#MeToo

And now a word from Captain Obvious: women will no longer suffer harassment from the Weinsteins, O'Reillys and Trumps of the world when more of them preside in C-suites. 

I know. From experience.

For the first half of the '80s, I worked for a Fortune 500 company, managing an in-house agency staffed largely by women.

One day, the company announced its appointment of a new CMO, a man who'd been a behind-the-scenes operative in Republican presidential politics for two decades.

It wasn't long before a few of them came to me, independently of one another, and told me of his many unwelcome advances. I asked the other women who reported to me whether the CMO had hit on them, as well. He had. 

I didn't hesitate to report my conversations to my boss, who went immediately to HR.

The CMO was fired, unceremoniously, the same week.

I failed to mention: women filled many of the senior executive positions in the company at the time.

In themselves, firings, lawsuits, board resolutions, and employee training won't put an end to harassment, or to organizations' file cabinet compliance with civil rights laws.

Those will end when more women lead.

Elitist Clickbait

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence.
His method is to poison the channels of public information.

― Henry A. Wallace

The Trump Administration has redefined truth as "elitist clickbait."

In May, the president appointed Nancy Beck, a former lobbyist for American Chemistry Council, his chief deputy at EPA's toxic chemical unit.

When New York Times reporter Eric Lipton sent EPA a letter asking the agency to explain why it's appropriate to appoint a lobbyist for the chemical companies to rewrite EPA regulations, spokeswoman Liz Bowman replied:

"No matter how much information we give you, you would never write a fair piece. The only thing inappropriate and biased is your continued fixation on writing elitist clickbait trying to attack qualified professionals committed to serving their country."

Who Invented Branding?

Josiah Wedgwood may have been the first marketer to brand his products with a logo, but the 18th century potter didn't invent branding.

Eleventh century European monks did.

By design self sufficient, medieval abbeys routinely sold surplus meat, cheese, honey, wool, brandy, beer and wine to local laypeople. 

The abbey's name on any of these products was a mark of consistent quality.

Ten centuries later, the vestiges of medieval monks' marketing smarts remain, most notably in the wine industry. 

Many of our most recognizable wine words derive from the abbeys, including clos, hermitage, prieuri and commanderie.

HAT TIP: Our resident medievalist Ann Ramsey suggested and researched this post.

Who Invented Marketing?

When asked to name the inventor of marketing, many fans point to Eve (of the Garden of Eden); but many more point to the early 20th century Chicago adman Albert Lasker.

Trained as a newspaperman, Lasker conflated advertising and reporting until the day he met the bibulous freelance copywriter John E. Kennedy in a saloon and was persuaded advertising is "salesmanship in print."

Lasker used that single insight to build a small agency into a powerhouse, launching brands we still recall today: Frigidaire, Lucky Strike, Palmolive, Kleenex, Kotex, Sunkist, Quaker Oats, Van Camp's, Pepsodent, Wrigley, and Warren Harding (the president).

Besides injecting sales-driven creativity into advertising, Lasker introduced other innovations we now take for granted: A/B testing, tracking, market research, the value proposition, discount coupons, sports team sponsorship, and the sponsored radio show.

But labeling Lasker "the father of marketing" discredits late 18th century potter Josiah Wedgwood, truly "the man who invented marketing."

Unlike his contemporaries, Wedgwood took full advantage of middle-class consumers' exuberance at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, turning a regional pottery-making venture into a world-class company.

An autodidact, Wedgwood was unafraid to experiment. He was the first to find that shop-window displays move luxury products; that celebrity endorsements and influencer marketing engage prospects; that trade show exhibiting spurs demand; that premium pricing attracts "aspiring" consumers; and that customizing products boosts sales.

Wedgwood also introduced the first sales catalog, the first traveling sales reps, and the first salesman's sample-kit; he introduced free shipping, the money-back guarantee, and the customer testimonial; and he introduced the paid product placement, the product name, and―most importantly―the brand (literally stamping his name on the bottom of each piece of ceramic).

Do Shooters and Presidents Dream of Electric Sheep?

Evidently, the humanoid robot consisted of a solitary predator.

― Philip K. Dick

We puzzle over why a wealthy man would become a mass shooter, or a wealthy president tell a grieving widow her dead husband wished to be in harm's way.

It's the absence of empathy―a condition natural to solitary predators.

Empathy is a new word in English, only 110 years old. 

It came into the language thanks to philosophers of art, who borrowed the word from the Greek empatheia, meaning "passion." They believed our ability to appreciate works of art stems from our ability to project "fellow feelings" into them.

Novelist Philip K. Dick, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (adapted for the screen as Blade Runner), imagined that manufacturers in 2021 will purposely omit empathy from androids' programming; and thus, a simple "empathy test" will be able to prove who's an android and who's a human.

Early in the book, Dick portrays the main character, the policeman Deckard, reflecting on the ease with which the test can detect an android:

He had wondered, as had most people at one time or another, precisely why an android bounced helplessly about when confronted by an empathy-measuring test. Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida. For one thing, the empathetic faculty probably required an unimpaired group instinct; a solitary organism, such as a spider, would have no use for it; in fact, it would tend to abort a spider's ability to survive. It would make him conscious of the desire to live on the part of his prey, Hence all predators, even highly developed mammals such as cats, would starve. Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because, ultimately, the empathetic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated.