November 21, 2009
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Why John Zogby Is Optimistic About the Future
Q&A with Mary Wells
MARY: John, I sent out a lot of copies of your book, The Way We'll Be, because a lot of the people that I know were in advertising or marketing or the research business. And everybody is crazy about it. You must be selling lots and lots of them.
JOHN: It's doing very well, but to hear that from you is better than the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. You are a great lady and this is an honor for me.
MARY: Oh, thank you. But the thing about the book that is so wonderful is that it's fun. I've read similar books on the subject and have spent a lot of time with pollsters and researchers. But this is the first time I think that I've read a lot of really revealing information that's useful and at the same time was so entertaining. You have made it very interesting to read. It's a terrific book.
JOHN: Well, thank you.
MARY: How did you put it together?
JOHN: I set out to write a far different book and one that was not necessarily going to be so upbeat. In fact, I thought that it was going to be about how the American dream changed, how people moved away from the drive to succeed or the desire to acquire and were essentially giving up. And basically, the more I delved into the numbers and asked more questions, a completely different picture emerged, a picture of a movement toward living within limits, embracing diversity, looking inward and demanding authenticity. I realized that we had something different here. The generation now rising to power is fundamentally different in its aspirations and expectations from "the Greatest Generation" that's now fading into the sunset. We're still an optimistic people, but what the numbers and data told me, as I really started researching this book, is that in a real and deep way we've changed the terms of what "optimism" entails, and have come to accept and even embrace our membership in and our responsibilities to the global community. And as it turns out today, with the stock market being the way it is, with the general malaise in the country regarding our political system, an upbeat, optimistic book is connecting with people.
MARY: I would think so because it's so gloomy out there. But tell me, first of all, how did you decide demographically who you were going to talk to? Did you plan it in terms of people from different parts of the country? Or doesn't that matter?
JOHN: These are regular polls that we conduct all the time on a nationwide basis, going back 16, 17 years. We would add questions to our regular nationwide samples. But I cut my eyeteeth in this business in the 1980s doing lots of local and regional polls, and always took the opportunity when I had a local government client or a sheriff or a product that was in a regional market, to ask some of my own questions, to feel that I got to dig down a whole lot deeper by going beyond nationwide circles. I could get down deep into locales and regions and really get at people where they were on their most intimate level.
MARY: That really comes through and that's why the book is so personal and funny and touching. Of course, everybody refers to you as the rock star of public opinion. Very Short List said that. When you talked to people, were you constantly surprised? Do people, individually, surprise you when you're talking to them?
JOHN: They do. They do.
To read the rest of the Q&A, please visit: www.wowowow.com
Mary Wells, legendary entrepreneur, broke the glass ceiling back in the Seventies when she founded the ad and marketing agency, Wells Rich Greene. She was so far ahead of her time that the idea of a woman succeeding in a man's world didn't even have a name. But Mary gave a name to everything.
Her agency created the "I Love New York" campaign and Alka Seltzer's "Plop Plop Fizz Fizz." It was Mary who famously painted the Braniff airplanes in bright colors, there by smashing the competition.
She was the first female CEO to take a company public and on to the New York Stock Exchange. She is in the Advertising Hall of Fame and The One Club's Creative Hall of Fame. Ad Age said: "She is advertising's most widely publicized symbol of glamour, success, wealth, brains and beauty."
She is the widow of Harding Lawrence. With her family, she has lived and worked in New York, Dallas, London, Cap Ferrat France, Mexico and Brazil. Her home is now on the island of Mustique and she travels in her glamorous Feadship "Strangelove." She wrote a memoir, A Big Life -- In Advertising, and is busy on another book, develops real estate and helps women with problems to overcome them. She sees this website as a rare and exciting place to meet and talk to women who know the answersÂ… "a place to turn up the heat and the savvy in your life and to accelerate your successes."
(9/30/2008)
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