PROTEST: Don't Buy A Car In December

Top 10 Reasons Buying A Car Sucks
Buying a car makes you feel STUPID and depressed. Even when you "win" you feel like you "lost". I desperately need a new car, but I am MAD AS HELL and I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE. Clearly I am not alone in that feeling. The problem is Detroit doesn't hear us. They are so insulated and CLUELESS. They fly to Washington in separate private jets to beg for our tax money. Thanks for the stark and clear demonstration that you (Detroit) could give a shit about me as a consumer. In a nutshell, executives from Detroit demonstrated what it feels like to try and buy a car. Anyone who has been inside of a car showroom in the last five years knows this feeling because it is the nasty, screw you attitude this entire business model employs every day.

WHY I HATE CAR DEALERS.
They are the most ridiculous 1950's JERKS. Car dealers care about one thing, selling metal, and believe the best way to do that is lie, cheat and steal. Note to Car Dealers, there is this new thing called The Internet where I can learn your costs, your salaries, and your past, present and future. Oh, by the way, your future doesn't look good. You know why? Because you are STUPID. Let's be clear about what is being rejected - YOU. Let's be even clearer. We are rejecting your inauthentic, smarmy attempts to take advantage of us. We've had it. The effect of all of those nasty belittling experiences is you will sell dramatically fewer cars this year than last and fewer still next year.

Not The Economy, Stupid
Car Dealers - you may get your 25 or 50 billion, but it won't be your last. As long you take advantage of us instead of taking care of us you will suffer. In fact, you may be beyond redemption. It may well be too late for your arrogant selfish business model. One thing is clear, you will never be the same. We are not rejecting your product, though that is part of it, we are rejecting YOU. We reject the already applied undercoating (great riff on that in Fargo). We reject making us sit for hours because your training says the more time we invest the more money we pay you. We reject paying extra so your retired employees don't have to pay an insurance co-pay when we've been paying one for years. We reject your arrogance, cruelty and shameful treatment of your most valuable assets - your customers.

3 Books For Detroit
Detroit is 30 books behind, but let's start slow. Here are three books you need to read fast:

• The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
• Cluetrain Manifesto by Locke et al.
  
• All Marketers Are Liars, Seth Godin
  

You need to read The Tipping Point because you are past yours, well past. Your negative virus is spreading so fast now there may be no antidote, but Gladwell can teach you how word-of-mouth combined with web speed is killing you.

Cluetrain Manifesto could have saved you IF you read it in 1999 and came away realizing that treating people horribly has consequences and none of them are good. Stick Cluetrain in your jet and read it on your next trip to beg for money.

Any book by Seth Godin could help. I selected the Liars book because it stresses the importance of story and I thought Detroit could relate to the title. Detroit used to make stuff we couldn't live without. How do you lose your center so completely in so little time? You trick us and get away with it. More accurately, you set up dealer networks that trick us and get away with it. Thanks in large part to that dealer network, your (Detroit's) story becomes abusive and nasty. I am going to speak directly to Detroit now, so every time you see "YOU" think "DETROIT". You lose your innovative touch. You lose our support and encouragement. You lose your story and any credibility right along with it. Make cool stuff with passion, treat your customers like you care and LISTEN to us and you will climb out of this cave. Don't and nice knowing you Detroit.

DON'T BUY A CAR IN DECEMBER!
Despite needing a car, I will not buy one in December. I call on anyone reading this blog to join my protest. Clearly our rejection of this antiquated business model is not being heard. Nothing is changing. Detroit throws rebates and gimmicks at us as if this was a money problem. Certainly lower prices would be nice, but just LOWER THE PRICE DON'T PLAY GAMES. When you play games you signal NOTHING HAS CHANGED. We are smart. We know the only way to win your game is not to play, to keep our money in our wallets and purses. Keep playing games and you can keep your bleeping cars.

BECOME AN OUTLAW
Fletcher tells the Senator, "Don't piss down my back and tell me its raining," in the Outlaw Josey Wales. I think that is good advice for any company who wants to join the "buy a car now" crusade instead of my DON'T BUY A CAR NOW revolution. Fox 22 Raleigh just ran a strange commercial about why we should be buying cars now from local dealers. Here is what I wrote to the television station:

Just saw your strange commercial encouraging me to buy a car. I realize local car dealers must be big ad partners of yours, but do you really want to line up with them right now? Let's be honest, buying a car sucks. The process is unfriendly; dealers are nasty and act as if we can't know what they pay for the car. They think and treat us (consumers) as if we are STUPID. The old model has been dead for years but they refuse to change. I kept thinking they would want to keep up with the times, but they haven't. Instead they deny, deny and deny. If you want to help your dealers sell more cars tell them to change their model and fast. If they don't get smart they will be smoke and if you think a commercial from you will change anything you are as WRONG as you can be and as self deluded as they are. My advice to you is TEACH them how to get a clue. I suggest starting with an Internet browser. When you hit Twitter and FaceBook you’ve moved them to the NOW. If you want to keep them alive, and I assume that is why a television station would run a commercial telling me why I should buy a car, then help them or slap them. Let’s be clear here guys, we (consumers) are MAD AS HELL and we are NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE from car dealers. Adding television stations to that mix wouldn’t be that hard, so teach them or distance yourself is my advice. Martin

If Fox 22 wants to play Lifeguard my advice is to teach your charge how to swim. Using advertising to try and solve car dealer's many problems WILL NOT WORK and oh-by-the-way the television model is not all that secure either. You jump in to save local car dealers in the usual way and you may drown right along with them.

Instead of buying a car in December, I will write a series of posts about what might get me back in a car showroom. My next post will be the top 10 reasons why buying a car sucks and what Detroit can do about it (if they want to survive). I don't want people to lose their jobs as something we created, cars, becomes a foreign entity. I want Detroit to GET IT, FIX IT and join me in the 21st Century. If they can't change then I will be glad to buy another Japanese car. Q: Will buying a Japanese or German car still suck? A: Yes, but the car won't fall apart. My advice the Toyota and VW is reform or GM is your future too.

DON'T BUY A CAR IN DECEMBER.

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Do you have ideas for Detroit or frustrations you need to excise? Please share your thoughts or alert me to articles you've written and I will link to them.

Response from Fox Station in Raleigh

I received your email communication. This is not a commercial. We are running it free of charge. As the only locally-owned television stations in this market, our goal with this campaign is to support our local dealers. The campaign is not intended to support or endorse any specific course of action as it relates to the automakers, and we make no reference to domestic vs foreign. Rather, we hope to remind those consumers who may be considering purchasing a new vehicle that now is a good time to do so… for the variety of reasons pointed out in the spot.

Thank you for your comments and for watching FOX50.

Here is my response to Fox:

Thanks for your note. I understand your position. I believe tough love is the only answer because car dealers are out of touch. Every "deal, deal, deal" commercial I see only reinforces just how out of touch they remain. It is as if they can't stop talking to themselves about themselves. We (consumers) have stopped listening.

Your local car commercial is well done and impassioned. It simply can not over come the hurdle those you are trying to help have created for themselves. Radical authenticity is the only fix for their problem. All the deals in the world will not put humpty dumpty back together again. Your commercial, while well intended and well done will not move the needle even a little.

The end of the Roman Empire wasn't a pretty thing. This "de-leveraging" will not be pretty for Detroit or us. You are obviously smart people with a vested interest in helping your local dealers. My suggestion is put together a one day seminar about what it means when someone can twitter every second of the negotiation she is having with a car salesmen. Imagine when the salesman leaves to go do the BS talk with his manager for no other purpose than to waste time and attempt to jack the price. Every moment he is out shooting the bull the customer is twittering on her cell phone simultaneously broadcasting to thousands. Those thousands flip the tweet to thousands more and some blog the tweet. Every car dealers sold in this way in the last ten years has been one more nail in their coffin. That game is over, done, gone. There will be no bringing it back. When your dealers realize that, when they stop screaming at me as if the way to get my attention is to turn up the volume on a message I've tuned out long ago, then I will buy a new car. Until then I will keep my money as I suspect thousands, tens of thousands of people will.

Martin

Here is my email to Squawk Box on CNBC:

I am as MAD AS HELL and I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.

That is the sentiment I think you guys are missing on why no one is buying cars. I wrote a blog post about why, even though I need a car, I am not going to buy one anytime soon. WE HATE BUYING CARS BECAUSE THEY TREAT US LIKE DOGS. No wait, I would never treat a dog this bad. When I saw that dealer on your air the other morning telling me why I was a bad American if I didn't buy a car from him it made me even madder. Car dealers knew this revolt was coming, they had too. Their attitude has been to go blithely on as if nothing changed. They could still dupe us (consumers) into paying too much for their non-special hunks of metal. Newsflash - We've (consumers) have had it. The tipping point has been reached and we are done.

I desperately need a new car. My 1998 Nissan Sentra has 150,000 miles on it and it makes strange sounds when I drive it (ghost in the machine). I have the money to buy a new car, BUT I REFUSE TO PLAY THEIR GAME ANYMORE. I loved the dealer this morning. He says, "we have great deals" as if that is what matters. All that says to me is you are doing exactly the same BS you've been doing for years and you think I am stupid and will continue to play. NOPE, not going to happen. Car dealers have no authen ticity, no authority. They are ranked dead last on just about every reputation poll and for good reason. They lie, waste our most valuable assets (our time) and cheat.

Note to car dealers. There is this new thing called The Internet you may want to check into. It is a place where I can know everything about yo u. I can tweet our negotiation. I can mash up your commercials. I can tell the TRUTH about what you do, say and are. My frustration can be merged, magnified and exploded out at the speed of light. I need a new car. Right after I wrote my blog post my "check engine" light went on (kind of spooky). I am not going to buy a new car because I AM MAD AS HELL AND NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE. I suspect there are a bunch of people just like me out there but not on your air. Maybe, and maybe is as far as I can go, if you put someone like me on your air to share our frustration the car dealers would GET IT. I don't want to be on TV, or at least not for this, but the missing side of the story is WE ARE MAD AS HELL AND NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.

Martin Smith
Durham, NC

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Martin's SEO Rules

Keywords Are Your Friend
A friend from college just launched an e-commerce site. I just wrote a hard email to share that the site, as constructed, would never rank for keywords he needs. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is organic chemistry. Connected, complicated and something you could spend a life learning. SEO is still a mystery to many. The purpose of this post is to share Martin's basic SEO rules and some things to check. Check these things and follow these simple rules and your new site will get the rankings you deserve.

Page Title
My friend's site's home page title is the name of his site. The good news is the keyword "watches" is in his name. The bad news is the way the title is written, USWatches; the keyword will do no good. If his programmers wrote it as "US Watches" it would still stink, but the word "watches" would at least count. As is, "USWatches" has no value BECAUSE no one is searching for USWatches (yet). No one knows USWatches even exits.

View Page Source
Want to know best practices for your business? Find the top ranked sites on our most important keywords. In watches "Citizen Watches" would be an example. When you are on that highly ranked site, use the "view page source" menu item to "see" the way your competitors define their site to Google. My friend's competitors, while not great SEO geniuses (AT ALL), at least filled their page title with keywords such as Citizen and other watch brands. If your page title is more than 50% different than the site that is currently #1 on Google on the terms you want then your programmers don't know enough about SEO. DO NOT ask them to fix it. Hire a SEO specialist (email martinsellingzoe(at)aol(dot)com and I will share my favorite SEO contacts).

How To Hire A SEO Specialist
There is a lot of snake oil in SEO. I've hired SEO Wreckers. These are firms who seem credible but their advice will kill you. They violate the first rule of SEO:

DO NO HARM - Martin's First Rule of SEO.

If any SEO firm tells you what to do without quantitative measures then they are Snake Oil Salesmen (or Saleswomen). There is no such thing as impromptu SEO. You make moves because of what others are doing NOT because of what you THINK. First you emulate their success and then you improve on it. Resist the temptation to strike out on your own on SEO. SEO is about incremental improvement and constant algorithm changes (meaning whatever you owned yesterday you may not own tomorrow).

RESEARCH, RESEARCH AND RESEARCH - Martin's Second Rule of SEO.

If Location, Location and Location are the secrets to real estate then research is Martin's main search engine optimization secret. SEO Research is one of those things that if you have to ask you should hire someone. Special tools exists to help and there are books galore. If you don't enjoy finding needles in haystacks, hire someone to do this work for you.

Ask your SEO guns what they would do about your page title. If they say they will have to fire a tool or they look at your competitors they may not be snake oil salesmen. No SEO person is going to know your business. All SEO changes are based on numbers. If they guess they are wrong and your site will never rank.

DON'T SPAM = Martin's Second Rule of SEO

Tricky part of this rule is you will have no idea what is considered "spamming" by Google today. Google changes the rules frequently (daily),so best idea is to NOT do things such as stuffing your meta data or body copy with keywords. You do and your site will send off "spamming" vibes and the damage could far exceed the benefit.

CREATE NATURAL AND COOL CONTENT = Martin's Third Rule of SEO

Don't create content that is inappropriate for your site just because you think it will generate traffic. Your best bet is to create "natural" content that is unique, cool and content rich. "Natural" is a very important word to Google. Change out keywords to stuff and you are spamming. Write a keyword dense article beyond your site's scope and you are spamming. Your text should tell a story, be inviting and fascinating. Remember when you used to pack words to make your English teacher's word limits? Don't do that.

NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH CONTENT = Martin's Fourth Rule of SEO

Content (written or video) is truly king. Google started as a research tool. If your site doesn't sell by influence, story and content you will be crushed. Do some natural e-commerce things such as display your 20 best sellers and you will look like a spammer. Why? Because you will be "stuffing" brand and product names into your page, or it will appear so. My friend's watch site repeats watch brands over and over. Guess what, his site looks "spammy" to Google.

YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW = Martin's Fifth Rule of SEO

This rule is always true, but not knowing what you don't know in SEO could KILL you. My IT team did 5 spammy things not because we are spammers but because we don't know better. Ignorance is no excuse for Google, so study, read up or hire someone who knows what you don't. Ultimate penalty for being stupid in this area = banishment from the engine. You think getting ranked is a pain? Wait.

DON'T SWEAT SEO = Martin's final SEO Rule

Life is too short to sweat the small stuff and it is all small stuff. If you have the mortgage bet on your web site shame on you. If rankings are important, and if they aren't then can I come live with you for a bit, then follow Martin's SEO Rules and everything will be fine, no really :).

Top 5 Ecommerce Video Rules

Including Video In on An E-Commerce Web Site
In a recent Bruce Clay SEO training session Bruce said, "We are all going to be doing video soon." Bruce is right Video is compelling, engaging, entertaining and it can lift conversions and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) significantly. As a Director of E-Commerce I've been nipping at adding video to the multi-million dollar site I mange for three years. Here are Martin's Top 5 E-Commerce Video Rules:

1. Do No Harm
   Adding anything to an e-commerce web site for the sake of adding it is goofystupid. You add things to an e-com site because it helps your site make more money. Let me be clear, one of the reasons my site makes money is to save the world. We send a substantial check every year to make sure every child is wanted and prevent aids, but we don't make profits and we can't cut that check. If you place video on an e-commerce site it must help people buy (i.e. increase your conversion rate). If it decreases your conversion rate, or tanks it (been there done that) then remove the video. Video per se is not the answer. The right video in the right context is the answer.
   
   
2. Don't Pitch
   Very important to understand this rule because we are born to pitch. Problem is YOU can't pitch anything on your web site. Pitching makes you a used car salesman and the enemy. You can speak factually about a product's features. You can discuss the intent of the product, but any review must come from a separate source. My site developed a team of customer reviewers. We include how this team feels about a product via a rating, but we never say product X or Y is the greatest thing since sliced bread. We have NO STANDING to make such a statement and to the extent we do we are hucksters. Pitch and you immediately violate Rule #1: Do No Harm.



3. Words Less Important Than Pictures
   Video is raw emotion. Hollywood tear jerkers understand this dynamic well. Online video plays by the same rules. Everything in your video is telling a story. How you pace, track and cut your video is more important than your script. In fact, what you say may be the least important thing. Not unimportant, but not nearly as important as pacing, tracking (going in and out on your subject to create a sense of movement) and cutting (smooth and fast, smooth and fast).



4. Story
   Might be strange to follow my last rule with the importance of story, but words are different than story. Story means your script, no matter how quick, has a beginning, middle and an end. Who are you, why are you talking to me and why should I listen are questions best answered by story. For our products we tell their story in a factual way, but there is an opening (who we are and what we are talking about on this video), there is a middle (the feature set) and an end (we always end by referencing our review team bringing in "the hive").



5. Video Time
   Video time is faster than read time, but not by much. We like to keep our product videos to two minutes. Move past the two minute mark on that kind of video and you are talking to yourself about yourself. Testimonials are different. People will watch other people tell their story longer. Here you can stretch to five minutes if the story is emotional, engaging and "like me" compelling. "Like me" is the magic moment where I (customer/viewer) project myself into your video and see just how your widget will work for me. This kind of pitch CAN ONLY come from testimonials. You pitch you die. They pitch you have half a chance, but you script the pitch or destroy its authenticity and YOU DIE. Real people telling their story warts and all are what you have to do. Don't kid yourself that is what is going to happen anyway, so better to lead than try to fight the tide. Lead with hard, cold, external, brutal reality and you may just create a relationship with your customers. Relationships matter because no one buys anything from a company anymore. We buy things from people and only from people we trust.

My Father's Birthday Present

In Search Of Ted Turner
I love my father and have written about him extensively (see links at bottom of this post). Like Ted Turner, he lives life large and in charge. My father, Duncan Smith, was a classmate (I think) of Ted Turner. Both Ted Turner and my father arrived at McCallie, then a military school, as tots. My father ended up at McCallie after the grandfather I never met, his abusive father, tied one on and beat him senseless. My Granny wanted my father to have male role models. She and my great grandmother also wanted my father to be safe, so they put him on a bus to a beautiful school at the foot of Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee. My father was ten years old that day almost 66 years ago.

Help Martin Find Ted Turner
My father has Leukemia (CLL) and is doing well, but time, as if I didn't already know this, is precious. My father is not an easy person to gift. He has particular tastes and is a bit of an equipment junkie. My dad spent years working with people like Ted Turner. In fact, he isn't fully retired yet. I only partially understand what my father did for a living. He was a partner at The Frank Russell Company and always played golf with interesting people.

I know my father is a McCallie supporter (as is Ted Turner). At one time my father wanted me to attend McCallie. I spent a summer there and it is a great school that I enjoyed. If we still lived in Texas I would probably have attended McCallie. My brother Drew did. I didn't complete my dad's vision because we moved to Connecticut. I wanted to attend school closer to home. That is how I ended up at The Choate School.

I share a New Year's birthday (I will turn 51 in a few weeks) with my father. I have a special idea for this my Father's 76th birthday. I would like to have Ted Turner autograph his book for my dad. I have no idea how to go about this. My hope is to post this request for help and see how I can get a signed copy of Call Me Ted to my father by his birthday (January 1). If you have any ideas how to make this happen please share them. No such thing as a bad idea. I will share my notes and attempts on this post.

To some this effort may seem goofystupid. I understand that no gift, even a note from an old classmate, will cure my father's CLL. As I write this my father is in Denver visiting my sister. He is still working and doing well and may never need treatment for his CLL (fingers crossed and knocking on wood). My father and Mr. Turner haven't spoken since their years at McCallie (that I know of). I am not even sure how they overlapped, but my father admires Ted's intelligence, business creativity and outspoken stances (even the ones he doesn't agree with). I know what my father will love the most about this gift is my story about it. He is fascinated by the web and its many implications. I've discussed my belief that a computer, a blog and an idea can accomplish just about anything these days. Whenever I say this my father pushes his glasses back on his nose and says a short, "uh huh." I will include a copy of this post and the journey I am about to take along with Mr. Turner's note (if I can find a way to make that happen). I know both notes (Turner's and mine) will wish my father a happy 76th birthday.

If you have any ideas or know someone who knows someone please let me know. I don't expect to be able to speak to Mr. Turner, but I am hoping I can send a book with an explanation about why it would mean a lot to my father and me to have such a special present from a McCallie classmate.

Martin's Posts About His Father

We Happy Few
Shopping with dad at Cutter and Buck.

My Dad's Hunting Lesson
Lessons on becoming a man.

Why are we in Iraq?
A day with my dad, a shotgun and our dog Friendly at Sky Bo Ranch in Glen Rose, Texas.

Martin Links
Not sure these links prove I am not a crazed Internet stalker guy, but my background is a testimony to my parent's love and support. The Net Present Value (NPV) of my education is staggering. My mom and dad never hesitated to sign big checks. They would have been better served in CD's. I don't think they look at it that way (luckily for me lol). Any ideas or contacts you can share to help me give my father a special 76-birthday gift would be much appreciated.

Martin email: martinsellingzoe (at) aol

Martin LinkedIn

Martin Facebook

Martin Marty Smith on Google

Martin's ScentTrail Twitter Feed

Martin's Actions - Keep up with the search for Ted:

ScentTrail now following Grand Central Publishing on Twitter
Grand Central Twitter Feed (http://twitter.com/GrandCentralPub)

Posted search for Ted Turner on Digg
http://digg.com/arts_culture/Searching_For_Ted_Turner_For_My_Dad

Posted a question to LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/professional-development/professional-books-resources/PRO_BKR/363130-13925622?browseIdx=0&sik=1226460681596&goback=.amq

Posted a link to this post on my Facebook page.

Wrote email to friend and uber-connector Susan Bratton at Personal Life Media

SB,

Started cracking that book you sent me the other day, THANKS BTW, and it is cool. It made me think of what I can do for my dad this holiday season. My dad is impossible to gift. He is one of those curmudgeons who is hard to surprise. So I really want to surprise him this year. He went to school with Ted Turner, but they aren't buds or anything. My dad admires Ted and they both support their prep school (McCallie in Tennessee).

As I think I mentioned, my dad has Leukemia (like someone else we both know). As I write this my dad is visiting my sister in Denver and doing well. He has never been treated for his CLL and may never be (that is our hope), but this 76th birthday coming up needs to be off the hook. I share a New Year's birthday with my dad, so it is a birthday I know he won't forget (his 76th and my 51st).

Looking at your book today with your sticky note I thought getting Ted to hook up a note for his old McCallie classmate would make my dad's year. I have no idea how to go about that so I thought I should ask my most connected friend. The book is published by Grand Central Publishing (division of Little Brown) in NYC. Bill Burke is the coauthor. If you know anyone I can beg, borrow or steal a few minutes of TT's time please share. Even if your contact is six degrees of separation it will get me closer than I am now.

Thanks Susan. Hope you and Tim are good and busy beyond belief at Personal Life Media. Why did I write that line so stilted you ask? I am blogging this journey and I want to include a link to PLM on my blog (http://scentTrail.blogspot.com).

Thanks, Martin

Good ideas from Peggy on LinkedIn:

1. Call Ted's corporate offices and tell whoever you can get to talk to you what it is you want.

2. Call Good Morning America. They've just interviewed Ted. They might like the human interest of this and help you.

Peggy

PHE Marketing Dogs 2

Marketing Dog Meeting
Tomorrow is the first meeting of the PHE Marketing Dogs. This afternoonn I wrote a post to prove our ability to achieve top search engine listings is related more to tools than our team's creativity and persistence. That blog post generated these top Google listings:

PHE Marketing Dogs

Marketing Dogs Hidden Bones

Google Marketing Bone Time (page one)

Smart Marketing Dogs Faster

PHE Marketing Dogs

What is a Marketing Dog?
These days marketing requires bull dog persistence and a nose for hidden bones. Tenacity is needed just to get fed. Some evil dog is always trying to take your dinner, find your buried bones and throw the tennis ball where you will never find it. Two things changed our marketing world: Google and Time.

Google made us marketing dogs because everything is known by everyone instantly now. In the good old days bones were aplenty and secret hiding places were convenient and unknown. Google mapped every good bone hiding place on the planet now, so what we know everyone knows. This undeniable truth shifts the life of a marketing dog to execution. Bone finding and burying is still a preoccupation for some, but smart marketing dogs focus on getting things done faster. Speed is the new bone.

Time collapsed on us. We could bury a winter's worth of bones, sit back in the knowledge we were covered. Everyone knows where every marketing dog bone is now. This means there is no time to relax, no winter off. Google time is both nothing at all (this article will be indexed in a half an hour from when I put it up) and forever. Forever because if you mess up and get bounced or are trying to claw your way back into Google's good graces then "forever" is the months it can take to recover, rebuild or rebury.

Getting Into College - Admissions People

Assistant Directors of Admissions
When I was an Assistant Director of Admissions (Vassar 1980 - 81) I thought it was cool to be a member of the faculty. I graduated from Vassar and then presto chango I am a faculty member. Cool, but no money, long hours, cheap travel and lots of hard work. Admissions staff are doing jobs they love and, in many cases, for colleges they love.

There are three kinds of admissions personnel. Directors are political animals who give good speeches and sit up on high like lifeguards. A quarter to a half of an Admissions Director's job is interacting with their like number from other colleges and the President and senior staff of their college. They serve on internal boards and are the marketing force behind the college. A quarter of their time is dealing with their staff, setting the tenor and tone of their mission and overseeing the admissions process. Another quarter, if they are worth their salt, is spent with students to keep their hand in and not lose the pulse.

Underneath the Director is a group of long term office staff. These guys are the true admissions sherpas. They move paper up hills, down hills and around valleys. Their average tenure is more than five years and 20 years in the office is not uncommon. If you speak to someone about making appointments and following up with Assistant Directors or the Director you will be interacting with one of these hard working under appreciated people. WORD TO THE WISE - treat everyone with respect and nice but be THANKFUL and THRILLED by assistance your receive from these sherpas and you will never see anyone so excited about being thanked and cared about. The office staff can be your best friend or your worst enemy and you determine that by how much care you show. It is a good lesson for your life. How you treat anyone should be how you treat everyone and think you are better than these hard working staffers and show that snobbery and you will make your admissions process harder (guaranteed). Cherish their service, intelligence and care and you will make a valuable friend for life.

Directly underneath the Director are Assistant Directors. Not all Assistant Directors are equal or alike. Most offices have an office manager Assistant Director. He or she will split admissions duties with operational duties. In my office, this Assistant was immediately below the Director. We both had the same title, but he was more Assistant than me (by far). His name was Peter and his goal was becoming a Director.

Next there is an Assistant who is a road warrior. This Assistant will log the miles visiting high schools in the north forty. The office will see little of this Assistant Director until the paper starts to roll in and everyone is reading applications. The road warriors are higher up the totem poll than lowly Assistants like me, graduates of the college they are working at, but lower than the operational Assistant. They want to get out of town and they do. They can pitch their college in their sleep and they may only care about it because it is their job. They travel a lot, but don't live high up on the hog (as we say where I come from). This means they can squeeze a dime. No college sends their Assistants to stay at the Ritz, but the road warrior has a well worn path of familiar schools and middle of the road places to stay. They have more latitude on their expense reports than other staffers and are trusted to represent the college on the road (no drunken escapades).

Most colleges like to have alumni in the admissions office. This group of one to three Assistant Directors LOVE their college. They took the job because of that love. I went to prep school and was taught the concept of Noblesse oblige - giving back. This group of Assistant Directors are not lifers. They aren't planning on admissions for a career and they will be gone in one to three years. If you can get interviewed by anyone pull an interview with one of these alums because love changes the way you think about things. When you love something you care about it in ways that "pros from Dover" never will. You look for ways to find and make matches. You take risks pros won't, you share information they don't know and you have a greater sense of what your institution is really all about.

Most interviews are luck of the draw, but, with the Internet, all things are possible. Research the team that will evaluate you. If you are sending our application to an office filled with admissions lifers TIE IT DOWN. Let me explain this a bit. Admissions lifers, staff who will make admissions their life work, are the best pattern recognition people you will ever meet. They look at mountains of student data, your essay, your recommendations, your class rank, course schedule and school information. They are like walking computers and they look for ONE THING - disruptions in YOUR pattern. Those tiny spelling mistakes, the poorly presented activities page, the recommendation that damns you by faint praise. Give these machine-people any hint of a slip or a break in the pattern and that break becomes the NEW pattern. TIE IT DOWN. One of my students, and a good one, sent me a seemingly unimportant list of activities with two spelling mistakes on it the other day. I dressed him down a bit (sorry B) and he probably thought I was over reacting. I wasn't. I've seen how these pattern recognition machines eat applications. You have a run on sentence in the north forty of your application they will pull that out faster than an aching tooth. It is very "rain-man" like just how efficient the human mind is when it has done something tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of times. It is awesome to see and should scare your socks right of if, like me, you are not the most organized tied down student.

I am not saying some tiny mistake will doom your application. It won't, but ruffle a pattern recognition machine and you move the story from what you say to what they believe. You also just reduced your ability to control your pitch. Once you've made an Assistant Director of Admission start to make their mind up about you it may be favorable it may not. Why take such a chance. Check, recheck and check a hundred more times. Dog it out. Read it until you can't see it anymore and then have friends, family and anyone read it. Assume that even the most least important thing is VERY IMPORTANT. If your college asks you a seemingly innocent question - please provide a list of your activities know that it is not a light or fun request.

The hardest part of understanding the application process is this secret - the application process itself is an evaluation tool. Don't kid yourself, how you organize and present your application is being evaluated (BIG TIME). I wrote my essay in blue ball point pen with spelling errors. I don't know that for sure, but well past midnight with no spell checker and my Texas dyslexia means you can count on four to ten spellos no problem. I could get away with that BECAUSE there was no word processors with spell checkers, word counters and built in grammar checkers. You do that now and you are hurt (potentially fatally so). The bar is way up for you (sorry), but so are the capabilities. You send me a spelling mistake now and you are sloppy at worst and lazy at best. Dog it out and tie it down. DO NOT MAKE A SPELLING MISTAKE. There is no place on your college application that may break this rule.

Let's return to this idea of what is being evaluated. I can tell you that in one word - YOU. Students think SAT's, class rank, teacher recommendations and grades are being evaluated. WRONG because everything I just mentioned is a means to an end. Every Assistant Director of Admissions is asking three questions:

* What is this kid really all about (i.e. cut through the BS of the application).

* Can this kid do the work and excel at College ABC?

* Will this kid fit into the environment we are creating at College ABC?

What is this kid really all about?
Try to BS Assistant Directors of Admissions and YOU WILL LOSE. It simply isn't possible. Whatever you think you are getting over on them they are seeing right through in the time it took me to write that sentence. You are an kid. You will apply to college maybe three times in your life (undergrad, masters, Ph.D.), but the people you are sending your application too will see 500 kids within 10 degrees of you this week. Try to put stuff over and you just look foolish, so don't try. Be yourself and if you don't know who that is tell them that. Don't make stuff up and don't add ten activities in your senior year to pad your application. It doesn't work like that. Who you are is your best friend even if you don't like that person much (lol). Cozy up, relax and be confident in your ability to be YOU. If you are a stoner wasteoid find the art in it and present that.

Colleges need stoner wasteoids too. If you are a bookworm nerd cool go with it. If you are an overly dramatic social butterfly that is cool too. DO NOT under any circumstance try to create some new person and get that new person into college. Can't do it, you, no matter who you are, can get into a good college but you must be yourself in everything you do. Do most students take this approach? Not at all, most try desperate to become someone new starting about middle of their junior year when the college panic sets in. Don't panic and don't change who you are since the pattern recognition machines will smell that on you before you get out of the car. I had a special class for these rushing, nervous activity hunters. I called them the "Busy Bee C's". We ranked activities (and most things) from A (best) to E (unacceptable). If you received a "C" from me on your activities it wasn't fatal, but it didn't move your application closer to admit either.

The "A" activities folks, the applications helped by the quality of their activities, usually did no more than 3 things but they did them with passion and well. They were all in, fully invested. The range of those activities at an artsy school like Vassar was amazing. We had the next Anne Hathaway (Vassar Grad), chess champions, musicians that would win grammys (my friend Greg Arnold for example), writers who've churned out best sellers, artist who would have works in major collections inside of ten years and more gifted scholars and people than you can shake a stick at. The point is when we were applying to Vassar no one knew those futures for sure, but the college took a bet on us.

Can this kid do the work at College ABC?
I've said this before and it is worth repeating. Your college application is your first college work. Approach that work like a high school senior and you will be fine, but bested by those who elevate their game. My advice, approach your application as freshman work. Note your sources and bring in sources you know well. If you've read Dewey and you care about education bring Dewey into the conversation of your application. If you are interested in education and you don't know Dewey from The Pillsbury Dough Boy then study up. Today, with the gift of the Internet, there is no reason you can't TEACH YOURSELF what the 5 great thinkers in your interest area think. Do most seniors bring in outside sources to support their essays? NO WAY, most high school seniors approach their application as if it was going to extend their high school career (and it may). The really smart ones (and by the way I was not one of these) walk the talk BEFORE they are on campus. Spend the time, do the work and NEVER use anything you can't talk up, down and sideways. Bringing Dewey in can move you to a new level - up if you know what you are talking about down if you don't. While I strongly recommend using outside sources because so few do, I also tell my students to be able to talk Dewey (or whatever) in their sleep. If you can't do that don't go near Dewey (or whatever). Is the rest of your life worth some tough reading on a weekend or two? Hey if you are going for the stoner thing I can dig it, but know that there are VERY FEW stoner seats available. My advice, ace your boards if you are going for one of the two maybe four stoner seats at the party. Can you walk and talk Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Jimi Hendrix, Seth Grogan? Can you roll all Seth Grogan's post-modernist films into an analogy with Leary's war against the establishment? Cool, you get the stoner seat. If you just want to party then you will not get one of the few stoner seats.

I can hear the thought in many student's head reading this. "Yeah but I am just an average student with an average life." NO YOU ARE NOT because there is no such thing and NEVER run yourself down in a college application even in your mind (especially in your mind). You are the story you tell me. YOU ARE THE STORY YOU TELL ME, so tell me an amazing story in a creative way. Next thought is always, "I can't". Nonsense, you are more capable than you know and now is the perfect time to find reserves you've never tapped but are about to need. If your application doesn't scream, special student with cool friends, great pets and fun to be around then redo it until it does. Your life already has all of what I just mentioned you just have to stop running yourself down and TAKE CREDIT. We are taught to be humble and most times I think trying to find the Zen in things is a good idea, but not in your college application. I am not saying you need ads in Times Square, but I am saying this is your first elevator pitch and you must stick this one or learn the phrase, "would you like fries with that" (not that there is ANYTHING wrong with working for a company whose stock is going crazy as the rest of the economy falls apart, but you can get that gig today you don't need to spend $100K and 4 years to rock the Big Mac).

What is an elevator pitch? When you present business ideas to Venture Capitalists you have to organize your complex business into an elevator pitch - a pitch you can make capturing the full force your opportunity in the time it takes an elevator to travel less than ten stories. That is how much time you have to knock my socks off when I was in Admissions. You have seconds to grab my attention, pull me in and make me your advocate. Be bold, tell your story and rock my admissions world. This is one of those situations where risks for doing something in a dull way FAR EXCEED risks for being bold, confident and amazing.

Will this kid fit into the environment we are creating at College ABC?
Colleges are ever evolving things. This is where the Director gets back involved. He or she is telling his Assistants what kind of class they want. The Director's message to his team comes from many places. During my time at Vassar we wanted to tell male applicants Vassar was an acceptable alternative. We looked for preppies because they brought their brands with them. They created instant legitimacy for the Vassar for Men concept. Brilliant vision and a vision that shaped who was offered admission.

Think of the admissions process as creating a big fun party. You want diversity because if everyone is the same the party will be too dull or too over the top. You want the brains to bounce off the athletes, the geeks to interact with the socialites (to the extent they can) and the stoners to chill everything out. You look for different kinds of students. Hispanic, Japanese, Russian, Iowa, female, male, tennis star, theater dog, published writer, wants to be a doctor, lives for training horses, wants to be a hippie, wants to be a poet, wants to direct film, wants to create sets, doesn't have a clue and obsessively compulsed about career are all seats at the party. What kind of seats is not really known until you see the applicant pool. If you have two students from similar backgrounds with similar scores competing for seats you've already filled...well that is what the wait list is for. Your best defense is to know what you want, know who you are and pitch it as cool, fast and engaging as you can. After that, after you've taken your best shot, you let the chips fall because Karma is Karma.

Short personal story. I applied ED to Hobart Williams Smith and was rejected (my interview was the tipping point and I will write about that disaster soon). Every day of my life since I think God I wasn't offered admission to Hobart. Don't misunderstand. My roommate Hans Keiser went to Hobart and loved it. It just wasn't nearly the right college for me. Vassar was (for a hundred reasons) and I found Vassar purely by serendipity and a great presentation by Dick Moll, Director of Admissions when I attended Vassar. Dick knew Vassar would be perfect for me just like the Assistant Director I met at Hobart knew Hobart would be a disaster. Both were right and I owe my life to each of them. Karma is Karma.

Good luck and don't forget I help students all the time by reviewing their essays and making specific recommendations. If you would like me to review your essay, please email it in Word format (or in the body of the email) to martinsellingzoe (at) aol (dot) com.

Martin