PR 101

I don’t know what’s going on in your state, but in Wisconsin, it’s election time. Since we Badgers are purple most of the time, every political party from the Greens to Tea Party wants to talk to us. (Maybe the Greens and Tea Party could merge and form the Green Tea Party. Healthy at least.)

I have to say for someone who has done marketing for a decade or so – and was a working reporter for two decades before that – I have never seen more terrible marketing campaigns. A five-year-old with a lemonade stand does a better job marketing their product than your average politician and his/her campaign staff.

“Advertising is essentially truthful, except political advertising, which … gets worse every year … (It’s) just the artful assembling of nominal facts into hideous, outrageous lies,” Adage Columnist Bob Garfield, as quoted on the PBS Frontline Show “The Persuaders.”

What amazes me is so many people believe those advertisements and information that comes from robocalls and information provided by the candidates themselves.

Here in Wisconsin, we have tight races for US Senate and Governor. As I said, we are generally a purple state. We are a contrary people. You can never be sure just which way we are going to lean. So, every election season we get bombarded with calls, fliers, and newspaper and television ads. Each side is trying to convince us that they are the solution to all their problems.

The ads usually run along these lines:

Attack ad – “Did you know that (fill in name here) proposed barbecuing puppies on the steps of the capital? Well, call (fill in name here) and tell him/her you are opposed to barbecuing puppies on the steps of the capital.”

Reply – “My opponent (fill in name here) says I proposed barbecuing puppies on the steps of the capital. Balderdash and poppycock!! Why my opponent has proposed eliminating child labor laws so that it is mandatory that every child over the age of three go to work.”

Of course, when a candidate appears in his or her own commercials, it goes something like this: “When Moses parted the Sea of Reeds, I was there. It was I who suggested the route the Israelites took through the Sinai. Re-elect/elect me and I will steer my constituents through the desert we are in currently in. I will lead you all to a land of milk and honey.”

I have a friend who is a veteran marketing and public relations practitioner. He is so good at it, he teaches it at the college level. He is also, I think, a conservative Republican. Yet, he told me the other day he turns the volume down every time a political commercial comes on the tube. He said they are so bad they make him cringe.

What amazes me is that research indicates those commercials work. And the more excited the commercial gets the viewer, the more effective it is.

“We know from lots of good geeky political science research that ads that are able to stimulate emotions are more likely to be effective,” University of Wisconsin – Madison Political Science Professor Kenneth Goldstein. Goldstein is a political advertising expert.

As I said, I just don’t get it. Of course, it just shows me that my hero, H.L. Mencken was right when he said: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

This is going to be a different kind of rant. I am a fed up and I want tell the world about it. Yes, I am as mad as hell and I not going to take it anymore. The problem is I don’t know what to do about it.

This is going to be a long one. There is nothing that says you have to read all of it or any of it. If you like it, let me know. If you don’t let me know that too.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know my rants are usually about something marketing misfire. I try to call out campaigns or companies I feel need to be chastised for missteps or incompetence.

Well, this time I am calling out the whole economy, or more specifically, how companies, politicians, bureaucrats, and all of us are reacting to it. I will admit this is personal to a point because I cannot convince anyone out there to spend any money on marketing. I am feeling the pinch and it’s a hard pinch. Expenses are rising while income is flat.

I know I am not alone. I have lost count of the number of conversations I have had with other small business owners about the same topic. We all hear the same things from potential clients – not now; I am not sure we can afford this now; I will find something who will do it for half your price; things are too uncertain; your service is not that important.

Or my personal favorite, give us a proposal. Which I labor over for many hours and then send off. The company decides they cannot afford me right now, but then uses my ideas. I know it has happened. I know people on the inside of many companies. What can I do – sue?

What frosts me is that no one has a solution and I mean no one. Not the Republicans, not the Democrats, not any level of government, not corporations, not the media, and no individual that I have heard. Since I think they all deserved to be skewered equally, I am going to make this a series.

Not that I think it is going to do any good. I am not sure most of you are going to read this far down. But, it might make me feel better, so that makes it worth it.

Let’s start with the two political parties – the Republicans or Tweedle Dum and the Democrats – Tweedle every bit as Dum.

First, I do not belong to either party. I used to lean Democratic, but lately I have decided they are no better than the party across the aisle.

So let us begin with a quote from my favorite philosopher, cynic and curmudgeon: “The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.” H. L. Mencken (1880 – 1956)

Mencken sums it up quite nicely. No matter how many ideals or plans any newly elected candidate has at the beginning, within about six months all they care about is being reelected. Which means instead of coming up with a real solutions to a problem, they pander to whoever has the most money or shouts the loudest. To steal a phrase from an English writer, most politicians are intellectual pillows. They bear of the impression of the last person to lay on them.

Lately, they so want to stay in office, they will not admit the other side might have a good idea. I honestly think that if one party in either Washington, D.C. or any state capital introduced a bill saying the sun rises in the morning, the other would oppose it.

Also, all politicians are very good as distracting their constituents from the real issues. At a time when we are still fighting two wars, the economy is the toilet, the unemployment rate is somewhere around 10 percent, and the national debt is somewhere north of $1 trillion, they get people fired up about gay marriage? Give me a break. What a waste of time and effort. Time and effort that could be spent solving real problems. Both sides are so stuck in their positions they are not open to any new ideas.

All the Republicans want to do is give tax breaks to rich people, who frankly could afford to pay some more to the government. Their mantra is government is evil and must be stopped. Judging by their positions, I think they must be anarchists. Their perfect government would be no government.

In the perfect Republican world, a business would be free to do whatever it wanted. They could pollute the water, blow the tops off mountains, treat people like disposable tissues and never be called to account for any of it. Of course, they wouldn’t be paying any taxes. I don’t want to see rivers catch on fire or try to explain to my grandchildren where all the forests went.

As for the Democrats, well they want to coddle people so they are so dependent on government they no initiative of their own. They think government is the solution to everything. They expect us to pay for things like free cell phones for poorer and to rebuild houses of people dumb enough to build in a flood plain. In this case, I don’t want to have to explain to my grandchildren why 90 percent of their income is going to pay taxes.

Both parties cater to the wing nuts on the left and right. Of course, some of them are wing nuts. It never fails to amaze me what comes out of some elected officials mouths. As a friend used to say, they run their mouths in fourth gear and their minds in neutral. Or as my father used to say: “they don’t even have the brains they were born with.”

Is their solution to all of this? I don’t know. I am not very optimistic. I do not see a Theodore Roosevelt or Harry Truman on the horizon.

I will end this with a song written by a brilliant man, Pete Townsend:

Won’t Get Fooled Again

The Who

We’ll be fighting in the streets

With our children at our feet

And the morals that they worship will be gone

And the men who spurred us on

Sit in judgment of all wrong

They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around me

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

And I’ll get on my knees and pray

We don’t get fooled again

Don’t get fooled again

Change it had to come

We knew it all along

We were liberated from the fall that’s all

But the world looks just the same

And history ain’t changed

‘Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around me

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

And I’ll get on my knees and pray

We don’t get fooled again

Don’t get fooled again

No, no!

I’ll move myself and my family aside

If we happen to be left half alive

I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky

For I know that the hypnotized never lie

Do ya?

There’s nothing in the street

Looks any different to me

And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye

And the parting on the left

Is now the parting on the right

And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution

Smile and grin at the change all around me

Pick up my guitar and play

Just like yesterday

Then I’ll get on my knees and pray

We don’t get fooled again

Don’t get fooled again

No, no!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss

My daughter Heather was married Sept. 5 to a wonderful guy, Jordan Goffin. The wedding was a kind of gathering of the clans, with guests coming from all over the United States. We had people from California, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Massachusetts and, of course, Wisconsin attend the nuptials.

(Note: that’s why there were no blogs last week.)

Because of the distances traveled, most of the guests flew into Milwaukee. What struck me is how no one said they had even a fair to middling experience on the airlines. I think there were at least four airlines involved in transporting people. I suspect if I had been doing a consumer survey, the highest grade any of those carriers would have received would be a “C-.”

There were major complaints – flights that were rescheduled two or three times, overcrowded planes, uncomfortable seats and surly employees. There were also the minor complaints, such as the “gourmet” pretzels my son-in-law was served on his flight. They were thumbnail-sized pretzels – there was nothing gourmet about them. Or another guest who said she was charged for a blanket she wanted for her sleeping four-year-old.

As bad as the major complaints were, I think it is the little things that really frost passengers. It is bad enough when you are crammed into a seat that would be considered a war crime under the terms of the Geneva Convention. However, when all you receive for sustenance is a dried-out bag of pretzels that often becomes the proverbial straw.

Of course the airlines can get away with this because there is often no alternative method of long-distance travel. You want to get to California or Florida in under a day; an airplane ride is often the way.

I put great store on good customer service. It is one of the most important kinds of marketing. One of the reasons I am an Apple aficionado is the fantastic service I receive at the Apple stores. I am willing to pay more for a good meal at a restaurant that has great waiters than I am for a great meal with a restaurant with bad service.

This is marketing at its most basic. Any company that knows what it is doing wants to have happy customers. Happy customers tell potential customers about how good the company is. That usually gets those potential customers to check out a retailer or a service provider.

Now I get that times are tough in the airline industry. Rising fuel prices, the depression caused by 9/11, and the current recession effects on leisure travel have combined to deal some hard hits. But as I have noted in other blogs, the companies that invest in their product and customer service during those times are the ones that dominate when times get better.

What particularly surprises me is that after the video United Breaks Guitars, airlines still haven’t learned. I have read estimates where that YouTube effort cost United Airlines $100 million in lost sales. If that is not a wake-up call, I am not sure what it will take. Unfortunately, airlines just don’t seem to be listening.