Somehow I love this show…this is the promo for a television version of the famous radio show…it will air this week on BBC America.

Newt Gingrich has surged to the top of many polls in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, despite being married three times. Herman Cain’s campaign ultimately collapsed after allegations of sexual misconduct and then allegations of infidelity.

How much should a candidate’s private life affects his public service?

Our ideas about marriage in the USA are fundamentally changing at lightening speed. Even with those changes I believe there are still some hard fast guidelines for candidates seeking the presidency.

Number one, I think all candidates must be married. We are a long way away from handing over the government to a single man or woman.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but marriage matters much more here than it does in other country. Look at this example in supposedly conservative Great Britain.

Ed Miliband married the mother of his two children in May, less than a year after becoming the leader of the Labor Party. Miliband, who is likely to run for prime minister in the next election, previously responded to criticism about cohabiting by saying he was “too busy” to get married. Good one Ed.

Here in America marriage rates have fallen dramatically however people’s attitudes about what counts as a family and what they expect from their political leaders are still basically conservative.

It doesn’t even have to be a candidate’s first marriage. A divorce, perhaps even two, is not a problem.

America’s divorce rate has sky rocketed to a level where nearly half of all marriages ended in divorce, and Americans’ attitudes began to change. In 1980, Ronald Reagan became the first person to be elected president who had divorced and remarried. If Gingrich were to win the Republican nomination, he would be the fifth major-party nominee to have been divorced and remarried, following Reagan, Bob Dole, John Kerry and John McCain.

Asked about his family life and how it reflected on him as a candidate, Gingrich said: “I’ve made mistakes at times; I’ve had to go to God for forgiveness; I’ve had to seek reconciliation.”

Obviously the most important guideline is, don’t have an affair.

Extramarital affairs, especially those uncovered in the course of a campaign, are still a problem with American voters. Cain, who was polling well in the GOP race this fall, saw his campaign crash and burn because of sexual harassment allegations.

After you are in office you may survive a “sex” scandal…after all look at Bill Clinton for example.He could run for office today and win.

In the General Social Survey, a national poll of adults conducted biennially by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, the percentage of Americans who responded that it is “always wrong” for a married person to have sex with someone other than his or her spouse rose from 73 percent in 1991 to 81 percent in 2008.

America seems to moving away from the old standard of lifelong monogamy to a new one of serial monogamy. Being married remains important, but we are allowed, even expected, to move from one marriage to another. However, we are supposed to remain sexually faithful to whomever we are married to at the time.

What we accept from our politicians in their personal lives is inconsistent with how our own personal lives work. I want our President to be….well Presidential. The contradictions reflect our difficulty in coming to terms with the great changes in sex and marriage since our parents’ and grandparents’ generations. We value marriage, but it looks like today we value the right to pursue personal happiness a bit more.

What do you think?

Ilya Pozin recently wrote this for Inc. Online and I began to worry…I need to focus! If you have more important things to focus on than, um, focusing get back on track with these tips.

“We all probably don’t want to admit it but we love distractions. In fact, just like monkeys, you get a shot of dopamine every time something pulls you in another direction. Why do you think you check your email so much?”

Want to be more productive and get your focus back? There are no secret tricks here… do one thing at a time. Stop multitasking—it’s just another form of distraction.

Easier said than done, I know.

Recently Ilya sat down with Tony Wong, a project management blackbelt whose client list includes Toyota, Honda, and Disney, to name a few. He’s an expert in keeping people on task.

Here are his tips for staying productive:

1) Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks.
Writing “launch company website” at the top of your to-do list is a sure way to make sure you never get it done. Break down the work into smaller and smaller chunks until you have specific tasks that can be accomplished in a few hours or less: Sketch a wireframe, outline an introduction for the homepage video, etc. That’s how you set goals and actually succeed in crossing them off your list.

2) Stop multi-tasking.
No, seriously—stop. Switching from task to task quickly does not work. In fact, changing tasks more than 10 times in a day makes you dumber than being stoned. When you’re stoned, your IQ drops by five points. When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women). 

3) Be militant about eliminating distractions.
Lock your door, put a sign up, turn off your phone, texts, email, and instant messaging. In fact, if you know you may sneak a peek at your email, set it to offline mode, or even turn off your Internet connection. Go to a quiet area and focus on completing one task.

4) Schedule your email.
Pick two or three times during the day when you’re going to use your email. Checking your email constantly throughout the day creates a ton of noise and kills your productivity.

5) Use the phone.
Email isn’t meant for conversations. Don’t reply more than twice to an email. Pick up the phone instead. 

6) Work on your own agenda.
Don’t let something else set your day. Most people go right to their emails and start freaking out. You will end up at inbox-zero, but accomplish nothing. After you wake up, drink water so you rehydrate, eat a good breakfast to replenish your glucose, then set prioritized goals for the rest of your day. 

7) Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals.
Your brain uses up more glucose than any other bodily activity. Typically you will have spent most of it after 60-90 minutes. (That’s why you feel so burned out after super long meetings.) So take a break: Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do something completely different to recharge. And yes, that means you need an extra hour for breaks, not including lunch, so if you’re required to get eight hours of work done each day, plan to be there for 9.5-10 hours.
 

Andrea Jung, the longest serving female CEO at a major American corporation, will soon be out of a job. It was announced today that Avon Products is launching an executive search to replace its 12-year chairman and chief. Once found, Jung will step aside.

The Wall Street Journal today notes that it is very unusual for a company to publicize a CEO search while the current one remains, but also points out that the 125-year-old beauty company has seen its stock drop by 45% this year. She will remain and help the board recruit her replacement next year.

While 2011 started off well for Avon, as Jung cheered first-quarter profit that nearly tripled from a year ago and a growing independent sales force of 6.5 million representatives, a third quarter earnings report said sales targets would be unattainable and admitted two ongoing SEC inquiries as problematic.

The three-year probe into an alleged bribery of foreign officials has already caused the firing of four Avon executives and increased investor concern. When approached earlier this year, Jung wouldn’t comment on the matter.

I am always curious about these issues. Having lived all over the world and knowing the types of markets where AVON is trying to expand, I am sure that bribery is part of the everyday way to do business in some of those countries at very high levels. It is a reality that many US corporations face abroad.

This year has shaken up the small percentage 3% of women in the high-powered executive ranks. Yahoo‘s Carol Bartz was fired over the phone just months ago, on the same day that Sallie Krawcheck left her post at Bank of America. Meanwhile, IBM hired its first female chief, Ginni Rometty, in its 100-year history, and Meg Whitman returned to the spotlight as CEO of HP.

Jung, 53, has been a longtime champion of women’s empowerment, often emphasizing Avon’s role in offering entrepreneurial employment opportunities to the 95% female reps who sell its products. She is also one of the few female faces on the boards of Apple and General Electric. She was ranked at No. 64 this year on the FORBES list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.

As soon as I saw the new Morman advertising on the air it hit me…these ads could benefit Mitt Romney. It seems I am not the only one who thought about them in this light. Of course I am in marketing and a bit cynical too.

A recent New York Times articles hints the “Mormon Ad” campaign is a tactic to help elect Mitt Romney to the White House. The ad campaign was going strong before the election cycle and the Latter-day Saint Church is pulling commercials from primary states.

The ads feature Latter-day Saints from diverse backgrounds surfing, raising children and singing. .

What is the campaign really about?. According to the New York Times, Americans describe Mormons as cultish, sexist and controlling.

I think this campaign seeks to portray Mormons as typical, normal, family people. With 4 in 10 Americans saying they would not vote for a Mormon President the campaign would certainly help their image. What do you think?

adidas Originals is launching the first Augmented Reality experience in footwear. The adidas Originals AR Game Pack is a set of 5 shoes, each printed with an AR code on the tongue.

When you hold the code in front of your webcam, you’ll gain access to a virtual version of the adidas Originals Neighborhood. Each month between February and April, we’ll launch a new interactive game within the Neighborhood and your shoe will be the game controller. The experience launches on February 10th at http://www.adidas.com/originals

Brandon Griggs of CNN wrote a great article about the woman behind Apple’s icons.

I certainly did not know her name but thanks to Griggs I now know her work which still influences how we interact with our computers today.

She is Susan Kare, and she designed fonts and icons for Apple’s original Macintosh, including the little trash can for discarding files and the computer with a smiling face. In that way, Kare helped people such as Steve Jobs pioneer the transition from controlling computers via text to the icon-based interfaces now common on touchscreen devices.

Kare had a fine-arts background when a friend recruited her to join Apple in 1982. For the Mac, Kare designed the first font whose letters were spaced proportionally – in other words, accounting for the varying width of ”i” and “m” instead of just fitting letters into identical blocks regardless of size, which left gaps in between. As a graphic artist I am pleased about that but never knew who was behind what seems to be a simple idea unless you are obsessed with typography like I am.

Because an application for designing icons on Macintosh screens hadn’t been coded yet, Kare went to an art-supply store and bought a sketchbook so she could begin playing around with ideas. In those pages she created the casual prototypes of a new, radically user-friendly face of computing — each square of graph paper representing a pixel on the screen.”

After leaving Apple Kare designed icons and products for Microsoft’s Windows, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Facebook’s Gifts program, which encouraged users to send each other virtual birthday cakes, flowers and other amorphous treats.

After years of semi-obscurity, Kare has been getting some renewed attention lately. She just published an art book of 80 of her favorite icons created between 1983 and 2011. Her work with Apple is also cited in Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Steve Jobs, currently the top-selling nonfiction book in the country.

“She and Jobs hit it off because they shared an instinct for simplicity along with a desire to make the Mac whimsical,” Isaacson wrote.

In keeping with his rep as a perfectionist micromanager, Jobs stopped by to check on Kare’s work almost every day. When she first named her Mac fonts after stops on the Main Line commuter train in her native Philadelphia, Jobs encouraged her to think bigger.

“They ought to be world-class cities!” he complained, according to the book, Kare’s fonts were soon renamed after such cultural capitals as San Francisco, London and Venice.

There is a new reality show on Bravo TV called the Headhuntress. While most reality shows are watched for pure entertainment or perhaps I should say watched out of morbid curiosity this show actually offers some sound job hunting advice, especially during these tough economic times.

Here are ten tips that the Headhuntress recommends on her website.

1. Your resume is your calling card. Trim It Down, Tone It Up, Get It In Shape.

The Headhuntress says: Your resume is not your life story. It is a tool to get you the interview. If something isn’t absolutely essential to the role you are applying for, take it off of your resume. Adjust your points to fit the position you are applying for. Grab the requirements and experience directly from the job description and use strong verbs “created”, “managed”, “produced” etc. to prove you’ve got exactly the chops they are looking for.

2. Make an appointment with yourself.

The Headhuntress says: Even a perfect resume isn’t any good if it never gets seen. Make an appointment with yourself to send out at least two resumes every day. I know what you are thinking. Some days you won’t feel like it. But it will become a habit over time if you keep at it. And I promise you will be motivated when you see your phone ringing off the hook.

3. Go Google yourself. Seriously.

The Headhuntress says: If you haven’t done a search on yourself in the last 30 days to see what comes up, prepare for an ambush. I guarantee the person sitting across the interview table knows all about that Facebook status you posted at 2am last Saturday. If you can help it, keep your personal business off of the internet. And don’t leave anything to chance — manage your online rep like it’s your job. (Because it is.)

4. Have a great elevator pitch.

The Headhuntress says: An elevator pitch is the 30 second personal pitch that tells someone who you are and what kind of position you are looking for. Polish this pitch so you can recite it anytime, anywhere. You never know when you may need it. We use this approach everyday in advertising.

5. Dress the part.

The Headhuntress says: If you’ve got an interview, do yourself a favor and don’t screw it up by “going sexy” unless that is expressly required for the position. (Here’s a hint: it’s not.) Dress for the job you WANT. They’ll develop their impression of you within minutes of you walking in, so DON’T give them any opportunity to write you off before you’ve finished your 30 second elevator pitch.

6. Get to know the Spin Cycle.

The Headhuntress says: Do you have some professional dirty laundry? Don’t hide it. Whether you have worked in the adult entertainment industry or were fired for a personal Tweet… Address these things before they find out about it so you can spin it to your advantage. What should you keep to yourself? Physical or mental illnesses, as long as it the situation is resolved and won’t affect performance, is none of their business and beside the point.

7. Get to work… on building your network.

The Headhuntress says: It is true that amazing jobs can be won through the standard application process. But it can also be about who you know. 75% of people find a job through someone they know. Pay attention to building an outstanding reputation not only with potential employers, but also with EVERYONE you work with now or have ever met…(what, you didn’t guess that your workout buddy’s uncle was a hiring manager at Facebook?) Start combing your “Happy Holidays” list – I guarantee that you know someone who could be the magic link in your career.

8. You’ve got the technology, use it.

The Headhuntress says: You know that smart phone in your pocket? It is a lethal weapon against other job-seekers competing for the positions you want. Speed and response are some of the most powerful tools recruiters (and YOU) have for scouting career opportunities. Emails, Job listing feeds, Linked In, even job alerts on Twitter…there is no excuse not to use them. Employers are posting jobs online and assessing applicants often within hours. Get online and get ready!

9. Follow up, but make it appropriate.

The Headhuntress says: Follow up after a conversation or an interview but don’t become a nuisance or they will rename you “Crazy – Don’t Answer” on their caller ID. You do want to stay on their radar, but be careful not to be too persistent. It shows them you are selfish and don’t respect their time. The casual follow up is good form. Turning into a stalker is not.

10. Excuse Me? Drop the excuses.

The Headhuntress says: I hear the same excuses all the time: “I CAN’T get a job because the market is so hard,” Excuses are great…if you want to have exactly the situation you currently have. But you know what? I just placed someone in your dream role. The jobs are OUT THERE if you are willing to work for them. “I can’t” may be doing a great job protecting your ego, but ignoring the hard truth about what YOU are doing wrong will prevent you from having the career that will change your whole life.