Archive for December, 2009
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
The “Up To” Claim
In a book presciently titled Business Civilization in Decline, the late Robert L. Heilbroner made this rather crucial point:
At a business forum, I was once brash enough to say that I thought the main cultural impact of television advertising was to teach children that grown-ups told lies for money. How strong, deep, or sustaining can be the values of a civilization that generates a ceaseless flow of half-truths and careful deceptions?
Under corporate capitalist normalcy, the lies multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit blush.
One noteworthy lie is the now-rampant use of the phrase “up to” in advertising claims. Once you stop to notice it, you’ll see and hear this howler everywhere.
One particularly egregious case of the “up to” claim is here:
Not only has Michelin extended from humans to animals its long-running reliance on using death threats as a sales tactic (this extension to critters probably being done after a focus group suggested Michelin could get kids to ask their parents to buy Michelins to save the bunnies), but the “up to” claim in this ad is a double-whammy. Not only is it an “up to” claim, but it also doesn’t tell you the context for the “up to” claim!
As Ad Freak explains:
The Psyop-animated [dig that name!] spot says Michelin tires stop up to 14 feet shorter than those of the competition. (“At what speed?” you might ask, but get no answer.)
So, Michelin takes two scoops at once from the barrel of statistical deceptions.
Michelin’s products are definitely worth up to a certain price…
Monday, December 7th, 2009
Questions From the Consumer Trap Community?
I’m never sure this blog matters. Sometimes, I think the lack of comments is a sign that I’m pissing up a rope, or high on my own fumes, or something akin to that.
Sometimes, I fancy that it might only be a sign of how unfamiliar my/our angle of vision is.
Other times, I think it might be that I simply don’t ask y’all directly to give it both barrels. Or maybe…Or maybe…
But the truth is that, if you read this blog and care about the issues it addresses, you might as well propose topics, ask challenging questions, or even send things you want me to post under your byline. It ain’t rocket science, after all. It’s just watching reality.
Having said that, do you people have questions you’d like to investigate and have us elaborate/debate here?
Remember: There are no bad questions!
Monday, December 7th, 2009
More Murder for Money
There are two reasons to bother reading The New York Times.
First, it hosts and proudly (and entirely uncritically) displays major exhibits of overclass irrationalism. In an age of peaking resources and rapidly worsening imperial decrepitude, keeping track of what the elites are thinking is more important than ever.
Second, the NYT sometimes hosts and proudly displays actual journalism.
A bit of the latter happened yesterday, December 6, 2009, under the headline “Promoting the Car Phone, Despite Risks.” As reported by Matt Richtel, this valuable story details how the capitalist cellular phone industry has known from day one that its product is seriously deadly.
Now, we’re not talking here about speculation on the effect of cell phone radiation on the human body. No. We’re talking about the cell phone’s long-understood status as a direct and certain cause of the thousands of annual deaths that indisputably result from its use inside moving automobiles.
As Richtel reveals, those who planned to make profits from cell phones knew from the very beginning that what they wanted to sell was going to snuff out many thousands of individual lives:
Martin Cooper, who developed the first portable cellphone, recalled testifying before a Michigan state commission about the risks of talking on a phone while driving.
Common sense, said Mr. Cooper, a Motorola engineer, dictated that drivers keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel.
Commission members asked Mr. Cooper what could be done about risks posed by these early mobile phones.
“There should be a lock on the dial,” he said he had testified, “so that you couldn’t dial while driving.”
It was the early 1960s.
Long before cellphones became common, industry pioneers were aware of the risks of multitasking behind the wheel. Their hunches have been validated by many scientific studies showing the dangers of talking while driving and, more recently, of texting.
And what do corporate executives do when their engineers express such concerns? Do they, as long alleged by a range of economists and social scientists, balance the needs of their prospective customers with those of their firms’ shareholders?
Not so much: Read the rest of this entry »
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
Dex Blows (as do all telephone capitalists)
...how to waste resources
In the western United States, one of the pieces of the old AT&T corporation is called Qwest. Qwest is about to do something it knows is unconscionable — throw yet another paper telephone book onto everybody’s doorstep.
If ever anything was outdated, it is the unrequested provision of paper telephone books for every household. But Qwest cares not. Phone book advertising remains a source of revenue and profit, so onward it steams, the planet and people’s time and space be damned.
Meanwhile, to alter the mental agendas of those who will soon be burning or recycling its unconscionable droppings, Qwest is running a multi-million-dollar TV ad campaign saying this:
Join Dex® in our commitment to being environmentally responsible by recycling your outdated directories. You’ll help save valuable natural resources and reduce energy consumption.
This kind of pre-emptive interpretive suggestion is, of course, a common corporate marketing tactic. By shifting the issue from “Why another pile of useless paper?” to “What do I do with my old phone book?,” Dex spends some of its customers’ money (and its workforce’s foregone wages) engineering the mental climate its shareholders need.
Qwest an eco-criminal? No, not us! “Join us in our commitment to being environmentally responsible!”
What commitment would that be, one might wonder as one trips over 5 pounds of pointless tree pulp? None, of course. Qwest is pulling a Big Brother, pure and simple. Up is down. War is peace. Another immense waste of paper is a commitment to the Earth’s ecology.
If we ever manage to create a movement for social change we could really believe in, one of its most obvious tasks would be to nationalize all telecommunications infrastructure and provide all such services publicly, without any marketing costs or profit margins or unconscionable ecological and existential waste.
Until then, all the mental and physical garbage being foisted on us by outfits like Qwest and the cell phone corporations remains a “business” only on the basis of our failure to recognize how outdated such capitalist practices are.
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Obama, Market Fundamentalist
Despite his proud proclamation that he has no idea that imperial armies are bad at squashing enraged and desperate guerrillas, the 2008 Marketer of the Year still has people still saying he’s smart. Meanwhile, here’s his latest claim/statement of policy:
“Ultimately, true economic recovery is only going to come from the private sector.”
Jesus! For Wall Street and car corporations, it’s the biggest give-away in human history.
For unemployed people, “our resources are limited.”
The man certainly has chutzpah.
[technorati token PKAC864AXJTU ]
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
Tony Horwitz: Civil War an “Overreaction”
God, The New York Times sucks! It just published an op-ed that equates John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry with 9-11.
Here is the author, Tony Horwitz’ conclusion:
If anything, given the North’s half-hearted, soon-sold attempts at Reconstruction, the Civil War was an UNDER-REACTION.
Jesus!
