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2.13.03
Rubber Necking
-- OR --
Dinner and a Webcast
A recently released book about the infamously foolhardy merger of AOL and Time Warner chronicles the shotgun marriage of Steve Case and Jerry Levin, two corporate titans blinded by love (of power and money, that is). Maybe Nina Munk's Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner would have ended on a more positive note had the capricious couple met under different circumstances. Like on the Sunset Strip atop a Yahoo! Personals billboard, for instance.

It just might work for Julie Koehnen, a "39-year-old" LA woman who spent three days exposing her daily life and potential mate-screening activities to the world via webcast while living on a billboard platform promoting the Yahoo! Personals online dating service. According to a 1/7 Yahoo press release, the promo was intended to draw attention to the company's "Project: Real People" campaign, "a response to feedback singles had about wanting a comfortable, welcoming environment for their online dating experience."

Man, now that's what I call cohesive branding. I mean, what could be more comfortable and welcoming than spending three shelter-less days on an LA highway-side stage, surrounded by cameramen, shivering beneath a J.Crew-supplied coat and gloves, making small talk with strangers?

Throughout her man measuring escapade, Koehnen met with a variety of boyfriend bidders. The Lowbrow Lowdown Lackeys, being the suckers for hapless douche-bags that they are, were rooting for Cory, a noncommittal student loan slave with degrees in everything from cold war era history to sports management. While on his date with Koehnen, he revealed his latest aspiration to start up a "micro fashion company." "Hopefully I'm appealing to the youth market," intimated the knit-cap sportin' "career student" during the webcast.

Sadly, the quixotic Cory must not have appealed to the Hollywood bimbo market 'cause his wishy-washy arse got the boot (the new $48 J.Crew Low Wellie Boot, to be precise). Instead, Clark, the Indy 500 pit crewman and El Camino owner came in first. (Check out the webcasts and bios on Yahoo.)

Koehnen is one of fifty actual Yahoo! Personals users chosen for use in Project: Real People ads and related promos. Again, the Internet media giant has shown a serious lack in branding ability in its choice of so-called "Real People." Jay, one Yahoo! Personals pick, lists the three C's to look for in a girlfriend: "Character, Communication, and Commitment!" However, his failure to mention the most important and most obvious C-word (the one that makes a chick a chick) evinces his dishonest nature. And then there's Jennifer, whose official Yahoo! Personals press photo depicts her as a blonde, but whose profile photos reveal her brunette origins. She's keepin' it real, too…real fake.

Well, if a bleach blonde and a chick who's willing to exploit her private life atop a billboard are the closest to "real" people Yahoo can find to represent its brand, it doesn't say much for the dating pool.

Remember when those brazen Brits dangled a hamburger in front of David Blaine during his self-indulgent fasting stunt? It's just too bad nobody tried to sabotage Yahoo's ridiculous display of narcissistic exhibitionism in the same way. I guess nobody could figure out how to attach Brad Pitt to a fishing pole.



Total Refry
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No Red Lobster on Red Planet
Last month, corporate leaders from around the globe touched down on Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. But as far as attendees of the session on relations among extraterrestrials, government leaders and corporations were concerned, perhaps it should have been called the Intergalactic Economic Forum. Apparently there really was a session entitled The Conspiracy Behind Conspiracy Theories: Have Extraterrestrials Made Contact With Government Leaders? During the session, interplanetary power broker wannabes discussed things such as strategic alignments among companies like IBM, Ford and Boeing and visitors from the Altair star system.

Maybe Steve Davis, president of fast seafood chain Long John Silver's knows something we don't. As mentioned in a 1/26 Wall Street Journal article (Advertisers Hitch a Ride on Mission to Mars by Reed Albergotti), the poisson peddler "wrote a letter to NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe to express support and 'officially registered interest in Long John Silver's becoming the first seafood restaurant on Mars.' "

Let's get one thing straight. The sludge served at Long John Silver's is exactly the kind of cuisine we should not be exporting to other countries much less other planets. Of course there's little possibility of any of today's businesses still existing by the time we humans have determined how to inhabit Mars. By then trial lawyers and tax-hungry politicos will have forced the demise of all fast food establishments anyway.

On second thought, perhaps the only fast food chains that will persist will be the ones that are skilled in operating on the black market. In that case, the pirating prowess of Long John Silver's just may ensure its survival. I can see it now: a rogue pirate ship sailing through the galaxy, plundering space booty and leaving greasy trails of hushpuppies behind in its wake. Then again, it might help if water were discovered on Mars before the fishing commences.

Hey, I'd never rule out the slim chance of mankind inhabiting Mars or even devising a way to sell deep fried Fish Planks up there. But there's no way the swashbuckling seafood seller could possibly stay in business on Mars 'cause I saw that Twilight Zone episode about serving man and I know for a fact that Martians prefer the succulent taste of human to fish any day.



A Voice for Hobson's Choice
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Needs of the Many Screw the Few
The other day I got a phone call from Precision Research. The tongue-tied fellow on the other end of the line wanted to ask about my feelings regarding women's health issues. Being fascinated by the psychology behind marketing both products and politicians, I'm a sucker for phone surveys. So, I played the part of "Woman, age 26-34." The first question went something like, "Many health care plans cover prescriptions for men's medicines such as Viagra, but don't cover prescriptions for women's medicines like birth control pills. Do you think legislation should be passed that requires health insurance companies to cover birth control?"

Although I love The Pill almost as much The Orgasm, my answer was "No." As I elaborated, "I think insurance companies should be able to cover whatever they want to cover." Anyway, in my cold-hearted libertarian opinion, what we need is less laws and restrictions on businesses, not more. Whether it be a company's choice to offer certain services, my choice to pop that Pill, or even to buy Extra Sugarfree Bubblegum instead of Carefree, the benefits of choice far outweigh what Barry Schwartz, professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, calls the tyranny of choice.

Schwartz dropped his warped wisdom recently on the listeners of NPR's The Tavis Smiley Show. During the 1/26 program, Schwartz asserts, "We're now so awash with choices about trivial things like what to buy in the supermarket and really important things like…where to put our retirement funds, that we're paralyzed, we're anxious, and some of us are clinically depressed."

According to Schwartz, some of us simply cannot handle what he refers to as "overwhelming choice." To these panicky pansies, also known as "Maximizers," a wide array of options is a terrifying prospect. If you can't examine all choices, he explains, "you finally do make a choice and you're plagued with doubt that if you'd looked harder you'd have found something better. You're plagued with regret. You kick yourself for opportunities you might have passed up."

"Here's the paradox," continues Schwartz. "When you throw all these choices at people (particularly people who are Maximizers), they may make a better objective choice…but they're going to feel worse about it….This to me is not progress."

Imagine being a member of some tribe in New Guinea where most of your meals consist of the same starchy mush, or toiling over the same antiquated machinery in a Cuban sugar mill day in and day out. The most people like these can do is dream of having the luxurious problem of being confronted with an abundance of options.

Of course Schwartz's paranoid theory places some of the blame on marketers. "We spend more money than we have. We buy things we don't need. We take them home and we don't like them. And what do we do tomorrow? We go out and we do the whole thing all over again." Concludes Schwartz, "I think this is one of the great achievements of modern history, the trick that Madison avenue has played on all of us."

Puhleeze. I'll admit I've got my choice of bones to pick with marketers and advertisers, but the notion that we're all weak-willed automatons compelled by marketers to over-consume is insulting. It's also untrue for many of us with any intelligence and fortitude. I've been targeted by marketers all my life, but when I buy things, it's on my own volition, not because I've succumbed to their ploys.

Although Schwartz surprisingly acknowledges personal responsibility, soon he spews the inevitable socialist hooey. Referencing President Bush's efforts to offer more choice in Medicare and Social Security through privatization, Schwartz contends, "Built into that is the assumption that giving people a choice in and of itself makes them better off. That assumption is absolutely false." I suppose to Schwartz the current Social Security Ponzi scheme that's about to topple is a better solution than allowing people to choose how to plan for their own futures.

There are numerous reasons why more choice is better than less. With choice comes competition and with competition comes innovation and higher-quality. The fewer options we have, the more standardized and diluted they must be. Thus, unlike Schwartz's assertion, fewer choices necessitate a lower, not a higher degree of satisfaction on an individual level. And, because the more we choose the more we hone our abilities to scrutinize and decipher differences, greater choice sharpens minds rather than paralyzing them as the professor suggests.

When I first heard about this guy's book and his anti-choice propaganda, I felt attacked. Schwartz's beliefs are not only offensive to my nature, but to man's true nature. The very thought that choice should be limited to the decision-making capabilities of the lowest common denominator, the feeble-minded among us who'd rather be babysat than live in a truly free manner simply because it's easier, disgusts and frightens me.

The real paradox? That's the fact that if it weren't for the vast choice enabled by the diversification of the publishing industry, Schwartz may never have a forum for his freedom-squelching ideals in the first place.


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