Not surprisingly our town mandated the use of masks effective last week. Of course I completely forgot, and had to make a mad dash to Target to stock up. Also not surprisingly Target was pretty much sold out of masks. Except for about 10 packets left of “kids masks” - in your choice of coal black or coral pink. Two masks in every packet. $4 a packet…

David Ogilvy, a cantankerous, controversial and brilliant Scotsman whom I adored – built his advertising empire using only direct response marketing.

The very first direct response advertisement he wrote wasn’t for a Fortune 100 company, a Fortune 5000 company or even a scrappy but well funded start-up. As the surprising story goes, it was for …

So here we are. So much for post-COVID. With numbers soaring, the media screaming recession and many schools and universities not opening in the fall, it seems the end to this madness is not in sight afterall.

Onward. 

We’re too busy to pay attention to the media hysteria. We have businesses to run, clients to serve, new projects to launch, supply chain issues to solve, staffing challenges to sort and consumer demand to reignite.

The way I see it every business has three options . . .

COVID. I know you’re sick and tired of reading about it. I certainly am. The media have had a field day spreading doom and fear like a suffocating blanket over the world. Nevertheless I strongly believe that COVID is an incredible opportunity for all of us - if we choose it.

You see I think of COVID like the "Sorting Hat” in Harry Potter - the magical Wizard’s hat that quickly sorts new students into different houses. Every business, and every employee will be “sorted” thanks to COVID - into success or failure. The very good will rise …

The first time I ventured into the “bowels of Detroit” as some people call it was just a couple of years ago. I had been summoned to appear in the Supreme Court (no, not in that way – but to get sworn in as a US citizen alongside the melting pot of new immigrants who mostly didn’t speak English.) When I drove my car in downtown Detroit it felt like I had left America altogether and was instead in some burnt out husk of an impoverished African nation.

A homeless couple barreled up to my car at the lights, knocking on the window and demanding money.

Vacant buildings outnumbered occupied ones, broken windows and “no trespassing” signs peppered the landscape and there was trash everywhere.