Interview with Vendela Vida, who wrote the script for Away we go with her husband, Dave Eggers. Basically, she just took all the funny and surreal things that happen to you while you're pregnant -- people relaying their terrible labor & delivery stories, unasked for advice in the grocery store, wierd things that happen to your body -- and making it into a movie. Brilliant. I wish I had thought of it.
Ford is spending a lot of money to market their hybrids, like the Ford Fusion. It looks like a pretty great car. And there are lots of tax incentives to buying a hybrid right now.
But just try and find a single dealership in Colorado that has one even to test drive. It was a problem in August, 2007 -- apparently it still is.
Did you see the front page headline of The Denver Post this morning? It epitomizes the reason that print newspapers are going extinct: "The Ecomony: Is this mess over?"
Yeah, sure. Obama did a press conference, and it's all fixed, nice and tidy, with a cute little headline. There you go.
Now here's an example of some really good damage control PR (I'm a bit late on this one...):
On 2/3/09, The Denver Post ran an article: "Boulder firm tells investors to expect heavy losses," saying that "Agile Group, a Boulder wealth-management firm, has frozen client accounts since last fall and warned investors, including former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo and KOA talk-show host Mike Rosen, to expect heavy losses... Clients were told the firm had placed money with Bernard Madoff, accused of swindling investors out of $50 billion in the world's largest Ponzi scheme, and Tom Petters, a Minneapolis businessman indicted on 20 counts of fraud that could cost investors up to $3.5 billion. "
The next day, 2/4/09, the Post ran this article: Clients don't blame Agile. "Some clients of Boulder money manager Neal Greenberg said they don't blame him for the large losses they've suffered...Greenberg has also told investors that his own money and that of his parents was invested with Agile." The story includes forgiving quotes from KOA's Mike Rosen and Tom Tancredo, two of Agile's high profile clients.
Of course, Agile spent lots of money advertising on KOA for years, with the implicit personal recommendation of the radio hosts...
I just can't get over how the change in our political climate has spurred such a change in our unbiased media.
In addition to the 60 Minutes story about West Bank settlements, the past few days have seen these articles published:
60 Minutes last night aired a report on what has really been going on in the West Bank for the last fifteen or so years: Israeli settlements being built on the hilltops with the express purpose of making a two-state solution impossible. Finally, the mainstream media runs a story that hasn't been packaged up by the Israeli government or lobby!
But don't take the Palestinians' word for it -- all you have to do is listen to what the mayor of an Israeli settlement has to say:
"Daniella Weiss moved from Israel to the West Bank 33 years ago. She has been the mayor of a large settlement.
"I think that settlements prevent the establishment of a
Palestinian state in the land of Israel. This is the goal. And this is
the reality," Weiss told 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon.
"
It's amazing how quickly the change from the Bush regime can result in change -- can you imagine this report being aired a year ago?
The reality is that we have had eight years of a foreign policy that not only financed Israel's occupation of the West Bank, but turned a blind eye to the creation of an apartheid state. Jimmy Carter was not so off-base when he called it like he saw it several years ago!
I just received a marketing promotion for an ultra-luxury item: if I buy 10 treatments of Rejuvenex, I get 10 free Botox treatments.
Call me crazy, but it just doesn't excite me to get "free" Botox. It's like Mercedes or Neiman Marcus: they just don't have sales. They're expensive, and a lot of marketing dollars fought hard to create the perception that they're worth it. It seems suspect to give it away for free.
This is the year of needs -- versus wants. People will be analyzing everything they buy, and if it fits into the "I want it" category, it will no longer be thoughtlessly charged to the Visa card. Botox and Rejuvenex, whatever that is, fit into the "wants" category.
Clothing stores are also falling for "wants" marketing: Buy 2 suits, get one free!
No one needs 3 new suits, but the offer of a free suit tempts you into thinking, "Well, it's such a good deal, I should just go for it."
If I were in charge of marketing for a clothing store, I'd market all the basics: 12 things every woman must have in her wardrobe --every woman needs a crisp white shirt, a great pair of black pants, a great pair of pumps.
I wonder if this will translate into more trips to the movies -- an entertainment option for around $20 that will let me escape for a few hours -- this is an affordable want.
Way back when, when I worked at an ad agency in San Francisco and began the first incarnation of what would eventually become this blog, I chose the name Spoonfed because I felt I was part of the huge media machine that spoonfeeds information to the American public, bit by bit. I also felt I was part of the public that hungrily and eagerly ate it all up, no matter what the message. I started writing Spoonfed to encourage people, especially myself, to ask questions and not take everything at face value.
This week, the news is full of yet another escalation in violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's been a pretty quiet decade, actually, from the point of view of most Americans. Peace talks start up, they fail, violence flares up, it quiets down, Hamas and the terrorists are always working to destroy Israel. Isn't this the line we've been spoonfed throughout the entire Bush reign?
But this time, it's different. What's happening today in Gaza is different. Morally, this is not a time to stand on the sidelines.
Most Americans have not had the opportunity to visit Israel, much less Palestine, much less the Gaza Strip. We hear the Fox news anchors describe Gaza as a "dump," a terrorist stronghold where the terrorists use the civilians as human shields. We hear Fox tell us that rockets are being fired from Gaza into Israel, sort of like rockets from New Jersey being fired into New York City. Bush says it's all to stop the Hamas terrorists, and the American public eats it up.
But I have had the opportunity to visit Israel, and to live in the West Bank, and to visit Gaza several times, and I can assure you: the Fox reporters have it wrong. Gaza is more than a "dump" -- it's one giant refugee camp, and there is no escape from Gaza. Most importantly, Gaza is full of real people -- people like you and like me -- trying to raise their families in a pretty rotten situation.
Most of the Palestinians living there fled from their homes all over what is now Israel in 1948. They fled to escape the fighting, or to try to get into Egypt, or because they were scared; whatever the reason, once there, they found themselves stuck. They built concrete shelters, close together, because they surely never expected they'd be there 60-some years.
People living in Gaza cannot leave. Not to shop, not to visit family, not to travel. The borders into Israel are heavily guarded. Most people cannot get the permits and papers to allow them to cross into Israel. The border with Egypt is also heavily guarded, and Egypt won't take the Palestinians in. Most of the Gazans who get permits to cross into Israel are men who need jobs in Israel. There aren't a whole lot of jobs available in Gaza. Many women who live in Gaza live their whole lives without leaving -- not by choice.
When I was there in 1994, I visited with a doctor's son, a 17 year old who had been accepted into an American university, on full scholarship. Israel denied his visa application, and so he could not go. He enrolled in the university in Gaza instead.
Back then, Israel still occupied Gaza, as they had since 1967. In Beit Jabalya, I walked tentatively underneath the sniper pits, high in the air, where Israeli soldiers sat, their guns trained on me the entire time.
Under Israeli occupation, they didn't do much to build any kind of infrastructure in Gaza. There were no civil services like trash collection or sewage treatment. In fact, raw sewage frequently ran down the dirt streets. But groups like Hamas built infrastructure. They built schools, and hospitals, and picked up trash, and did things to make life in Gaza a little more bearable. Is it any wonder they won the election?
Then a few weeks ago, Israel closed the borders into Gaza. Not an unusual occurrence -- they do it all the time. But this time, they didn't reopen them. Not to allow people to go to work, not to allow supplies in or out, not for anything. People in Gaza were running out of food and medicine.
And now, with the borders shut and those millions of people with nowhere to go, Israel bombs them from the air, and now sends their soldiers in to "fight" on the ground. Believe me, with the apartment buildings stacked upon each other like they are in Gaza, no "surgical bomb" could avoid killing civilians.
So the next time you flip through the news channels and hear the same old same old lines, "Israel has every right to defend itself," or "the terrorists must be stopped," stop to think about the real people who live in Gaza. They are just like you and me. They have children, and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and they want the same things in life. They want to work, and feed their families, laugh a little.
If you think we Americans are far removed, think again. Our foreign policy is allowing this attack to go on, with not even a whisper of recrimination. As Fox News said last night, most other foreign countries are denouncing Israel strongly, but not America. Not America.
There is a doctrine of just war, and as The Economist says: "In general, a war must pass three tests to be justified. A country must first have exhausted all other means of defending itself. The attack should be proportionate to the objective. And it must stand a reasonable chance of achieving its goal. On all three of these tests Israel is on shakier ground than it cares to admit."
Seth Godin has done an insightful analysis of the marketing of this election.
In a nutshell, he says that McCain, who always appealed to the less conservative Republicans, took a big risk to get the socially conservative, Karl-Rovian-"base" by naming Palin as his VP; and as a result lost his own base to Obama. (My neighbor, who once worked for McCain's previous campaign, was one of them.) He also speculates that they hoped Palin could pick off the Hillary supporters, which proved to be a disastrous choice.
Obama, on the other hand, knew that the Democratic base, or "tribe" in Godin's marketingspeak, wasn't enough to get him elected -- so he embarked on a very expensive, and very successful campaign to weave together a new tribe -- of people who had never voted before, blacks and hispanics, and people whose worldview was larger than the us-versus-them mentality.
The negative attack ads didn't work, Godin alleges, because -- like us Apple evangelists -- any attack on Obama we took personally, and when the Obama campaign asked for a small donation to fight the smears, we responded. In huge numbers. $25 here and there adds up quickly when you've got a huge new tribe behind you.
In many states, McCain got exactly the same numbers Bush got in the last election -- but they just weren't enough to overcome Obama's new base.
