Driving Mad
When my friend Dave's daughter asked for permission to get a tattoo, he responded with "Sure. As long as it works like one of those MAD fold-ins." His point-and it was brilliant-was that as a person ages, she or he mysteriously accumulates extra skin. And if the tattoo that she got when she was young could later be adjusted by folding ... I think you get the picture. Dave's daughter sure did. By the way, Dave's not his real name. The gentleman in question is a very successful trucker. He's the founder and owner of one of the countires fastest-growing for-hire carriers. He and I were at a meeting with other people from the industry when he mentioned that tattoo thing. Everybody around the table agreed he was a genius and what's not amazing at all is they all knew what a MAD fold-in is. (For the record, the fold-in is the inside back cover of MAD magazine designed so that when you crease it properly the original cartoon and words are rearranged and become something related but funny. Hillary Clinton, creased, might turn into Bill and the words change from President to Pest.) What some of them didn't know is that MAD, born in 1952, is thriving. And it has barely changed. MAD still carries Spy vs Spy cartoons, movie satires that are often more entertaining than the movies themselves, and repeated skewerings of anybody who runs for public office. As for the theme of the magazine, I see it this way. As soon as Dave mentioned the fold-in, I knew he was a businessman you could trust. If his world view was brought into focus by the satirical geniuses at MAD, Dave's B.S. radar would be set on 10. As a kid, MAD was like a Bible to me more than the Bible was. As a magazine editor, I see MAD standing out as a hale survivor among literally thousands of other publications that have tried and failed over the years to move from one generation of readers to the next. Most, just like the majority of business startups, fail. As a business magazine editor, I take MAD's longevity very seriously. For one thing, MAD has always put its readers (customers) first. MAD, like any decent publication, challenges its readers but never insults them. For most of its life, MAD carried no advertising. It was only after the publishers decided to improve the quality of the paper; add color and make the magazine more physically durable that they started selling ad pages. Even there, customers are kings. MAD ads most of which are for gamers and downloaders, and are as pertinent to the readers as is the rest of the magazine. MAD hasn't tried to fix something when it weren't broke. There's absolutely no evidence that the 14-year-old boy of today is any less snarky, cynical or bored as the 14-yearold of 1968. He has the same gnat-like attention span for school but Einstein-ish level of concentration when it comes to finding a movie's dirty parts. Sticking with something good works in your biz, too. See Steve Macleod's story on page 29 about Siemens family. Reliable and trustworthy year-in-year-out customer service. The only way MAD has changed-besides the improved color and paper stock-is that the stories are a tad racier and thanks to the miracles of digital printing and satellite technology, the movie satires are published the very same week as the movies appear in theatres. It's old-fashioned on-time print journalism, done at new-fashioned speeds. For a trucking example of a company giving great customer service with near-NASA efficiency, read Marco Beghetto's ATS profile on page 45. I'm not suggesting you stop reading Today's Trucking in favor of MAD. I suggest you do both. Who knows where your next great business idea is going to come from? Me, I'm still trying to get our ad department to the page facing this one to work like a fold-in.