One of the things our customers get from us is the truth. At times, this puts us in a delicate position of having to disagree with something they might feel strongly about, or cause us to recommend something they haven’t thought of. I think it’s one of our greatest strengths: we never sit down at the table to play the role of the “Yes Man”. I was reminded of this when I heard this story about one of America’s great space heroes, Max Faget.

Paraphrasing commentator Andrew Chaiken, on NPR:

Every great achievement in space begins in the mind of an engineer on Earth. Last week, SpaceShipOne captured the $10 million X Prize because of some brilliant out-of-the-box thinking by its designer, Burt Rutan. More than 40 years ago, NASA’s brilliant out-of-the-box thinker was a small, wiry engineer named Max Faget. He was never a household name, even at the height of the space race. But his genius was crucial to NASA’s space triumphs.

In 1958, aerospace engineers were struggling with the biggest problem of space flight: protecting the craft and the astronauts from intense heat of re-entry. It would have to withstand temperatures hotter than the surface of the Sun, if anyone could figure out how to build such a craft. Most scientists favored a sleek needlenose design to minimize air resistance. But Faget had a different idea. He had heard researcher Harvey Allen talk about a ship with a blunt shape, allowing it to slam into the atmosphere, creating a shock wave that would deflect most of the heat away from the spacecraft. Allen’s idea went completely against conventional wisdom, but Faget knew it was right.

When the experts gathered for a conference in March, 1958 to discuss needlenose designs, they got an earful from Max Faget.

“You’re all wrong,” Faget said. “If you’re serious about putting a man in space anytime soon, a blunt body is the only way to go.” His outspokenness helped convince the skeptics and he designed the spacecraft for project Mercury with a blunt heatsheild. It was anything but sleek. But Faget’s Mercury capsule successfully carried the first American astronauts into space, inlcuding Alan Shepard, John Glenn, and Gordon Cooper. Faget went on to design the Apollo command module that carried astronauts from the Earth to the Moon and back. He even led the early design of the reusable space shuttle. But Mercury was always his proudest accomplishment.

Max Faget, Designer of the Mercury capsule and Apollo command module and clearly nobody’s “Yes Man”, died on Saturday at the age of 83. Here’s to you, Max.

Following just on the heels of the war on terrorism, the rising cost of health care is likely the top hot-button topic for this election. (That is, of course, unless you’re talking to someone who doesn’t care who’s elected, as long as it’s not George Bush.) For the rest of us, we’re probably going to be considering the impact on our personal lives when we make a voting decision and, with an estimated 27 million people without health coverage, I suspect this issue will be a driving factor.

The real question then, is which plan has a better chance of providing the promised coverage without hindering freedom? Strangely, even after spending considerable time trying to determine the specifics of the Kerry plan, I wasn’t able to find anything more specific than “We have a plan.” Personally, I think Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s), which were a part of the Medicare reform and are already a reality, are the better bet. In a nutshell, here’s how they work:

First, you buy a high-deductible ($2,500 – $5,000) insurance policy. Since your deductible is higher than most other plans, your premiums should be considerably less. Then you put tax-free money (up to $5,150 for families) into your Health Savings Account. When you go to the doctor, the payment for the visit comes out of this account. If you exhaust the entire deductible, the insurance kicks in and picks up 100% of the tab. (This provides the “safety net” of catastrophic insurance.) If you don’t use all of the money in the account, it rolls over to the following year. The money can be used for medical purposes at any time without tax. Once you hit 65, you can begin withdrawing the money for retirement. Since you have complete control over how this money is spent and get to keep the remainder, the theory is that you’ll become a wiser consumer (looking for better prices, buying generic medicine, etc.)

You can get more information about HSA’s at the HSA Insider.

I just spent the last two days at the first-ever Exact Excellence User Conference, an event aimed at advancing the best practices for the growing field of e-mail marketing. The conference covered a variety of issues related to the subject, including deliverability, dynamic content, list building and segmentation, small- and medium-size business success stories, and more. I co-chaired a discussion titled “Creative Best Practices for Email Marketing”, which was essentially a primer and prod to the industry to do a better job crafting their messages.

One of the primary benefits of e-mail is also one of its chief problems: it’s too easy. Because it’s so easy to create and send a message, the creators don’t spend enough time sweating the details. Far more than the subject line, we need to be concerned with the content and copy, headlines, the images used, the emotion of the piece. I think people forget that the final product will be a marketing message designed to communicate something about your product and company. The same care and caution that goes into crafting other marketing messages should be (but – sadly – often isn’t) apparent.

The keynote address was given by Seth Godin (pictured above with me), author of several books including “Permission Marketing”, “Purple Cow”, and “Free Prize Inside”. Seth is arguably a marketing genius, but I think the cover of Purple Cow describes him best: “Perhaps the most intuitive marketer on the planet” (or something like that.) The point is, Seth has a grasp of what feels right, and it’s a simple litmus test we should be applying to all marketing communications.

As for e-mail, Seth points out that every marketing message you send to your list should be anticipated, personal, and relevant. And, like a purple cow, it should be remarkable. If it’s not worth remarking about, why would anyone feel compelled to either act on your message or pass the information along?

I received this from my brother-in-law today and couldn’t resist sharing it…

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

She rolled her eyes and said, “You must be a Republican.”

“I am, how did you know?”

“Well,” she answered, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.”

The man smiled and responded, “You must be a Democrat.”

“I am,” replied the balloonist. “How did you know?”

“Well,” he said, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You’ve risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but, somehow, now it’s my fault.”

It is with some degree of sadness that I report the 2004 Fookarwie has officially come to an end, with Wandering Hairy Turkey declared Chief.

The event was the same successful outing as normal, though I have to say that it seemed a little less raucous than normal. (This could be related to any number of causes… we’re all getting older, some of us are drinking less, and some of us were preoccuppied with other issues. It could also be due to the absence of Duke, Duke Goose. It’s hard to say.)

Driving Three Iron became the first-ever Fookin’ Hold ‘Em Champion, due to his amazingly inexpressive poker face. To be truly honest, he hardly ever had cards worth a damn, but he did have ’em when he needed ’em. Well done.