THE PERILS OF ADVERTISING
In my long and uneventful life, I have watched lots of corporations decline from leadership to just holding on and finally to final bankruptcy. Incompetence and indifference at the top seem to precipitate downward to all divisions and ultimately to all employees. Management becomes the role model of precisely the kind of employee the company doesn't need--and may not even want--but that will eventually destroy it. If it is a retail company, shelves will be unstocked, prices marked on the merchandise will not match the prices that come up at the checkout counter, employees will avoid customers and if forced to interact will be surly and indifferent. To reduce costs, the company will reduce the number of employees so that a customer cannot find even and indifferent one when needed. After a while customers lose faith and begin to go elsewhere.
How do corporations respond? Instead of improving service, retraining employees, renewing stock, or improving the quality of merchandise,
almost invariably the company responds by stepping up its advertising. Local TV stations and newspaper will carry increased numbers of advertisements making increasingly exaggeraged claims for the service and merchandise of the company. It does not work, of course, and soon the company files for bankruptcy and that is the end of it.
What does this have to do with the price of eggs? I see by the papers and other media that the Bush administration has now installed Karen Hughes as its mouthpiece to the rest of the world. It is clear that the United States is getting a bad press all around the world. Unfortunately, it is a press well deserved, for we have performed badly. But, instead of correcting the policies that cause the trouble and generate international ill will, the Bush administration adopts a corporate response (advertising) and launches an international propaganda campaign to apply lies and denials to its problems rather than attempt to face them directly and make the changes that would correct them.
It won't work.
How do corporations respond? Instead of improving service, retraining employees, renewing stock, or improving the quality of merchandise,
almost invariably the company responds by stepping up its advertising. Local TV stations and newspaper will carry increased numbers of advertisements making increasingly exaggeraged claims for the service and merchandise of the company. It does not work, of course, and soon the company files for bankruptcy and that is the end of it.
What does this have to do with the price of eggs? I see by the papers and other media that the Bush administration has now installed Karen Hughes as its mouthpiece to the rest of the world. It is clear that the United States is getting a bad press all around the world. Unfortunately, it is a press well deserved, for we have performed badly. But, instead of correcting the policies that cause the trouble and generate international ill will, the Bush administration adopts a corporate response (advertising) and launches an international propaganda campaign to apply lies and denials to its problems rather than attempt to face them directly and make the changes that would correct them.
It won't work.
posted by Jerry at 8:20 AM
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