February 26, 2016--Politico-Babble

Thus far my tally is 22 and 37. Twenty-two "lanes" and 37 "paths."

Last election cycle everyone was talking about "brands" and "narratives."

Were Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Herman Cain running for president or teasing that they might do so because they seriously thought they had a chance to be nominated--forget elected--or were they running to enhance their brands, their ability to command top-dollar speaker fees and secure seven-figure book deals?

And then what about poor Mitt Romney's ability to explain and represent himself to voters? it was said that a coherent and attractive narrative was missing. In fact, running up to his eventual nomination, all his rivals were criticized for the same thing--the lack of a convincing narrative about how their life stories and experiences wove together into a plausible and engaging picture that plain folks could understand and within which find at least a semblance of authenticity.

Four years ago, this politico-babble was purloined from the world of marketing and advertising. It was thought--still is--that unless a product or service has a strong brand identity (read essence) it would not stand out, would languish. This was especially true if that product or service didn't include a compelling narrative that people could relate to and thereby eventually consider purchasing.

This time around, if you listen carefully, as I have been attempting to do, on the cable news networks and in publications commenting on the primaries and caucuses, you'll hear all about paths and lanes.

Once I tuned into this I've been keeping a tally of how often these are used to explain the state of the Republican and Democratic campaigns. Particulalry, how individual candidates are faring.

At this point is is being noted that as Hillary Clinton and Donald TRUMP widen their leads, it is difficult to chart a path to the nomination for _____ .

Fill in the blank with, say John Kasich, who continues to claim he is a legitimate candidate, not just in it to polish his brand (he does at least have a credible narrative) or increasingly Bernie Sanders whose now unlikely path to the Democratic nomination requires him to get about 55 percent of the votes through the mega-primaries of March. A long and winding path for sure.

And, to make matters worse, what lane or lanes are open for Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio? Cruz's big-picture strategy from the beginning was the Evangelical Lane. With a charismatic preacher for a father (a Cuban Canadian citizen no less), a well-worn bible, and a copy of the Constitution close at hand, this was his lane and should have stood him in good stead in Iowa (it did with a few dirty tricks thrown in to help) and was supposed to then be wide open for him in South Carolina.

But TRUMP riled these plans, blocking Cruz's lane much like the way Chris Crispy blocked those leading to the George Washington Bridge.

And Rubio's lane was supposed to be the one leading to establishment support. Jeb Bush and John Kasich made a bit of a mess of that--if not blocking it, minimally trying to wedge their way into it, which is why there is so much pressure from Rubio supporters, especially after last night's effective debate for Rubio, for Kasich to drop out this week, if possible today, so with Jeb also out of the way that lane would be wide open for Marco.

Maybe Rubio will try to make a deal, promising to name Kasich his vice presidential running mate. On the other hand, TRUMP may have already made that deal with the Ohio governor--to stay in the race, blocking Rubio's until the convention and then . . .

Rubio should live so long. Kasich is going nowhere. He can live on, campaigning on fumes and to whom do you think Kasich would prefer to be second banana?  Rubio? TRUMP?

I have no idea how these politico-babble terms leach their way into the tsunamic vocabulary of political chatter, but there you are.

22-37.

July 4, 2014--Best of Behind: They Used to Sturdy the Kwakiutl

This originally was posted on September 20, 2006. For the record, OfficeMax, the subject, in spite of their best efforts, no longer exists as such--it merged in seven years later with Office Depot:

Before it became politically incorrect, anthropologists engaged in "field work" among American Indians and other Indigenous Peoples. More recently this kind of ethnographic research has taken on the feeling of cultural imperialism--it no longer seems appropriate for an outsider, say a German-American Jew such as Franz Boas, to roam among and study the Kwakiutl of the Pacific Northwest.

But the field of anthropology is still booming, in part because anthropologists in the Pacific Northwest are now doing field work in more accommodating places. Places such as OfficeMax. They do so in order to help lure shoppers into buying more index dividers and staple machines.

And of course the living conditions and remuneration for the anthropologists are much, much better.

The NY Times reports about one such study—watching over the shoulder of a sort of anthropologist of shopping as she observed and diagramed how a male shopper first picked up a shopping bag and then proceeded to the pen display. She made a schematic drawing of every step he took, which displays he lingered over, and noted how unusual it was for a man to use the OfficeMax-supplied canvas shopping bag. They appear to be gendered items. 

OfficeMax is very happy with what was discovered—“Scientifically understanding how customers interact with our stores can make a big difference.” Paco Underhill, CEO of the firm OfficeMax hired to do the study, is the author of Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. To give you an insight about the field of science he is developing, note how he expounds on the subject of “butt brushing." He has found that if a store’s aisles are two narrow and people thus brush up against each other when negotiating them, they tend to leave the store without buying anything.

Obviously not a good thing--though I can think of reasons why brushing the right butt might make it appealing for me to remain in the store—though maybe not to shop. 

And so, for this and other reasons OfficeMax has been redesigning how it lays out its aisles, breaking up the familiar grid and replacing it with what they call a “racetrack,” where the main wide aisle loops around the store, dividing it into “comfort zones” where no butting can possibly occur, which in turn leads to specific areas where “destination products” are on display—all things that are needed for filing or where you can find expensive electronic gadgetry.

It works! Electronic cash register data reveal increases in sales of related office products. Customers, I imagine, no longer just buy the staple machine, they also buy staples.

And all poor Franz Boas ever did was study the Kwakiutl’s potlatch ceremonies where individuals effectively bankrupted themselves by giving away everything they owned in order to appear more prosperous than their neighbors. Who ever heard of anything as crazy at that?

June 14, 2013--Miley and Ashton

I was reading a piece in the New York Times about how various celebrities are getting paid by companies to sneak advertisements into their TV shows, movies, and Twitter pages.

The 20-year-old pop star, Miley Cyrus, for example, tweeted the following after flying to northern California to promote her new album--

Thanks @blackjet for the flight to Silicone Valley

This seems innocuous enough except that Black Jet is a company that arranges for private jets for rich folks; and, though Miley refused to comment when asked if she was paid for this mention to her 12 million Twitter followers, the company's CEO said, "She was given some consideration for her tweet."

"Some consideration," I assume, means money or free private jet travel.

When Demi's ex, actor and star of Two and a Half Men, Ashton Kutcher, served as guest editor for the on-line version of Details magazine and wrote favorably about a dozen companies in which he is a major investor, Details' executives didn't seem to have a problem.

Nor did the producers of Two and a Half when he pasted a bunch of labels for other companies he invests in on the back of his character's laptop. Kutcher presumably benefitted by doing this but the producers of the show got nothing.

And like Miley Cyrus, he has not been shy about plugging companies in which he has a financial interest on his Twitter page as a subliminal way of advertising them to his 14 million followers.

When I told Rona about this she just shrugged, as if to say, "What else is new," but she did ask how someone like Miley Cyrus could attract 12 million Twitter followers and Ashton Kutcher 14 million.

"You got me," I said, "I occasionally look at our niece's open-source Twitter postings and admire her enigmatic, often poetic tweets; but about everyone else, the whole tweeting thing seems to me to be superficial and usually downright silly."

"Before you're too condemning," Rona pressed me, "You should do a little more research."

She was right, and so I looked at some of Ashton's and Miley's recent posts.

Here are a few of Kutcher's--

I don't like to b*tch on here but does anyone else feel like all they do all day is charge sh*t?

Wonder what wooly mammoth meat would taste like? RT @pritheworld: Russian scientists discover a wooly mammoth

But, to be as fair as Rona would want me to be, he also has a serious side--

In recent news there's new news about the news

Miley, on the other hand, sent out the following to her 12 million faithful--

When I was a little girl I used to run around saying "I ain't scurred of nuffin"

Booty Tweet. Oopsie Doopsie

I did NOT get a tattoo of wings on my as hahaha

When I reported this to Rona, she sighed and said, "I can't imagine who these 12 or 14 million are who read this stuff. It just feels sad."

May 21, 2013--The "Patient Experience"

As I have been hobbling from doctor to doctor to MRI to doctor the past couple of weeks, I assumed that the only one keeping track of me was Rona.

Assume again.

From what I've been reading, the drug companies are hot on my trail.  From a report in the New York Times, here's how it works--

There are data-mining companies that specialize in tracking patients' encounters with doctors, the tests that are prescribed, how patients' insurance works and reimburses, and what drugs are recommended. Also, using other data-gathering techniques, these companies can learn if patients are taking the drugs they bought and if they refill prescriptions on time. Perhaps most chilling, they gather information about what doctors talk about with each other and how they collaborate, including which doctors in a geographic area are most influential among their colleagues. From this "influence mapping" they are able to develop an "index" and do all they can to influence the influencers.

In effect, as the CEO of one of these marketing companies claims, they are able to monitor all aspects of the "patient experience."

The information gathered is in turn sold to pharmaceutical companies who use it to target-market their drugs to doctors and other medical professionals. If they discover that a particular physician has many patients with high cholesterol but is not prescribing their latest statin, they do what they can to reach out to that doctor in an attempt to convince him or her that theirs is the most effective medication.

The drug marketing people say that by engaging in these quasi-ethical practices they can help doctors by "providing information that is customized to their needs."

For example, German drug maker Boehringer Ingelheim uses insurance and prescription data to focus on doctors who have many patients with chronic respiratory disease but do not prescribe long-acting drugs such as BI's Spiriva. Of course, to get patients as well to think Spiriva, they run endless TV commercials on those channels that appeal primarily to middle-age women.

In the words of BI's USA chief executive, "You start analyzing what [doctors are] doing and you can find out if, through a combination of factors, you can intervene."

I can remember the time when that intervention was by young (and very attractive) pharmaceutical sales reps who made the rounds of doctors' offices, leaving sacks of free samples that physicians then passed along to their patients. To further predispose doctors they also paid for sumptuous lunches and dinners for all who worked in the office.

But wouldn't you know it, as a result of  the data-mining, Big Pharma has been able to cut way back on this in-person salesforce. Thus far thousands have been laid off.

And all along I thought this information about me and my doctors was strictly confidential. The research companies claim that their work is accomplished anonymously, without identifying individual patients. Forgive me for being skeptical. I wouldn't be surprised if ZS Associates already knows the results of my recent MRI. On the other hand, I am still waiting to hear about it from my surgeon.