marketing

Notes from north of 49ºN

A shorter, more applied version of this appears on rhizomicon.

The above Wind Mobile commercial is for a Canadian cellphone carrier, competing with the big three, Bell, Rogers, and Telus. The humour is derived from characterizing the major wireless carriers as entities that turn a nominal charge into a much larger one with extra fees and charges. Another facet is the use of a South Asian hot dog vendor to make the point, using an accent and cultural stereotypes familiar in North America. The South Asian-Canadian population was 4% of the population in 2006, categorized as visible minorities., i.e., visibly not one of the majority race in a population.

Is this Wind commercial offensive?

This reminds me of a 2007 Guardian UK piece by Manish Vij criticizing the use of The Simpson’s character of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon by 7-11 as part of a tie-in promotion.

“Apu is quite a unique character on The Simpsons. Unlike the show’s parodies of policemen and Irish-Americans, he’s the only character to mock a small American minority relatively unknown in the mainstream, and he’s by far the most visible immigrant. For desis (South Asians) growing up in America, just one eighth as concentrated and visible as in the UK, Apu shadowed us at every turn. Until the rise of American Idol chanteur Sanjaya Malakar, Apu was the most widely-known Indian after Mahatma Gandhi. And he has that fake Peter Sellers simulacrum of an Indian accent: Apu’s voice Hank Azaria, a Greek-American, is a brown man doing a white man doing a brown man.

To be sure, Apu has many redeeming qualities: a loving wife, passive-aggressive cunning, and a Ph.D. Culture-vulture Simpsons fans have felled entire forests in arguing that he’s a parody of a stereotype, rather than the stereotype itself. But the plain fact is that most viewers are laughing at Apu, not with him. They’re enjoying the simple pleasures of a funny, singsong brown man with a slippery grasp of English.”

Manish states that not all South Asians were against the promotion, but quotes a post on an online 7-11 franchise forum::

“This is an absolute embarrassment for our company… The vast majority of franchisees are immigrants… [A]ccepting our portrayal of Apu is nothing less [than] accepting the images portrayed years ago in the US of black people with very black faces, big lips and white teeth… [T]hat image is considered racist, so does Apu [seem] to me… I cannot imagine any store willing to rebrand to Kwik-E-Mart even for a day… I am not proud to be part of this promotion.”

Some commenters on the Guardian’s site and elsewhere this was discussed were quick to say the reaction is overly-PC and that The Simpsons have poked fun of the Scots with Groundskeeper Willie.

It’s easy to get into pissing matches about who one can and cannot make fun of in a post-racial world, isn’t the real issue about cultural power, privilege, and dominant and dominated positions? Does the rise of black cultural power in the US explain why outrageous stereotypes and iconography are now taboo? While some may eyeroll at complaints by groups that point out racism as overly-PC, isn’t protesting/complaining one means of how cultural power is obtained/negotiated?

The problem is that the stereotypes often serve to reinforce unflattering or negative attitudes towards a stigmatized outgroup. So, in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle {2004}, despite Kumar being an upper-middle class medical school candidate who speaks perfect English without an accent, local thugs use cultural power to harass him with the taunt,”thank you, come again.” Later in the film, Kumar used the taunt ironically right back at his harassers::

The lines of cultural power and privilege can get blurry. Media and advertising infuse meaning and shape attitudes, but what’s a marketer/advertiser to do? The use of stereotypes is meant to increase the efficacy of the communication, i.e., ideally the content resonates more with the audience. On the other hand, should marketers and advertisers steer clear of using stereotypes in a non-ironic way, in order to protect the brand from being labelled as insensitive? Some might say that those who take offense need to “get over it,” but before someone goes on the record as saying that, perhaps they should ask themselves how much cultural power they have.

Twitterversion:: Wind Mobile hotdog cart ad in Canada uses stereotypes to make a humourous pt. Is it offensive or benign? #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: M.I.A. -‘World Town’

The SEC is turning up the heat on Goldman Sachs for their role in the financial meltdown related to the subprime crisis. The Guardian reports::

“[Senator] Levin turned up the heat on Goldman by releasing emails which he said showed that, – contrary to statements in its 2009 annual report – the bank ‘made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market’. He said the bank’s behaviour had the effect of ‘magnifying and spreading risk throughout the financial system, and that Goldman was ‘all too often betting against the instruments they sold and profiting at the expense of their clients'”.

The above video gives some background about Wall Street, what Goldman Sachs did, and questions the practices of “financial innovation.” The take is somewhat an apologist position, but it does highlight the how we should all should be wary of having unyielding faith in markets.

The crux of the matter is that financial institutions are more about sales and marketing than their own client interests. There doesn’t have to be any “smoking gun” memos. These are bright people hired to game the system. In my Money & Banking {Economics} course I took way back in 1991, we learned that getting around regulation was the basis for financial innovations. We learned strategies, but within a mantra that there must be a faith in the market. Of course, I never worked in finance and this was before the hedge fund copula formulas were commonly used, but I do know how organizations work. The bright people in finance knew what could be done to ensure they looked good, their bosses looked good, and the firm made money. Tacitly.

What the video illuminates is how widespread these practices are. In my mind, the firm and its profits took precedence over the implications for the market—market failure. In order to control for market failure—enter the ‘r’ word, regulation. Insider trading laws are all about controlling insider trading, i.e., trading on information that’s not public knowledge. The penalties are stiff. Why? Trading with insider information distorts the market and reduces faith in the market.

Should firms be allowed to spread risk and use marketing tactics to do it? Isn’t this just business -or- does it do violence to a faith in the market? Let’s see how this plays out with the SEC, the courts, and Congress. My take is that the sophistication and technology of Wall Street has far outpaced the current regulatory framework. Let’s restore the faith in the market and if this means the playing field is levelled and the paths to profits through creative chicanery are over, boo-hoo, so be it.

Twitterversion:: Goldman Sucks. Use of sales & marketing to dump risk on the market = #fail. Paving way for regulation? #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Eno/Byrne-‘America Is Waiting’