Last year I participated in the ann arbor area chamber of commerce Leadership Ann Arbor program.  Part of the Leadership mission statement is to provide "a foundation for the development of a sustainable, vital community whose vision is based upon an informed and committed business community."  The program begins with an orientation and then an overnight retreat.  After that, one Wednesday a month, for the next 8 months the group learns about a different sector of the community including education, health care, local government, community services and others.  It's a very diverse group of people who participate each year. 

Last year I missed the May day, Quality of Life which focuses on arts, sports and other leisure opportunities in the area.  Lindsay, the fabulous director of the program, said that I could come back this year and make it up.  So 2 weeks ago, I tagged along with this year's class.  We started out at Gallup Park for a tour with some of the natural area preservation employees.  I'm ashamed to admit that I've never even been in the part of the park that we walked through.  They're doing a lot of work to restore some of the natural vegetation and get rid of the invasive species that have taken over many of the spaces that we think of as "natural".  Then we headed over to Hill Auditorium for a little tour that included a peak into the organ room.  We also had someone from The Ark, the A2 Summer Festival, and UMS speak to us about their programs that bring some of the best artists to the Ann Arbor area.  Then we headed over to WEMU, the public radio station on Eastern Michigan University's campus.  We are fortunate to have two great public radio stations in the A2 area but WEMU is known for jazz and a focus on local news and information. 

Next we headed to lunch at Pizza House followed by a trip to the Michigan Theater.  At the Michigan Theater we heard some of the background of the theater and movies from Russ Collins, the CEO and exec director.   He and Ron Olson, the chief of the parks & rec division of the SoM Dept. of Natural Resources, were our hosts or tour guides for the day.  We also heard from Amy Milligan from the Neutral Zone about the great work they do providing opportunities for artistic expression and community leadership for the youth in our community.  Amy is actually a fellow alum of the 2008 Leadership class.  Next we headed over to the UofM athletic campus for a tour of the football practice facilities.  We were all pleasantly surprised when Coach Rich Rodriguez came to speak to us.  Finally, we headed over to the Ann Arbor Art Center where we got to paint a mug. 

All in all it was a great day.  I highly recommend the program.  I have lived in Ann Arbor for most of my life but I learned so much about the sectors of the community that I don't come into contact with very much.  And it really helped me expand my network.  I was definitely aware of that when I attended this year's Quality of Life day and ran into a number of people that I know because of Leadership connections.  My participation in Leadership was also the catalyst for me to find ways to get more involved in the community through volunteer opportunities and a city advisory board.  If you can't commit the amount of time to do Leadership, there are other opportunities to get a little of the same experience. Russ Collins hosts the Morning Edition events through the chamber and the chamber has even done a couple of events that are formatted like a mini Leadership Economic Development day.  We're really blessed to have a number of organizations that improve our quality of life and make Ann Arbor a wonderful place to live.

We're MOVING in China.  Don and Carol are in China this week for the graduation of their foreign exchange student, Bruce.  They are doing a whirlwind tour of Beijing, Shanghai, Bruce's hometown, and a few other spots. 

Don's even been able to connect with some of our business contacts proving that we really are living in a global market. 

Stay tuned for more from Don when he returns next week. 

(Top: Don & Bruce running the race insided the Bird's Nest
Bottom: Don, Carol, Bruce & his family in front of the Bird's Nest)

Everyone knows that the city of Detroit has seen better days.  I've heard a number of people say that we Michiganders do some of the worst damage to the national reputation of the city.  In spite of this, there are a lot of people working very hard to turn the city around and return it to a thriving metropolis.  But it's a slow process. 

One of the best examples of this is the election for the interim Detroit mayor, a vacancy created by the resignation of former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick after his text message/purgery scandal.  I really wouldn't have been surprised if either of the candidates, Ken Cockrel, Jr. or Dave Bing, would have won.  It turned out that Dave Bing pulled out a come from behind lead on election day.  But what did surprise me is that only 15 percent of registered voters turned out to vote.  What that says to me is that the voters of Detroit are weary (to borrow the title of a song from Sufjan Stevens, a Michigan native).  They're tired of politics.  And that might be what won the election for Dave Bing.  He's not a politician.  I live in Ann Arbor so I'm not right up in the middle of the Detroit scene but I only saw one campaign ad during the campaign.  I think it was on freep.com and it was one put out by the Cockrel campaign attacking Dave Bing for something, I think it was for being an outsider.  When I heard that only 15% of registered voters turned out, my first thought was "Well, they didn't do very good marketing."  Maybe it's the economy and budgets are tight, maybe it's that it was an interim election, but it seemed like we didn't hear very much about it. 

Just today, I opened up our copy of Crain's and saw an article about how Dave Bing won the election because of the "brand" that he built for himself.  The Cockrel campaign's biggest criticisms of Bing were that he was an outsider and was in with big business.  But Bing's campaign was able to turn those around and brand himself as someone who wasn't linked to any of the negative things about politics in recent years and who would think about running the city like he would run a business.  When we are working with our clients to develop a strong brand we ask ourselves is it "true from the inside out"?  If a brand doesn't represent who you really are, it won't be effective.   I hope for the sake of Detroit, and our state, that the Dave Bing brand is one that is true from the inside out. 

I attended a town hall meeting here in Washtenaw County last night about transportation hosted by State Representative Pam Byrnes.  The event included comments from a panel including US Rep. Mark Schauer, MDOT Director of Governmental Affairs Ron DeCook, and Terri Blackmore of the Washtenaw Area Transportation Study.  I am not a transportation expert by any means but better public transportation is one of the hot topics these days when discussing how to keep young talent in Michigan so I'm interested in what our policymakers are doing to promote it.  

All of the panelists spoke about how important supporting improved public transit was important what it all comes down to is Michigan's transportation funding.  There is a significant risk of losing federal transportation funding in the next couple of years because we aren't reaching the state and local matching levels to keep it.  Ron DeCook presented some of the elements of the Michigan Transportation Funding Task Force recommendations that are intended to increase over the next 5-7 years the level of transportation funding come close to meeting the anticipated funding needs for transportation.  The primary ways that they are looking at increasing that funding are through incremental increases to the state gas tax, vehicle registration fees, and the aviation fuel tax.  I was amazed to learn that the aviation fuel tax hasn't increased since 1929 when it was first implemented.  One of the other things that I hadn't considered about funding is that the more we encourage people to buy smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles and ride public transit, the less gas tax revenue the state will bring in.  I don't think that means we should continue to encourage gas consumption as we have in the past but it means that we're going to have to get more creative about how we fund some of our transportation needs.

It's never easy to get people excited about tax or fee increases but I think that we'd all agree that well-maintained roads, safe bike and walking paths, and efficient and convenient public transportation are all important elements of a desireable place to live.  I'd certainly pay a little more for my registration or gas to not have to pay $200-300 to get a tire fixed after I blew it out on a pothole or to be able to ride on a bikepath to more of the places that I need to go.  I'd love to be able to take a high speed rail line to Chicago for the weekend and not have to worry about getting stuck behind a freight line that has priority over the passenger line.  There are all sorts of benefits for our cities and state if we do invest in these transportation improvements but I think it will be a hard sell when people don't have jobs and are losing their homes.  The other thing is that people just don't know.  I learned about the event from the A2 Chamber of Commerce so I'm sure that a number of chamber members received the same email.  However, there were maybe only 40 people at the meeting and at least 50% were government employees or elected officials.  I think 50% is probably quite conservative too.  As citizens we need to be informed and get involved, especially if we want our state economy to bounce back.  Now is not the time to sit back and feel sorry for ourselves and our state.  Get involved!

It was just announced this week that GM is phasing out its' Pontiac brand.  While I can't say that I've ever been a big fan of Pontiacs, it's still a sad day in the automotive world.  Pontiac has been in the GM family since 1926 and has become the GM performance brand.  I think Pontiac actually just hit a homerun with the G8.  It's a pretty great looking car.  But one niche vehicle can't save a whole brand.

I'll admit, I'm actually more disappointed that they're getting rid of Saturn.  It seemed like they were moving in a good direction with their product offerings and especially with the offering of the VUE hybrid.  We've all gotten used to $2/gallon gas again so we're not pushing quite as hard for fuel-efficient vehicles anymore but GM's hybrid offering is pretty sparce and the Chevy Volt might not be the savior of the NA automotive industry that the media/government/GM is touting it to be.  It's a great leap forward for GM but there's still a long way to go.  In the mean time it's a shame to get rid of some of their more family-friendly hybrid vehicles. 

The problem is that GM just had too many brands.  There's a lot of development that goes into each vehicle line and even with the move to global platforms they end up having to repeat work.  The average customer can't really differentiate between the brands and they don't have the same kind of brand loyalty that my grandparents' generation had.  I've been trying to figure out what marketing lesson we can learn from this.  There are probably quite a few but the one I've landed on is to focus on what you're good at.  GM has a great thing going with Cadillac and there is a lot of brand loyalty to Chevy.  The demise of Pontiac gives us all a chance to re-evaluate what we're really good at and make sure that's our focus.   

You may have heard a few weeks ago about President Obama's gift to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a collection of classic American movies.  The British were appalled of course because it was so low-brow of the Americans to give movies as a gift, when the Brits brought a pen from a 19th century British war ship.  But the biggest problem with the whole thing was that the offending DVDs didn't even play in the Browns' DVD player. 

Why didn't they play?  Well, the powers that be created DVD player regulations to allow the movie industry to control when, with what content, and for what price DVDs are released in different parts of the world.  So DVDs have to be authored specifically for the players in the regions where they are going to be used.  Some DVD players are universal so they can play DVDs from any region but most consumer players are regional.  Mr. Brown had a bunch of Region 1 DVDs that don't play on a Region 2 DVD player.

We don't have to do it a lot but at least a couple of times a year, I have to send videos to clients in Europe and Asia.  In the video world we were still using Beta pretty regularly until the past 3 or 4 years so the switch to DVD made things a little bit easier.  Now we have a new format, Blu-ray.  I had a moment of panic the other day when we sent a Blu-ray disc to Germany and one to China because I had forgotten about regions.  Fortunately, our encoding mastermind informed me that they were created as universal region discs.  There are only 3 regions for Blu-ray and according to Wikipedia, almost 70% of Blu-ray are region-free so it's getting easier but there's still some level of complexity that most of us never think about, even the President of the United States.

The lesson for me is that in an increasingly global business-world we need to spend a little time understanding the culture of our clients and partners, whether it's how to greet someone or what region their DVD player is. 

Everyone’s pretty down on the automotive industry right now.  Here in Michigan, we’re definitely feeling the pain of the changing market.  Some people think that we should just let the OEMs ride the market wave and fail if that’s where it takes them.  Others are concerned with the fallout, not only for the OEMs, but also for their suppliers and the various industries that provide a network of support for employees and their families. 

Personally, I’m not ready to throw in the towel on automotive.  I love cars.  One of my earliest memories is of the upholstery in my parents Pontiac Phoenix hatchback.  (Incidentally, I’m glad the hatchback is regaining favor with American drivers, but that’s a story for another time.)  So I’d like to see us figure out a way to make automotive work in these global economic times, but the issues are complex and I don’t know what the answers are.  

What I do know is that some really great work is being done within the industry to evolve it into something that is sustainable, both economically and environmentally.  We had the opportunity to work on a video for the Johnson Controls NAIAS 2009 “demonstrator” vehicle interior, the re3, this past year.  When they began the development of this interior they realized that they had to rethink everything.  Consumers’ attitudes are changing.  They want smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.  But they still expect the comfort features that they had in their larger vehicles.  Then Johnson Controls looked for ways to renew the industry and the driving experience.  This meant making it a plug-in hybrid (with Johnson Controls lithium ion battery technology), using renewable materials, and reducing mass wherever possible.  But they kept in mind that consumers still wanted comfort features and found ways to respond with electronics, storage and seating innovations. 

Johnson Controls offers the OEMs a way to get more mileage inside their vehicles too.  Take a look to see how:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEMDjUQYWHQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VDHeGjlJww
Recommendation: watch it in HD if your computer can handle it 

Well, we’ve finally done it.  MOVE Communications is blogging.  Have you ever noticed that sometimes you are your own worst client?  We at MOVE have been helping our clients to use their websites and appropriate internet tools as a way to communicate with their customers more often.  But as happens frequently in the business world, we focused on serving our clients and neglected ourselves.   But no longer will our voices be unheard.  Here we are world! 

Ok, we won’t claim to believe that you will enjoy reading our thoughts more than we enjoy sharing them, but hopefully you’ll at least get a chuckle now and then – and even learn something occasionally.  We’ll try to make it worth your while to read our blog and would love to hear your feedback.  Let’s get MOVING.