The latest load of BS

I’ve talked to many Darden students this fall about my experiences at Frito Lay and their own career aspirations.
One stereotype that I’ve heard that I wanted to clear up: “CPG company X creates great brand marketers; not great general managers”.
Where does this come from?
I can speculate: Often, companies that produce products that don’t resonate with consumers (ie are not consumer-facing) are often categorized as great “general management” companies…and for some reason companies with strong brands are thought of as creating strong marketers alone. The folks creating the stereotypes focus only on one of the P’s (Promotion) and categorize brand managers as great advertisers/promoters. No freakin way. I encourage those making blanket statements like this to take a step back.
Brand and Genearl Management are not mutually exclusive in the slightest! A company’s marketers can be both strong Brand and strong at General Managers! I’ve seen it with my own eyes. In many powerful CPGs, the Brand manager is the HUB of the wheel…not a spoke. They are not just a link in the chain; they hold the whole dang thing together. The dive in, seek the value, and bring it to their customers and consumers! That's quite different from sitting in an ivory tower (what's up, Bear Sterns?) crafting models that "create value" out of fancy math (but we need those guys, too...sometimes).
Check out Wikipedia’s definition and tell me how CPG marketers DON’T do general management: “A General Manager has broad, overall responsibility for a business or organization. Whereas a manager may be responsible for one functional area, the General Manager is responsible for all areas. Most commonly, the term general manager refers to any executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement. This is often referred to as Profit & Loss (P&L) responsibility. This means that a general manager usually oversees most or all of the firm's marketing and sales functions as well as the day-to-day operations of the business. Frequently, the general manager is also responsible for leading or coordinating the strategic planning functions of the company.
In many cases, the general manager of a business is given a different formal title or titles. Most corporate managers holding the titles of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or President, for example, are the general managers of their respective businesses. More rarely, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operating Officer (COO), or Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) will act as the general manager of the business. Depending on the company, individuals with the title Managing Director, Regional Vice President, Country Manager, Product Manager, Branch Manager or Segment Manager may also have general management responsibilities.
In consumer products companies, general managers are often given the title Brand Manager or Category Manager. In professional services firms, the general manager may hold titles such as Managing Partner, Senior Partner, or Managing Director.”
This may not be true for every CPG, I give you that. I’ve seen a few pharma companies whose marketers are mainly responsible for the Promotion, and less about the P&L. Part of that may be due to industry-specific regulations on pharmaceuticals and the way that they are marketed.

Kids in America’s business schools: don’t accept the old paradigm of brand and general management being mutually exclusive. Dig into the details. Ask smart questions. You’ll be surprsied what you find!

Confusing...so confusing

Right after Al Gore invented the internet, journalism began its agonizing swan dive into the typography's toilet. Couple that with the morons at Yahoo! News with stories titled "8 ways to think like Warren Buffet", "Bored of chicken for dinner?", and "6 popular tattoo designs".

I want to poke myself in the eye with a pencil. I know there are pencils around because it appears "journalists" don't think before they write. Or even do more than one draft.

The lack of dignity in the profession is awe-inspiring as of late. I believe that the barrier to entry is having DSL.

This article, though, really took the cake. I may be exhausted from my self-imposed looooong workdays, but I couldn't make heads or tails of this story to save my life. It seems like everybody is married to everybody and that a "messy home" is a clear indicator of child neglect and a childhood disappearance case is re-opening after 20 years and...OMIGOD WILL YOU PEOPLE STOP (and maybe not have as many kiddlins?)!!!!

Beige suits you, babe.

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Speaking of messy houses: mine is definitely there. But I promise the only abuse our child Brutus suffers is too much love & affection.

House Healthcare bill to cost $1.2 Trillion

...and that's just the tab for the printer paper alone.

Holy crap, guys. Where are the hippies when we need them to police our policymakers for wasting so much paper?
Couldn't it be on a Kindle? You might even get Gates' endorsement because he and Bezos have GOT to be golfing buddies (or ideation-scribble-on-your-dry-erase-board-in-the-basement buddies).
In other news, had a great time at Cat & Kitten Cross. Great band (The Spectacles) who in true fashion of ironic hipsters; started their name with "the". Love it.
Got my boots a bit muddy but Mom's wedding dress remained intact. El Gato didn't race as well as he wanted but did do some theatrics for those of us at the Money Pit who waved dollar bills at riders struggling over the barriers. We mainly taunted the men; women scrambling for dollars was a bit too...well...you know.

Cat & Kitten cross...aw yeah

October 22, 2009; Conshohocken, PA, USA: Hard economic times have given rise to some creative sponsorships lately. But none have changed the paradigm more than the HPCX Cyclocross in New Jersey. HPCX, round 6 of the MAC Powered by SRAM Series, didn’t choose a sponsor; a sponsor chose them

…for their wedding reception.

The Cat and Kitten Cyclocross presented by HPCX on November 1 will not only follow Beacon Cross as the second half of MAC’s annual UCI New Jersey Weekend, it will also be the wedding reception for Jonny “Cat” Sundt and Mandy “Kitten” Lozano. Sundt, a member of the Kelly Benefit Strategies Pro Cycling Team, and Lozano, a recently retired pro road and cyclocross racer, originally met at the HPCX race several years ago. And though they married earlier this year and settled in Texas where Mandy works in Marketing for Frito Lay, they wanted to return to New Jersey and HPCX for their reception. “Cyclocross has given us so much, including each other,” said Sundt. “We just wanted to share with the greater family of cyclocross. I’ve done just about every kind of bike racing, and cylcocross has a sense of community that’s unparalleled in any other discipline. So we’re going to have a party with about 400 of our best ‘cross buddies.”

“Cyclocross’ culture of inclusion is key,” adds Mandy. “Few do it better than the HPCX crew. Financially supporting the race lets us give back to the sport and helps to ensure the longevity of the mindset.”

More information on the Cat and Kitten Cyclocross presented by HPCX on November 1, and the previous day’s Beacon Cyclocross, can be found on BikeReg.com.

Farmshares and baby burritos

I just finished creating a marvelous pear & potato soup from our farmshare. It is deceptively creamy despite being (accidentally) vegan! My girl Yamileth will love that!

And, to top it off, tonight my husband revealed something he'd been hiding for years: he can cook! He pulled together a delicious roma tomato reduction-of-sorts over crispy polenta rounds with asiago. Who knew?

I gladly did the dishes.

Perhaps only slightly more important than the discovery of my husband's cooking skills was THE BIRTH OF MY BABY NEPHEW, BLAKE! He is tres cute. (Photo below, masquerating as a baby burrito)

After a speedy labor (4.5 hours or so), Sarah and Ryan welcomed their 7lb 11oz boy (+ a lot of dark hair) into the world at 3:37 a.m. on October 16. They were rather secretive about the name (understandable). Blake Hawk is a perfect reflection of who they are, what they value, and how much of an awesome quarterback he'll be.

Blake is a name they both like a lot. Sarah even remembered an old crush of mine from junior high (I had hormones in my brain but none working on my body) named Blake. He WAS rather cute when we were 12. I'm sure my Blake will be even more adorable. I've been trying to friend Blake T. on Facebook but he's not into it. Perhaps a message to the likes of this will bring him around?

Hawk stems from various things. An image of the West. The freedom of flight. A threatened and sometimes fragile species. A creature Sarah sees often in her line of work. And the name of our favorite cowhorse when we were growing up: Hawkeye. It made us all so happy to hear homage to that lovely horse!

As luck would have it, the entire Lozano clan + Gato were in San Diego when he came into the world. I think that he was just waiting for us all to show up in order to make an entrance. I'll ask him that when he's 10.

Perhaps one of the most mystical things about his birth was a story his Grandfather, Eric Larson, told us at dinner on Friday. He was sitting in his office in Phoenix, and a "thunk" interrupted his thoughts. A huge hawk had flown into the window and was trying to come to its senses while it perched on a tower outside. Hawks rarely make it to the city center like that, and Eric was incredibly surprised to see it. After a while it flew away.

And the next day our little guy was born.

Harbinger? Oui.

You know you live in the hood when...

You walk out your front door, go one block, and someone asks you if you're lost.
True story.
Happened on Saturday night.

I heart this place.

No secrecy...really

I've just been buried in workywork stuff. The adjustment from Darden life to commute + job + housework + useless cat is one that I've not handled too well. I'll get there...it just takes time.

Some cool stuff:

1. Went out to dinner in July with a few friends from Darden. Of the two occupied tables in the restaurant, would you believe that Al Carey (Frito's CEO!) was at the other one? Insanity.

2. Jonny got rid of the monkey on his back. Last he saw it, the creature was pissed off and stalking the parking lot at the Hotter 'n Hell races, looking for some sucker to take him in. Word has it he looks like Mojo Jojo of PowerPuff Girls fame.

Jonny won the Hotter 'n Hell criterium "with nobody else in the picture". I love winning races like that.

3. It's been raining for 3 days. It rained for 90+ days my senior year of college. This is nothing. But I did feel a bit lazy as a result.

4. Life at Frito is pretty good. My projects are exciting and full of challenges that teach me more and more every day. Love every second of it.

5. Been listening to biz books on my commute. Pretty good way to pass the time. I really liked Built to Last by Jim Collins. Most write him off, since some of the companies in his Good to Great book have bit the big one. However, the wisdom in Built to Last is sage, especially the last chapter. He is very self-deprecating and humble about things. I was quite inspired by his final words in the last chapter. It alone is worth the read. Plus, I got to hear his ebullient voice on my stereo!

6. After 3 months without hot water, El Gato installed a new tank on Labor Day weekend. I was getting tired of my frontier-days dishwashing, complete with heating water on the stove. All I needed was a bonnet and a bustle.

More soon. Doubt I have a lot of readers, but just in case I'll write more regularly about life in the Big D. Should be exciting: Lang, Hunky Hungarian, and Bohle will visit this week! Yay!