Monthly Archives: March 2004

America in the Middle East

One of the interesting experiments in marketing in recent years was the assignment given Charlotte Beers. Ms. Beers was appointed by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in the aftermath of the terrorist attack of 9/11 to change the way people in the Middle East think about the US. To put this somewhat more grandly, but not inaccurately, Beers was charged with prosecuting the case for the values of Western civilization.

Naturally, everyone thought this was, all by itself, clear and present evidence of a great difficulty in Western civilization. That an advertising executive was charged with this task struck many observers as ludicrous. Surely, advertising was antithetical to Western civilization. Did we not have the great works of Barber, Ewen, Klein, etc. to tell us so? Was this not a little like going to one of the magnificent entablatures that surround great libraries, the ones that show the great “fathers” of Western civilization: Socrates, Dante, Shakespeare, and so on, and chipping in an image of Charlotte Beers?

This is the usual prejudice of the chattering classes, and it fails to see that advertising is merely another rhetorical form…and were it not a very potent form, it would not have called up the exertions of Barber, Ewen and Klein.

No, Beers was an interesting appointment and maybe not a bad one. Beers’ approach, it turned out, was not altogether surprising. She resolved to treat America as a “brand” and informed Businessweek, that “the whole idea of building a brand is to create a relationship between the product and its user.”

This meant advertising. Here too we shouldn’t be surprised. Beers had been the head of Ogilvy and Mather and latterly J. Walter Thompson, two of the world’s great agencies. It was hardly surprising that she addressed this task as she had other ones: with the conventional marketing tools she had used and administered over a long and distinguished career.

But I can’t help thinking that somehow this missed the real opportunity. The task here called for something more than the management of images. I have not seen any of the advertising created by Beers and her team but I can’t help feeling that it leaned heavily in the direction of making a case for “freedom.”

The Right has a way of using this term as if it were a liberty that exists in and for the market place. Freedom gives people the right to own property, to pursue their livelihood, to make a place for themselves in the world through risk and reward. Or it supposes that liberty is a matter of religious choice.

Both of these are important pieces of the “freedom” argument. But it seems to me there is a deeper, more promising proposition to make here. It is the freedom that is expressed and expanded by the pursuit of what Bell called expressive individualism. This is the freedom that emerges when individuals throw off the prevailing definitions that confine them, when women, young people, old people, the representatives of all the sexual orientations, and other groups refuse the “received definitions” of who they are, and insist on refashioning new definitions. (For a fuller treatment of these groups and their anti-hegemonic effect, see Plenitude, the book posted at this website.)

Surely, this is the better or at least an additional arrow in freedom’s quiver. The Middle East is largely controlled by aged male elites who are, as Thomas Friedman and others have told us, are entirely comfortable telling women, the young, the elderly, and every alternative group (defined by gender and lifestyle) who they are and how they must behave. Unleash these groups fuelled by this virus, and surely the elites must fall, perhaps not in the short term, but certainly in the long. And this is a long term proposition.

Let us take one example. What if the Commission in question were to encourage feminism in the Middle East. Naturally, we do not wish to export all forms of Western feminism. We need only encourage it’s first principle: that women need not defer to men in any matter for any purpose. I do not speak from any deep ethnographic knowledge but I think we can assume that the well springs of resentment in the Middle East are deep and high. The trick is to tap them. (Oil is not the only energy resource available in that part of the world.)

How would this work? This is the work of the Commission. To see where, how, and in what voice native feminism could be encouraged, enabled and allowed to flourish. This is a social engineering game, one that would have to be done with fine knowledge and great subtlety. But it could be done.

We can assume that the Middle East has 10 Ani DiFrancos waiting for enablement. It is unlikely that they would answer the Western call with an album called Puddle Dive. It is unlikely that they would answer the Western call at all. But given the right resources (clandestine and otherwise), there is, I think, no doubt that they would begin the work of expressive individualism, gradually integrating feminism with the local culture, working their way towards the light.

Naturally, there is a problem here. Republicans are, to put the matter mildly, deeply ambivalent about expressive individualism. They are unlikely to want to see the virus of individualism to prosecute the war against Islamic fundamentalism. But this is a pity. Because expressive individualism will surely be more effective than ads about freedom. It might even be more effective than a massive military intervention.

Ok, what if we were to commission a new commission for this task? I have some names: David Arnold, John Clippinger, Tyler Cowen, Kathy Davis, Ani DiFranco, Bob Dolan, Denise Fonseca, Herbert Gans, Nick Hahn, Charles Hale, Henry Jenkins, Leora Kornfeld, Kay Lemon, Margaret Mark, Deirdre McCloskey, Charlotte Oades, Virginia Postrel, Sir Martin Sorrell, Wodek Szemberg, Khalil Younes, Andrew Zolli, are just a few. (Naturally, this is a “dream team” list and does not signify knowledge, interest or committment from the parties named.) And I have a budget. Ms. Beers was given $500 million. I think we could do the job for about $26 million.

I am waiting for my call for the State Department.

those nutty consumers

The Swiffer ad features a woman dancing around a house. It turns out she is dusting someone else’s house. A Microsoft house shows members of the corporation dancing. A Honeynut ad shows a guy wandering around telling anyone and everyone that he has just lowered his cholesterol, including a little girl who has no idea what he is talking about. A recent ad shows a man sitting in someone else’s car, practicing his driving skills.

Is it just me or are we seeing a new theme emerging here? Call it the nutty consumer theme.

Certainly, these ads are funny. And that’s reason enough to encourage the theme. They also show an appealing side to the consumer. These characters are innocent, caught up in the moment, helplessly transported by their own fantasy.

But this is very different from the smiling talking heads that were once featured in ads. This old approach gave us the consumer as someone who wants us to know how much they like the product in question. They address the camera with the full knowledge that we are watching and the apparent hope that we will consent to, and be persuaded by, their recommendation.

The new approach gives us a consumer who doesn’t know that we are looking in on them, who doesn’t know that anyone is looking in on them, who is so caught up in the moment that they are worlds away.

What is going on here? We live in a culture that encourages self dramatization. We are all ever more vivid actors on the public stage. But this dramatization is witlessly performative. These consumers are entertaining in spite of themselves. Public performances have given way to private reveries.

Why this face for the consumer right now? What does it say about contemporary culture? Why is it so recurrent in our advertising?

As usual, the anthropologist has no answers, only questions.

Japanese housewives

Are Japanese housewives no longer on strike?

The NYT today tells us that household spending is up. And it is widely understood that Japanese housewives control the household budget.

The most intriguing explanation for the long-standing downturn in the Japanese economy I ever heard is from Alan Middleton who teaches marketing at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. (And to be fair to Alan, he was not insisting that this was the only factor nor that it was a certain one. He suggested it as a possibility only. It’s also worth pointing out that Alan ran an advertising agency in Tokyo some years ago and continues to have very good contacts there.)

Alan says that he thought it was possible that the downturn was created in part by a version of Japanese feminism. Japan has embraced many cultural innovations, but it is not clear that feminism is one of them. In fact, it looks like the cultural division that once prevailed, more or less, in the West prevails there still.

Women control the domestic space, men the world outside the home. Women do participate in the world of work, but very often they are confined to the role of secretaries and assistants. What is worse, men continue to treat women with a high hand and a presumption of superiority.

I caught a glimpse of this when I was doing research for Kodak a couple of years ago in Tokyo. As one interview began, there was a long exchange between the head of the household and the translator. As we were leaving the home, I asked her what it was about.

“Oh, he was asking me why I was not yet married. He was mocking me.”

I waited. It sounded like there was more coming.

Fnally, she said, with great feeling, in a quiet but unmistakeable voice addressed a little to me but mostly to the world.

“What I didn’t say was that if I was married I would have to live with a pig like him.”

She was, it should be said, about 35, intelligent, attractive, presentable, and very, very clear.

This is just one data point, but it spoke volumes. In cases like this, anthropologists, and for many of them this may be the only time they do so, play a statistical game. This woman, as I got to know her over a week of constant company, with the opportunity to watch her interacting with households, in every respect a conventional creature. The chances that this feminist sentiment should have taken hold in her and not in some substantial part of the educated, middle class, was remote. Single remarks from single individuals can speak volumes for the rest of the community.

So several things are possible: 1) that feminist sentiment is alive and well in many Japanese homes, 2) that there has been almost no movement in the larger culture and economy to accomodate it, and 3) that Japanese women began to use the last weapon at their disposal. They controlled the household economy and to this extent some part of the domestic consumer economy…and they went on strike.

Clearly, there were many other things at work in the economic downturn, including a banking crisis and an economy that has in some respects, especially to do with channels of distribution, not very much changed since the middle of the 20th century. But this factor, if it is a factor, would be a very interesting one, not least because it will take more than banking or channel reform to fix it.

This is where anthropology meets economics in the most conventional way. Economics is very good at making numbers matter. Most of the things that are wrong with the Japanese economy can be indexed, charted, graphed and otherwise made manifest in the data that comes to economists from Dow Jones and the Bloomberg system.

What will never show in these numbers is the way Japanese women think about themselves, their husbands, their households and their economy. This factor, if it is a factor, will play like a shadow on a spread sheet. It may somehow have changed, and changing, made the new upturn possible. But it is more likely that Japan continues to refuse feminism and that the “housewive boycott” will live on to make itself felt another day.

Japanese Household Spending Rises for 4th Month in a Row

Taking Madison Avenue by Storm

Yesterday, I was standing in the lobby of Ogilvy Worldwide in New York City waiting to get through security. In front of me are three guys who are fresh scrubbed, new clothes, new haircuts, new shoes. They are looking around them with awe and anticipation.

I engage one of them, a tall Asian kid with spiky hair, in conversation and he tells me they are from the Miami School of Design. They are here to see what life looks like in the Big Leagues. I can see them thinking, “and some day I will stride through this lobby like I own the place…maybe.” They are very nervous. Clearly, it’s time for the old-timer to give a pep talk.

“Hey, you’ll wow them with your ideas,” I say.

One of the kids actually hangs his head, and says with heart felt sincerity, “I don’t have any ideas.”

“No, no, no,” I can hear myself thinking, ‘this is not the way you take Madison Avenue by storm.”

Peppier talk is called for.

“The ideas are already here, like electricity. It’s the strangest thing. You get into the boardroom, you start talking, and the ideas flow. The trick is to step into the moment. It’s like improv. Don’t censor. Just talk. The ideas are there in the heavens waiting for a chance to get into the room. You have to let them know that they can channel through you.”

He looks at me with surprise and relief.

“It’s a kind of group mind thing. Eventually, you are thinking out of one another’s heads.”

The kids look at me with hope and skepticism. I am old enough to know what I am talking about. On the other hand, maybe I’m too old to know what I’m talking about.

And then I say, “It’s as much fun as you can have with your clothes on.”

And they laugh at this. Obviously, I’m a nut.

They get signed in and as they move towards the elevators, I say,

“Knock em dead.”

One of them turns and laughs and waves.

Mr. Peanut taken captive!

The inestimable Stuart Elliott did a recent article on the rebranding of Mr. Peanut. (NYT March 19, 2004)

He quotes Sandy Greenberg, an executive vice president and group creative director on Planters at Foote Cone Belding, the advertising agency in New York City. “It [the new campaign] started with a strategy shift to focus on the fact that all the occasions of your life, large and small, are worthy of Planters.”

I’m sorry, I thought you said occasions of my life might be worthy of Planters. Really, I can’t possibly begin to say what an honor this is.

That parts of my life might be worthy of Mr. Peanut, this is, by itself, well a little overwhelming. That all of the occasions of my life should be worth of Mr. Peanut, it is really too much too hope for. Surely I can expect a promotion, renewed respect from my family, the adoration of my neighbors. And surely this is just the beginning of a climb up the ladder of recognition: Cannes, the Golden Globe, an Oscar. “I’d like to begin by thanking the Academy…”

In the last few years, PR and advertising have drawn together. The new conventional wisdom is that, with advertising saturation and new consumer vigilence, it is a good thing when a product or a brand can find mention in a conventional news story.

This may well be true. But what damage does the brand suffer when the brand stewart is revealed to be an idiot? Poor Mr. Peanut. He was designed by a Virginia school boy in 1916. He is, in the words of David Altschul, president of Character in Portland, Oregon, “a toff in the body of a peanut.” He is, in sum, a toff twice captured, once by caricature and again by stupidity.

In a perfect world, there would be a team of “operatives” who specialized in “brand extraction,” busting in to save brave little icons from the captivity of bad marketing and marketers. Well, I guess there is such a team. It’s called another “advertising agency.” And one must wonder what Weiden Kennedy would have done with this opportunity.

In the meantime, let us remember Mr. Peanut in our prayers.

valuation: anthropology meets economics

I was talking to a New Yorker recently about an upcoming trip.

“Where are you staying in the city?” she asked.

“Oh, mid-town”

Actually, this was just a guess. I like to sound like an insider. So I use “upper west side,” “soho,” “tribeca” with nonchalance. But to be honest, I am never exactly certain I have got my terms right.

“But where, exactly.”

Damn.

“Um, on 49th, near the Plaza.”

“Ok.”

Whew! Guessed right.

I put down the phone in a vertiginous moment. These neighborhood labels are a little testing for a rube from Canada. (I am in another classificatory scheme, “bridge, tunnel and border.”) But as a classificatory scheme, these labels are almost nothing at all.

And this is where anthropology meets economics. For the neighborhood labels are, like most cultural schemes, pretty general. There are, and now I’m really guessing, about 12 of them. (Ok, I know this because I just googled the question.) That’s 12 categories to cover an island that contains, um, 8 million people.

And here’s where it gets vertiginous. As I put down the phone, I realized that these 12 cultural categories contain, roughly, 19.5 economic distinctions. This is the number of discrete prices for property in Manhattan. (This assumes that the most expensive property sells for $20 million and there is no property that sells for less than $500,000, and that there is, or could be, a property for sale for every dollar amount.) (I am sure there are places that sell for more than $20 million, but you get the idea.)

Let’s review. Culture gives us 12 distinctions. Economics gives us 19.5 million distinctions.

This is not to mock culture. We are very happy to have a set of 12 categories that somehow manages to map the great, blooming diversity called Manhattan. Without it, many things, including a taxi ride, would be vastly more difficult. It’s always true that we want embracing classificatory schemes and without them would be lost in a welter of detail.

But compare this cultural valuation to economic valuation. With this classicatory scheme, we can make endlessly fine distinctions. We can mark the difference between a Soho condo on the 4th floor and the 5th floor. We can distinquish between a property that has double paned windows and with single panes. We can in other words make impossible fine distinctions. And in the process we can what many things are worth: sides of the building, views, neighborhoods, access to a park. Clearly, only the virtuoso real estate agent is fully conversant in these distinctions. But all of us will defer to these distinctions if and when we buy a place on the island.

But what is really astonishing, and here is where culture must not just tip its hat to economics, but actually remove it in a gesture of abiding deference, the valuation scheme created by economics actually floats. All those monetary distinctions can change 1) over night, 2) without committee oversight, 3) in almost perfect concert.

That’s condo on 5th avenue that is now worth $8.3 million will sometimes fluctuate with stock market as its owners sleep. Oh, the Japanese buy more dollars. Oh, the exchange rate changes. Oh, the markets respond. Oh, the owners wake up a little richer or a little poorer.

It’s nice to think of a city that has digital read-outs attached to every property, the numbers spinning up and down over the course of a day as the real estate market works out what value is and external factors impinge. Oh, someone just bought a place in your building for 1.5 million more than asking. Everyone’s value goes up a little. The market has spoken.

This is the mystery. Not for economists for they take this for granted. But for anthropologists. A classificatory scheme that lets the market “speak,” in very little voices, in the creation of millions of utterances that are prone to second guessing and revision many times a day.

Anthropology meets economics and comes away astonished.