Ramblings Related to AIG

While I just posted a blog entry yesterday, I couldn't resist doing another given the AIG situation. What troubles me most is that while AIG is getting big stimulus money and doling out the bonuses, one would think that AIG's brand is taking a huge hit ... much more than what the bonus money is worth. It's a PR nightmare spun out of control. If you are like me, you're watching this with disgust. Just think about the companies and individuals that will NOT consider AIG for their insurance, investments or financial planning needs. This will have ill effects for years if not decades. The lifetime value of a customer lost in this case or the hope or ease of new customer acquisition could be eye-popping. I'd also take a wild stab that given the financial condition of AIG, that this PR nightmare does nothing to stabilize the company, but makes it worse. You can't turn your back on $30B but how much will AIG lose as a result of this.

According to the Associated Press, AIG rewarded more than 70 employees with more than a million dollars in bonuses, saying it needed to do so to retain key employees. Eleven are no longer with the company but will receive their bonuses.

Message to education: Protect the brand. Have a plan. Don't invest in program development that you can't sustain long-term. Fulfillment and customer service are part of brand management. Hire good people. Retain and train them. Hold them, as well as yourself, to accountability and performance metrics. Don't reward bad behavior ... especially with a million bucks. :)

Changing Media ... The End of an Era: Newspapers?

A sad note ... the Seattle Post-Intelligencer prints its last edition today. After a century and a half of operations, the newspaper ends a long history of service. Times change. Young people don't read newspapers and many older or middle-agers have conditioned themselves to read online. It's tough to imagine losing out on a great social pattern ... picking up the paper, pouring a cup of coffee and starting the day. Reading on the Blackberry has its place, but doesn't seem to be as fun ... also, the newspaper can't easily fall in the toilet.

I remember the day when I first identified that newspapers were on the way out ... Friday, May 17, 2002 on the Penn State Wilkes-Barre campus to a room full of a hundred business people. The jaws dropped. Just seven years later, the first major sign of it happened with a number of papers closing its doors in 2009.

Implication to marketers and continuing education? It's the continuing evolution of marketing skill sets for both marketers and deans. Download my recent whitepaper on "The Expectations of Marketing from Continuing Education Leadership" for more discussion on this. Deans need to make sure they know current and future marketing trends and marketers need to understand how new and existing tools connect to the marketplace and the institution's offerings. Marketers can't rely on skills built on the 80's and 90's. In the 80's, I learned the 4Ps of marketing and market research. In the 90's, I learned marketing strategy, advertising, media buying, geographic information systems, distance learning, websites, database marketing and public relations. In the 2000's, I learned about CRM, search engine optimization, electronic public relations and enrollment management. Marketers need to continue to feed themselves ... proactively. Continuing education marketers and leaders need to continue their own education and they need to be aggressive about it. Things happen quick, just ask the Seattle community, as they've lost one of their gems.