| Number 109 | March 9, 2001 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, Thank you to those of you who sent in the names of potential new subscribers, and to those of you who will be doing it when you get around to it. It is much appreciated. Please feel free to send me unsolicited comments. Thanks to those of you who shared your interesting contacts with Target around schools and such. I enjoy hearing about them, and who knows when some parts of these stories might appear in print? Thanks! This week you'll see a piece entitled "The World of Advertising," which I fully intend to be Part 1 of an occasional series. Advertising, marketing, hype, commercialization – whatever you want to call it, our capacity for meaningful human interaction is one of the casualties of the increasing "billboardization" of America and the rest of the Market. I mean, the rest of the world. Their influence has had a profound impact on the nature of our society, about which I will be writing one of these days. For now, I offer a couple of hints as to the mind of the marketer. Next week, a cornucopia of examples of the consequences of our fixation on tax cuts. See you then! Nygaard |
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Websites of the Week: School Shootings, Safety, Racism, Etc. |
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News reports of school shootings like the recent one in Santee, California, understandably make many parents and children nervous. Since fear is such a big part of the lives of modern Americans, it is well worth our time to examine a little more closely the objects of our fears. Kids and random violence, now there's a potent combination. Long-time readers of Nygaard Notes are aware that the actual chances of any child meeting a violent death at school is about the same as their chance of being struck by lightning. I pointed this out in Nygaard Notes #66, "Kids Are Safe in Our Schools." This might be a good time to review those comments. For even more context on schoolyard violence and how we understand it, I recommend an excellent organization called the Justice Policy Institute. They published a study last April (upon which NN #66 was largely based) called "School House Hype: Two Years Later." Find that study at http://www.cjcj.org/ and click on the link "America's Schools are Generally Safe." For all Notes readers, but especially for "white" ones, I recommend visiting the website of the daily news publication called "AlterNet" http://www.alternet.org/ and clicking on an essay by Tim Wise called "School Shootings and White Denial." Readers who are concerned about racism -- all of you, I hope -- and who are not familiar with the work of Mr. Wise, a Nashville-based anti-racist educator and organizer, would do well to go a step further and visit his homepage on the ZNet site at http://www.zmag.org/bios/homepage.cfm?authorID=96 |
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A tremendously important ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on February 21st -- "University of Alabama Board of Trustees vs. Garrett" -- got far less attention in the corporate press than it deserved. As reported in the March 10th issue of Access Press newspaper (Shameless Plug Alert: this is the paper I am editing at the moment) the Supreme Court ruled that state employees with disabilities cannot sue their state governments for monetary damages under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Although the federal courts can still order states to stop or to change unfair or discriminatory policies and practices, they cannot award monetary damages to people who have suffered under those policies and practices, even if these things have been going on for years. This loss of the ability to sue for monetary damages is harmful to people with disabilities because of the deterrent effect such monetary damages often have. Damages in suits of this kind are levied like fines against persons or organizations who knowingly have done harm to someone or some group. Like "tort" lawsuits against corporations, the levying of these damages is meant to function as a deterrent to those who would do the harm -- in this case, state governments. If they are afraid that they may get slapped with a lawsuit and be assessed a big penalty, the theory goes, they are likely to refrain from whatever policy or practice might bring on the threat. By the way, eliminating this powerful disincentive to corporate misconduct is a high priority of the new administration in Washington. If you are interested, I gave a wealth of details on the subject in Nygaard Notes #62-63. The Garrett ruling is important beyond the effect on people with disabilities because of the Court's reasoning in the case. The Court ruled that the ADA didn't fully apply to state governments because the states have "sovereign immunity." This is a variety of the old "states' rights" argument that is trotted out whenever the federal government tries to impose some minimal standards of human rights upon the states, such as with the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, or any number of others. "States' rights" is a code phrase, and has been for many years, for the right to deprive citizens of their rights, as any veteran of the Civil Rights struggle will tell you. So, watch how the Court rules in disability-related cases; like the canary in the coal mine, this erosion of the civil rights of people with disabilities is likely a harbinger of further attacks by the Court on the civil rights of anyone who is not a white, U.S.-born, middle-aged, able-bodied, Christian, heterosexual male. These further attacks, I'm afraid, may not be long in coming. |
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All The World's A Market, to painfully paraphrase Shakespeare, and nowhere is this more evident than in the domain of advertising. I love to look at that industry. Part of the reason is that I think it is important to be at least somewhat aware of the various ways in which these people study our innermost psyches in order to find new and better ways to manipulate us. For this week, though, I have no greater interest than entertaining Nygaard Notes readers with some of the ideas expressed in recent editions of the regular column that appears in the Business Section of the New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") which is entitled, appropriately enough, "Advertising." Although this column does not have a dateline, I am presuming, against all indications to the contrary, that the columns were written somewhere on the planet Earth. America Loves a Good Deal The February 5th Advertising column was headlined "Hallmark's 99-cent cards, for those who don't care quite enough to send the very best, sell well." It seems that Hallmark developed the line – called "Warm Wishes" – after Marita Wesely-Clough, the company's "chief trends analyst," spotted an "emerging trend." The spotting of emerging trends is apparently her job. The "trend" in this case is that "America loves a good deal," which Ms. Wesely-Clough discovered "when she saw garage sales proliferating in affluent suburbs and heard teenagers bragging about great deals at discount stores." Those are pretty subtle clues, but that's what a Chief Trends Analyst is for, I guess. The column points out that "The Warm Wishes line is just one example of how Hallmark keeps close watch on cultural trends and then takes those insights and transforms them into greeting cards." Another example offered by the column is the "cynical, yet offbeat" Maxine character, which will soon be an entire line of cards and licensed merchandise. Cynicism sells! Now Ms. Wesely-Clough is "looking into her crystal ball for 2001" where she "sees a continuing demand for a good deal," adding that "It's now considered sophisticated and savvy to find the best deal at the lowest price." In my neighborhood, this is considered a "survival skill." "Hallmark also forecasts a backlash against the 1990s penchant for oversizing everything, from supersized fast food to oversized furniture," the column goes on. "People," said Ms. Wesely-Clough, "are overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of it all." Personally, I'm overwhelmed by the sheer absurdity of it all, as in this comment from the column: "If you want to know what is acceptable in American society, take a look at a greeting card." Finally, the February 5th column informs us that "Experiential marketing – where retailers offer ‘transformational experiences' that leave consumers rejuvenated or emotionally moved – is also hot" right now in the marketing biz. This idea of Bypassing The Brain Entirely appears to be an emerging trend in advertising, as the next example illustrates. Striking a Non-Rational Chord The January 12th Advertising column tells us that "A new campaign will try to identify a company's cellular phones with the idea of self-expression." The company – Cingular Wireless – has given up on the idea of trying to convince customers to buy their stuff because it is, well, better than the other company's stuff. After all, the industry is "replete with pitches centered on claims of equipment or service superiority." Instead, Cingular wants to "strike an emotional chord...much as the ‘The joy of cola' – soon to become the less-generic ‘The joy of Pepsi' – is intended to strike a non-rational chord in a category crowded with claims of taste superiority." Advertising giant BBDO handles the Cingular account, and one of their executives says that "The concept of Cingular as ‘the only company dedicated to the enhancement of human self-expression' resonated in our research with customers and prospective customers." I'll bet it did. After all, the company's ads, which use the slogan "Silence is weird," and offer the opinion that "I'm Cingular and I believe you are, too," aim to "equate self-expression with peace and happiness." Peace and happiness, then, are associated with Cingular products, which are available at a discount outlet near you. This is how, Cingular marketing officer Virginia Vann said, Cingular plans to pursue "both the hearts and the wallets of prospective customers." They don't even mention our minds. Monetizing Every Space in America The February 6th Advertising column is called "The Postal Service is going right along with the trend of putting ads on everything in sight." The story here is that the Post Office is "accelerating plans to offer marketers advertising space to peddle private goods and services in places where paid pitches had never appeared until last year, including on the sides of mail trucks and collection boxes, [and] in post office lobbies." The USPS is already selling ads on the sides of their Priority Mail envelopes, to the Visa Corporation. "This is part of a trend to ‘monetize' every space in America, particularly outside the home, with advertising." This statement is not from some black leather-clad radical, but from the chief executive of a media services agency called Carat North America, who explains that "Because of viewers' ability to ‘zap' TV commercials, advertisers are constantly trying to find where they can put ads that ambush consumers." Isn't it nice that they are thinking of us? The column notes that some people may not like the fact that their pictures of summer camp now come in an envelope selling credit cards, but postal executive John Ward says that they did "focus groups" in which customers declared that they were "very enthusiastic" about the idea. The only caveat, Mr. Ward said, was that those customers want the ads to be done "tastefully." Here's where the column really gets interesting, as we get to see what these people think is "tasteful." It turns out that ads for products that compete with the Post Office are not tasteful. So I guess that rules out FedEx and UPS ads. "Indecent or obscene" material is not tasteful, which in my mind would rule out pretty much all of the rest of the advertising in the Western world, but I have a feeling the Post Office won't agree with my interpretation on this one. "Issue-oriented ads" will be "excluded from consideration," says the Post Office. Here's where we really part company, since I consider that advertising itself is a big "issue" that we all have to deal with constantly, so I would argue that advertising itself should be excluded. I think this partially explains why I never seem to end up in these focus groups. "Advertising is always about the context and environment in which it appears," the Carat executive goes on to say, "whether the associations are positive or negative." For example, a poster in a Post Office lobby may not be desirable because "it's not a particularly upbeat environment. On the other hand, an ad on a truck I find the most interesting, because when a truck is seen on the road or the street, it's usually welcome." Part of the reason it is welcome is that it is not plastered with ads, if you ask me. Of course, they didn't ask me. "The Post Office joins a growing list of governments and quasi-governmental authorities that are considering the transformation of ad-free environments into revenue-producing ad outlets," columnist Stuart Elliot says. I can hardly wait. How about: "This STOP sign brought to you by General Motors." That may be next, my fellow consumers, that may be next. |