All in Communications

Cater To Who Matters - Not To Everyone Else

Cater To Who Matters - Not To Everyone Else

Omer Abdullah
Strategy, Leadership, Personal Codes, Careers, Entrepreneurship, Communications, Creativity, Marketing, Aspirations, Life

I’m reading a book called “Coal Black Mornings” by Brett Anderson, the lead singer and founder of the British band, Suede, which had their heyday in the BritPop era of the 1990s through early 2000s.

(Suede is in my Top Five bands of all time, but while popular in Britain, they’ve been largely ignored in the US. If you haven’t heard of them, they’re absolutely worth checking out - start with the first two albums.)

There’s a passage in the book where he talks about his song writing process, and writes:

Engage And Entertain (Or It's Always Better to Pull Than Push)

Engage And Entertain (Or It's Always Better to Pull Than Push)

Omer Abdullah
Sales, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Communications

The advent of recording technology (from the cassette tape to the VCR to the current digital formats) as well as the ability to access audio-visual entertainment on demand has allowed us to do the one thing that marketers hate:

Skip their ads.

For the most part, you don’t have to sit through a 15, 30 or 60 second ad just to get to the content you’re actually there for. You just hit the forward button and presto! No marketing message, no advertiser trying to sell you something.

When It's Too Soon To Quit...

When It's Too Soon To Quit...

Omer Abdullah
Aspirations, Careers, Communications, Entrepreneurship, Investment Banking, Leadership, Life, Personal Codes, Private Equity, Strategy, Sales

In my last post, I talked about the thought process we (should) go through when deciding if it’s time to quit what we’re doing.

While there were multiple idea threads that inspired that post, one of them was an article by Mariam Naficy, the Founder and CEO of Minted, an online design marketplace. In that article, Mariam talked about how she raised a small seed round from friends and family and then launched the business, originally intending it to be a lifestyle business. And then:

Everyone Has A Platform (Part 1)

Everyone Has A Platform (Part 1)

Omer Abdullah
Aspirations, Careers, Communications, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Life, Marketing, Personal Codes

The best thing about technology today is that everyone has a platform.

It doesn’t matter whether our preferred medium is in written, audio or visual form, we have access to all the technology we need to create, publish, broadcast and market our message to anyone, whether they’re in our hometown or all the way across the other side of the globe.

When We Rush To Judgement

When We Rush To Judgement

Omer Abdullah
Communications, Entrepreneurship, Careers, Leadership, Life, Personal Codes, Teams

The more time you spend on social media, the more you see examples of it.

Someone posts a video excerpt of an altercation, or footage of someone acting a way we don’t agree with, or an article about someone making statements that don’t resonate with what we believe in.

And our tendency, our natural instinct, is to react. To make our judgement. And then to share that judgement with someone else, and someone else, and someone else. Because the emotion of the moment is hard to get past, hard to get over.

Own The Message

Own The Message

Omer Abdullah
Careers, Communications, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Management Consulting, Life, Marketing, Sales

Back in my early consulting days, I was asked to give a presentation to a prospective client and was handed a deck to present. My instructions were to go through the material, get comfortable with the content and then do a run-through with the partner with whom I’d be doing the pitch.

The content was right in my sweet spot, so I was pretty comfortable with the key messages that we needed to get across. But some of the material in the deck didn’t sit well with me.

When You’re Sick of Fitting In...

When You’re Sick of Fitting In...

Omer Abdullah
Communications, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Life, Marketing, Strategy

“People want companies and the world around them to align to their values, their goals, their needs, their interests. People want to find where they belong. They’re sick of fitting in.” Chris Brogan

We’re in a very different age from the one I grew up in. Back then, consumer brands exhibited personalities along parameters that were, generally speaking, non-controversial. It was important to offend no-one and “to stand out” was to do so along ‘conventional’ lines (sexy was cool but in a heterosexual way; models were never plus-size; family units started with a man and a woman, etc.).

3 Reasons This Post Will Change Your Life (Disclaimer: It Won't)

3 Reasons This Post Will Change Your Life (Disclaimer: It Won't)

Omer Abdullah
Aspirations, Careers, Communications, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Life, Marketing, Personal Codes

Yes, that title is clickbait. (Partially anyway.)

A title that is designed to lure you in and make you read what I’ve written.

Because it promises you salvation (or resolution or clarity or closure) in some form. Because it suggests that that salvation will come from a few discrete steps. Because it suggests that salvation is going to be easy (implicitly anyway).

I’m Not Him

I’m Not Him

Omer Abdullah
Communications, Life, Personal Codes, Sales, Teams, Marketing

A small portion of the folks who follow me on Twitter think I’m Omar Abdullah, the former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. I know this because every so often they’ll Direct Message me with news about developments in Kashmir (usually holding me accountable for it), or they’ll post an article about some Kashmir related issue and tag me along with the Prime Minister of India and other senior South Asian politicians.

It doesn’t happen a lot but it’s happened enough that I posted a PSA in Twitter that I wasn’t him and if you were following me for my views on Kashmir, you’d be sorely disappointed.

You're Not Perfect. That's OK.

You're Not Perfect. That's OK.

Omer Abdullah
Careers, Communications, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Life, Personal Codes, Teams

“We love seeing raw truth and openness in other people, but we’re afraid to let them see it in us.” (Brene Brown)

There’s an illusion in the business world that we cannot expose our flaws to anyone around us - not our colleagues, our clients and certainly not our bosses. The fear is, of course, that we will be judged, perceived as someone who is fundamentally flawed and, accordingly, cast off to career obscurity.

It’s an illusion that becomes all the more exacerbated at the management level. I can’t afford to show any weakness. I have to always impress that I know everything. I can never say ‘I don’t know’.

When You Need A Burning Platform

When You Need A Burning Platform

Omer Abdullah
Careers, Communications, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Life, Personal Codes, Marketing, Sales, Strategy, Teams

Change doesn’t tend to come easily to most of us.

For the most part, we don’t typically choose to change. More often, change - or at the very least, the need for it - is thrust upon us due to some exterior event, shift or development. When profits are severely impacted, when a competitor introduces a revolutionary new product or when an external environmental shift occurs, shifting the steady state we’ve become so comfortable with.

The Lemon Loaf Incident

The Lemon Loaf Incident

Omer Abdullah
Personal Codes, Teams, Life, Communications

Alright, let me start by saying that I’m wary of saying that how someone partakes of a lemon loaf directly reflects what kind of a person they are.

I do, however, think that how one partakes of a lemon loaf - and specifically an iced lemon loaf - suggests something about them (in conjunction with other data points as well, of course).

Don't Believe The Hype

Don't Believe The Hype

Omer Abdullah
Teams, Leadership, Life, Careers, Entrepreneurship, Communications, Personal Codes

To be human is to be complex. It means we aren’t one thing. We’re multi-faceted.

For example, that sports star that won that coveted trophy actually isn’t perfect. She’s made (and will continue to make) plenty of mistakes along the way.

And that team that finished in second place, the one whose faults are being picked apart by all critics? Well, they still played better than all the other teams in the league - except for one.

When AOL Tanked (Or Paying Attention To The Right Metrics)

When AOL Tanked (Or Paying Attention To The Right Metrics)

Omer Abdullah
Communications, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Life, Marketing, Private Equity, Strategy, Sales

Sometime between late Spring and early Fall, 1996, AOL’s stock fell from a high of $70 all the way down to $24.

These were the early days of the internet. The space was booming: startups were popping up everywhere, investors’ ears were perking up, and the big, established players were taking notice and/or beginning to get involved.

"It’s Like A Pizza..."

"It’s Like A Pizza..."

Omer Abdullah
Careers, Communications, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Life, Management Consulting, Personal Codes, Strategy, Teams

Many years ago, I worked with a senior consulting partner who liked to talk in puzzles. Instead of giving us specific marching orders, he’d talk around the issues and then ask us to put together a deck for his review.

For example, as we’d talk through a proposal we were working on, he’d talk about the client situation, the range of issues they were facing as well…

The Thing About Politics...

The Thing About Politics...

Omer Abdullah
Communications, Sales, Investment Banking, Life, Entrepreneurship, Teams, Personal Codes, Careers, Leadership, Management Consulting, Strategy

…Is that there really isn’t any such thing.

In popularity contests of any significance (where a sizable population is asked for its endorsement of an individual or a subject or an action), the landslide win is not a common occurrence. More prevalent (in my admittedly unscientific assessment) is the close race, where the margin of victory is in single digit percentage points.

The Thing About Mandates...

The Thing About Mandates...

Omer Abdullah
Strategy, Management Consulting, Entrepreneurship, Communications, Life, Marketing, Aspirations, Personal Codes, Leadership, Careers

…Is that there really isn’t any such thing.

In popularity contests of any significance (where a sizable population is asked for its endorsement of an individual or a subject or an action), the landslide win is not a common occurrence. More prevalent (in my admittedly unscientific assessment) is the close race, where the margin of victory is in single digit percentage points.

No One Likes Surprises

No One Likes Surprises

Omer Abdullah
Careers, Communications, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Life, Management Consulting, Personal Codes, Marketing, Sales, Strategy, Teams

When it comes to the work we do, no one likes surprises.

It doesn’t matter which part of the organization you sit in - client management, operations, marketing or elsewhere - one of the fundamental tenets of corporate performance is predictability. We want to know what’s happening, why and, if necessary, what we need to do about it.

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