This Week:

Quote of the Week

Peaceful 9/11 Commemorations

For Our Own Good I: "It Serves Viewers"

For Our Own Good II: "It Works to the Public's Benefit"
Outside the Preferred Target
Saveaduck.com

Greetings,

This week is kind of a Nygaard Notes Horror/Humor Issue. I say that because the focus is on advertising and marketing, and I never fail to be both amused and horrified at the goings-on in that realm. There was actually more than I could fit into this issue, but that's the way it often is in Nygaard-land. Given this week's focus, it may be a good time to think again about supporting a group that was the Nygaard Notes Website of the Week almost exactly a year ago. The group is called "Commercial Alert," and their website is at http://www.commercialalert.org/. Maybe you'll want to join their campaign to get UNICEF to drop their plans for "McDonald's World Children's Day" in November.)

This next couple of weeks will see primary elections in a number of states around the country, including my own state of Minnesota (September 10th). To say that no "real" change can come from elections is not to say that they are to be ignored. It does make a difference to many people—especially poor people—who holds office in your state and in Washington. So, think about voting this month, and in November. Remember, many people didn't vote in the last Minnesota governor's race, and look what happened here.

Thanks to all who wrote to me this week. I appreciate the feedback. To the rest of you, please send along comments or questions. I try to respond promptly to all my mail, and lately I've been succeeding.

Until next week,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

"Vietnam was the first, and most definitely the last, television war. Never again would the war-makers allow journalists to crawl through the muck with American troops, recording their dying moans, capturing their fear, their rage, and their despair on film. War had always been ugly, but before Vietnam, Hollywood could spin the killing into a pageant or ballet, with beautiful women, heart-warming songs, and a cuddly happy-ever-after ending. Vietnam put the mud and blood on stage."

-- From the introduction to the book, "Hell Healing and Resistance: Veterans Speak," by Daniel Hallock

Peaceful 9/11 Commemorations

I promised last week to give information on peaceful alternative events planned for September 11th, the anniversary of the Washington and New York tragedies. Here are a few of them. Many readers will have no need for any organized activity on this day, and you can ignore this section.

"Families for a Peaceful Tomorrow" is an advocacy organization founded by family members of September Eleventh victims. Besides being generally inspiring, their website, http://www.peacefultomorrows.org/, lists peace-oriented events around the country. Check for one in your area.

There are two events of note planned for the Twin Cities. The first one will occur in Minneapolis's Loring Park (near downtown) from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Under the heading "9-11-02: Reflections on Pain and Peace," citizens will gather to join in a "memorial observance of peace," sponsored by the all-volunteer Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers. (If it's bad weather, the event will move indoors.)

The event will have an activist tilt and will "offer numerous opportunities for volunteers seeking an outlet to express their feelings about peace through action." Speakers will include Phil Steger, a local peace activist speaking about his recent trip to Iraq, and others. A brick commemorating the observance will be implanted in the Loring Park Walkway; a statement will be read on behalf of Families for a Peaceful Tomorrow, survivors of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and a peace plaque and peace pole will be presented to the Minneapolis Park Board for installation in Loring Park. Learn more by calling 612-374-3594, or look on the web at http://www.mapm.org/calendar.htm#september11.

The second local peaceful 9-11 event, called "Releasing Frozen Tears—a Ritual to Melt the New Cold War," will be an event of a very different sort. This event was conceived by the impossible-to-summarize-briefly Minneapolitan Patrick Scully, and will be held in the evening—at 9:11 p.m. to be precise.

At that moment, on a bridge at the north end of Nicollet Island in Minneapolis, here's the plan: "On the bridge we will light small candles representing our passion and our wishes and place them in boats made of ice. From the bridge we will then lower our boats of ice into the current of the Mississippi River. The river will carry our message to the universe. The candles and the river will melt the ice, symbol of the New Cold War."

You can find more information (including how to make your own ice-boat!) on the web at www.frozentears.org. Or send an e-mail to notanewcoldwar@aol.com.

For Our Own Good I: "It Serves Viewers"

In January, NBC decided to air a "news" program called "The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing." In a move that "the White House and NBC acknowledged" was "mutually beneficial," the "news" show was set to air in the hour before the network's "hit show" called "The West Wing," starring Martin Sheen, on January 23rd.

NBC was a good choice to bring this "news" show to the American public because, as White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "They have experience working well with the White House." Tom Brokaw, the "news" show anchor, spent 12 hours at the White House with "12 camera crews" on January 17th, videotaping "people doing nothing more extraordinary than walking up the stairs." They also, oddly, taped "press briefings" (which some people might think it is their job to routinely report). I guess those are a couple of reasons to believe Mr. Brokaw when he said of the show that "It is not an exposé or a big investigative thing." Still, Mr. Fleischer asserted that this is "as real as it gets."

I don't know exactly what he means by "real," but the program's producer, Mark Lukasiewicz, pointed out that "There's no question that [White House staff] knew we were there, and they prepared for the day." This "preparation" included arranging an "unusually full schedule of public activities" for the "President" to act out for the benefit of us out here in TV land. It wasn't clear what was "unusual" about it (no nap for the "President," maybe?), but Tom Brokaw felt moved to state that "This is not an infomercial for the White House."

So, the show was "real," and it was rehearsed. It was "not an infomercial," and it was not "investigative journalism." So, what was it? Well, whatever it was, the Times reassures us that "both [NBC and the White House] said the exercise was not merely in the interest of television and presidential-approval ratings." And spokespeople for both institutions explained that "It serves viewers." Could anyone doubt that it did?

For Our Own Good II: "It Works to the Public's Benefit"

Speaking of serving viewers, the June 10th New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") ran a story about the military's role in advising Hollywood in the making of one of this past summer's Major Motion Pictures, "The Sum of All Fears." Beyond supplying advisors to help make the movie, starring Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman, more realistic, the U.S. military also supplied or allowed the use of two B-2 bombers, two F-16 fighter jets, the National Airborne Operations Center, three Marine Corps CH-53E helicopters, a UH-60 Army helicopter, four ground vehicles, "more than 50" marines and Army troops, and a 97,000-ton nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

The Times points out that the U.S. military has been "cooperating with Hollywood for nearly a century" but that, with this Paramount movie, "it seems to have reached a new high." True, it costs the U.S. public untold millions but, as Philip Strub, the Pentagon's Special Assistant for Entertainment Media, points out, "We want the opportunity to communicate directly with the American public through that powerful medium."

Not any communication will do, as you might imagine. Despite the claim of Chase Brandon, the C.I.A.'s Hollywood liaison, that officials didn't want to "whitewash" the history of U.S. military operations, but simply hoped that "the good things will be presented along with the negative," the Times article points out that "The Pentagon says it denies more requests than it accepts." And those denials seem to have something to do with avoiding exposure of "the negative." To wit: "Government officials...insist on overall positive portrayals of the military—that is, after all, the point—or they will not cooperate" with Hollywood, reports the Times.

The Pentagon says that the expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars is "essential in seeking recruits at a time when there is no draft and the nation is on a war footing." In addition, the Times points out, "A positive portrayal can also help justify a partly secret budget to a skeptical public." The C.I.A charges Hollywood nothing for its "assistance," but Brandon stresses that it's not a subsidy, pointing out that, if they can get "a positive portrayal" of the military on the nation's movie screens, "that works to our benefit and it works to the public's benefit."

Outside the Preferred Target

Speaking of working to the public's benefit, some parts of the public get more benefits from the media than others, as the Wall Street Journal of May 20th illustrated. The front-page headline, "Prime Time: How NBC Defies Network Norms—To Its Advantage," was followed by the sub-head, "Unfettered By A Media Parent, It Pursues Upscale Niche That Draws Advertisers. Short Shrift to Minorities?"

The story here is that NBC leads the other networks in a category "that nobody paid attention to until just a few years ago," that being "the ‘$75K-plus' demographic. The article pointed out that, by producing and airing programs that appeal specifically to United Statesians who have incomes of more than $75,000 per year—roughly the wealthiest 20 percent of the population—NBC can charge more for their advertising. The Journal quotes NBC West Coast President Scott Sassa saying that NBC's richer audience means "we will make more money." Sassa uses a little class-based "humor" to get the point across to potential advertisers, saying, "NBC is the place to buy if you're selling to people who actually shop, not shoplift." Har Har Har. For the non-business reader, Sassa spells it out: "Our expectation is to make several hundred million dollars, and we treat this as a business."

The nature of that business—the media business—is poorly understood by the average United Statesian. Many of us think it works like this: The network (or newspaper publisher) is the seller, the product they sell is news and entertainment, and the buyer is us, the viewers and readers. However, the Journal's readership knows that, in fact, that's not at all how it works. In the real business of media, the network is indeed the seller, but the buyer is the advertiser, and the "product" they are being sold is...us. The battle is to see which media outlet can "deliver" more of us—or, more specifically, our attention—to the advertisers.

Toward the end of the article, the Journal addresses this disconnect between business sense and common sense as follows: "Helping advertisers target consumers who have a lot of money seems like a no-brainer. But it does clash with the traditional definition of a broadcast network, forged in the 1950s. In return for use of the airwaves, the thinking goes, a network should provide a public service by helping to inform and educate the general populace."

(Actually, this "definition" was "forged" long before the 1950s, and it wasn't just "thinking." The Communications Act of 1934 legally required a broadcaster to serve the "public interest, convenience, and necessity" in exchange for a license to use the public airwaves. This law, like all laws that attempt to serve the public interest, was the result of decades of hard work by all sorts of organized people. Take a look at Upton Sinclair's book, "The Brass Check" for a little history in this regard.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, NBC's yuppie roundup. The Journal makes the odd comment that "This audience [the affluent few, that is] can unwittingly shape the content of NBC programming." I say "odd" because, while the audience may be "unwitting," the shaping of content is all-too conscious on the part of the network, as the Journal makes clear by quoting "a former producer on the show" thusly: "After the first few seasons of the police drama "Law and Order," producers switched the focus from street criminals to more upper-class perpetrators because of NBC's concern that its audience couldn't get involved in the story lines unless the defendants were more like them." Like them in many ways, including skin color, he didn't add.

Presented with a comment from an African-American scholar that "NBC's programming should really reflect America, and America is not just a group of white friends in New York City living a very white life," NBC chief executive Robert Wright re-states the no-brainer like this: "We have developed shows that appeal to wealthier people, which are more attractive to some advertisers." The Journal adds that he went on to say "NBC hasn't had much luck with shows geared toward groups outside its preferred target."

Saveaduck.com

Speaking of preferred targets, how about a fuzzy duck to target the heartstrings of America? Starting September 9th, U.S. consumers will be seeing a stepped-up campaign for a brand of dishwashing soap called "Dawn." (Some of you may have already seen it.) Dawn, if you didn't know, is the Procter and Gamble dishwashing liquid that dominates the dishwashing liquid market, with 34 percent of U.S. sales. Marketing types say that this is an example of "a mature product in a mature market," meaning that this is a product that's been around a while that does something that can only be done so much. I mean, people only have so many dishes to wash. In a rational economy, this would mean that there is not much need to tell people about Dawn, since everybody already knows.

In our modern economy, however, this is a job for...ADVERTISING! The New York Times of July 31 talked about the creative ad campaign that the Dawn dish-soap people have devised to "come up with a new angle" to get people to buy their soap. For some reason ("no one seems to know why," the Times tells us), Dawn is very good at removing oil, while still being easy on the skin. Just what one would want in a dish soap! Well, it works so well that Dawn is used by marine biologists to clean up oil-covered ducks after environmental disasters, such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill. I'm not making this up.

So, you see where we're going with this; Dawn hired an ad agency that has created a bunch of TV commercials showing ducks being cleaned up with Dawn and then happily swimming away. Or at least we are supposed to believe they are happy; who knows how to read duck body-language? The adman behind the campaign says that "We are attempting with the spot not just to show that Dawn is the No. 1 grease-cutting liquid, but also that it's a brand that cares about the community and environment as well."

Dawn "cares" so much that they promise to donate ten cents of the price of each bottle of Dawn sold to "two wildlife rescue groups," up to a limit of $50,000. This is called "cause-related marketing," and works on the assumption that "the person making the purchase believes he (sic) is supporting something," says Don Sexton of the Columbia Business School. Dr. Sexton also points out that Dawn's sales this past year amounted to $216 million. In case you don't have a calculator handy, $50,000 comes to 0.023 percent of sales. Now there's a company that cares about the environment! Check out the special website: www.saveaduck.com.

For those of you who don't think like marketers, here's the rationale for the whole thing, provided by William H. Steele, who "follows Procter and Gamble for Banc of America Securities": "What good marketing and advertising do is create an emotional link between the brand and the consumer. I venture to guess that few people wouldn't be emotionally connected to saving a bird in a positive way."