Tag: advertising

  • Daily Reads: K-Cups

    Daily Reads: K-Cups

    Do you use one of those Keurig coffee machines that use the little pre-filled pods called K-Cups? Have you ever thought about whether you can recycle those pods or how many you end up sending to the landfill? When I first saw a Keurig machine I was, frankly, dismissive; it seemed like a machine that was trying to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist. But really, isn’t that what product marketing and advertising is all about – manipulating consumers into wanting and buying things they don’t need? I was immediately turned off by the wastefulness of K-Cups but apparently I’m in the minority, because Keurig machines are now widely used. It turns out that the creator of the Keurig is in that minority, too. In this article from Brian Bennet of C|Net, Keurig inventor John Sylvan admits that his machines and their pods are overpriced and environmentally damaging. Too little too late, since they are now so popular, but some people are starting to figure it out. This article by Maria Godoy from the NPR blog The Salt discusses a parody video that highlights the environmental disaster of the K-Cup. It’s funny, but it’s also informative. And if you really want to drill down into the Keurig problem, this article from The Atlantic by James Hamblin will fill you in. If you are a Keurig user, maybe reading these articles will cause you to reconsider.

    Keurig’s own inventor not a fan of K-Cups

    Coffee Horror: Parody Pokes At Environmental Absurdity Of K-Cups

    A Brewing Problem

  • Brandwashing

    Brandwashing

    Raise your hand if you’ve never heard of breast cancer. How about AIDS? Do heart disease, leukemia, or diabetes ring a bell? You may not have been aware of ALS, or amylotrophic lateral sclerosis, until recently… although you probably have heard of its common name, Lou Gehrig’s disease. What about domestic violence? Are you just now realizing that sometimes people are the victims of violence at the hands of their significant others? I’m going to guess that you have heard of all of these diseases, and that you have known for a long time that there are people who assault and victimize their romantic partners. So why do I ask? Because apparently there are many big, brand-name corporations who want to “raise awareness” of these issues by selling you their products.

    The fact that corporations profit from these so-called “awareness” campaigns is not surprising. I have been wary for years of the now-ubiquitous October “pink ribbon” campaigns for breast cancer. And lest I be misunderstood, let me state right now that I absolutely support activities and charities that actually raise significant sums to help fight diseases or help the victims of domestic violence. Of course I want there to be cures for cancer and debilitating diseases, and of course I want the domestic violence victims to have the support and resources to escape abuse. But when brands and their corporate parents throw their weight behind these causes by offering their products for sale and promising that a portion of the proceeds will benefit the cause, I am skeptical and cynical. I don’t doubt that there are individuals within corporations who do care about these causes, but let’s be honest: big brands use their breast cancer campaigns to make money, bottom line – and to build a reserve of social capital by appearing to be a warm and caring champion for women rather than a corporate behemoth that is beholden to shareholders and the profit motive. Lest I seem too cynical, bear in mind that these breast cancer “awareness” campaigns frequently raise tiny fractions of money, but buy their corporate backers enormous – and unearned – goodwill from an uncritical public. These campaigns have been dubbed “pinkwashing” by those who see them for what they are. Take the NFL as one example: according to The Guardian, “The NFL is exploiting breast cancer for its own gain and setting a pathetic example for big business: with nearly $10bn in annual revenue, they have given a mere $4.5m to breast cancer research since the pink misdirection play began.” Ok, so $4.5 million dollars is not nothing; but it is a drop in the bucket for a megabusiness (or shall I say, an untaxed non-profit!) like the NFL – and the money they contribute comes from sales of merchandise to consumers, not from the NFL’s own pockets. Adding insult to injury, that money is only 8 percent of the total that is spent by consumers to buy the NFL’s pinkwashed merchandise.

    The NFL is actually the reason I bring up this topic in the first place. They have started a new “awareness” campaign regarding the socially conscious topic du jour: domestic violence. Their campaign – which I won’t link to, but which you can find on your own if you so desire – is called “No More.” In the article “No More, The NFL’s Domestic Violence Partner, Is A Sham,”Deadspindeconstructs the branding of causes by corporations in general and focuses on the NFL in particular. In the spirit of pinkwashing, I am dubbing this phenomenon “brandwashing.” No More is explicit in its acknowledgement that the NFL needed to “brand” its anti-domestic violence campaign. The article juxtaposes this with the origins of the red AIDS ribbon, which grew organically out of a desperate desire by early AIDS activists to bring attention to a plight that at the time was truly in need of awareness-raising. Of course now, AIDS is used by corporations to give a rosy glow of social consciousness to their brand in the same way that the pinkwashing of breast cancer does, and with just as little actual positive impact on the cause.

    Ultimately, the NFL is trying to get off easy with its cynical use of No More to “raise awareness” of an issue that people everywhere are already aware of; and in fact, are even more aware of in light of the NFL’s kid-glove treatment of the domestic violence (and child abuse and violent crime) perpetrators  in its midst. But to me, the most horrifying thing about this is that the “awareness raising” of the NFL’s domestic violence brand is based on selling merchandise and asking people to buy things rather than directly contributing to the cause they pretend to be concerned about (for a graphic arts take on this, see the powerful poster created by my friend David Bernie). Since when does buying a case for your iPhone, or a t-shirt, or a mug, do anything to help cancer victims or AIDS patients or those suffering from domestic violence? The Deadspin article puts it best: “What good this does for people in need of help isn’t always clear, but it’s great for the brands, because all they have to do is slap logos on a few products and/or advertisements and throw a few pennies to charity to make themselves seem socially conscious.” Let’s be clear: the NFL is brandwashing this problem to make it go away and make the league look good in the process, not because they care about domestic violence.

    Let me conclude by reiterating that I am completely behind honest efforts to raise money and do concrete things to solve some of our greatest medical and social problems – but brandwashing is not the way to do it.

    If you really want to do something to help end domestic violence, here are a few places to start. The best way to help is to donate money directly to the charity of your choice – or, if you can, volunteer. That will do a lot more than “raising awareness” by drinking coffee out of a No More mug.

    National Network to End Domestic Violence

    Safe Horizon

  • Logical Fallacies: The Bandwagon Fallacy

    Logical Fallacies: The Bandwagon Fallacy

    When I was attending Humboldt State University in the early to mid-90s, I noticed that I was putting on some weight – the dreaded Freshman 15. To combat this phenomenon, I started getting regular exercise, joined a gym, and started watching my diet. It was right around this time that a new dieting trend burst on the scene: a massive proliferation of low- and non-fat foods, all of which were marketed directly to the consumer’s desire to lose weight while still being able to indulge in treats like cookies, ice cream, and chips. In particular, I remember the Snackwell’s brand of cookies and snack cakes in their trademark green packaging. I remember scanning the nutrition label and seeing that I could eat an entire package of vanilla creme cookies and only ingest 4 grams of fat. Eureka! It never occurred to me to stop and think about the wisdom of this approach. Did it really work? Well, it must – otherwise, why would everyone be buying these products?

    Welcome aboard the bandwagon fallacy. The premise is simple: if an idea is becoming popular, it must be true. The low-fat fad took off because so many people wanted to believe in its simple premise that removing fat from your diet would remove fat from your gut. As the idea gained in popularity, it gained in adherents, which further increased its popularity, in a nice little feedback loop. Bandwagons can form around all sorts of premises, tested and untested, but I find the ones that form around food to be quite fascinating. These fads seem to come and go: the high-protein Atkins diet was first popularized in the 1970s then faded, only to experience a resurgence in the 2000s. Of course, as people came to realize that the diet didn’t have the lasting weight-loss effects it promised, it lost its popularity as people abandoned the bandwagon. Yet, these ideas manage to persist. The same thing happened to the lactose-intolerance fad, and I strongly suspect it will happen to the gluten-free fad.

    When a bandwagon idea holds the potential for becoming a marketing bonanza, it explodes across a universe of products. This reinforces the bandwagon. Currently, gluten-free is the top dietary fad. It’s quite amusing to see products that never had gluten in them in the first place emblazoned with the GLUTEN FREE! label. I’ve seen it on products as ridiculous as soda and fruit snacks (although as an aside, it can also be quite shocking to discover all sorts of strange ingredients in prepackaged foods, so I suppose it’s always possible that a fruit roll-up could have gluten in it). The same thing happened during the fat-free fad. Other current bandwagon labels include organic, free range, cage free, all natural, non-GMO, RBGH-free, and other labels catering to the health-conscious (but sometimes logic-unconscious). Gluten-free still seems to be towing a full bandwagon, but the next wagon is rapidly filling with adherents. This is the anti-sugar bandwagon. I’ve lately been seeing a lot of ink spilled over the toxic hazards of our high-sugar modern diets, and I have absolutely no doubt that the marketing bonanza has already begun.

    Research is revealing that the causes of modern health problems are much more complex and intertwined than the simplistic healthy-food bandwagons would make it appear. I do want to stress that there is real research into some of the bandwagon fads I have mentioned. Sometimes the research supports the fad, sometimes it doesn’t, and often the results are maddeningly inconclusive. The Atkins diet has been thoroughly studied with mixed results, depending on what particular factors were the focus of the research. Lowering the amount of fat in one’s diet also can certainly lead to weight loss, but that by itself is not enough. People with celiac disease truly cannot ingest gluten without becoming severely ill, and some people may be able to handle wheat protein in their diets better than others. Organic foods have the benefit of lowering our exposure to potentially toxic pesticide and herbicide residues; however, some of the other popular adjectives for “healthy” food remain highly problematic because they are misleading. “All Natural” is a loosely regulated term that can be used by almost anybody. “Free Range” and “Cage Free” can mean only that the birds in question are released to a fenced yard for a short time each day or are crowded together in large facilities with no cages – but no natural light or ability to go outside. The research into GMOs and RBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) is unsettled and deserves a post of its own. Even the simple “calories in-calories out” approach is turning out to be much more complicated than we thought.

    The point of all this is that these issues are complicated and deserve critical review. The bandwagon fallacy encourages us to jump aboard because it’s easier to go with the crowd than do the hard work of researching an issue on the merits. Do your research and you may just find that the bandwagon is the right place to be – but it’s not because everybody else is there. If you choose to ride on the bandwagon, be sure it’s because you are confident in its origins and its destination – whether it’s about making food choices, social choices, or even pop-culture choices. Better yet, build and drive your own wagon!

  • Shifting Perspective: Kiddie Couture

    Shifting Perspective: Kiddie Couture

    On April 24, 2013, a building in Bangladesh known as Rana Plaza collapsed, killing 1,129 people and injuring 2,515. Rana Plaza housed several garment factories, in which workers – including children – were employed in manufacturing clothing for a variety of brands, including The Children’s Place, Benetton, and Walmart. The collapse triggered a wave of collective shock and outrage throughout the developed world as people were faced with the reality that working conditions in Bangladesh were poorly regulated, often dangerous, and beset with bribes, graft, and abuse.

    At the time of the collapse, the minimum wage for Bangladeshi workers was $38 a month. Following the collapse, international pressure and a series of worker strikes led the Bangladeshi government to raise the minimum wage to $68 a month, beginning on December 1, 2013. The real shock to many people in countries like the United States was having to face the fact that the reason we are able to buy $10 t-shirts and $19 jeans is because workers in places like Bangladesh make the equivalent of 39 cents an hour – and that’s assuming a standard 40-hour work week. In reality, Bangladeshi workers can labor for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Of course, the cost of living in Bangladesh is much lower than it is in most parts of the world – but we are fooling ourselves if we believe that this is truly a living wage.

    I bring this up not because I have a solution for the wage slavery taking place in much of the economic periphery – I don’t. I bring it up because I think it’s important for people to have perspective. To that end, I offer the story that made me decide to rant about this topic. ABC news broadcast a story about a new trend in children’s clothing: renting clothes instead of buying them. On the face of it, I think this is a terrific idea. The company offers parents the chance to pay a fee to rent clothes for special events such as weddings instead of having to pay full price for an outfit that will probably only be worn by their child once, and which they will outgrow soon in any case. Great! Sounds like a wonderful way to reduce our impact! But here’s where I got fired up: the company in question, Borrow Mini Couture, only rents high-fashion clothing. They carry brands such as Moschino, Roberto Cavalli, John Galliano, and Fendi – brands that charge hundreds of dollars for a single piece of children’s clothing. The least expensive Roberto Cavalli dress on the website retails for $352 – and it’s sized for a one year old girl. You can rent it for five days for $98 – $30 more than the monthly minimum wage of a Bangladeshi garment worker.

    The ABC piece makes it sound like this company is a boon to parents who want to save money. That very idea makes me want to weep. It’s not about saving money. It’s about aspirational parents being able to say they dressed their tot in couture clothing. Now, I don’t know where these couture brands manufacture their clothes, but that’s not really the point. Even if they are made by workers who are employed in safe, well-regulated factories where they earn enough to make a dignified living, what does it say about us as a society that we would even consider paying hundreds (or thousands) of dollars for a single piece of our own clothing, much less the clothes for our kids? And what does it say about us that there are people who will spend $50 to $100 just to briefly rent a status symbol for their child (or more accurately, for themselves)?

    For the shift in perspective I wish to impart in this rant, I offer this 2-minute video produced by the Toronto Star of children working in the garment industry in Bangladesh. Juxtapose this video with the ABC story and, like me, you might just want to weep – and I hope, want to think about what this means for the world we live in.

  • Technology and Its Discontents: Planned Obsolescence

    Technology and Its Discontents: Planned Obsolescence

    Last Sunday a friend and I took a trip to visit the Antique Gas and Steam Engine Museum in Vista. I have been tremendously enjoying the process of learning to use my new camera, and the museum provided an abundance of wonderful subjects. Yet, as I wandered amongst the rusting hulks of old tractors, engines, trucks, and farm equipment, I felt a pang of unease. The museum is a testament to obsolete or aging technology, and some of the machines have been lovingly cared for or meticulously restored so that visitors can appreciate the technology of days gone by. In many cases, the old machinery did not look that different from what is in use today, but small, incremental changes over time led to the abandonment of the old in favor of the new. In other cases, as with the steam engines, radical new technologies led to the complete obsolescence of previous innovations.

    George Bernard Shaw said “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” When I came across this quote I shuddered. To me it speaks directly to the human desire to shape the world in his image. It is steeped in a theological ideology of man’s supremacy over and domination of the world. It does not see humans as the animals they are, destined to adapt – or not – to their environment. As I noted in a previous post, human adaptation takes the form of wanting things to be easier, faster, and better, and this idea was amply illustrated at the museum. What was wrong with the machines that had been abandoned for better (and there’s a word that needs a critical unpacking) models? I’m not arguing that innovation is necessarily a bad thing; but when we consider how our ability to do more things more easily has changed the world and our ability to survive in it in greater and greater numbers with a greater and greater impact, it’s worth thinking about whether it’s necessarily a good thing.

    Taking a turn towards more modern technologies, I find myself wondering when we will have museums filled with obsolete televisions, computers, and cellphones. I realize we have antique communicative technologies in museums already; radio has been around for more than a century, and so have telegraphs and telephones. Television is not far behind, and computers are nearing the half-century mark. But unlike the technologies of old, which seemed to change and innovate relatively slowly, computers in particular are changing so fast that what you buy today is practically obsolete tomorrow. This is not an accident. Humans seem unable to leave well enough alone and adapt to what they already have. Shaw’s remark about progress is pertinent, except that I don’t think it’s the unreasonable man alone who is responsible for Shaw’s so-called progress. Instead, it is human nature itself, because it wants faster, easier, better… and ultimately, higher status technologies even if we don’t actually need them. We are being relentlessly manipulated and trained into believing that we must have the next big thing, and nowhere is this more apparent to me than in cellphones and computers.

    I don’t want this to turn into a rant about advertising, but I am so angry and distressed at the commercials I have seen recently that attest to this planned obsolescence phenomenon. One is for Cox Communications and features a recurring, annoying dad character who races around boasting of his blazing fast internet speed and his ability to watch streaming movies and TV everywhere he goes. In a scene where he walks down a staircase, eyes glued to his computer tablet, I found myself wishing the commercial’s punchline would be dad tripping and tumbling to his death from a broken neck. Alas, that wouldn’t sell many subscriptions to Cox. Another commercial, for AT&T, states that they are offering a new plan wherein customers can Upgrade to a New Phone Every Year! With No Activation Fee! And No New Phone Upcharge! All I could think when I saw that one was “holy shit, we are doomed.” I recently met an old friend for dinner, and he was using a cell phone he’d had for 13 years… and it still works. It doesn’t text, or have more than a rudimentary screen, or a (what used to be so cool) flip cover; it’s just a phone. And guess what? We were able to use it to communicate. I found myself feeling a mixture of envy and nostalgia for his decision to stick with the basics.

    What are we doing to ourselves with this attachment to newer, better, faster? What are the ultimate long-term consequences of “progress”? Is it really better that we have increased the earth’s human carrying capacity to billions? Or is our insatiable need to take what’s not really obsolete, or even necessary, and trade up for something better going to lead to a crash? In a way, by refusing to adapt to the world as it is, we are planning our own, ultimate obsolescence.

  • Stereotypes, Generalities, and Banalities

    Stereotypes, Generalities, and Banalities

    Another Super Bowl has passed, and with it has passed several attempts by corporations to trick us into thinking we need to buy what they are selling. We all know that the Super Bowl is about more than the game of football; for many, it is a social opportunity as well as a sporting event. Over the past several years, the commercials have become as big, if not a bigger, draw than the game itself. It seems to me that before this became the standard, the commercials were actually better. Madison Avenue saw it for what it was: an enormous audience of sports fans and their associated hangers-on. No longer did the commercials need to be tailored specifically to football fans; they could be crafted to appeal to the general American public, which included the spouses, friends, and families of the actual football fans. I feel no shame in admitting that for years I, too, was more interested in the commercials than in the game. Now, however, my interest has taken a decidedly different turn.

    Two commercials in particular caught my interest, and they were both produced in the service of the same corporation. Chrysler created one ad for its Jeep division, and another for its Ram truck division. The Jeep commercial features a serious narrative intoned by Oprah Winfrey, telling us that we cannot be “whole again” until our men and women in uniform are back home with their families after completing their heroic service. The Ram commercial is soundtracked with an old speech by famous conservative radio commentator Paul Harvey, who extols the virtues and values of the American family farmer. In both commercials, the money shot of the product being sold is saved until the end. This serves the purpose of luring the viewer into a particular state of mind – one of admiration for our heroes, whether military or farming – and then associates that feeling of pride, nostalgia, and lump-in-the-throat patriotism with the product. Manipulative? Absolutely. Does it work? Absolutely.

    So what’s my problem here? I don’t assume that every Super Bowl ad viewer is credulous enough to fall for the Madison Avenue hype. Most viewers know they are being manipulated, even if unconsciously. But how many people really stop to think about it? I’m sure there are reams of research on effective advertising strategies that trick consumers into believing they need things that in reality, they simply want. However, I do think the kind of shameless manipulation manifested in the Jeep and Ram ads is particularly egregious. What do Jeeps have to do with the socioeconomic realities that make so many young Americans believe their only real hope of success in life is to join the military? These young men and women are not heroes in the sense that this commercial wants us to believe; that is, they are not heroic because they put themselves in harm’s way. They are ordinary people with ordinary foibles, and serving in the military does not, in and of itself, make them “heroes.” (This is also a rant for another day; I believe the word hero needs to be defined much more narrowly and that it is cheapened by applying it to every single person who does a difficult job.) If anything, their heroism lies in accepting an extremely narrow range of choices in life and making the best of it. Jeep has nothing to say about changing the structural realities of our society such that status inequalities are erased and military service truly becomes one choice among many, as opposed to an avenue of escape for those who have very few avenues to pursue.

    I have the same issue, although slightly less so, with the hero farmer portrayed by Ram. Undoubtedly family farming is strenuous and difficult work that is not taken lightly by those who pursue it; but at the same time, being a farmer does not somehow instill men (and the commercial features only men as the farmers, with women and children as support staff) with deeper, or truer, or greater values than the rest of us. I realize that the commercial is not meant to imply that only family farmers have these strong, quintessential American values of hard work and sacrifice; but the symbolism of the farmer is very powerful in our national gestalt. And just like the Jeep commercial, I wonder what, exactly, Ram trucks have to do with these values. In my reading about these commercials I read a comment stating that in reality, Ram trucks are probably out of the price range of the average family farmer today – especially since family farms are a dying breed and those that succeed do so without tricked out Rams that are really luxury cars in disguise.

    So we get back to the original point: tugging at our patriotic and bootstrap individualistic values; wanting to see in ourselves what the commercials stereotype, generalize, and banalize about the essential symbols of American culture; and being tricked into thinking that cars, of all things, have anything whatsoever to do with it. Feel free to admire the values, but think carefully about what they really mean… and think extra carefully before accepting the false, hegemonic notion that you can purchase them.