a brief note on consumerism

I would like to have called today buy-nothing day for us, if only to counter-balance the stupidity of people who will wait all night to get in a fight over an electronic hamster. Instead, we made our way to IKEA so grandma could get Buttercup part of her Christmas haul — a desk and bookcase to facilitate the changeover to a "big girl's room" — and one of the recently-built, urban-center malls in the Dayton area for some clothes. In the end, our little shopping trip pumped somewhere in the range of $700 back into the economy.

Such a sum isn't exactly what some people might dump out on the day, and it was a bare scratch on the whole gift question. Still, it seems notable to acknowledge that we were pulled by the desire to shop on the same day that so many other people went out to pound the pavement for questionable deals. It seems a validation of the cultural norm that is shopping — we do it so well in this country.

What struck me as I was walking around today, though, is the degree to which we are marketed common experiences. I've thought about this and written about it before, but it particularly struck me today when I realized that there were few, if any, locally-owned businesses in any of the places we went. Every shopping experience was standardized to the point that location simply didn't matter. And to an extent, individuality didn't matter — and was perhaps discouraged.

This is really an outgrowth of my past thoughts on place and identity. After all, if there is nothing to connect you to the place you are, what forms your identity? Can a series of brands and manufactured experiences really pass for identity? And if this is what we're raising our children with, what sort of identities will they possess when they come into their own? Will they see the value in unique experiences or will they be like the students I've taught and worked with who only ate at chain restaurants because anything else was "weird"?

Discuss.


(Photo is not from today's excursion.)

Hanna in China

We just got an order of new Hanna's delivered today. They are, of course, adorable and fit Buttercup well — their European sizing works well on her. Sad to say, they are also all made in China. This is nothing new, and I'm not going to belabor it. I just can't help being sad that even good brands known for quality and attention to "sustainable" materials opt for outsourcing to the factory of cheap.

Crafting another generation of consumers

Thanks to Highlights for Children I’ve finally gotten the perfect opportunity to explain marketing to Buttercup.

See, yesterday, we got the latest round of marketing from them. This particular one is for a series of pubs about the fifty states. Before I even had a chance to intercept the thing, Buttercup had it in her hands, pulling the plastic off. There was a poster showing parts of the series. There was a sheet of stickers for the states — stickers being prime swag for the kid-set. There was a card assuring me about the fun and educational value of the series, and assuring me that I was under no obligation to buy anything. And last but far from least, there was the sweepstakes game.

The sweepstakes game is, of course, the prime driver here. There are six scratch-off spots. Scratch them off and find out if you’ve gotten: (a) the free book with one star, (b) the free bag with two stars, or (c) the free book and bag with three stars. As Buttercup started in on it, I grumbled that she would find three stars, of course. Why, she asked, and with a sigh, I told her that this is what marketing people do — we make the audience think they’ve gotten something special, even when everyone else who got the package also got three stars.

She didn’t care. She scratched them off and applied the three stars to the reply card, absolutely pleased that she’d gotten them. And of course she wanted to know whether we could send them in for the book and the bag.

I tried to explain how the process works, that we would send it in and pretty soon have things arrive that we would be expected to buy. She mentioned that we had gotten them last year, and I realized we were on the slippery slope again. Parental guilt was about to set in — if we got them, she might learn and that would be a good thing, but was the (small) added expense worth it — but it was bed time so I hoped it would pass.

No luck. I found her filling out the response card in the morning with her name and age. (Who knew that the words “Print Name” vs. “Signature” were a learning tool?) Her next question, though, was a good one for the lesson I wanted to teach. “Why are your name and our address already on here,” she asked. “Because they know we might buy it, so they’re selling it directly to us, sweetie. And making it really easy to send back to them.”

“Oh,” she said. “So can we still get it?”

I sighed, asked her to put it away for now, and eat her breakfast. Will guilt push me over into sending the card in? Probably. Do I feel like I got sucker-punched by classic, tried-and-true direct marketing techniques? Absolutely.

Desperate times?

How can you tell if a company is in trouble? Massive discounts and constant sales might be a good sign. At that standard, Jos. A. Banks must be prepping for bankruptcy any day now. That or they really can afford to give away a suit, two shirts, and two ties — all free with the purchase of one suit. Yep, it's a clothing twofer.

Good luck staying afloat, guys.

Customer Service, how not to do it...

Yesterday, my Richmond Times-Dispatch was not on my doorstep when I woke up. Whether I was missed or it was stolen, there's no telling. I called the circulation department and registered my complaint with the auto phone system. Lo and behold, my doorbell rang half an hour later, and the paper was handed to me.

This morning, I woke to find this note wrapped around my paper:



The note would be one thing. One thing, that is, if the carrier hadn't then called me at 6:45 to make sure I got the note and understood I should call him in the future. Granted the carrier is a contractor, but this doesn't exactly strike me as customer-friendly behavior.

Lord knows I wouldn't have gotten away with anything like that when I was delivering papers in the early 1980s.

life at the heart of crass consumerism

Yesterday was Richmond's annual Easter on Parade. Neither parade nor particularly Easter-ish, this amounts to a few blocks of Monument Avenue being shut off for a grand street festival. I gather that once upon a time in some far-off memory of "the way Richmond was" this amounted to a parade of grand hats and people strolling along in their Easter finest. While some of this was on display yesterday, the festival amounted to much more of this:



Large inflatables for sale? Check. Gyro/falafel/sausage/funnel cakes for sale? Check. Parents saying no? Check.

Don't get me wrong. There were some grand hats. There were refined folks in their better garb — right down to our friend and neighbor who sported a boater for the day. There were grand houses opened for parties. There was a troupe of Morris dancers decked out in their sticks, bells, and face paint. There might have been a petting zoo. There were bottles to fill with colored sand. There were mimosas and bloody marys in plastic cups. There were dogs decked out in wings and ears and bonnets. There were kids-a-plenty. And there was the sun, the grand sun which decided to push past the April moods and join us all day long. There were puppet shows, and there was Jonathan Austin — Richmond's local juggler who is at all things public where there are kids and families.

With all of this and more, I still don't understand the need for the same food concessions as always. Isn't it possible — just once? — for there to be a festival in Richmond without the same old Italian sausage and funnel cake vendors? Isn't it possible — just once? — for that big cup Banana is holding to be filled with lemonade that doesn't come with a side of grease and a heavy dose of sugar? And I fail to see what Batman and Dora the Explorer have to do with Easter.

Thanks, USAA

Thanks, USAA, for the Customer Service Fail. You promised that my replacement debit card would be FedExed, but apparently the card is not arriving on time and wasn't sent FedEx. So, thanks for keeping me locked out of my slush funds for an extra day or two. Oh yeah, and I forgot the best part: the CSR who promised such great, prompt service? He never logged it in to "The System." So, thanks again for the Customer Service Fail.

Unconscionable

Salmonella in peanut butter. Awful, right? Mercury in high fructose corn syrup. Troubling, right? What I find more troubling is that companies and regulators may have information about these issues long before the public learns about them and long before anything is done to correct them.

It is shocking and inconceivable that the company responsible for the current Salmonella outbreak in peanut products knew about the contamination long before any actions were taken. Salmonella is deadly, yet Peanut Corp. allowed the contamination to pass unreported and unresolved until death and illness brought it to light:

Michael Rogers, director of the division of filed investigations at the F.D.A., said that the inspectional team found records showing that on at least 12 occasions between 2007 and 2008, the company’s own tests of its product “identified some type of salmonella and released a product after it was retested, in some cases by a different laboratory.”

Mr. Rogers said the positive test results should have led the company to take actions to eliminate the contamination. “It’s significant because, at the point at which salmonella was identified, it shouldn’t be there, based on the manufacturing process that’s designed to mitigate salmonella, actually eliminate it.”

The firm took no steps to clean its plant after the test results alerted the company to the contamination, and the inspection team found problems with the plant’s routine cleaning procedures as well, Mr. Rogers said.

Without putting too fine a point on it, it is reasonable to say this: the people who knew this and chose not to report it have the blood of at least 8 people on their hands.

And from one processed-food issue to another, the week also brought the revelation that studies conducted since 2005 have discovered trace amounts of mercury in high fructose corn syrup:

In the first study, published in current issue of Environmental Health, researchers found detectable levels of mercury in nine of 20 samples of commercial HFCS.

And in the second study, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), a non-profit watchdog group, found that nearly one in three of 55 brand-name foods contained mercury. The chemical was found most commonly in HFCS-containing dairy products, dressings and condiments.

Products affected included "Coca-Cola, Yoplait strawberry yogurt, Nutri-Grain strawberry cereal bars, and Smucker's strawberry jelly. The top offender on their list was Quaker Oatmeal To Go." (source and additional links) While such findings don't surprise me given the industrialization of our food production, what worries me is the fact that the research has been showing this for more than three years.

From melamine to this, how many more instances have yet to be publicized (or found) of dangerous contamination in our food stream?

At this rate, Banana will never get to eat a school-supplied lunch again. Come to think of it... she never does.


************


UPDATE

Daddytypes does a good job of tossing water on potential hysteria over the mercury/HFCS issue. In particular, he correctly points out that a lax FDA under the Bush administration can't necessarily be faulted for not pursuing this; it simply wasn't something they were looking into. He also rightly points out that the potential contamination from tuna is much, much higher.

The sad part is that we probably have to assume a certain amount of contamination in almost anything produced in the maze of food processing and preparation. The contamination could be from chemicals included in refining processes or ingredients; carcinogenic residue from cooking utensils; corrupted ingredients; unhealthy additives; and so much more. And as long as our food production complex remains built on (first) business principles and (second) mass industrialization, and as long as these remain a thousand times more important than quality or healthfulness, we will continue to see problems like these.

The CPSC bows (a little bit)

Just picked this up from Consumerist. It looks like the Consumer Products Safety Commission has seen the light a little bit:

Large manufacturers and retailers say the cost of testing will not be a burden. But small businesses such as handmade-toy shops and thrift stores say the requirement would force them to spend tens of thousands of dollars to test products such as clothing, in which the threat of lead is almost nonexistent. Many thrift stores said they would be forced to stop selling children's clothing or close altogether.

The commission's two members (a third seat is vacant) voted tentatively to exempt:

• Items with lead parts that a child cannot access;
  
  
• Clothing, toys and other goods made of natural materials such as cotton and wood; and
  
  
• Electronics that are impossible to make without lead.

The commission also tentatively approved a rule that clarifies how it determines exclusions from the law.

Emphasis mine.

Notes from the holidays

Some days as a parent you feel like a super hero. Some days you feel like a super villain. I guess the key is finding the balance—remembering that at the best moments you will stumble and the worst moments you will do better. That said, here are some mental notes from the holiday season...

• A girl will fall in love with a pair of cool new boots. She will wear them every day. Gift success...


• It will be very interesting to see how many brands and/or retailers survive the current recession and holiday season. The sales are absurd. The discounts are so deep it's impossible to imagine how brands like Jos. A. Banks will maintain profitability and viability.


• The grocery shrink ray hit Reilly's food. California Naturals shrank the mid-size bag of their Herring and Sweet Potato food from 20 pounds to 15 pounds. The price remained the same. As a result, the per-pound cost went from $1.50 to $2.00, and the longevity of a bag is reduced from three weeks to two weeks. I appreciate the company's need to deal with rising costs, but I do not appreciated such a drastic loss in value for the consumer.


• Mad Men is an exercise in excellence.


• Once you accept that the holidays are about more than an orgy of consumerism, it is easier to see the beauty of the season. What it really comes down to is the ways in which any one of us can make the people around us feel better.


• Your grandmother's traditional dishes come out better when you stop reading the recipe and remember how to cook and how they tasted when she made them.

There will be more to come later...

Best Buy

On Friday, I tried to reach three Best Buy stores. Unsuccessfully. My goal was to find out how I could place an order for in-store pick-up in Ohio. After finally calling the main customer service line, I learned that there is, in fact, no way to place an order that someone else will pick up. This seems like something that should change...

the great Christmas debate

We live, of course, in a consumption-driven society. Getting, wanting and spending are the drivers of our lives. We live between the poles of want and need, and there are even whole sections of kindergarten curricula dedicated to discussing the difference between desires and necessities. But there is no other time of the year when it seems to become as crucial to consider the want vs. need question than at Christmas time.

Banana and I talked the other day about what she was going to ask for from Santa. The list was short, only three items. At the top of the list was an iPod. At the bottom of the list was a complete Littlest Pet Shop set. Believe it or not, I'm okay with the iPod. Shuffles are $49—not inexpensive, but also not bank-busting. When it came to the Littlest Pet Shop, however, I suggested that she probably shouldn't ask Santa for it. Since the summer we've been periodically purging toys, and several Littlest Pet Shop items have been purged. She said she'd play with the complete set, and with all the self-assurance that six-year-olds possess, she told me that the complete set was very different from the other stuff. I persisted a bit longer in part because while none of these things are needs, I am acutely aware that I want to spend money on things that will be used and would much rather spend the same amount on something that she will use for the foreseeable future rather than a few months. (The Polly Pocket racing set from last Christmas is a prime example here; friends play with it more than she does.)

So that brings us to the boots. Does Banana need $60 boots from Hanna Andersson? Probably not. But there are two reasons I will splurge. First, compared to the Circo boots at Target or similarly disposable items for a third of the price, I'd rather spend more on something that won't look worn out in two weeks. I also see a value in teaching her to look for higher quality items that last longer rather than seeing inexpensive as better. Second, I realized recently that Banana is seriously lacking in little girl clothes. She's been wearing more jeans this fall, but when she gets the chance to "girl up" she does. And I realized that her dearth of more-stylish clothing is a direct product of my pragmatism. Just as I'd rather spend more on a few better-quality items, I also tend to spend money on clothing that is more "practical."

The thing is, a little girl should be able to look like a little girl — even if she lives with daddy rather than with both parents. So these boots and the faux shearling coat she'll be getting from Grandma? They're also an effort to remind myself that life isn't all about jeans, sneakers, and fleece jackets.

My (Sporty) Concession

A week and a half ago, I took the 2004 Jetta in for its 40K service. Our local VW dealer had just gotten in a new shipment of cars, including a few Jetta SportWagens. I've been tempted by these since they were announced late last year. Well, it just so happened that one of the models had a manual transmission—still one of my requirements for a car.

I drove the car and found it stiff but sporty. The engine had a good bit of zing, and the car felt as stable as any I've driven—more like a couple of Audis I've driven than the last generation Jetta. It was also remarkably roomy inside. In the end, I played with the financing and thought through one basic issue: the '04 Jetta was coming out of its warranty, and I probably couldn't handle any major service bills that might come up, at least not in the foreseeable future.

In the end, it just came down to a decision to take one more step to putting the past behind me, and I came home in this:



I will admit I've had some moments of buyer's remorse—moments where I wonder if I should have stubbornly stuck out paying off the 2004 and moments where I wonder if I've made the ultimate concession to parenthood and approaching middle age by getting a wagon. In reality, though, neither is really a good reason for remorse. Paying off the 2004 would have been an honorable activity, but might have not have benefitted me in the long-run. And the wagon question? Well, the reality is I need to haul a kid, a dog, and all the stuff that goes along with those responsibilities. I also hope to get back to more active, outdoor pursuits, and a wagon just works better for that.

In the end, though, I'm a dad. I'm almost forty. I'm an adult in need of adult trappings. Would I love to have the cherry red GLI with its 6-speed gear box and 220+ hp engine I looked at before buying the last Jetta? Sure, I would. But that one will have to wait for the day Banana inherits our well-used, paid-for 2009 SportWagen... in 2019.

God help us all...

********************

One other thing I should add: I love the car. It truly is fun to drive. And when we came home from IKEA and Trader Joe's this weekend, there was room to spare. Time to add the Apple sticker...

Dear B & H Photo:

I was shopping on your site, and I liked some of the prices I was seeing on the Nikons. Unfortunately, your site is now broken. I guess the error message means I will look elsewhere.

Signed,
indecisive

brand fascination

More times than I can count in my career in advertising and media I have been involved in conversations about branding and brands. As you might expect, the tenor of that conversation depends on the client-in-question. One common rule I think you can establish, though, is that most clients do not really understand the difference between brand and branding. The two are often confused for each other, and though they are part of the same overall picture, they are not the same thing.

Essentially, a brand is the identity you create. In visuals and copy, it is what becomes your identifying mark. Branding is different; it is the feeling evoked by your brand. And it is a great deal more complex.

You can always create a great, memorable visual identity. Think Target or L.L. Bean. The thing is a great visual identity doesn't create the brand identity. Or more to the point, the visual doesn't create people's feelings about the brand. The company, instead, needs to connect with people's experiences and emotions. For example, Target has done such a good job of building its branding that many people (including me) think of that big red bullseye whenever a question of essentials from socks to shampoo to toilet paper comes to mind, and the biggest consumerists may even make the leap from essentials to figuring out what else they need (or want) from the store.

While I've found this a difficult concept to communicate in the past, the WSJ pointed to a site today where you can see what people's perceptions of brands are. Considering the extent to which consumerism and branding shape our society, it's a pretty interesting little exercise.

more ad stupidity

Nobody ever said ads had to be true to their market, right? In fact, sometimes it's better if an ad creates an aspirational feeling rather than depicting reality, right? Right. As Exhibit A, I offer this page from this week's Target circular.

Beautiful girl? Check. Aspirational look on face encouraging shoppers to feel good about themselves? Check. Correlation between sale items and visuals? Um, not so much. Why? Take a look at the product just below the headline... the weight-loss product. Yeah, and the smoking cessation lozenges below it. Oh, and the prenatal vitamins at the top of that column. Yeah... the real target here doesn't look much like the model.

selling god

My buddy Jack and I hiked out to Short Pump Town Center this afternoon for a bit of retail roaming. Short Pump TC is one of the local examples of the reinvention of malls as "lifestyle centers" — an evolution that can inspire more than a few diatribes itself. Short Pump TC is also home to our local Apple store, and I'm in the market for a new MacBook Pro. (The Air calls, but I will not answer that call yet.)

Anyway, as we're roaming around and on our way to having a beer at one of the mall restaurants, or "concepts" in the lingo of mid- to high-end corporate chain restaurants, we stuble across a store that is having its grand opening. It takes nothing more than the words "Christian Fashion" to stop me.


The store is named Not Of This World—"NOTW" in rakish and grunge-cool typography. Very hip of them. The clothes from what I could see all followed the example of the mannequins in the window. The styles and look of the store fall somewhere between Hot Topic and Urban Outfitters. This is a long way from Thomas Kinkade and Zondervan Bookstores. This is hip, downtown cool like the church near my house which bills itself more as a worship lifestyle center than as a "traditional" church.

Leaving alone my belief that spirituality is should be quietly revered rather than crassly commercialized, this strikes me as one more effort to foist a brand—and it really is a brand in this case—of Christianity on society. The religion (specifically Christian) section at Barnes & Noble continues to expand while a whole subculture of films and music continues to build and creep in around the edges of popular culture. Our political discourse, international relations and military actions begin to take on the rhetoric of faith (again, a very specific faith). What I want to know is this: at what point do secularism and plurality begin to push back?

Verizon Sucks, part *I've lost count*

I'm liveblogging this, baby...



I am on hold with the fourth person I've spoken to this morning. Supposedly, she finally found the "active" erroneous bill. She has placed me on hold--mind you, by this point, I know every song on Verizon's hold music--in order to speak to billing and find out which way this account needs to be corrected.

She just lost me. The call shipped over to another rep at sales and service. She shipped me back to billing, and the person there shipped me to FiOS.

Patience is a virtue, right?

I have just asked the latest CSR to hand me to her supervisor. When she told me she would need to take my call-back number and have the supervisor call me back , I patiently explained that she was the eighth person I had spoken to this morning and that I very much needed to speak directly to a supervisor at this point.


12:20 p.m. Update

I'm on with person number 10 now after the last rep refused to put me through to her supervisor directly.

Oy.


1:02 p.m. Update

The FiOS account rep I was "walked to" by number 10 has found the whole cycle of bills. It's possible (knock on wood quickly) that she may be able to resolve this mess. Fingers crossed.


1:36 p.m. Update

After three and a half hours, we have a partial resolution. And in theory, I'll be receiving an email confirmation of the partial credits. The rest of the credits will be sorted out--supposedly--over the next few days, and the latest (very nice) CSR has assured me that their "special team" will be resolving any credit issues from this.

Fingers still crossed.

Verizon sucks, pt. 7,001

I shouldn't have to write this post, particularly after the last round we had to go through on this saga. But I do. Because I got another letter from a different collections agency seeking to collect the $505.91 bill that was supposed to have been wiped out in the summer, and then again in October. But somewhere down in the system it wasn't.

This means that I have been trying to get this mess cleared up since July. And that's just the billing portion.

This kind of inattentive idiocy is simply unconscionable and unbelievable. Even the CSRs who have actually tried to help me navigate some of this mess have been befuddled by the complications that seemed to start with a poorly recorded move order and a subsequent call to clear up the billing foul-ups related to that order. Every fucking part of this saga stems from those two phone calls and the inability of those two CSRs to record correct changes.

To wit, and to repeat... for the hell of it:

• I placed the initial order to move my service from my old house to my new house the week before Memorial Day. When I had, in fact, moved and called to find out why the tech hadn't come out to make the switch on the day I had taken off work, I was told that there was no record of the change order. To their credit, they had a tech out on that Saturday to do the install. That tech decided not to install a new router or set-top box because I already had the right ones. Fast forward six weeks...
  
• I receive a bill for service at both my old house and my current house. The bill also includes charges for the equipment. I get on the phone the next day with the business office to clear up the issues. The CSR is very nice and assures me she understands the situation. She understands it so well that she turns off the service at both locations. Madness ensues as I get on the line with CSR after CSR to resolve the situation. This process takes nearly two weeks.
  
• As part of the resolution, I am guaranteed that all of the outstanding bills—including any outstanding bills from before the move—will be closed. I am also given a month's free service. Yet here we are seven months later and the situation is still dogging me.

Words don't cover the absurdity of this. The pity is that I very much like my service, but the inability of the various levels at Verizon to deal effectively with a clear and documented screw-up on their part is patently absurd.

Anybody know how to get up the chain with Verizon FiOS corporate to resolve this?

Oy.

consumer protection?

Oh, this is just brilliant. The White House is vetting candidates to run the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Wash Post leads the article with this:

The White House is considering a scientist who has frequently testified and written on behalf of the energy, pesticide and tobacco industries to chair the nation's chief product-safety regulator.

Sounds innocuous enough (sort of?) until you get down to this:

"She's not thought of as a consumer advocate per se but as someone hired by industry to represent their point of view," said Lynn Goldman, a former assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton, who has testified at hearings with Charnley.

We want more government by of and for business, dammit! Screw the consumers!

Oy.