Category: Marketing Trends/News

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

“When they go low, we go high.”—Michelle Obama

The US election is tomorrow, and I’m hoping for a result that utterly repudiates the racism, misogyny, and general hatred spewing from the mouth and keyboard of Donald Trump. That hope got me thinking about a column that ran in our local paper this summer.

The writer is progressive and I usually agree with him. But when he wrote about his experiences as a counterprotestor at a Trump rally, tossing insults at the attenders with his child in tow, I had a growing sense of unease.

Michelle Obama gardening with an elementary school student. Photo courtesy of Whjte House Public Domain
Children from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, D.C. help First Lady Michelle Obama plant the White House Vegetable Garden, April 9, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton)

He forgot Michelle Obama’s excellent advice at the Democratic Convention not to stoop to the level of those we oppose.

Yes, it’s very easy to get caught up in a temporary good feeling, hurling insults at Trumpsters and feeling like you’re striking a blow for what’s right and true. But it negates the other side’s humanity. It demeans people. It ignores the phrase popularized by 17th-century Quaker theologian George Fox, “that of God in every [hu]man.”

And it accomplishes the reverse of the desired goal! No one’s mind is changed by being insulted. If anything, when people are belittled, they are more likely to harden their hearts, reinforce their defenses, and stand resolute against what they perceive as the rowdy mob.

Think about the mindset of a Trump supporter encountering a protestor hurling insults. Many of Trump’s supporters are already feeling attacked; that’s why they respond to ideas like building a wall to keep Mexicans out or blocking any Muslim from entering the US. When they get insulted, they’re going to feel even more attacked. Instead of changing their minds, they’re more likely to come away from an encounter with a name-calling protestor feeling more justified in their condemnation of protestors. Instead of being touched at a human level, they wall themselves into the gated communities of a mind that now finds more safety in Trump’s lies and empty threats.

He writes, “what became clear as we shouted back and forth is that there is no common ground whatsoever between Trumpistas and the rest of us.”

But I disagree. When we focus on our differences, on the “otherness” of our “enemy,” we lose sight of what binds us together—yet our commonalities are still there. We all want a word where we feel safe, can earn a decent living, and can raise our children to feel like they matter in this world.

Are there some Trump supporters who are attracted to Trump’s blatant racism and misogyny, the constant lying, incessant bullying and name calling, and all the rest of his hateful message? Of course. But I don’t think it’s anything close to a majority of his voters. He has learned the fine art of framing. Helped by a vitriolic, slanderous 20+ year campaign against his Democratic opponent in right-wing media, he has framed his opponents as crooked and incompetent liars, who are bringing this country down, and he portrays himself as the Messianic savior who can turn the whole thing around, even without clear policy positions—and he’s managed to get enough people to believe this to win the nomination.

Trump is a master of crowd psychology. He speaks to the amygdala, the “reptilian” part of the brain that doesn’t care about facts—and he knows how to work an audience. I’m guessing that he’s probably read many works on manipulating the psyche, including Neurolinguistic Programming. I’m guessing that he has carefully studied the methods the Nazis used to get elected in 1933. This makes his refusal to be bound by facts more understandable. Catch him in a lie and he denies he ever said it, or denies it means what it appears to—because to admit and apologize would pry loose his grip on the minds of his followers. If we mirror his nastiness, we fertilize the field where his metaphorical bacteria can grow. But when we take the high road, we defuse his manipulations with a powerful natural antibiotic: the truth of our common humanity.

Let’s not stoop to Trump’s level. Let’s honor Michelle Obama’s call to take the high road. Rather than call our opponents nasty names, we must win them over to the promise of a better world than Trump can offer: a world that helps them achieve our common universal desires—without stomping on the backs of others.

“When they go low, we go high.” Let’s go really high tomorrow, and show that as a country, we are better than that.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I read a comment by the author of a new book called President Obama Created Donald Trump, claiming that President Obama saw himself and the country as post-racial, and thus didn’t prepare for the consequences of “the catalyst for racial backlash and unrest” that led to Trump’s nomination.

The White House. Photo by Emilien Auneau
The White House. Photo by Emilien Auneau

Interesting theory. But it sounds to me like blame-the-victim. I’m too young to remember FDR, who I know was adamantly hated by conservatives—and who, despite that hostility, was elected four times. When the Republicans got power again in 1952, their standard-bearer was no radical demagogue. It was Eisenhower, a moderate who feared the oligarchy and was the first to call it “the military-industrial complex.”

Obama has borne the brunt of more hostility than any US president in my lifetime (much of it due to his color)—and handled it with remarkable grace. In this author’s view, he is somehow to blame for racism?

Here’s my contrasting view: When the Democratic Party and especially (Texan/Southerner) LBJ began to get serious about undoing racism, the Republicans, starting at least with Richard Nixon and his Southern Strategy (if not earlier) began courting and nurturing the most racist right-wing fanatics in the party. Richard Viguere and his ilk brought fundraising, marketing, and organizing prowess. Reagan came to the party with a new economic agenda geared toward the 1%. Bush II added megalomaniacal ignorance and disastrous foreign and economic policies, yielding two wars and the Great Recession–and a hankering for “change.”

Obama rode that wave but faced an intransigent Congress openly dedicated to sabotaging his efforts. Progressives perceive him (falsely) as not accomplishing much. Yet the Republicans see him as usurping power. Neither accusation has merit, but that’s the public perception.

So people are eager for change. We saw it in the remarkable primary successes of not only Trump but Bernie Sanders (who I supported and voted for, incidentally—and like Bernie, I’m voting for Clinton next month). People feel disenfranchised, powerless, and thoroughly disgusted with the Establishment. Hillary Clinton, destined perhaps to be an even more hated president than Obama or FDR, is the embodiment of that establishment, as is Jeb Bush–one of the first GOP candidates to drop out.

Trump stepped into the vacuum, with lowest-common-denominator messages of hate masked in “Make America great again” rhetoric. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of his statements closely parallel quotes from Hermann Goering:

Trump: “I love the poorly educated!”
Goering: “Education is dangerous—every educated person is a future enemy.”

Trump: “The security guys said, Mr. Trump, there may be some people in the back with tomatoes in the audience. If you see somebody with a bag of tomatoes, just knock the crap out of them, would you? I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.”
Goering: “Shoot first and ask questions later, and don’t worry, no matter what happens, I will protect you.”

Trump: “By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”
Goering: “Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning.”

While his psychopathologies and abusive behaviors (not just the groping, but the lying, cheating, physical intimidation, psychological intimidation, threats of violence, etc.) go beyond even the Republican Party of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Trump’s thinking is a logical extension of his party’s reach for the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the barrel. He is the next iteration of a pattern that began in the GOP nearly 50 years ago. He is merely the next step the Republican Party has aimed toward for decades.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Branding, Customer Service as Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

If you don’t think customer service is part of marketing—and maybe the most important part—this post is must reading for you.

Old movie theater marquee. Photo by Marcus Buckner.
Old movie theater marquee. Photo by Marcus Buckner.

Great Service Builds a Business

Great customer service builds long-term customers, relationships, and ambassadors for your brand! Just ask Nordstrom. They surely don’t compete on price.

Ask Southwest Airlines, which made its original reputation on low prices but now is known for exemplary service in an industry that generally treats its customers like crap. Many times, I’ve actually paid a bit more to fly Southwest, because I know I can check bags for free and—more importantly—change my ticket if there’s an issue.

Southwest earned my loyalty by saving an expensive cruise vacation that was about to go up in smoke when our airport closed for a snowstorm and we weren’t going to make our connection to the cruise ship. Southwest cheerfully if perplexedly let us shift to the following day in a different city, so we could board at the ship’s first port-of-call.

These days, I go to the Southwest website first, and only check discount travel sites if I can’t get a good flight there. Have I told people they should fly Southwest? You betcha. I just told you and a few thousand others, in fact.

Crappy Service Kills a Brand

Yet no amount of (expensive) marketing will undo bad customer service. This is something I talk about in many of my books, including the most recent, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.

I have boycotted a number of businesses that treated me shabbily—including the movie theater in the New York City neighborhood I grew up in that sold my 12-year-old self a full-price adult ticket and made me sit in the children’s section. I have not been back in the 47 years since—because I felt wronged and discriminated against.

But the worst was our local Toyota dealership. We had a long and extended bad interaction with them that culminated in a phone call, “you have 24 hours to get your car out of our lot—and by the way, the engine is in pieces in the trunk.”

Not only did I write a five-page complaint letter with full documentation to the VP of customer relations for Toyota USA (which gave a too-little-too-late form-letter make-good offer a full year later), not only did I never buy as much as a tube of touch-up paint from that dealer for the rest of their career and was not sorry when they closed—but the next time I went car shopping, I didn’t even seriously consider Toyota and bought a competing brand. That was the first time I bought a car not built or designed by Toyota since 1981; they threw away decades of strong brand loyalty. Over the 30 years or so that likely remained in my car-buying lifetime at that moment, they probably cost themselves well into the six figures.

And no amount of expensive advertising will counter the disconnect if you don’t walk your talk, even if it’s not a customer service issue. If you have a sign posted in your store noting that you’ve empowered your employees to solve customer issues, as the late Blockbuster Video did, that should actually be the policy. It wasn’t for Blockbuster, in my personal experience. And they’re gone.

And these days, a frustrated customer doesn’t just tell ten friends. I just read recently that Dave Carroll’s video, “United Breaks Guitars”—seen by nearly 17 million people—actually lowered the airline’s stock price. The video also garnered tons of mainstream media coverage (including CBS and CNN), many new fans for Carroll and his band, the Sons of Maxwell, and even a book contract (the book—big surprise—is called United Breaks Guitars. And think about all those “companysucks.com” websites out there damaging brands.

In Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, I cite an auto-industry study that only 40 percent repurchase. So it’s up to you to turn satisfaction first into delighted amazement, and then into loyalty, and finally into ambassadorship for your brand?

Timothy Keiningham and Terry Varva, authors ofThe Customer Delight Principle: Exceeding Customers’ Expectations for Bottom-Line Success, point out that marketing’s primary role is to communicate “the wants, needs, and expectations of current and potential customers,” [emphasis mine] so the business can “create and distribute products or services that more closely address and answer these inherent needs.” If meeting the needs of current customers doesn’t encompass customer service, you’re in trouble.

Please share your customer service successes and disasters (either as a vendor or a s a customer) in the comments section, below.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with , , ,

During last night’s debate, Donald Trump kept taking any accusation or criticism and attempting to  pivot it around to his opponent. He also interrupted constantly, shouted belligerently, told numerous documentable lies,* and bragged about his bad behavior. It was a performance worthy of an elementary school bully, not a candidate for President of the United States. It was ugly. And quite frankly, it got in the way of the few good points he honestly made about areas where Clinton should do better.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton face off. Screenshot from CBS News.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton

Clinton chose to be cool, calm, and collected, to smile patronizingly with an “isn’t this little boy adorable?” look over her shoulder—while quickly and scathingly rebutting him when she got the floor. It may not have been the perfect approach—but with the need to do a delicate dance of expectations, as a very public liberal woman in a culture that doesn’t like powerful liberal women in politics, it may have been her best option–even if it did seem a trifle over-rehearsed. Trump mostly glowered and scowled, looking for moments to interrupt.

But let’s not focus on style over substance. On policy specifics, Clinton noted her earlier accomplishments and referenced her specific proposals. Trump was hard to pin down, used empty adjectives like “beautiful” and “tremendous” (example: “I’m really calling for major jobs because the wealthy are going to create tremendous jobs.”). He resorted to ridiculous claims, defense of procedures that have been declared unconstitutional, and as already noted, flat-out falsehoods.

Perhaps most telling are the “accomplishments” he did brag about. Here’s his response when he was asked about his pattern of cheating people who’ve worked for him:

I take advantage of the laws of the nation because I am running the company. My obligation right now is to do well for myself, my family, my employees, for my companies.

Here’s what he said when Clinton speculated that the reason he doesn’t release his taxes is that he doesn’t pay any:

That makes me smart.

Near the end, Trump made this ballsy claim:

I think my strongest asset, maybe by far, is my temperament. I have a winning temperament.I know how to win. She does not know how to win. The AFL-CIO – the other day behind the blue screen, I don’t know who you’re talking to, Secretary Clinton, but you were totally out of control. I said, there is a person with a temperament that’s got a problem.

In Yiddish, the word for this is chutzpah. The closest English translation would be unmitigated gall. The man who has run his campaign on temper tantrums, slander, innuendo, inappropriate sexual references, and racist/sexist belittling of others, who could not even make it through a 90-minute debate without interrupting and shouting, claims that his temperament is his best asset.

Let’s take him at his word—and give a landslide vote in November that repudiates that temperament and doesn’t  expose us to the dangers of his other, presumably worse attributes.

* You can read an annotated, fact-checked transcript of the whole thing at https://www.npr.org/2016/09/26/495115346/fact-check-first-presidential-debate

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Ethics in Government, Greenwashing, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, Psychology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , ,

Last night, I signed a petition created by Rep. Joe Kennedy about gun control. The page gave me the option to share on Facebook, and I did. Then I went to bed.

I was pretty horrified to check my page this morning and see my share that said “Stand With Rep. Joe Kennedy” and had a huge picture of him. Not a word about gun control showed up in the Facebook preview.

So I took it down and posted this note:

To those who might have wondered why there was a huge campaign ad for Rep. Joe Kennedy on my page last night. I had just signed a petition he originated on gun control, and wanted to share it. I didn’t check how it posted on FB. I felt tricked and betrayed enough to take the entire post down. Let him get signatures some other way.

This was a classic bait-and-switch. In fairness, Kennedy probably delegated this to some social media intern and most likely wasn’t personally involved. But if I lived in his district, this would make me look for someone else to vote for, because I don’t like being manipulated and cheated.

Only after I took it down did I think about blogging about this feeling of betrayal. If I’d decided to blog before I instinctively took it down, I would have grabbed a screenshot to post here. Instead, you get the logo of the ultimate-bait-and-switcher: Volkswagen.

Aging Volkswagen showing VW logo. Photo by Daria Schulte.
Aging Volkswagen showing VW logo. Photo by Daria Schulte.

VW, of course, preyed upon environmentalist car owners to sell them a low-emission vehicle—but fudged the test results and was really selling highly polluting cars. This is costing the company billions, and it isn’t over yet. The state of Vermont just filed suit against VW two days ago. Vermont, tiny as it is, has the second-highest per-capita concentration of VWs in the country (after Oregon)—precisely because environmental consciousness is extremely high among its residents. In fact, a year ago, a group of those Vermont residents already filed a class-action suit against Volkswagen.

I used to think my parents and in-laws were overreacting with their continuing pledge never to buy Volkswagen s because of the company’s involvement with the Holocaust. After all, the people who made those brutal decisions are long dead or in nursing homes. But after this scandal, I can’t think of any reason why I would ever trust the company again.

Bottom line: in business and in politics, bait-and-switch has no place in ethical marketing.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Democracy, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, propaganda, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , ,

NOTE:  I clarified my response–and especially the headline–in this later post.

I got an email this morning from Labor for Bernie, urging me to sign up to continue the movement. My wife saw a note from Bernie himself, on Facebook. Both urged us to join the ongoing movement by signing up at OurRevolution.com.

So I clicked over. And this is what I saw:

Landing page of OurRevolution.com
Landing page of OurRevolution.com

It’s designed like a classic marketer’s landing page with only two options: sign up or send money. Except that a classic marketer’s landing page describes the project it’s selling—sometimes, in great detail. This time—not a clue about what this organization is going to stand for.

I’m a strong Bernie supporter. I love that he was able to bring a progressive agenda into mainstream US politics—after watching so many fail before, from Jesse Jackson to Howard Dean to Dennis Kucinich. But I’m not signing.

Too many times, I’ve seen organizations co-opt supporters by turning out to stand for something other than they pretended, going back to the Socialist Workers Party’s attempt to co-opt the Vietnam peace movement when I was a teenager. Here, I don’t even see a pretense. I see nothing about what this organization will stand for, what tactics it will use, etc.

Even for Sanders, I don’t write a blank check. Not financially, and not in my commitment to an organization whose tenets I can’t describe. Even for Bernie, I won’t sign blind.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Branding, Business Ethics, Democracy, Entrepreneurship, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Donald Trump and the late Muhammad Ali had at least three things in common: personal wealth, a love of bragging and a willingness to speak their mind even if others were offended. But there’s a big difference: Ali actually had something to brag about. He really was the greatest at what he did, racking up an amazing 55 victories over 61 fights in his career, and going undefeated in his first 30 bouts.

Muhammad Ai probably wore gloves like these. Photo by Wojciech Ner.
Muhammad Ai probably wore boxing gloves like these. Photo by Wojciech Ner.

He was also a man of deep principle, foregoing his career for three years after refusing to fight in Vietnam.

This is what he said about that choice:

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.

Agree or disagree with him , you knew where he stood.

Ali was also a humanitarian and philanthropist, using his fortune—a fortune amassed not through inherited wealth and speculative business ventures, but by coming up out of poverty and putting himself in the ring to be slugged again and again by some of the strongest people in the world—for social good.

By contrast, Trump brags about screwing people over, is very quick to unleash insults on others, and yet is very thin-skinned when anyone criticizes him. He even revoked the Washington Post’s media credentials to cover the Trump campaign because he didn’t like the things he said about them.

Let’s listen to Trump in his own words:

“The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.” –Donald Trump

Of course, it helps that he inherited a fortune from his father, a large-scale NYC landlord whose racist policies were so bad that Woody Guthrie (his tenant, briefly) wrote scathing songs about him. Trump’s own record includes lots of failure—including four bankruptcies. It’s hard to imagine him getting rich if he hadn’t had the springboard of his father’s wealth. And he brags about using bankruptcy as a tool to screw the public to further his personal fortune. This quote is on the same 2011 ABC news report on the bankruptcies:

I’ve used the laws of this country to pare debt. … We’ll have the company. We’ll throw it into a chapter. We’ll negotiate with the banks. We’ll make a fantastic deal. You know, it’s like on ‘The Apprentice.’ It’s not personal. It’s just business.

Two more very telling quotes from The Donald:

“If you can’t get rich dealing with politicians, there’s something wrong with you.”

“I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for two years, and then I didn’t let him use the land. That’s what we should be doing. I don’t want to use the word ‘screwed’, but I screwed him.”–Donald Trump

Has he reformed? No. Just look at the recent flurry of news stories quoting everyone from the conservative National Review to the New York State Attorney General calling his Trump University “a scam.”

Results for search for "trump university scam" from Washington Post, CNN, Wikipedia, and National Review
Results for search for “trump university scam” from Washington Post, CNN, Wikipedia, and National Review

This is the continuation of a long history of unethical business dealings, as this story in US News and World Report notes.

As it happens, I’ve heard both Muhammad Ali and Donald Trump speak in person—Ali at an Aretha Franklin concert in Harlem, in 1971, and Trump delivering the keynote for a conference where I was also speaking, in 2004. Ali’s speech left me feeling empowered. Trump’s left me feeling I’d been slimed by an exhibitionist in a public place.

This bullying, thin-skinned, name-calling racist and sexist who brags about how he gets rich on the backs of others has no grasp of the issues, and apparently no ethics. He  doesn’t belong in the White House.

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Business-general, Customer Service as Marketing, General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , ,

In one day, I had two interactions with people reaching out on behalf of their employer that made me scratch my head.

I got telemarketed by a woman who claimed to have sent me some stuff I never received. She didn’t understand the simplest questions like “was it by postal or email?” (answer, repeated 3x: “Mail”) “What domain was it coming from?”

To top it off, the follow-up email, or what I believe was the follow-up email, came from a different domain and was signed by a different person, but it mentioned a conversation with their office.

And then there was the person who private-messaged me on Facebook about her social media marketing services. When I clicked the link, I was appalled at the sloppy grammar–NOT a way to get me to do business. When I told her that careful writing matters to me and that I wouldn’t be doing business, she started asking whether I would scout for her as an affiliate.

Who vets these people? If you have people representing your company, they should leave a GOOD impression with prospects. Yet over and over, I see businesses being harmed by the clueless, aggressive, unhelpful people they hire.

Gotta wonder.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Branding, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’d hazard a guess that most US natives between the ages of 40-80 can still sing the jingle: “Candy-coated popcorn, peanuts and a prize. That’s what you get with Cracker Jack.” It was a big part of our childhoods, back in the days when three TV networks controlled the entire universe of video and national advertisers bought saturation advertising programs that aired the same commercial many times a day. Cracker Jack was immortalized in the song “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in 1908, started bundling the prize way back in 1912, and began its national TV advertising in 1955.

The Cracker Jack box as it appeared during my 1960s childhood (courtesy of Wikipedia)
The Cracker Jack box as it appeared during my 1960s childhood (courtesy of Wikipedia)

It didn’t matter that the prize was something worth about 2 cents, something not even worthy of being called a tchochke. It was the thrill of the hunt, searching through all that icky sticky stuff to locate the prize—and the thrill of mystery, never knowing what, umm, “treasure” you’d find. Sometimes it would be something really cool, like a spy decoder ring. But like any other grab-bag item, sometimes it was truly worthless. I knew kids who bought CrackerJack just to get that prize.

At that time, the company was owned by Borden, whose Elsie the Cow was another advertising icon of the period. It’s now owned by Pepsico’s Frito-Lay division

Well, here’s some shocking news: Despite its wildly successful run of more than 100 years, the Cracker Jack toy is now an endangered species. As Bob Dylan sang during the Cracker Jack saturation TV period, “The times, they are a changing.” Cracker Jack is replacing the “tchochkette” (if I can coin a word that merges Yiddish and French) with a slip of paper bearing a QR code!

I’m sorry, but that is just not the same. From a branding point of view, I think it’s a huge error. Cracker Jack’s whole brand is built around nostalgia, Americana, baseball, and that unforgettable jingle. Sure, digital natives will redeem their QR codes and not think twice about it. But they won’t know what they’re missing. And those who can’t afford or choose not to use smartphones are left out entirely. Plus, their kids will never hear their parents scream at a bad driver, “Did you get your license in a Cracker Jack box?” A piece of American culture is disappearing.

In Cracker Jack’s earliest days, during a baseball corruption scandal known as the Chicago Black Sox scandal, a fan reportedly went up to the legendary Shoeless Joe Jackson and begged, “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” Maybe now, we need to say, “Get back on the track, Jack!”

 

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics-International, Marketing Trends/News, media-general, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The US presidential race is full of outsiders this year. Trump gets lots of attention in the media–but Sanders seems to be having more of an impact on policy questions, and on bringing disenfranchised-feeling voters in from outside the electoral process.

There are many parallels between Sanders on the left and Trump on the right–both of them attracting attention for being firmly OUTSIDE the mainstream, and both waging far more successful campaigns than the pundits predicted. And they both look and sound like the New Yorkers they are.

But in many other ways other ways, of course, they’re completely different: Unlike Trump, Sanders is…

1. Seriously concerned about making things better for those who are not wealthy, and basing this on a 50-year record of activism (vs. concern only about making things better for Trump and a few others of enormous class privilege).
2. Thoughtful, willing to engage on issues, analyzes more deeply than most candidates with charisma.
3. A populist fundraising champion who does not fund his campaign with–and thus is not beholden to–corporate money or party money, but from millions of ordinary people. I don’t think this has been done before on this scale (vs. Trump self-funding out of his personal fortune and claiming that this makes him honest because he’s the one doing the buying of politicians instead of being bought by them)
4. Someone who tells the truth (Trump has been caught in more lies than any of the others).
5. A successful coalition builder who has a track record of working well with people who think differently

But even Cruz and Rubio (and certainly dropouts Carson and Fiorina) are outliers too. It is scary to see the Republican Party start to coalesce around the very scary Ted Cruz, who only looks rational because Trump is so far in right field that he moves the public perception of what’s mainstream. When Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (a slasher of the safety net) is considered a centrist, we have a serious distortion in perception vs. reality.

So the big lesson I take away is this: when four out of the five most popular candidates this year are outside the mainstream, the mainstream had better look at why, and what they can do about it. With the exception of Clinton, all the mainstream candidates are out of the race–even presumptive GOP nominee (as of last summer) Jeb Bush.

Me? I agree with at least 80% of what Sanders says, and was happy to vote for him in our March 1 Massachusetts primary.

Oh yes, and let’s not forget the role of the media in king/queen making and unmaking. One of Sanders’ other strengths is in engaging millennials who are good at creating their OWN (social) media–while defeating the myth that a self-declared socialist can’t run a serious campaign for national office in the US.

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