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All Play: How Companies Can Make More Inclusive Toys

9/13/2023

A collection of play balls, some containing icons for sound, touch, and smell

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

Toss-Across, Evel Knievel, Simon, Big Wheel – the most popular toys of the 1970s offer a trip down memory lane for many of us who were kids during that unique era. We probably didn’t think then that some children weren’t able to enjoy these common playthings because of certain physical limitations. Over the past 50 years, the world has become more welcoming in many ways, but have toy makers kept pace with the inclusivity trend?

Legos have been fixtures in family rooms for at least a few decades. The tiny bumpy bricks provide appropriate challenge and fun for children from four to 14 and beyond. Kids who can’t see also can snap together the blocks to build shapes and structures, but they haven’t been able to appreciate the variety of colors or visualize their finished work in all the ways that sighted children can.

In 2019, the Lego Group conceived a creative way to bridge the participation gap by using the bricks’ raised knobs to represented braille letters. For the last few years, the company distributed its Braille Bricks selectively – mainly to individuals and organizations teaching children with visual impairments. Recently, the firm made the 287-piece set widely available for purchase, so blind and sighted members of any family can enjoy playing with and learning from the uniquely inclusive toys.

Mattel also has done a good in making its iconic Barbie doll more inclusive. For decades, the company has added dolls of different races and ethnicities to the collection, and in more recent years, it’s introduced dolls with disabilities and different body types.

Product inclusivity is a great thing. It’s hard to imagine products being ‘too inclusive,’ especially one’s targeted toward children.

As I’ve spoken with college students about product inclusivity, some have said they didn’t care whether their Barbies looked like them or not, but others really appreciated having dolls whose skin colors and other physical attributes mirrored their own.

Jason Polansky, one of my former advisees who is totally blind, has worked in employee recruitment roles for Microsoft and Whole Foods and now has a position as an unemployment claims interviewer with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. We had many good conversations when he was a student and more since he graduated several years ago, but I never thought much about his childhood – what it was like to grow up blind – and I certainly didn’t think of the toys he played with, so I recently asked him about them.

Polansky said he mainly liked playing with tactile toys such as Legos, Duplos, and Geomags, as well as a braille/tactile Battleship game, a Connect 4 game with holes in the black checkers, and braille Uno cards. He also enjoyed audible toys like a talking trivia globe, a puzzle map of the United States, a talking clock, and "two buckets full of dinosaurs and reptiles."

Sound was a mixed blessing for Polansky. Although he enjoyed listening to cassette tapes and AM/FM/shortwave radio, the same sounds sometimes created a problem when they kept him from hearing other noises in his environment that he needed to hear. In fact, when he was about six, he went through a stage in which many extraneous sounds scared him for that reason.

Sadie McFarland is one of my current advisees. Because of optic nerve hypoplasia, she has no vision in her right eye and limited functional vision in her left one, which means she is legally blind. Although McFarland reflects fondly on playing with Barbies and a variety of other toys and games when she was a child, her attention now as a college marketing major is drawn to the lack of playthings designed for children with disabilities, especially those with vision impairments.

Even as she credits brands like Barbie and American Girl for making dolls that “give beautiful nods” to individuals who have prosthetic devices, use wheelchairs, and have diverse skin tones, she laments that companies in the toy industry have done relatively little to represent blindness.

McFarland recommends making dolls whose eyes move sporadically, mimicking nystagmus, placing a white cane in the doll’s hand, and equipping it with a guide dog in harness. She adds that blindness also can be identified with certain types of glasses.

As an adult, McFarland still loves to play games but often finds them challenging because “at least 75% contain items with text that is nearly microscopic, even to the working human eye.” Some of her suggested fixes are to provide braille instructions and scorecards and to create tactile boards and differently shaped pieces. She also recommends reaching out to organizations like the National Federation of the Blind and American Printing House for the Blind, which can provide useful insights into meeting the needs of blind consumers.

It's nice to imagine a world in which more companies heed such advice and genuinely attempt to make products, especially toys, accessible to a broader range of people; however, the reality is that companies need to pay vendors, make payroll, and provide ROI to shareholders, all of which may appear to preclude satisfying some niche markets.

Of course, companies can gain goodwill be serving underrepresented people groups, but is it right to expect companies to lose money doing so? As a corollary, the law requires organizations to make reasonable accommodations for employees with special needs, unless doing so represents an undue hardship.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have an either-or decision. Several years ago, Polansky and I coauthored an article titled, “How Serving Blind Consumers Creates Competitive Advantage.” We summarized a main takeaway in this statement: “The same services that meet the unique needs of blind consumers often ‘delight’ other customers, thereby differentiating a brand and even offering competitive advantage.”

Since blind people lack at least some degree of sight, marketers must appeal to other senses like touch, smell, and taste. Of course, most sighted people also have these senses, and they similarly appreciate things that feel good, smell nice, and taste good. So, by integrating more senses for the benefit of blind people, marketers also increase their appeal to other consumers and differentiate themselves from competitors who don’t do the same.

McFarland maintains, “Play is a universal language that must be kept fully accessible for every child and child at heart.” Hopefully, increasingly creative toy design will see the introduction of more toys that tap into multiple senses for both inclusivity and profitability, which can be considered a playful approach to “Mindful Marketing.”

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Has Tipping Reached a Tipping Point?

8/26/2023

34 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

There are many ways people are rewarded for good work, but few are as immediate as monetary tips. Restaurant servers have long received confirmation and big parts of their compensation from gratuities, but recently many other service providers have started tapping the same propensity for generosity. Given that these increasingly common appeals have become off-putting to some, it may be time to ask: Has tipping been taken too far?

The New York Times recently described a case in which, after some cosmetic medical treatments, a reader’s dermatologist asked her for a tip. If some physicians are soliciting gratuities, is it only time until other professionals start doing the same? Should professors like me put out tip jars?

We’ve all added a tip to a restaurant check, handed cash to a bellhop, or Venmoed a little extra money to another service provider. While physical tip jars have become increasingly common on retail store counters, digital technology has made it extremely easy for anyone accepting electronic forms of payment, in person or from afar, to casually ask for extra cash.

For instance, I recently placed an online order to pick up dinner from Chipotle. When I went to check out, just below the order total a prompt appeared: “Tip the Crew – Show some love to the team that prepares your order.” As I’ve grown accustomed to doing, I clicked one of the tip amounts but not without thinking, “Do I really need to?”

A decade or two ago, one would usually only tip in a sit-down restaurant where a waiter or waitress took your order, brought your drinks and food, stopped by your table to see if you needed anything else, delivered the check, and processed your payment. As the word “gratuity” suggests, your tip was a way of saying thanks for their multipronged service, and the amount you gave was a way of expressing how good you thought the service was.

In the case of Chipotle, no one did any of the aforementioned things for me, so it seemed reasonable to wonder, “Who exactly am I tipping and why?” The easy answers to these questions are the restaurant staff that prepared the food and placed it in the carryout containers because they work hard for low wages, but even if those inputs and circumstances warrant tipping, how similar are they to those of other occupations that are also now panning for tips, including at least one dermatologist?

The complexities and potential inequities in tipping are further illustrated in examples like this one in Sanibel, FL. A couple of years ago, Island Cow, a popular restaurant on the island, was ordered to pay $222,000 to 48 employees because it created an illegal tip pool that “required tipped employees to share earnings with non-tipped workers, including dishwashing assistants and kitchen expeditors.”

This incident and others like it prompt a variety of questions and concerns including:

Do tips always make it to their intended parties?
Do owners sometimes pocket tips for themselves?
Do workers who don’t deal directly with customers deserve to be tipped?
Why don’t companies just pay their employees more so they don’t need to receive tips?

The last question may simply seem hypothetical, but a recent visit to Europe reminded me how services can be delivered effectively with just base pay and little or no tipping. A few times, when dining out in France, I received my check, which had no place to add gratuity. When I asked how I could leave a tip, the waiter/waitress replied that tipping wasn’t necessary.

Of course, that norm is not indicative of every restaurant in France, and it’s certainly not true across all Europe, where the likelihood of tipping varies widely from rather unlikely in Norway (14.3%) and France (39.9%) to very likely in Sweden (82.8%) and Germany (96.7%).

Whether in the United States or abroad, the total wages that service providers earn should have some bearing on whether or not they’re tipped. While the question of whether customers are being asked to subsidize the poor wages from employers is a fair one, it also might be moot because when employers are forced to pay higher wages, they often pass those increased costs on to customers in the form of higher prices.

So why not do away with tipping entirely and just pay more for restaurant meals, etc.? Theoretically, tipping provides value to customers because it allows them to adjust the amount they pay based on the quality of service they receive. Meanwhile, service providers have an incentive to do their jobs better, as they gain feedback about how well they’re performing. However, in reality, those benefits may not accrue for several reasons:

Feelings of obligation: Even if service is very poor, patrons may feel obligated to offer an average tip, so they don’t seem cheap or unempathetic.
Product prices: When customers believe they’re already paying a lot for something, they’ll sometimes scale back their tips – like the person who told me that while they typically tip for everything, they don’t always tip at Starbucks because they’re already paying $5.00 for a coffee.
Poor timing: As suggested by my Chipotle example above, some companies ask for tips before the service has been completed. In those cases, your order may come out completely wrong, but you’ve already given a tip.

Despite several decades of work experience, I’ve never been in an occupation that received tips, which made me eager to hear from those who have. So, I reached out to two of my current students who have considerable food industry server experience.

Sarah Schall has worked in a variety of retail occupations, including as a counter-service food worker and as a waitress. She makes the important point that particularly in a sit-down restaurant, one’s overall dining experience is a function of many employees’ contributions, which should impact how patrons approach tipping:

“Although the waiter/waitress is the one who may seem to be in charge of a guest’s entire experience, it’s important to remember that there are many team members who go into creating a dining experience. Therefore, it wouldn’t be right to lower the tip that’s going to the server if the food took a while due to a slow kitchen staff.”

“If the food wasn’t up to par, or if it took a long time to get to the table, it most likely was the kitchen staff at fault rather than the waitress. Instead of leaving a poor tip, guests should inform the waiter/waitress that they were disappointed with their meal so that way the restaurant can improve and the server can work to reconcile the problem.”

Josh McCleaf grew up in the restaurant industry, working in a variety of front- and back-of-house positions in his family’s multigenerational restaurant. This experience has given him particular appreciation for the multifaceted and prolonged engagement servers have with customers in traditional dining:

“When you sit down at a table-service restaurant, you expect your server to spend the next 45 to 90 minutes getting you drinks, refills, meals, extra napkins, sides of ranch, and anything else you might need for your dining experience. It's also important to note that your server is not only fulfilling the needs of your table during your visit, they are also trying to fill the needs of every other table in their section at the same time.”

McCleaf contrasts this typical sit-down dining scenario with his own recent experience as a counter-service customer:

“A few weeks ago, I walked up to a Cinnabon stand in a mall to purchase two bottles of water. While the transaction was short and the water was only an arm's length away from the cashier, I was still faced with the increasingly popular iPad flip and a prompt asking me if I'd like to leave a tip. I have to admit that this put me in an odd position, and I was left to answer some questions: Was this one-minute interaction and simple order worthy of a 20% tip? Even if it wasn't, how bad would it look if I said no?”

McCleaf likens this incident to experiences patrons have at quick-service restaurants where interactions last for just three to five minutes and are “one and done,” i.e., people order, pay, receive their food, and leave, which is much different than the sustained engagement with servers in sit-down dining.

However, McCleaf emphasizes that even in these faster service restaurant formats, good customer service is vital, as servers who demonstrate dedication to their work, strong communication skills, enthusiasm, and patience may be well-deserving of tips. He concludes:

“What's important is that you tip at your own discretion. You should never be guilted into leaving a tip at these kinds of establishments.”

His admonition is a good one: guilt, fear, and other strong-handed emotional appeals represent coercion and aren’t appropriate for marketers to use. I’d add that organizations should be sensitive to how the tipping choices they offer, or don’t, can remove customers’ control and force their decision-making.

For instance, our family recently ate at a sit-down dining restaurant where when paying the bill, the lowest tip listed among the iPad’s preset choices was 20%. While I was happy to offer more than that amount, and I believe that servers deserve more for the hard work they do, it struck me as being too prescriptive – Why shouldn’t a patron be able to more easily offer any amount that reflects their satisfaction with the service they received?

To be true to its nature and intent, tipping must remain a discretionary thing – while it certainly should be encouraged, it shouldn’t be compelled.

Anyone who has the ability to tip generously should do so, but ultimately, consumers deserve: 1) to decide without pressure how much they’d like to tip, 2) to make their choice, ideally, after they’ve received the service, and 3) to know, with some assurance, who will receive their gratuity. Discounting these ingredients for equitable tipping is a recipe for “Single-Minded Marketing.”

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What's to Like about Twitter's Rebrand

8/6/2023

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

“There’s nothing I like about it,” said a family member after seeing a large brown sun sail I bought to shade our backyard patio. I actually appreciated the blunt assessment because I also had misgivings about the tarp-looking sail, which fortunately was easy to return. Many have similarly bemoaned Twitter’s unexpected rebranding, which won’t be as easy as the unappealing patio shade to retract, but are there actually things to like about “X”?

Like a quick-moving summer thunderstorm that seems to emerge from nowhere, Twitter’s announcement that it was replacing its acclaimed name and famous bird with the moniker/graphic “X” seemed to catch even the most astute business analysts by surprise.

In reality, the curious move was several months, if not years in the making. This past April new-owner Elon Musk formally changed the company’s legal name to X Corp. He also had gained ownership of X.com six years earlier, which makes one think that the rebrand was more of a long-term plan than a knee-jerk reaction to Musk-revival and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent launch of Threads.

Regardless the timing or the reason, to say the response to Twitter’s rebrand has been critical is certainly an understatement. Some of the criticism has included:

‘”Completely irrational’: By changing Twitter’s name, Elon Musk is wiping out $4 billion to $20 billion in brand value” – Fortune

“This sudden transformation poses a significant obstacle for marketers who had been relying on the platform as part of their social media strategies.” – Digiday

“It’s rare for corporate brands to become so intertwined with everyday conversation that they become verbs. It’s rarer still for the owner of such a brand to announce plans to intentionally destroy it.” – AdAge

“I am concerned that Musk will continue to make random changes to the platform, either alienating more casual users of the service who tend to be people my company would market to, or change the advertising tools that allow us to target users.” – Brian Chevalier-Jordan, CMO at National Business Capital

All of the above seem like valid criticisms; however, the last one appears to have forgotten the remarkable number of successful business innovations Musk has to his credit:

The Boring Company
Neuralink
PayPal
Tesla
SpaceX

In addition, Musk founded OpenAI in 2015, and more recently he launched a new AI company xAI.

All this to say, Musk and those who work with him are likely extremely competent people. You can’t build the world’s leading brand of electric vehicle and launch people into space without having significant engineering and business acumen.

Given Musk’s elite team members and track record, maybe the rebrand from Twitter to X is some kind of marketing rocket science that’s beyond the ability of casual observers and even most marketing professionals to understand.

I have no inside information on Musk’s strategy, but here are a few considerations that may have gone into the surprising decision:

1) Appeal to Gen Z: Overtime, virtually every brand loses followers simply because its core demographic’s wants and needs change as it gets older and those consumers age out of the market. So, companies constantly need to be making inroads with the next generation, which is about to age into the market.

As someone who works with many Gen Zs, my sense is that Twitter has been falling out of favor with them, not unlike Facebook has with this young age cohort. Maybe a younger, hipper feeling brand would help them reconsider.

2) Restore Relevance: Even consumers whose needs haven’t changed can grow tired of a brand over time. Most of us experience this kind of satiation effect whether it’s with the music we listen to or the food we eat.

To avoid stagnation or worse, customers switching to other firms’ products, brands sometimes will attempt a refresh so they’re perceived as new and exciting, like Jell-O did recently for the first time in ten years.

Aside for some minor tweaks, it didn’t seem like Twitter had changed much over the last decade, so maybe a major brand refresh was in order, not just for Gen Zs but for every user who was growing bored with the brand.

3) Regain Attention: Brands want to be top-of-mind, which helps in their ongoing efforts to retain and grow business. When consumers stop hearing about them, they may stop thinking about them and purchasing from them.

Simply slipping out of the news cycle is bad enough; it’s even worse to be replaced by a competitor, which is what happened to Twitter thanks to Meta’s new Threads.

These three are realistic reasons for Twitter to consider rebranding, but as the earlier criticisms implied: Was this refresh worth the very high costs?

Perhaps no cost loomed larger than this one AdAge and others identified: Abandoning the verb to “tweet.” Very, very few organizations are ever so fortunate as to have their brands turned into verbs, e.g., Google, Photoshop.

Of course, firms need to be careful that their brand names aren’t used generically to represent the entire product category (e.g., calling any brand of tissue a Kleenex), which can lead to a firm losing its legal trademark protection.

Still, there is tremendous value to having so much mindshare with consumers that they turn the noun of a company into an action. It’s hard to imagine that any or all of the three refresh reasons would warrant Twitter abandoning that extremely unique competitive advantage.

There’s also a perceptual disconnect between what social media typically stands for and the psychological meaning of “X.” Social media such as Twitter, tend to be about connecting people and having conversations, whereas “X” often represents the opposite. For instance, an “X” is often a person with whom one no longer associates, e.g., X-spouse, X-roommate, etc.

Ironically, “X” is also the tiny symbol that people often click on to close a webpage or an app. In fact, if someone says, “X out of that,” we know they’re giving a command to close something digital. In short, changing people’s existing interpretations of “X” from negative to positive is a very tall order.

Musk is among the most talented entrepreneurs of this generation, and he may deserve to be counted among humanity’s most innovative thinkers, but even business savants sometimes make mistakes, for instance:

Henry Ford’s first automobile firm, the Detroit Automobile Company, failed miserably, leading him to bankruptcy.
Walt Disney was fired from his job at a newspaper because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”
Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple, the company he co-founded.

Perhaps hindsight will prove 20/20, and history will exonerate the Twitter/X rebrand a few years or more from now. Now, though, it looks like it may go down as one of Musk’s bigger mistakes and an unfortunate instance of “Simple-Minded Marketing.”

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How Data Analytics Find You

7/19/2023

1 Comment

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

As a marketing educator, I take some pride in understanding organizations’ marketing and sharing it with others. However, two unexpected emails from unfamiliar online retailers left this professor perplexed and led me to reach out to a former student to teach me what had happened.

It was a Saturday evening when the emails hit my inbox within minutes of each other. They caught my attention because both were from furniture retailers that I never heard of before. Although I hadn’t been shopping for furniture, I knew my wife had been online helping our son find furnishings.

I asked her if she recognized the retailers. She said she had visited their websites earlier that day but hadn’t purchased anything or provided any contact information. Nonetheless, she also had started receiving emails from them.

Most of us have experienced the remarketing that happens when we search for a specific product online and soon after, ads for the same product start appearing on webpages we visit. However, that kind of digital targeting is typically confined to websites; it doesn’t lead to us receiving emails since we didn’t provide an email address.

While I was surprised that my wife had received emails from the two retailers, I was baffled by how I’d been added to their lists.

I understood that it’s easy for companies to access data linking our email addresses to our internet protocol (IP) address, “the unique identifying number assigned to every device connected to the Internet.” That connection is evident each time we complete an online form that asks for our email address, among other personal information.

Companies that don’t harvest that data themselves also can buy it from those who do. The market for data brokering is huge – now a $138.9 billion industry that’s expected to top $229 billion by 2025.

Big tech companies like Facebook and Google, as well as credit bureaus like Equifax and Experian, are among the biggest players in the data collection market. These organizations often say they don’t sell customer data; rather, they “share” it with their advertising partners. Of course, advertisers pay these big data collecting companies to run their ads, so selling vs. sharing seems like semantics.

Having exhausted the extent of my digital data-sharing knowledge, I turned to an expert. Dan Shaffer was once a BIS major and a student in my Marketing Principles class. He’s since risen to Director of Marketing Operations at WebFX one of the world’s leading digital marketing companies. I asked him how the two furniture retailers, who were completely unknown to me, could have gotten my email address.

Shaffer said that the companies were likely using https://retention.com/ to tie my IP back to my email addresses via brokered data – a process that started when at some point my email address and IP address were paired, probably from an online form I filled or an email newsletter to which I subscribed sometime ago.

Even though my wife and I use different devices to access the Internet, and each device has its own unique IPv6, the first 14 digits of that number are the same for every device in our household. So, a company with data from both my wife and from me could connect our datasets and target not just an individual shopper but as Shaffer described, our “household’s browsing history and interests.”

So, to summarize, the two unknown furniture retailers found me by using a very specialized analytics service (Retention.com) that: cross-referenced myriads of data it either harvested itself or purchased from others, found correlations among my wife’s and my separate online activities, and used those connections to paint a digital picture of our household.

That’s a simplified view of what happened and how. Given the moral focus of Mindful Marketing, the bigger question is, should it have happened? Was it right for the two furniture retailers and Retention.com to put my wife on their email list and target me?

It’s interesting that Retention.com dedicates an entire webpage to answering the question, How is Retention.com Legal? Who else does that? Does your employer take time to explain why it’s legal? An organization that does so naturally makes us ask: Should I be worried? Are there reasons why this business may not be legitimate?

Retention.com makes a case for the legitimacy of its practices with a variety of alleged facts including:

According to the US CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 you do NOT need an opt-in to send email marketing in the USA. In Europe, you do; but in the US, you don’t.
To be CAN-SPAM compliant, all you need is an opt-out link in the communication, and you need to make it clear that it’s an advertisement, along with a few other requirements (see below).

The webpage goes on to discuss that the conventional definition of SPAM is email that is both unsolicited and bulk. However, Retention.com argues against that definition because although it comes from Spamhaus, which is “an important, and influential organization in Email Marketing,” “Spamhaus is NOT the US government.”

At the same time, Retention.com also claims that it complies with Spamhaus’ definition because it provides “verifiable consent, ie, a third-party opt-in date and time, and the URL of our partner website that they opted in to.”

Furthermore, the site argues that the emails sent thanks to its services comply with the main requirements of the Federal Trade Commission’s CAN-SPAM act:

No false or misleading header information
No deceptive subject lines
Identifying the message as an ad
Telling recipients where the sender is located
Telling recipients how to opt out of receiving future emails
Honor opt-out request promptly
Monitor what others are doing on your behalf

To Retention.com’s credit, I can confirm that the emails I received from the two furniture retailers complied with most of the seven stipulations above. However, one significant falsity appeared at the top of each email: “You’re receiving this email because you stopped by our site. Unsubscribe”

Before I received the first email from them, I didn’t even know these retailers existed; I certainly never visited their websites.

Given that my wife did browse the sites, perhaps the retailer and Retention.com could argue that “you” is plural, i.e., ‘you people,’ or ‘your household.’ Of course, even individuals in the same family or household often have very different personalities, preferences, and internet use patterns.

Why would a company want to risk annoying, alienating, or even offending potential customers, given the possibility that by targeting households one of the following could happen:

Spoil a surprise – What if my wife was hoping to surprise me with some new piece of furniture? Well, she can’t now!
Reveal sensitive information – Others don’t need to know that someone in their household is looking into treatment for a certain medical condition or for an attorney, a therapist, protection from domestic abuse, etc.

Besides being dishonest (“you stopped by our site”), it seems like Retention.com and these furniture retailers are taking a step backward in terms of best practices in marketing.

Ever since marketing began as a science in the mid-1900s, marketers have continually worked to refine their target markets, i.e., tailor them more and more to the needs of specific individuals vs. amorphous groups.

Now that digital media have enabled true one-to-one marketing and mass customization, why turn back the clock?

At the same time, I realize that Retention.com, like many digital marketers, is playing a numbers game. It doesn’t need to get my business for its clients. As long as its shotgun approach gets 15-20% of recipients to open the unsolicited emails and even smaller percentages to visit the retailers’ sites and make purchases, it’s probably providing ROI.

On its ‘right to exist’ page, Retention.com poses a rhetorical question that compares Spamhaus’ guidance to what’s legal:
Why abide by this definition, even though it’s considerably more restrictive than the law?

This question cuts to the heart of the difference between law and ethics and evokes a time-honored moral truism: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

First, there is at least one reason to believe that Retention.com’s practices do run afoul of the law, specifically concerning the Federal Trade Commission’s standard for truth in advertising, which mandates that “Under the law, claims in advertisements must be truthful, cannot be deceptive or unfair . . .” (1) Since I never visited the two furniture retailers’ sites, to say I did is blatantly untruthful.

Second, even if Retention.com is given a legal pass, it’s practices still raise moral questions, e.g., What really represents ‘opting in,’ and how might less-than-transparent and/or manipulative systems mislead or coerce consumers?

For instance, at some point months or years before, my wife and/or I may have clicked “yes” on terms-of-use agreements that in an array of opaque legalese said that certain companies could “share” our customer information.

Is there really informed consent when you have 1) practically no idea with whom your data will be shared and for what purposes and 2) you’ve been shopping online for a long time, the terms-of-use agreement is the last thing you need to check off before completing the purchase, and the agreement is 10 pages long, in 8-point type, single-spaced?

Just because a company like Retention.com can “legally” assimilate reams of data, find connections, and sell those association services to others, should it? Instances of deception and possible coercion suggest, “no.”

Despite my own unpleasant experience and critical analysis, Retention.com probably is helping to convert a small percentage of surprised email recipients to customers for its clients, making its data amalgamation and email inundation approach “Single-Minded Marketing.”

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Is Extreme Tourism Worth Its Costs?

7/3/2023

6 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

How far are you willing to go for fun? For some, it’s battling the traffic and crowds at busy summer beaches. For others, it’s climbing over ice and fighting to breathe on an expedition up Everest. Depending on one’s taste and budget, either one of these experiences can be a great time, but as extreme tourism increases, it’s time to ask, are extraordinary leisure activities worth their costs?

By now, most have heard of the Titan submersible’s ill-fated excursion to explore the sunken Titanic. When I first learned that OceanGate’s record-setting sub went missing enroute to the wreckage that lies 2.37 miles below the surface of the North Atlantic, I assumed it was a scientific expedition. Only after additional news reports did I realize that the five passengers passed away on a pleasure trip.

Regardless of the reason for the voyage, it’s tragic that these individuals lost their lives. It’s frightening to think of a sub imploding; hopefully, their passing was quick and painless. Still, the nature of the trip has caused some to question whether such a tour should have been offered, given its inherent risk.

Many people have jobs that require them to risk their lives each day such as: first responders, miners, loggers, construction workers, oil and gas workers, electrical power line installers and repairers. These brave individuals are typically well-trained and well-aware of the danger in their work, which they do to serve others, as well as for income. Leisure activities, in contrast, are by definition discretionary.

While everyone should have recreational time in which they can refresh their body and mind, there are many things people can do that require minimal cost and pose little or no risk, from reading, to walking in a park, to playing pickle ball. So, why does anyone need to do extremely dangerous activities like:

Free climbing – climbing a rock face with no ropes
Base jumping – parachuting from a fixed structure
Bull running – jogging with horned bovines
Big wave surfing – boarding on swells that reach 50 ft. or more

Of course, everyone is wired differently in terms of the recreational activities that bring them pleasure. While some like low-key, passive leisure (e.g., watching movies), others enjoy the physical exertion and competition that comes from playing a sport (e.g., tennis, football). Still others crave much more, like:

Experiencing an extreme adrenalin rush
Seeing or doing something that few others have seen or done
Testing one’s physical and mental limits

Before becoming vice president for finance and administration at Martin’s Famous Potato Rolls and Bread 12 years ago, Scott Heintzelman had a successful two-decade career in public accounting, including a long tenure as a CPA firm partner. For many people in his position and stage of life, the most leisure energy they’d expend would be on a round of golf. However, just before the age of 50, Heintzelman ran his first marathon, then soon turned his attention to triathlons. Over the past five years he's completed 13 Ironman races.

Heintzelman’s friends, family members, and others sometimes say he’s crazy to needlessly put himself through the months of grueling training followed by the body-breaking 140.6-mile competitions, which culminate with him crying upon crossing the finish line. So, why does he choose to recreate in such an extreme way?

Heintzelman says he likes testing himself mentally and physically and adds that enduring pain, delaying gratification, and overcoming negative thoughts have helped him become more disciplined, focused, and resilient – qualities that serve him well in other areas of life.

As the preceding suggests, participating in an Ironman certainly comes with physical costs. It also comes with some significant financial ones such as $1,000-$5,000 for a race-quality bike, $800 for travel expenses, $150 for a 6-month gym membership, and a $600-$800 race entry fee.

Still, these costs pale in comparison to an ultra-extreme sport like high-altitude mountain climbing, for which participants pay “around $100,000 or even more for the privilege to get to the world’s highest peaks.” In the process, there’s real risk of life altering injuries and death from falls, extreme cold, and oxygen deprivation, where above 8,000 meters, “there is so little oxygen that the body starts to die, minute by minute and cell by cell.”

This year, 12 climbers have died on Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, and regrettably, five more who are missing and likely dead will make 2023 “the deadliest year ever.” One of the reasons for the increase in fatalities is overcrowding, as more inexperienced guides and climbers have made for a record number of climbing permits and caused traffic jams on already very challenging slopes. At times, queues of climbers enroute to the summit have looked like lines of vacationers waiting for a popular Disney World ride.

There are reportedly more than 50 companies that offer guided tours on Everest. Great supply is usually good for consumers, as added competition typically means more options and lower prices. Those things are true to some extent for Everest, but they’ve also meant a dangerous lowering of standards for climber competence and safety, to the point that certain companies will “take absolutely anyone up the mountain, regardless of experience, and cut corners on safety standards.”

One company that’s particularly notorious for taking human life lightly is Seven Summit Treks. Unlike other firms that usually limit their expeditions to 20 people, Seven Summit “is known to take as many as 100 climbers up the mountain — many of whom are unprepared for the altitude and physical exertion.”

The company also offers a VIP Everest Expedition “designed for those seeking to summit Mt. Everest in the utmost comfort and convenience” whether they are “an experienced climber or a first-timer for 8000er.” The expedition includes lessons at Everest basecamp on “ice wall climbing, ladder crossing, and other techniques that will be required for the ascent” – skills you’d think anyone who hopes to climb the world’s highest mountain would have already mastered.

This piece has gone from the depths of the sea with the recent OceanGate tourism tragedy to the heights of the earth with lives lost seeking to summit Everest. So, what do these two elevation extremes and all the options in between mean for those providing extreme leisure activities? Here are three potentially helpful considerations:

1) It’s hard to judge what leisure is too costly and risky: I would generally describe myself as cost-conscious and risk-adverse, which makes me want to point my finger at others spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and risking their lives to do things like deep ocean exploring and high-altitude climbing. Then I remember that I’ve done some leisure activities that others might consider too expensive and risky.

More than a decade ago, when my wife and I visited Kauai, we took advantage of what seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to view the breath-taking island by helicopter. The nearly $200 we spent per ticket certainly could be considered excessive for the 50-minute ride. Likewise, flying inside canyons on the rugged Napali coast had risk. Then again, anyone who flies or drives anywhere for a vacation could be accused of incurring unnecessary cost and risk.

The point is, it’s difficult to draw a clear line between what is and isn’t excessive leisure. That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be a line or that anything should go but rather that it might be helpful to consider factors like cost relative to the individual’s income, if not per capita income, as well as the percentage of instances of severe injuries or death for those who engage in the activity.

2) Leisure interest can lead to scientific discovery: Sometimes people’s leisure leads to discoveries that benefit much larger groups of people. For instance, amateurs have documented unique animal behaviors and even discovered new species.

People pursing their recreational passions also have played significant roles in advancing fields like avionics and computing. Most recently, companies including SpaceX are leveraging what they’re learning from offering space tourism to create the potential for dramatically faster point-to-point travel on earth, such as a flight from New York City to Shanghai that might only take 40 minutes.

3) Consumers’ safety is critical: Ultimately, what matters most for companies marketing recreation of any kind, including extreme tourism, is safety. Of course, before people participate in dangerous activities, organizations must clearly communicate the risks. It’s fine to ask participants to sign waivers; however, those releases should never become substitutes for taking every reasonable step to ensure that individuals simply looking for a pleasurable leisure experience don’t return injured or dead.

It seems that the two extreme tourism companies mentioned above have both fallen short of this critical standard. Since OceanGate’s Titan submersible exploded, many have reported that there were serious safety concerns surrounding the structural integrity of the deep-diving craft. Similarly, beyond Seven Summits Treks’ questionable onboarding practices described above, the firm’s owner resists rules for who should or shouldn’t enter into Everest’s death zone; instead, he recommends, “If [people] have enough energy, they can go.”

As Baby Boomers and Gen Xs look for a last hurrah and experience-driven Gen Ys and Zs gain disposable income, it’s likely that demand for extreme tourism will continue to increase. Companies that want to capitalize on this trend should ensure that the benefits they provide to clients are proportionate to the costs they incur. In addition, others outside the exchange shouldn't be asked to bear costs (e.g., environmental degradation, rescue costs) without receiving benefits.

Above all, organizations must do everything possible to ensure their clients’ safety. In an often-unpredictable natural world complicated by periodic human error, safety can seldom be guaranteed. However, at 3,800 meters below sea level or 29,000 meters above it, companies should have air-tight models for returning their clients safely; otherwise, they’re liable for “Single-Minded Marketing.”

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Why Did the PGA Stop Keeping Score with LIV?

6/20/2023

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

“If you can’t beat them join them.” This old adage, suggesting that adversaries become allies, has been used to describe everything from Vichy France aligning with Nazi Germany to Apollo Creed training Rocky Balboa. Now a very surprising real-life sports pairing has made ethics appear expendable or at least raised the question: Is it okay to have a moral change of mind?

The Professional Golfers’ Association’s (PGA) decision to merge with LIV Golf was a move that virtually no one expected. Even professional golfers and analysts who cover the game were shocked by the news. The PGA’s sudden change of heart, which went from viewing LIV as a bitter rival to a bedfellow also represented for many an epic moral capitulation.

Over the past year, the PGA and LIV have been “at war.” The PGA had threatened to suspend golfers who defected to LIV and even ban them for life. Why such acrimony? Of course, no organization wants a new competitor, especially one that steals its product (golfers) and commandeers its place (golf venues).

However, the PGA’s disdain for LIV was rooted in more than competition-fueled conflict. Many in the veteran golf association, as well as others, took issue with LIV’s funding source – the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, the nation of origin for 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks and a country known for human right abuses.

In an interview just a month ago, the PGA’s CEO, Seth Waugh, was heard “trashing” LIV Golf ahead of the PGA Championship. How is such a seemingly irreconcilable relationship so suddenly repaired? One ESPN piece, “How the shocking PGA Tour-LIV Golf deal went down” details the events leading up to the proposed merger and its players, while another describes how the unification, which also includes the DP World Tour (Europe), might solidify the sport long-term.

This Mindful Marketing article doesn’t pretend to know what’s best for the future of professional golf; rather, it aims to ask a more general philosophical question: Was it okay for the PGA to have a moral change of mind?

Of course, it’s not organizations but the individuals that manage them who make decisions, including ethical ones. Most of us have experienced that our initial inclinations are not always optimal. As evidence, we’ve all mistakes and often realized later the option we should have selected.

Imperfect decision-making is a thread that has run continually through human history and often involved ethics. For instance, decisions in favor of racial segregation in the U.S. in the 19th- and 20th century are ones that most Americans now reject, as are the choices that kept women from voting until 1920.

Realizing the error of one’s way and self-correcting a moral stance is a good thing. However, it’s also important to help others understand the reason for the reversal. Intelligent, inquiring people want to know not just that a judgment that was A is now B but why it’s changed That’s where moral reasoning helps.

In a moral argument, a person first identifies a moral standard then suggests one or more alleged facts, which lead to a conclusion, or moral judgment. A month ago, it seemed that many PGA supporters/LIV detractors morally reasoned along the lines of the following:

Human rights should be upheld. (moral standard)
Saudi Arabia has not upheld certain human rights. (alleged fact 1)
LIV Golf’s funding come from the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. (alleged fact 2)
LIV Golf’s funding source taints the league. (alleged fact 3)
It’s wrong for professional golfers to play for LIV. (moral judgment)

Then, without notice, the PGA reversed course, announcing its merger with LIV and thereby introducing a new moral judgement: It’s fine for professional golfers to play for LIV.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with having a moral change of heart, especially if it’s the result of ethical enlightenment. However, others deserve to know what changed the moral judgment, which is where the PGA fell short of the cup.

A year ago, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan was invoking the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a main reason to reject LIV. Now, he will reportedly serve as CEO of the newly created company.

Monahan and the PGA have offered little evidence that their change of heart had anything to do with recognition of either a more compelling moral standard or more salient alleged facts such as, ‘Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights is improving’ or ‘Where money comes from doesn’t matter as much as what’s done with it.’

Moreover, it appears that the PGA has made a wholesale change in its moral decision-making from principle-based ethics, or nonconsequentialism, to outcome-based ethics, or consequentialism. Evidence of this philosophical shift can be seen in recent statements from the PGA and Monahan that focus not on upholding specific moral principles but on prioritizing outcomes for the game of golf, for instance:

“We are pleased to move forward, in step with LIV and PIF’s world-class investing experience, and I applaud PIF Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan for his vision and collaborative and forward-thinking approach that is not just a solution to the rift in our game, but also a commitment to taking it to new heights. This will engender a new era in global golf, for the better.”

Understandably, given what’s transpired, this explanation has failed to reach the green for many of the tour’s most important stakeholders. Many top professional golfers, have felt blindsided by the decision and left to wonder what inspired it. Rory McIlroy, the third ranked golfer in the world, said he was surprised by news of the merger, he felt like a “sacrificial lamb,” and he hated LIV and hoped it would go away.

Similarly, hall of fame golfer Tom Watson sent a letter to Monahan questioning the merger Watson also acknowledged that his skepticism about the new structure has been “compounded by the hypocrisy in disregarding the moral issue.”

If the merger goes through, professional golf, with its strong new financial backing and consolidation will likely thrive. However, the PGA’s pivot has left a moral divot that will not be easily replaced.

It’s the prerogative of any person and professional sports association, to have a moral change of heart. However, when such happens, it’s also important to say why. By not explaining how it so quickly arrived at a very different moral judgment about LIV, the PGA hit the ball into a bunker of “Single-Minded Marketing.”

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A 3D Approach to Corporate Social Media Responsibility

6/6/2023

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

Most of us receive warnings during our lives whether they’re about talking in class, highway speeding, or forgetting to pay a bill. When the U.S. surgeon general issues a warning, it’s a serious admonition for everyone, usually about some potential physical harm. So, when the physician in chief warns about the dangers of social media, what should the organizations that use it do?

The New York Times has called U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s most recent warning “an extraordinary public advisory,” which is saying something since warnings from the nation’s top doctor are uncommon and have included some grave concerns like AIDS, drunk-driving, obesity, video game violence, gun violence, and, of course, cigarettes.

How could social media possibly warrant the same level of concern?

Gen Z uses Instagram to share fun videos, parents turn to Facebook to celebrate family milestones, and professionals leverage LinkedIn to post and find job opportunities, all of which seem like positive and productive things. Unfortunately, though, most of us also have read about, if not experienced, social media’s negative impact.

I teach about sociological and psychological influences on behavior, but I don’t use social media much, so I’d like to believe I’m above its affirmation-seeking lure. However, I have to admit, there are times I’m disappointed that my posts don’t receive the numbers of likes and shares that those of others do.

Putting too much weight on other people’s reactions can be problematic, but it’s just one of social media’s potential pitfalls. As the following two lists suggest, misuse of social media can impact individuals’ well-being mentally (M), physically (P), and socially (S) in many different ways.

First, Entrepreneur identifies four other pitfalls in its list of five social media dangers:

Real-life interaction is replaced if you allow it (M, P, S)
Feelings of envy emerge based on fabricated lives (M, S)
Moments are missed and memorable experiences are diluted (M)
Addiction (M, P, S)
It can ruin your sleep, impacting your physical health (P)

Still, others suggest many more potential perils. For instance, McMillen Health identifies 15 social media dangers:

Sedentary behavior (P)
Less sleep (P)
Social Media addiction (M, P, S)
Cyberbullying (M, S)
Missing out on face-to-face relationships (S)
Less time for other activities (M, P, S)
Social comparisons (M, S)
Affecting self-image (M)
Damaging online reputation (M, S)
Harmful to mental well-being (M)
Misleading information (M, S)
Scams (M, P)
Normalizing risk-taking behaviors (P)
Misleading marketing (M, P)
Inappropriate content (M, P, S)

Although anyone can be negatively impacted in these ways, children and adolescents tend to feel social media’s impacts most acutely, partly because they’re heavy users of the platforms but mainly because individuals’ formative years are ones in which they often look to others for validation, and they more easily feel ostracized from their peers.

Mayo Clinic cites many studies that found evidence of adverse effects of social media on teens, including the following:

12- to 15-year-olds in the U.S. who used social media for more than three hours a day were at greater risk of mental health problems.
For 13- to 16-year-olds in the U.K., using social media more than three times a day was associated with poor mental health and well-being.
Various studies have found links between social media use and symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Even with this evidence, it’s important to note that social media is not inherently bad. As suggested at the onset of this piece, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and others provide very worthwhile services that range from connecting people, to offering entertainment, to delivering education.

It also bears emphasizing that ultimately people are responsible for their own social media use. Even in the case of so-called ‘addictive’ apps, like TikTok, people have the ability to stop using them without experiencing physical withdrawal symptoms associated with trying to stop smoking or doing drugs like cocaine and heroin.

One qualification, however, is that parents share some responsibility for the social media use of their children, especially younger ones. Unlike adults, children can’t necessarily comprehend the potential risks because they lack life experience and knowledge of social and psychological phenomenon. It’s up to parents to help moderate their children’s social media use.

Notwithstanding the preceding points, if companies care about their own consumers and people in general, they should want to contribute to their well-being and help them avoid harm.

Here are three “Ds” every organization should do to make their social media use more responsible.

1. Discourage divisive content: This is understandably a difficult phenomenon to police, but companies from the largest social media platforms to the smallest should work to eliminate content that unnecessarily pits people against each other.

While social media platforms shouldn’t be in the business of monetizing such content, all businesses should model civil dialogue and discourage polarizing posts.

2. Don’t allow abusive behavior: The social media communication that likely weighs heaviest on young people’s mental health is the communication that involves bullying and/or shaming. Yes, freedom of speech is important, but it shouldn’t mean that anything goes, particularly when that anything involves demeaning dialogue and personal attacks.

Smaller companies also can monitor their social media pages for abusive posts, removing them as they see them and banning users who make them.

3. Decrease overuse: Bars stop serving patrons who have had too much to drink. Social media platforms can at a minimum notify users of their time on the platform, similar to Apple’s screentime notifications. Beyond that, platforms could also ask people to set their own time limits, before they start using the app, when they’re still thinking about their use rationally and objectively.

Of course, most business that use social media aren’t platforms or major apps. Still, even small businesses can discourage social media overuse by limiting their posts to reasonable numbers, e.g., one or two a day versus four or five, which communicates to followers that they can and should have lives outside of their interactions with a single business.

Companies don’t need to stop using social media because of the U.S. surgeon general’s warning, but they should reassess how their use may be impacting people. The three Ds described above don’t represent a comprehensive plan for responsible social media use, but they are important steps toward more “Mindful Marketing.”

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Is it a Sin to Advertise Religion?

5/21/2023

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

In casual interpersonal conversation, two topics have long been taboo: politics and religion. By contrast, in advertising, politics are usually fair game, but religion has largely remained off-limits, until now. So, have two widely broadcast religion-related campaigns changed an age-old mass communication commandment?

By now, most people have driven by billboards or viewed videos online for “He Gets Us,” the omnipresent ad campaign aimed at changing people’s perceptions of Jesus. The campaign even aired ads during last February’s Super Bowl.

More recently, another campaign, which represents religion for some but with a very different objective, also has been broadcast in national media: #StandUpToJewishHate aims to stop antisemitism. The need for such an initiative stems in part from the sobering statistic that the American Jewish community represents just 2.4% of the U.S. population, but Jews are victims in 55% of the country’s religious hate crimes.

Given my past and present advertising-related roles, people sometimes ask my opinion about ads, and because I teach at a Christian University, my views on marketing that involves religion has some extra appeal.

However, as much as I enjoy sharing my thoughts, I really appreciate hearing others’ perspectives, from which I always learn. So, in the current case of these two high-profile campaigns, I reached out to a few wise friends and asked for their insights on the ads.

One person is a Christian church pastor; the others are Jewish – a software project manager and an executive coach. For the sake of brevity but at the risk of some awkward acronyms, I’ll refer to these kind contributors anonymously as CCP, JSPM, and JEC, respectively. Here are their reflections on the ads.

He Gets Us

In light of ongoing critiques of Christians and Christianity, CCP admitted having mixed feelings about the He Gets Us ads. Still, he was grateful for the campaign’s positive portrayal of Jesus.

JSPM and JEC also appreciated the ads. JSPM was particularly impressed by the campaign’s inclusivity, emphasized through third person plural language. He reflected, “Our world could certainly use more ‘us’ than ‘them’ . . . When we allow people to dehumanize others, bad things happen.”

Likewise, JEC was very impressed by the He Gets Us ads, which he found to be “incredibly open-minded” as they presented an accurate picture of Jesus, who was not close-minded.

Notwithstanding these positive attributes, CCP posed an important bottom-line question about the ads: Are they effective? More specifically, he wondered:

“The ads’ portrayals of Jesus highlight his love and grace, but do they clearly communicate to their audience who He is? Also, are those short dramatic snippets enough to cause someone to explore more about Jesus?”

Furthermore, knowing that purchasing national media isn’t cheap, and a 30-second Super Bowl spot can cost as much as $7 million, CCP asked the very reasonable question of whether taking practical actions would be more meaningful than words:

“While our Christian witness is important, do television ads or addressing the needs of people who are hurting provide a better representation to our world of who Jesus is and what He and his followers value?”

Still, CCP remained circumspect, “Maybe the fact we’re having this discussion is proof the ads are accomplishing their purpose.” He’s right: This kind of general image/brand-building is very difficult to quantify, and so much free press is likely helping, at least to some extent, to offset the costs.

#StandUpToJewishHate

As mentioned above, JSPM denounced dehumanizing actions and the acrimony that often underlies them. He added, “The abundance of hate in our society is crowding out love and is dangerous on many levels.” The hateful words and actions the #StandUp campaign seeks to discourage exemplify some of the more advanced forms of that abuse.

JSPM appreciated how each campaign, though very different in their focus, aimed to replace the prevailing narrative with a better one, i.e., Jesus was about loving others, and it’s wrong to radiate hate.

JEC supported the #StandUp ads’ goal of combatting hate and protecting people. He also fittingly differentiated the two campaigns, pointing out that while He Gets Us focuses squarely on Jesus and highlights specific spiritual disciplines He demonstrated like self-control, unconditional love, and hospitableness, #StandUp makes no mention of a deity or reference to specific tenets of faith.

In addition, JEC raised two good questions:

How should the funding sources for both campaigns affect the ways their respective ads are interpreted?
Do the #StandUp spots really represent religious advertising?

Admittedly, the second question surprised me as it challenged the fundamental framing of this piece and the logic: ‘Because the #StandUp campaign encourages rejection of acrimony aimed at Jews, and because Judaism is a religion, the ads are religious advertising.’

However, JEC reminded me that not all Jews consider themselves as adherents to Judaism, i.e., Jewish religion. For some, being Jewish is about cultural/and or ethnic identification, not necessarily religious beliefs and practice. So, although antisemitism may involve religious bigotry, it’s more broadly discrimination against specific people who are identifiable outside of their theological beliefs.

JEC’s analyses of the campaigns were also a good reminder that people, including me, see ads through the lens of their own worldviews and experiences, which can lead to very different interpretations of the commercial content. Those potential discrepancies are why it behooves those creating ads to step outside themselves and truly try to understand others’ perceptions.

The three interviewees provided some excellent analysis of the two specific campaigns, but what about the general idea of religion using paid-for mass communication? Is it right for religious organizations to advertise?

Considering this question, JSPM and JEC both pointed to the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. Outside of hate speech and a few specific requirements like truthfulness, individuals and organizations of all kinds do have great liberty to publicly disseminate information and to attempt to persuade people to believe and act in certain ways.

Still, the messages of religion-related ads cut deeper than most, which means religious organizations should strive to:

Promote in proper situations: Ensure that ads appear at appropriate times and in appropriate places.
Be inclusive: Use language that’s welcoming rather than exclusionary.
Seek common ground: Emphasize points of agreement.
Avoid offending: Don’t disparage others’ beliefs.
Be compassionate: Understand the difficult challenges that many people face each day.

Not surprisingly, these are many of the same principles that the three contributors to this piece have identified and implied. Furthermore, following these principles doesn’t mean abandoning the tenets of one’s faith; rather the principles suggest not leading with antagonism.

It’s also helpful to recognize that most religious organizations’ advertising does routinely uphold these principles. These organizations are not necessarily using national television campaigns like the ones discussed above but rather promotional tactics like these:

A synagogue buys newspaper space to advertise an annual flea market fundraiser.
A church runs radio spots to promote its Christmas-themed musical.
A new mosque uses outdoor signage to announce its opening.

This kind of religious advertising commonly accomplishes the organizations’ objectives and upholds values that virtually everyone understands, like decency, fairness, honesty, respect, and responsibility.

There are examples of good and evil mass communication in every sector. Religious advertising isn’t always pious, but when done in the right ways, it radiates “Mindful Marketing.”

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The Pros and Cons of Artificial Influencers

5/7/2023

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

Who would you ask for an important restaurant recommendation? You might turn to someone who knows the local area well, eats out frequently, or has discerning taste. What about asking someone who’s never been to a restaurant or ever eaten food? That seems like a silly suggestion, but with companies increasingly offering advice through artificial endorsers, the notion of consulting a ‘tech expert’ has taken on a whole new meaning.

I recently received an email from OpenTable in which the well-known reservation app announced an innovative partnership with the suddenly famous AI bot ChatGPT:

“We’re collaborating with the internet’s favorite chatbot to make finding the perfect table as easy as texting your best friend. Soon you can ask ChatGPT for restaurant recommendations for the perfect family brunch spot, a lively rooftop for a big group, or a romantic table for 2, and you’ll received recommendations with a direct link to book in seconds.”

It’s an intriguing proposition – asking a chatbot that doesn’t have tastebuds or emotions, let alone a significant other, to suggest a restaurant for a romantic dinner.

Virtual beings aren’t just recommending what to eat; they’re also suggesting what to wear. The 170-year-old jeans maker Levi’s recently grabbed headlines when it announced plans to increase diversity in its advertising by employing AI clothing models.

But wait, there’s more! Marketing technology guru Shelly Palmer has compiled a list of companies using virtual influencers to build their brands, which includes many notables such as Alibaba, IKEA, League of Legends, Lux Shampoo, Pacsun, and Puma. As the science and acceptance of AI continues to advance, all signs point to a baby boom of virtual brand endorsers.

Over the past few months, millions of people have turned to ChatGPT and some similar AI bots for answers, often to factual questions about:

general knowledge and information, such as definitions, historical events, and scientific facts
technology, such as how to use a particular software or troubleshoot a technical problem
health and medicine, such as symptoms, treatments, and side effects of various conditions
current events, such as news updates and breaking news

For those kinds of objective answers, it certainly makes sense to leverage machine learning, which can scour “a colossally large repository of text” and very quickly and adeptly “parse queries and produce fully-fleshed out answers and results based on most of the world's digitally-accessible text-based information.”

There’s a difference, though, between returning a list of “all fine-dining restaurants in Denver” and recommending a few that seem like the best fit for the particular diner’s occasion, palate, price range, and other personal preferences.

Companies wouldn’t use AI-powered artificial endorsers if they didn’t have advantages, but as this piece has already suggested, they also have disadvantages. Here’s what this human marketer sees as the pros and cons of virtual spokespeople.

Pro 1 – Affordability: Firms don’t have to pay artificial influencers, but they do need to pay for 3-D modeling which can be about $75,000 for a six-month contract. That’s not cheap but it is cost-effective compared to the deals demanded by A-list celebrities like Taylor Swift ($26 million from Diet Coke) and David Beckham ($160 million lifetime from Adidas).

Con 1 – Apathy: Jobs for humans are often an issue in conversations about AI. Virtual spokespeople don’t care that they might be replacing people. The companies that make and use the avatars may or may not feel conflicted, but at least some humans are needed to do the 3-D modeling and help manage the virtual endorsers.

Pro 2 – Adaptability: Firms can program an artificial endorser to do and say anything they want, as well as look anyway they want. These spokesbots will always deliver their lines perfectly, they’ll never cause PR headaches because of missteps in their social lives, and they’ll always maintain the ‘ideal’ weight, hair color, and skin tone.

Con 2 – Inauthenticity: Because they’re nonautonomous beings that speak others’ words, virtual endorsers can’t be truly authentic. One might argue that human spokespeople also parrot what they’re told to say , but at least they have a conscience and can decide, ‘The money is very attractive, but I can’t support this company/product.’

Pro 3 – Omniscience: As suggested above, AI-powered applications can scan and assimilate incredible amounts of information. Although they can’t literally know everything, and they sometimes make mistakes, their knowledge and accuracy will keep getting better and exceedingly surpass that of humans.

Con 3 – Inexperience: Even as virtual endorsers may have unparalleled knowledge, they have no real experience. As mentioned above, ChatGPT can’t eat food or wear jeans, so how can it really recommend restaurants or clothing?

Pro 4 – Disclosure: When we see ads with endorsers, whether they’re real people or digital beings, we instinctively know that they’re sharing a perspective that’s at least somewhat biased toward the advertised product. In some ways, the presence of virtual beings, which are still relatively uncommon, makes it even clearer that the communication is not impartial.

Con 4 – Deception: Although leading people to believe that their endorsement is unbiased is a possible problem for both human and animated beings, artificial endorsers hold greater potential to mislead, to the extent that their very life-like looks and mannerism make them seem real. This realism ties back to the issue of inauthenticity (Con 2) and represents the greatest potential ethical issue for spokesbots.

As described above, their lack of volition means artificial endorsers can never really say what’s on their mind, or be totally truthful. When people know a spokesperson isn’t human, they can account for that inauthenticity by raising their perceptual defenses and being more leery of what’s said. However, if consumers believe a spokesbot is a real person, that added skepticism will never arise.

Right now, most artificial endorsers still appear fake, although some, like Puma’s Maya look and act incredibly real. In fact, many have wondered if she is human, and some have even expressed a romantic interest in her.

As time goes on and technology advances, spokesbots will become more and more indistinguishable from real people. Organizations that employ artificial endorsers should let the public know that their digital creations aren’t real through some kind of disclaimer (e.g., “Maya is a virtual person”). Otherwise, consumers may give the bots’ communication more credence than it deserves since they’re not real humans who have genuinely judged companies’/products’ merits and made deliberate decisions that they are worthy of endorsement.

Over millennia of buying and selling products, people have known that it’s difficult for sellers to be truly objective about their wares, but buyers also know that spokespeople must make a conscious choice to endorse. Organizations that attempt to sidestep those consumer perceptions by passing off their spokesbots as real, autonomous people are endorsing “Single-Minded Marketing.”

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Is it Time to Retire Roasting?

4/23/2023

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

Roasting is a nice way to bring out the natural flavors of things like meats, vegetables, and coffee, but does it bring out the best in people? A well-known fast-food chain seems to think so, or at least it believes roasting others is a recipe for building its brand.

Given everyone likes to laugh, people tend to appreciate individuals and organizations that add humor to their lives. Insurance companies like Aflac, Geico, and Progressive are well-known for luring consumers with levity via advertising slapstick, usually at the expense of their own corporate characters: Duck, Gecko, and Flo.

However, for five years, another company has taken a more aggressive comedic approach – Wendy’s, the ninth largest fast-food chain in America, has reasoned, ‘Why should we just laugh at ourselves, when we can laugh at you?’

To be fair, Wendy’s uses more than one type of humor. Like the insurance companies, the fast-food chain has characters – actors pretending to be Wendy’s employees – doing and saying silly things in what are pretty appealing ads. However, the company also uses comedy that very few organizations are bold enough to try – roasting others, even their own customers.

Wendy’s has long been known for using social media to spar with its burger competitors. Typical of the trash talk that Wendy’s aims at McDonald’s is this tweet from a few years ago: “Hey @McDonalds, heard the news. Happy #NationalFrozenFoodDay to you for all the frozen beef that’s sticking around in your cheeseburgers.”

However, those periodic jabs pale in comparison to what Wendy’s did in 2018, when it created its only holiday of sorts, “National Roast Day,” during which it invites individual and organizations to volunteer themselves to be roasted by the restaurant. Most recently, an animated version of its redhead, pigged-tailed namesake Wendy, the daughter of Founder Dave Thomas, imparts the insults.

Over the past few years, Twitter served as the platform of choice for most Roast Day putdowns, but this spring Wendy took her talents to TikTok and also tripled the length of the ribbing from one day to three.

A review of the video shorts shows that the roasts vary in their acrimony. Some are pretty benign, for instance:

To a young woman wearing considerable eye makeup and applying lip gloss: “Hey, it’s the girl that walked the track in Cookie Monster pajamas during gym class.”
To a young man who asks Wendy to roast his band’s music: “I’d roast your music, but just like everyone else on earth, I’ve never heard it.”

Other roasts are more acerbic:

To a heavy-set young man: “I didn’t know someone without a neck could have a neck beard, but here we are. You learn something new every day.”

To a thin-framed young man who recalls Wendy’s once wrapping “underwhelming” single burger patties in foil: “Should have expected a weak punchline from someone who looked like they’d lose an arm-wrestling match to a seven-year-old.”

To a young man wearing sunglasses and a hat with a Pizza Planet logo, who speaks with a slight Southern accent: “Kids, this is what happens when you’re born in a truck stop bathroom.”

Of course, Wendy’s didn’t invent the roast. For that starting place, some point to 1950, the New York Friars Club, and roasts of comedians Sam Levenson and Joe E. Lewis. While the Friars Club has continued roasting one member a year since, others also have gotten into the act, namely Dean Martin’s celebrity roasts from 1974-1984, and Comedy Central. From 2003 through 2019, the cable channel aired one or two roasts a year of musicians, actors, and comedians, including David Hasselhoff, Charlie Sheen, and Roseanne Barr.

It’s unclear why Comedy Central stopped its roasts. Some on social media claim COVID killed the biting humor, while others note that the frequency of the channel’s roasts already had started to decline. There also were several very awkward exchanges along the way, including a roast in 2016 when instead of belittling roastee Rob Lowe, many of the roasters heaped brutal insults on fellow roaster and conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Retired NFL quarterback Peyton Manning compared her to a horse.

It might be naïve, but maybe Comedy Central’s cancellation of roasting had something to do with heightened sensibilities and introspection – i.e., What exactly are we doing here and what it’s greater social impact?

Understandably, some would want to push back on such criticism of Comedy Central’s specials and Wendy’s National Roast Day with plausible arguments like:

Don’t take it so seriously; it’s comedy; it’s supposed to be funny!
Everyone needs to laugh at themselves.
Those people volunteered to be roasted.

Although each of those arguments has some merit, overall, they lack a good read of the room. In other words, they miss the bigger picture of what’s happening in our world, the tenuous turn society has taken, and how roasting provides poor but enticingly imitable examples of how people might interact with each other.

Even a casual observer can see that society has become increasingly divided ideologically and in other ways. Although such schisms have likely always existed, what’s new is the freedom and numerous ways people now have to berate not only individuals who think differently but also those who fail to act and look like they do.

Of course, social media has been a main conduit for that verbal abuse, allowing people to unfurl personal attacks with the protection of partial, if not complete, anonymity and to do so at physically, psychologically, and socially safe distances, i.e., without meeting their ‘adversaries’ face-to-face, learning their stories, and truly understanding them.

Many young people, in particular, seek validation from social media, allowing their self-image to rise and fall based on likes, shares, and comments, often from people they don’t know. Those fleeting rewards teach them what’s valued and motivate future behavior, often aimed at realizing similar temporary validation.

What’s more, people also learn social norms vicariously, or by observing others and seeing how society responds to their actions. So, if caustic criticism of a person gains thousands of likes on social media, thousands of others may reason, ‘I’d like to receive that kind of response; I think I’ll try that.’

There-in lies the real danger of Wendy’s roasts: They’re invitations to imitate derisive communication at a place and time when society is already deeply divided and young people feel stigmatized by social media.

Fortunately, some other organizations not only recognize these serious societal rifts, they’re trying to remedy them. One such company is the global consumer goods producer Unilever. In keeping with its aim to be “purpose-led,” its personal care brand Dove has taken special efforts to battle the culture of criticism by doing things such as:

Challenging TikTok’s bold glamour filter, which “sets unrealistic and harmful beauty expectations for girls and women.”
Pushing for legislation to protect kids’ self-esteem, given the rise in mental health issues associated with social media use.

As someone who uses humor generously in his classes, I probably should be one of last people to criticize anyone who seeks to leverage the very legitimate value of laughter. However, roasting breaks the boundaries of what can be considered socially beneficial “playful teasing.”

From my 30+ years on the frontlines of customer interaction and college education, a little good-natured ribbing is not just tolerated, it’s often very desirable, provided the teaser:

Already has a good relationship with those being teased
Teases themself, or uses self-deprecating humor
Pays many more compliments than teases
Never teases about things that are sensitive or cannot be changed
Doesn’t focus the teasing on just one or two people

Regrettably, Wendy’s roasts fulfill few of these criteria. Also, given the nasty nature of animated Wendy, the company’s website description of how its founder Thomas chose the logo is both ironic and sad: “He felt that the logo of a smiling, whole-some little girl with the name ‘Wendy’s Old-Fashioned Hamburgers’ would be the place where you went for a hamburger the way you used to get them . . .”

Given the expansion of its self-made holiday, the fast-food chain’s burger sales must be benefiting; however, the butt of the joke is a society that shouldn’t have to tolerate more divisiveness or attacks on individuals’ self-esteem. Wendy’s deserves kudos for wanting to make people laugh, but unfortunately it has cooked up a biggie serving of “Single-Minded Marketing.”

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Is it Time to Retire Roasting?

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