wilson
Founder and CEO
Upstart: Business and Management for 20-40 Year Old Professionals
calvin.wilson1@verizon.net
http://twitter.com/Upstart__Nation

Monster Worldwide Inc. MWW -1.36% is trying to jolt its online recruiting business—and its market value—back to life.

The company has been outclassed in recent years by nimble competitors’ niche job boards, social networks and job-search algorithms that provide customers with more targeted recruiting options.

Chief Executive Sal Iannuzzi says the company is back on track, and points to a re-energized business based on sophisticated search products for recruiters and bespoke job boards for government agencies.

Investors, however, remain spooked by Monster’s stock. Earlier this year, shares were trading under $7, compared with a peak of nearly $50 in 2006. Mr. Iannuzzi said in March that the firm was considering “strategic alternatives,” including a sale of all or parts of the company, but won’t say whether a buyer has emerged.

The 58-year-old Mr. Iannuzzi spoke with The Wall Street Journal about why he believes the company will remain relevant. Edited excerpts:

WSJ: Is Monster still relevant when recruiters are gravitating to social recruiting, niche job boards, and enhanced company career websites?

Mr. Iannuzzi: We’re no longer just a job board. We’re incorporating social media, we’re harvesting job candidates as broadly as we can. We also have a $100 million business building recruiting systems for state and local governments as well as federal governments and we’re doing that internationally, too.

WSJ: How are you incorporating semantic search [analyzing résumés in a contextual way] into your products?

Read Full Article in Wall Street Journal.com

Good luck.

Calvin Wilson
Founder and CEO
Upstart: Business and Management for 20-40 Year Old Professionals
calvin.wilson1@verizon.net
http://twitter.com/Upstart__Nation

Political deadlock in Greece rattled world markets Monday, reviving fears that the fractious Mediterranean country could spurn an international bailout, abandon the common European currency and risk a fresh round of world economic turmoil.

European stock indexes fell, with Greece’s market now at a 20-year low, while the euro currency continued a recent decline against the dollar. U.S. stocks also fell.

Coming only days before the leaders of the world’s Group of Eight industrialized nations meet at Camp David, the standoff in Greece over its political direction has thrust Europe’s troubles to the top of the agenda. A downturn in Europe could stagger a fragile recovery in the United States and undermine growth around the world.

Fighting a new downturn would be a challenge for the major economies, many of which have not fully stabilized since the last big economic crisis.

After the 2008 collapse of the Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers, the United States, Europe and China unleashed trillions of dollars in economic stimulus to limit the blow to global markets and encourage a turnaround. With growth in China slowing and U.S. officials looking to tame record government deficits, that sort of massive reaction is unlikely — leaving Europe, in a sense, operating without a safety net.

The global leaders will gather at a vulnerable time for major economies, with most of the countries in the group struggling to cope with levels of public debt unseen since World War II, high unemployment, and years of potentially painful austerity in the offing.

In recent weeks, Spain’s borrowing costs have been rising to dangerous levels, with investors losing confidence in the country’s fiscal health. And on Monday, Moody’s downgraded the credit standing of all Italian banks because of financial problems in that country.

Read Full Article in Washington Post.com

Good luck.

Calvin Wilson
Founder and CEO
Upstart: Business and Management for 20-40 Year Old Professionals
calvin.wilson1@verizon.net
http://twitter.com/Upstart__Nation

Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson lasted just four months before revelations of résumé padding forced him to resign over the weekend.

Best Buy Chairman and founder Richard Schulze exited Monday after directors determined he used poor judgment for failing to disclose CEO Brian Dunn’s personal relationship with a young subordinate, a violation of company ethics that led to Dunn’s departure last month.

And JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is under fire after the investment bank’s $2.3 billion trading blunder that’s already cost a key deputy her job.

• PHOTOS: See some of the most famous CEOs caught up in ethical lapses

Most corporate executives aren’t on the endangered species list and probably never will be. But increasingly, their personal and professional decisions are placing them in the cross hairs of angry shareholders, opportunistic hedge funds, disgruntled employees and even their own boards of directors — making the imperious CEO far more vulnerable to personal, public and corporate missteps than ever before.

“Certainly, anybody who is doing something that can be construed as unethical, immoral or greedy is being taken to task,” says Paul Dorf of Compensation Resources, a consultant to boards of directors.

Ethical lapses such as extramarital affairs and résumé padding were part of Corporate America’s dark underbelly long before the anything-goes era portrayed on TV’s Mad Men, but lies and embellishments are no longer tolerated. Neither, it seems, are cozy arrangements like those of Chesapeake Energy’s CEO Aubrey McClendon, who profited handsomely from personal stakes in company wells as part of his board-approved compensation package until he agreed to end the arrangement under pressure last week.

Excessive compensation packages are getting blowback from investors. In a rare advisory vote, Citigroup shareholders recently rejected a large compensation package for CEO Vikram Pandit. Other CEOs, including Avon Products’ Andrea Jung, have been forced out — or up to a figurehead role — in the wake of poor performance.

Read Full Article in USA Today.com

Good luck.

Calvin Wilson
Founder and CEO
Upstart: Business and Management for 20-40 Year Old Professionals
calvin.wilson1@verizon.net
http://twitter.com/Upstart__Nation

Question: I want to move my email from Yahoo, but Gmail’s privacy issues scare me. What other options do I have for a reliable address independent of my Internet provider?

Answer: Google’s free, ad-supported email service has a lot going for it, but knowing that nobody besides your correspondents reads your messages isn’t among them. Instead, automated software scans them to see what advertisements would match them best, with occasionally creepy results.

But opting out of Gmail may not be that easy: If you don’t mind that ad system, it’s the strongest of the big-name Web-mail services.

Take Yahoo, for example. I can see why this reader said he’s had his fill with it; Yahoo still charges $19.99 a year for the ability to download messages to a computer, something you get for free from Google. And Gmail supports a smart standard called Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) that keeps your email in sync (including details like what messages you replied to, forwarded, or flagged for follow-up) among multiple computers and phones. Yahoo only supports the older Post Office Protocol (POP) system. That works, sort of, if you only download email to a single computer, but chaos ensues if you try to start answering messages from different machines.

Microsoft has put serious effort into Hotmail in the past few years, but it, too, fails to compete with Google by only offering POP access. And setting up an account at a personal domain name instead of the hotmail.com and live.com addresses the service hands out can get a little trickier than it is with Google, (where I get mail sent to my robpegoraro.com address).

Read Full Article in USA Today.com

Good luck.

Calvin Wilson
Founder and CEO
Upstart: Business and Management for 20-40 Year Old Professionals
calvin.wilson1@verizon.net
http://twitter.com/Upstart__Nation

To tweet or not to tweet? That was the question. I resisted jumping aboard the Twitter bandwagon until last week for reasons both practical and philosophical. But it basically boiled down to this: I don’t have that much to say. And certainly, once I turn in this column each day, I’ve pretty much said it.

I’ve never understood people like Anderson Cooper who, going to a commercial, announces festively, “And I’ll be tweeting during the break!” Let’s think about this for a moment. We’ve been listening to AC360 for, say, the previous half hour under the assumption that if Mr. Cooper has something to tell us he’s doing so. What could he possibly be hiding from us, or at least reserving for his twitter followers: “I had a BLT for lunch”; “I secretly don’t like Jeffrey Toobin”; “Our makeup lady did a great job camouflaging the pimple on my forehead.”

Read Full Article in Wall Street Journal.com

Good luck.

Calvin Wilson
Founder and CEO
Upstart: Business and Management for 20-40 Year Old Professionals
calvin.wilson1@verizon.net
http://twitter.com/Upstart__Nation

Read Full Article in Washington Post.com

Good luck.

Calvin Wilson
Founder and CEO
Upstart: Business and Management for 20-40 Year Old Professionals
calvin.wilson1@verizon.net
http://twitter.com/Upstart__Nation

If you thought Wall Street had learned its lesson four years after the global financial crisis, JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion trading debacle suggests you should think again, investment bankers and industry experts say.

To some, it suggests that the need for financial reform is still just as urgent as it was the day the crisis broke out.

JPMorgan revealed on Thursday that it had lost about $2 billion (with possibly more losses to come) from risky bets on opaque derivatives at a London trading desk.

The pressure on the bank intensified on Friday, with reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission had opened an investigation of its trades and Fitch Ratings downgrading the bank’s long-term credit rating to A+ from AA-.

JPMorgan’s big losing trade shows that at least some big banks are engaged in the same sort of behavior that rocked the financial system in 2008, if on a smaller scale.

“This is a smaller version of the same betting that went on in 2006,” said Will Rhode, a principal and director of fixed income at The Tabb Group, a financial-markets research and advisory firm.

“Ultimately, this is about banks being dissatisfied with the single-digit returns on equity that are associated with their conventional lending businesses, and trying to find other ways to make money,” said Daniel Alpert, founding managing partner at investment bank Westwood Capital, “with risk, once again, taking a backseat to potential reward.”

Read Full Article in Huffington Post.com

Good luck.

Calvin Wilson
Founder and CEO
Upstart: Business and Management for 20-40 Year Old Professionals
calvin.wilson1@verizon.net
http://twitter.com/Upstart__Nation