Economic Darwinism and the Marketing Struggle for Attention

Economic Darwinism manifests itself in a marketing struggle for attention. One of the enemies of attention is the development of immunity to habituated stimuli, and email advertising may be on the verge. This may explain the marketing interest in social media – the hope that people are not yet immune to it as they are to email. This would be consistent with adaptation level theory (see Hawkins, 2007, p 293), “over time we adapt or habituate to it [in our case frequent email from a vendor] and begin to notice it less.”

Poulos (2009, p. 1) contends that the deciding factor in email success or failure is the strategic planning that goes into the entire campaign: segmentation, objectives, tactics and so on. He cites research about the value of a list that is both opt-in and highly targeted. He finally advises us to implement the Sender Policy Framework in our email directory technology (see Sender Policy Framework). This is designed to prevent spam.

For habituated stimuli in other media, look at Rosser Reeves' Minute Maid or Anacin TV campaigns. Minute Maid complained about the deathly repetition in its orange juice campaign, to no good effect. Twitchell (1996, p 29) notes that such repetition "will no longer be tolerated" in TV advertising. Based on our readings this week, repetitious (too frequent email) may not be either.

An Attention Economy model has been presented to explain attention immunity in marketing with the utility theory of neo-classical economics. The unfinished argument in economics over the sui generis of the market now finds new application in the potential of Internet technologies. Is it natural for the market to be governed by a higher authority, the state, or is it a stand-alone, self-regulating entity? Likewise with email and social media. They are connected to brand planning but to what extent should they be governed by it?

The Cluetrain Manifesto sees the old marketing as a procession of charlatans who no longer have an audience. The new technology opens a free conversation to form markets directly between empowered members of a firm and the community they serve.

Most new parades, I think, start out solemnly and with dignity, buttressed by 95 theses or whatever, but end up in turmoil and rancor. Email is an example and so is blogging. Microsoft has employees talking directly to customers on blogs. In fact, Joe Cox reports (see Microsoft Watch) that Microsoft has over 5,000 employee blogs and quite often Microsoft makes major product announcements only on these blogs, not incorporating one or another of its marketing agencies.

John Cass is a marketer and a researcher at Forrester and has made a counterintuitive finding (see his blog ). Dell and Macromedia use a dedicated approach, and control communications that uses email and social media rather than take the wide-open approach of Microsoft. Dell and Macromedia are doing quite well with such an approach.

Cass concludes that anarchy does not work. While the Cluetrain Manifesto helped focus attention on change that is needed for marketing communications because of the Internet, "[it] did not provide a really effective road map for how to open up a company.”

Marketing communications is a discipline. By focusing their email and social media efforts in smaller groups capable of effective marketing communications (i.e. people trained in IMC), and providing them with support, Dell and Macromedia have been effective. More so than Microsoft. I think the lesson this week is that email is governed by a higher authority, the principles of marketing communications and marketing platform of the firm.

References
Hawkins, Del, David Mothersbaugh and Roger Best (2007). Consumer Behavior. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Newbusiness.co.uk. Retrieved on September, 25, 2009 from http://www.newbusiness.co.uk/articles/marketing-advice/how-grab-customers%E2%80%99-attention

Poulos, Alex (May 4, 2009). Email Marketing – Still Friend or Foe? (Part I). Retrieved on September 23, 2009 from http://www.covisio.com/blog/2009/05/04/email-marketing-still-friend-or-foe-part-i/

Twitchell, James (1996). Adcult USA. Columbia.

Are you jumping off a cliff with that email?

Both Email Marketing and jumping into a rocky canyon have risks. Both disciplines have proven techniques to cope with those risks. Well, at least Email Marketing does. It is manageable if you follow the practices recommended this week. Both experiences have a set of deadly forces at work and a set of life saving forces as well.

Deadly Forces
The erosive power of friction from email frequency can land us in the rocks. Quris (2003, p 10) says that “slow and steady wins the race.” Throughout their article they admonish us to avoid losing customers completely with Email that is too frequent. This is not having customers delete our emails. This is having them terminate the relationship.

Another deadly force is inertial boredom. Its uncomfortable gravity casts a gray pall over our dive or our email, and we will not get full points. Vanides (2009, p. 2) says that this is even truer for B-to-B: messages must be relevant and have substance. Quris (2009, p. 10) observes “Relevant versus boring is of course a subjective judgment.” That is the risk of cliff diving but it’s why people applaud us if our company and we survive and are not paralyzed.

The future for marketers who ignore these warnings is a rocky landing that acts like a meat cleaver, wielded by a client infuriated with the predictable banality of our frequent intrusions.

Life Giving Forces
Things are not completely bleak. Momentum is a force of hope. Quris (p. 10) says that measurement of past behavior lets us gauge email engagement momentum. This gives us the wind direction before we take our leap. They also say that our perspective should be the ocean, the long-term relationship with the customer and not a one-time sales objective.

Vanides (pp 7-8) provides life-giving advice on the form and style of our emails. First make a compelling offer and tell a story that “engages the reader’s imagination.” Stay focused, an email should cover one product or service. Give assurances to the forces of nature with money-back guarantees. Keep the paragraphs short and the tone appropriate to the audience. You may want to have a P.S. Finally, have multiple calls to action.


References
Quris, Inc. (October 2003). How Email Practices Can Win of Lose Long-Term Business. Retrieved from WVU IMC 626 Week Five Readings on September 13, 2009.

Spiller, L and M Baier, (2005). Contemporary Direct Marketing. Pearson/Prentice-Hall

Vanides, Alexia (2009). Lesson 5: Online and Other Email Marketing Techniques. Retrieved from WVU IMC 626 Week Five Lesson on September 13, 2009.

Case Study: Chiquita Brands and Landec Technology

1. Background
1.1 Industry Dynamics
Chiquita Banana International is a major international distributor of fresh and value-added food products. Its operations include a strong marketing element "designed to win the hearts and smiles of the world’s consumers…" (See Vanides, 2009, p 2). The nature of fresh produce favors a vertically integrated industrial organization and that is true with Chiquita.

The value-add is concentrated in specialized shipping and marketing activities (p. 4). This has led to discontent among growers, as their associations have not been able to negotiate favorable returns to the farmers. Grower associations have attempted to end-run the produce conglomerates, mainly Chiquita and Dole, (p. 5) but with mixed results. Dole International is Chiquita Brands’ major competitor in the vertically integrated fresh produce sector.

Customer concentration makes Chiquita vulnerable in North America. The case study (p. 5) reports that banana marketers and distributors are facing "the challenge of the increasing role that is being played by supermarkets and retail chains." The Boston Consulting Group, in their Harvard Business School publication examines the impact new information technology will have on disintermediation, getting rid of the middleman in many industries (Evans and Wurster, 2000, p 72).

1.2 Topic Statement: Don’t Become a Wal-Mart Harlot
The topic of this proposal is to recommend that Chiquita Brands work at 90° with the powerful grocery store channel. Using enabling technology like Landec to enter a new market is a start. We also recommend marketing strategies to broaden your customer base, first with Core-Mark and convenience stores, but longer-term with manufacturing intermediaries such as Gerber and Mrs. Smith’s. Additionally, we review marketing pull strategies to increase ultimate consumer awareness of your unique expertise and long experience in safe handling for the delivery of fresh produce.

1.3 Who are the customers and what do they want?
The customers of Chiquita Banana International are varied but concentrated so that 62% of its North American sales go to its top 20 vendors, a Pareto distribution (see Vanides, 2007, p 5). In Europe this is slightly more balanced with 32% of sales going to the top 20 retailers. The case study mentions the following customers:

• Convenience store distributors who need smaller delivery quantities of fresh bananas and packaging for individual sales.
• Supermarket retail chains that need continuous delivery of fresh bananas with high quality as well as integration with their supply-chain systems. They also seek long-term relationships.
• The ultimate customers, shoppers who buy fresh bananas

According to Spiller and Baier (2005, p. 320), bananas can be used as raw materials in manufacturing processes, in addition to being an end product for retail chains. With this in mind, I would propose the following customer categories:

• Independent canned goods manufacturers such as Bacardi Banana Daiquiri Mix, Comstock, or Gerber who use bananas and fresh produce in their processed foods
• Manufacturers of pastries and pies like Mrs. Smith’s Banana Crème Pie.
• Bars and restaurants such as Chili’s, Ruby Tuesday’s and Appleby’s
• Soda shops such as Dairy Queen, Baskin Robbins and Ben and Jerry’s.
• Convenience stores for processed foods such as slurpees or yogurts

2. Market Analysis
2.1 Competitive Actions
Chiquita sells to retailers and there is a growing Wal-Mart Effect in North America. Retail chains, especially in the USA, are leveraging their growing power to better control the wholesale distributors like Chiquita. Vertical coordination by the retail chains is managed through supply-chain software systems.

Dole’s response is to become Wal-Mart’s harlot. Dole concentrated its management attention on the market side of the business, strengthening its supply partnerships with the retail chains (p. 5). Chiquita has done the same so far. This is risky. Wal-Mart does not partner with such companies but instead uses them until they no longer have any life and are therefore not usable anymore.

2.2 Marketing Issues
The first marketing issue is the need to diversify and broaden Chiquita’s customer base to include convenience stores and other outlets independent of the large grocery store chains and Wal-Mart. Another related issue is the need to distinguish Chiquita from commodity bananas. Marketing communications should emphasize both Chiquita’s long experience in distribution that gives it complete understanding of the safety and cleanliness issues in handling fresh produce, as well as knowledge of new technology that can benefit the process. Freshness from Landec is an example of such a technology.

The case study goes on to say that powerful grocers are moving up-channel to exert increasing control over produce. This can torpedo Chiquita profit margins by commoditizing its offerings. To obtain a reasonable rate of return, Chiquita should also expand its reach into more profitable uses of its produce, especially with manufacturing intermediaries. Spiller and Baier (2005, p 320) note that often a manufacturing intermediary has an inelastic demand for the price of a banana in comparison to shoppers at Wal-Mart. This is because the cost of a banana in a Cream Pie is a small part of the total cost of the ware so banana price can be raised more before it is noticeable to the bottom line of the manufacturer.

3. Constraints
Demand for bananas as bananas is constrained by pricing pressures from both Dole International your major fresh produce competitor, and by the ability of large retail chains to negotiate favorable pricing terms in return for access to the market they control. Chiquita Brands is further constrained in its pricing to the extent the buying public assumes bananas are a fungible commodity and is not aware of the sophistication of the handling process managed by Chiquita to ensure cleanliness, safety and freshness.

Finally, Chiquita is constrained by the operational costs for its distribution activities, especially oil costs, which make cost reduction efforts problematic. This limited ability to trim costs also increases the vulnerability of Chiquita to an outfit like Wal-Mart muscling into its distribution and marketing franchise, leveraging Wal-Mart’s control of final retailing. With Chiquita’s retail sales concentrated mainly in twenty chains, there is a real risk that retailers can dictate low prices to Chiquita, basically asking "Where you gonna go?" This will squeeze Chiquita profit margins.

4. Decision Options: Objectives, Strategies and Tactics
4.1 Objectives
My biggest worries for Chiquita Brands is that its product line will be cast as commodities, that its profit margins will be squeezed, and that powerful new competitors will emerge if hefty retail chains like Wal-Mart make deals with grower associations, directly by passing Chiquita. This does not need to happen. Pine and Gilmore (1999, pp 1-3) show that exactly the opposite is possible when management has a more positive outlook and distinguishes the product or service of its company. This is our job as marketing communication consultants. We propose the following marketing objectives:

• Differentiate Chiquita from commodity bananas: 75% awareness among the retail trade about Chiquita’s sophisticated distribution methods like Landec,
• Diversify the customer base for Chiquita Bananas: Add 5,000 convenience stores to its retail channel. Both goals accomplished in next fiscal year.

4.2 Strategies
We recommend an immersive mix of push and pull strategies to differentiate Chiquita bananas from commodity bananas and expand its customer base into the convenience store sector. This initial campaign will be the introduction of the new partnership with Landec to provide consumers with a fresh and healthy snack at convenience stores. However, it is also the foundation for follow-up campaigns that must be undertaken.

The motif of this Landec campaign will be the century long experience Chiquita Brands has in safe and efficient distribution that protects consumer health while providing a continuous supply of fresh bananas at a reasonable cost. Chiquita innovates and is expanding the envelope with the introduction of a new technology by Landec. Unlike newcomers to the produce business, Chiquita does not need to experiment with the health of Mr. or Mrs. Consumer to learn the ropes like an upstart would.

Our push strategies are two: 1.) Trade-promotion to motivate trade-support through a mix of allowances; and 2.) Trade-promotion support through a complementing consumer promotion (see Duncan, 2005, p 502). Our pull strategies will use targeted advertising to different customer segments, along with promotional incentives. Additionally, we will use public relations because this advanced new technology is a "news peg" (Duncan, 2005, p 551).

The timing of the push and pull is to first push the Landec wrapped bananas into the channel at the same time as the public relations work is conducted. The consumer advertising and promotion will be presented shortly after the trade promotions to give time for the product to be available in the channel.

4.3 Tactics
Venerable trade promotion tactics form our toolkit for building this campaign. For the convenience store owners, Duncan (2005, p. 489) suggests the use of shipper displays to both highlight a new product and make it easy for customers to take a single banana. He goes on to say that co-operative advertising is an effective incentive, with 1-2% of the store sales in Chiquita bananas going back to the store for joint advertising Chiquita product availability in the store.

We will use direct mail to get a response from stores about the co-op ads. We also send direct mail to the C-stores to educate them on the profitability of this new market sector that is now open to them because of the Landec and Chiquita partnership. This direct mail is economically feasible because there are roughly 5,000 C-stores. Vanides (2009a, p 4) says lead generation is a goal of any campaign, and this will return store interest in co-operative ventures. This is a pull strategy aimed at a downstream channel member, the C-stores, to pull demand from the upstream channel, Core-Mark. Core-Mark can be incented with off-invoice allowances (see Duncan, 2005, p 497).

To forge pull from the ultimate customer, direct response advertising will be used. Spiller and Baier (2007, p. 144) note that special interest magazines have proliferated, so this gives us the ability to target our message to different consumer segments. Omniture (2007, p 1) notes that customers demand relevancy in marketing communications. Segmentation enables this.
Our message to the ultimate consumer will stress the sophisticated expertise that is required to transport fresh produce safely and with cleanliness. We also want to discourage any movement by the aggressive retail channel into your marketing and distribution franchise. There will be a call to action in the direct response ad, namely a discount coupon (see Duncan, 2005, p. 469). Spiller and Baier (2007, p. 145) note that magazine ads are relatively inexpensive. They go on to suggest that using remnant space will lower costs even more.

Internet promotions are a powerful opportunity. An increasingly popular method is Advergaming. An example game is Kellogg’s Froot Loops Treasure Hunt (see Froot Loops Game) The response rate for advergames is between 16% and 45%. Customers spend an average of 25 minutes with absorbing entertainment featuring our message. Blank (2001, ¶ 1) reports that Hershey’s Chocolate experienced a phenomenal response rate with advergaming.

For new products, like your bananas in a fresh-preserving wrapper, Spiller and Baier (2007, p. 90) recommend cross selling, a second opportunity we can exploit. One example is Graceland Cupcakery selling in 7-Eleven stores throughout the southeastern United States. They make banana bread cupcakes. See Graceland Cupcakery. Spiller and Baier (p. 96) go on to suggest new products can benefit from guarantees. We are asserting the new wrapping will preserve freshness. Let’s back it up with a money back guarantee.

Last but not least is a publicity campaign. The joint Core-Mark, Landec, Chiquita venture is a news peg – something new that can be legitimately reported by the news media. This creates awareness from a trusted source. Here is an example Chiquita-Landec News Release.

5. Implications and Recommendation
5.1 Implications
As noted earlier in this report, there are serious long-term threats to the Chiquita bottom-line and we have additional marketing communications plans that will help Chiquita more completely diversify its customer base. We welcome the opportunity to discuss these with you in future. Today, this plan is for convenience stores but tomorrow Chiquita must expand the use of bananas and fresh produce by manufacturers such as Gerber’s and Mrs. Smith’s. They provide markets with price inelasticity, i.e. protection from pricing pressure (see Spiller and Baier, 2007, p 320).

Evans and Wurster (pp126-7) expressly warn that Wal-Mart engages in predatory activity but, of course, monkey-see/monkey-do when it comes to bananas and retail food chains, so we should expect the other powerful grocers to do the same. As already noted, the growers are looking for a better deal than they get from Dole or Chiquita. How long before the two ends of the chain connect without the middlemen?

If Wal-Mart, et al can turn bananas into the ultimate fungible commodity and move up-channel to cannibalize Dole and Chiquita value-add, then they take away the basis for Chiquita revenues. The Chiquita marketing campaign with Landec will lay the foundation to counter any such attempt by alerting the public to the skill necessary for the transport and distribution of fresh produce. Chiquita will not be experimenting with shopper’s health while learning the ropes. Additionally, this campaign is the groundwork for future marketing to expand relationships with manufacturers.

5.2 Recommendations
If you will allow us to conduct follow-up campaigns, after the Landec-wrapped Chiquita bananas, we will begin working immediately to form symbiotic relationships with manufacturers such as Gerber Baby food, Ben & Jerry’s, or Mrs. Smith’s Banana Cream pies. Partnering and co-branding with them can increase supply of Chiquita even in an aggressive retail chain. We strongly recommend this for the following reasons.

Keller (2008, p 289) says that co-branding can both broaden the meaning of a product and increase its access points. Co-Branding can (p. 290) create "compelling points of difference" and create access to a higher profit margin category. Brand alliances can be an effective method for differentiating especially a fungible product, say like bananas, in a commodity war of declining profits and upstart retail chains.

To accomplish this, Chiquita must use customer database marketing to customize messages to its intermediaries. After co-branding agreements are in place with manufacturers such as Gerber, Ben & Jerry’s and Mrs. Smiths, we recommend using direct mail with coupons to enhance the partnering brands and establish pull demand through the retail chains.

6. Update
Levinson (2009, p 63) reports that Chiquita Brands is spoiling, and is unpalatable.
Its stock was downgraded to a sell in March of this year, because its profits margins have been squeezed into losses. The stock dropped 43% after losing 74¢ per share. Still, this is a great brand name, which can be salvaged. The name still has great potential but needs an integrated marketing campaign to escape the powerful chokehold being applied to it.

7. References
Blank, C (August 6, 2001). Hershey's Online Push for Reese's Gets Sweet Response. Direct Marketing News. Retrieved on September 3, 2009 at DMNews.com

Duncan, T (2005). Prinicples of Advertising & IMC. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Evans, Phillip and Thomas Wurster (2000). Blown to Bits. The Boston Consulting Group. Harvard Business School Press.

Levisohn, Ben (3/9/2009). Chiquita Bruised. BusinessWeek. Retrieved from EBSCOHOST on September 5, 2009.

Omniture (February 2007). Online Marketer‘s Segmentation Guide. Retrieved from WVU IMC 626 Week Two Readings on August 29, 2009

Pine, J and J Gilmore (1999). The Experience Economy. Harvard Business Press.
Spiller, L and M Baier, (2005). Contemporary Direct Marketing. Pearson/Prentice-Hall

Vanides, Alexia (2009). Case Study: Chiquita Banana and the Distribution Channel. Retrieved from WVU IMC 626 Week Two Assignment on August 29, 2009.

Vanides, Alexia (2009a). Lesson 2: Developing OST for B-to-B DM Campaigns, About Lead Generation Management. Retrieved from WVU IMC 626 Week Two Lesson on August 29, 2009.

Five Pressing Issues in CRM

The Web site http://www.crmguru.com/ has published a series of blog postings that analyze customer relationship management. Here is a synopsis of five of those CRM postings.

Customer Relationships Need a Personal, Not Robotic Touch.
The foundation of customer relationship management, indeed all of marketing is how we communicate with customers or publics. Engwall (2009, p1) speculates that the feedback method chosen by companies is often inappropriate for the customer relationship they are trying to build. For example, an email requesting a customer to take an anonymous Web survey is not a method for building closer customer relationships. He suggests that customers who are making "big decisions" want a more personal dialogue. Therefore, vendors need to spend the time to learn the operations of their customers. What distinguishes successful B-to-B companies is a structured approach that is personal at the same time. It "sends a strong signal about the commitment to listen and respond to customer needs." There is the old saying that a system, like CRM, is only as good as what we feed into it.

CRM is Too Associated With CRM Technology’s Front-End Focus.
Lee (2009, p1) reports that an enterprise-encompassing viewpoint is now outflanking the old viewpoint driven by CRM software, with its emphasis on the front office. Customer-centric behavior needs integration of the entire enterprise, front and back offices. This is "clearly beyond the capabilities of CRM software," according to Lee. He asserts that customer-centric planning is "the tail [wagging] the CRM dog," and notes that more and more companies are initiating comprehensive customer-centric efforts that don’t include the perceived limitations of CRM. His prediction: "[CRM] is not coming back."

Can CRM Systems Prevent Sales?
Apollo (2009, p 1) says that CRM is "no magic wand" to improve sales. Conversely, the immense resources invested in CRM are "often wasted." Apollo’s firm found that CRM systems do not reflect how the most promising prospects buy. He identifies five warning signs that a CRM system is a sales prevention machine:

1. Your CRM sales process stages are based on sales person activity rather than prospect commitment.
2. Your CRM has a Give/Get imbalance: it demands more of your sales force than it returns to them.
3. Your CRM has poor sales forecast accuracy: CSO Insights estimates that such accuracy is now less than 50%.
4. Your CRM is based on a static sales model, which hasn’t been verified and validated "for ages and has failed to take account of changing market conditions, buyer behavior and sales best practice."
5. Your CRM fails to reflect the prospect decision-making process; today decision makers are more risk averse and filled with growing uncertainty.
   

Taking Your Eye Off the Ball.
Band (2009, pp 1-2) describes Forrester research conducted on CRM technology. He expresses a concern that businesses are concentrating their attention on trendy CRM technology such as Social CRM rather than CRM technology that provides the best value. Forrester found that "Selling, Ordering, and Servicing" technology returns the most CRM value to a business. There are other categories of CRM technology offerings, each having its unique drawbacks.

Examples of CRM technology with risk/reward drawbacks are "Enterprise Marketing Management" and "Partner Relationship Management." They are not considered "critical for business success" but both are hard to implement. In another category, "Customer Insight" and "Data Management" solutions are critical but are risky and extremely challenging to implement. "Contract Life-cycle Management" and "Configure-price-quote" systems offer moderate benefits but again are very difficult to deploy. Finally, the contemporary Social CRM has yet to prove itself. Band’s conclusion (p. 2): "’Selling, Order-taking, and Customer Service’ remain the solutions that deliver the most certain business value-add."

Confused Meaning of CRM
Thompson (2007, pp 1-2) says it’s time to say goodbye to the term "CRM." Its confused meaning encumbers true customer-centric business operations. Consultants say "CRM" is an approach to business process improvement and their "CRM" is a package of consulting services. On the other hand, software vendors say "CRM" is a practice implemented around their technology. Industry analysts define "CRM" as a set of front office applications. So, "CRM" can mean many different things to different people. CustomThink research suggests that the IT-focused "CRM" projects have enjoyed modest success, which is to say they have positive ROI, but "have not [generated] strategic benefits." Thompson advises us to erase the term "CRM" from our lexicon, and instead embrace "the development and implementation of a customer-centric business strategy."

Overall Conclusion
The first thesis of the Cluetrain Manifesto is that markets are conversations among many players (see Levine, et al, 2001, pp1-3). The Internet has unleashed powerful changes in customer relations, and Levine, et al summarize that "smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language." Customer-centric thinking has become even more imperative for companies. The CustomerThink Web site agrees. On it, Thompson (2007, p 2) says we need to become customer-centric by understanding customers and giving them "what they want." The five issues discussed in this report have a theme of customer focus, and customer centered business organization and operations. The 19th thesis of the Manifesto says "Companies can now communicate with their customers directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance."

References
Apollo, B. (Sep. 03, 2009). Is your CRM System a Sales Prevention System? Inflexion-Point. Retrieved on September 7, 2009 from http://www.customerthink.com/.

Band, W. (Aug. 14, 2009). The Extended CRM Application Ecosystem: Value, Risk and the Future of Social CRM. Forrester Research. Retrieved on September 8, 2009 from http://www.customerthink.com/.

Engwall, E (Aug. 31, 2009). Customer Feedback: The Method is the Message. E.G. Insight, Inc. Retrieved on September 7, 2009 from http://www.customerthink.com/.

Lee, D. (Jun. 15, 2009). Has the CRM Industry Become Redundant? High-Yield Methods. Retrieved on September 7, 2009 from http://www.customerthink.com/

Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger (2001). The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual. Retrieved on September 8, 2009 from http://www.cluetrain.com/book/95-theses.html

Thompson , B. (Jan. 22, 2007). Why "CRM" Must Die for Customer-Centric Business To Thrive. CustomerThink Corp. Retrieved on September 8, 2009 from http://www.customerthink.com/.

IBM On-Demand Services is Timely

IBM On-Demand services is a timely introduction. They are the company that defined the era we live in with the introduction of the IBM Personal Computer in 1981. They will work vigorous wreckage on the Microsoft, Sun and Oracle with this new foray into on demand services, defining the next era. IBM (2009, p 1) says the world is “Instrumented. Interconnected. Intelligent.” And that these on demand services are “Inevitable.” They report that there are now 1 billion transistors per human. Over a trillion things are networked. All those things have intelligent devices in them. “The time is right now.“ Who better to define the next era than the one who has been defining next eras for over a century.

You could look at On-Demand Services as outsourcing your IT function and keeping the backoffice part of it off-premise. This saves you the costs of the network (replaced by Infrasturcture as a Service or IaaS), server computers (replaced by Platform as a Service or PaaS), and software (Software as a Service or SaaS), and the people who maintain them. You pay for what you use, like the electric utility. It is a boon to small businesses because they might gain access to automation services they could not otherwise afford.

The pieces are already offered: GoogleDocs is an example of SaaS. So is the On-Demand CRM service discussed in the Carlson Marketing (2007, p 2) article. They reported that an On-Demand service that has already proven successful is Customer Relationship Marketing. All businesses need it and small businesses may consider it a luxury because of the cost and difficulty of implementing traditional solutions (see Doyle and Martin, 2003, p. 1). Amazon offers IaaS and PaaS with service level commitments.

The leaders are IBM and AT&T, according to Leong and Chamberlain (2009, pp 1-2), in a Gartner Magic Quadrant. Amazon and Google are niche players now. Even though Ray Ozzie is the visionary who invented Lotus Notes and sees cloud computing as the future, Microsoft is not considered even a niche player. They are trying to fight the trend with what they call Software Plus Services. In other words, you still pay for the software license up front and then again as you use it. According to Wainwright, the Microsoft Azure effort at cloud computing is really a defensive effort to offer a .NET version of the cloud to keep exisiting customers in the fold.

Here's an example of MS Software Plus Service he gives:

"A Microsoft spokesperson told me that customers will need to buy a SharePoint server, which ranges from $4,400 plus CALs, or $41,000 all CALs included, if they want to share documents using the online version of Office 2010."

$41,000 to get what Google offers for free with Google Docs, not to mention the pounding the prospects will take in buying Office. Azure only makes sense if you are an existing MS customer and already own the licenses.

References
Carlson Marketing (2007). No More Limits: On Demand CRM Goes Strategic. Oracle. Retrieved on September 17, 2009 from WVU IMC 626 Week 3 Readings.

Doyle, M., Starr D., and R. Martin (2003). Salesnet: Change or Die. Retrieved on September 4, 2009 from WVU IMC 626 Week Three Readings.

Leong, Lydia and Ted Chamberlin (July 2, 2009). Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting and Hosted Cloud System Infrastructure Services (On Demand). Gartner Research, ID G00168687. Also, retrieved on September 16, 2009 from http://www.rackspace.com/downloads/pdfs/GartnerMagicQuadrant.pdf

Wainwright, Phil July 20, 2009). Assessing Microsoft’s Cloud Intentions. EBiz. Retrieved on September 16, 2009 from http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/connectedweb/2009/07/assessing_microsofts_cloud_int.php

U.S. Cap and Trade Bill and IBM On-Demand Services

Green marketing is no longer an appeal to conscious. With the passage of the Cap and Trade Bill, it will become an appeal to wallet also. Waxman and Markey's bill (2009, pp 652-672) put a cap on carbon footprint and will dictate an allowance to each business. All companies will be required to purchase an "Emissions Permit" and over time this allowance will continuously get smaller to squeeze companies to further reduce carbon footprint. The "trade" aspect enables good-boy companies with an allowance greater than their footprint to sell credits to bad-boys at whatever the market will bear. IBM On-Demand services reduces server and glass-house carbon footprint. We can take it a step further as well. With On-Demand services, you really may not need an office building- they are just big filing cabinets. People can access On-Demand services from anywhere they have Internet access.

So On-Demand services can help companies with a quick reduction in glass-house carbon and later with smaller building carbon savings. Teleworking becomes a more feasible option. This is considered by both the Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institute as one of the most sweeping pieces of legislation ever contrived. Heritage is opposed. Brookings is keeping distance. Plausable deniablity is a good ploy with something that can go really wrong. Although not yet signed into the law of the land, it is expected to be so before the Copenhagen World Environmental Summit. Obama wants to showcase it there. The expectation is that it will reduce global temperature by 1/10 of a degree to 2/10 of a degree.

References
Waxman and Markey (2009). H.R. 2454, aka The Cap and Trade Bill. U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved on September 18, 2009 from http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/upload/hr2454-text.pdf

I Choose a New Star This Day

NeuStar is a sophisticated vendor to communications companies and to business customers of communication services (see their 10-K, Our Company Section). They just started a direct response campaign to direct marketers, an audience interested in efficient corporate communications with the world. Here is their online ad.

Please notice, this is a NeuStar ad (logo is at bottom right). I found it at DM News Online. For fear the ad will not be in rotation when you view the page, I made a picture of the page for you, so you can see and it is here - the DMNews Page.

The ad immediately grabbed my attention with “270 Million Customers,” while I was on the DM News Web site. It kept me engaged with “Free Nielsen White Paper.” Spiller and Baier (2005, p 126) tell us that words like free and new are attention getting. In addition, Nielsen is a name I know and trust. Finally, as Kostermans (2007, p 4) recommends the ad uses “fonts that are easy to read.” Okay, so I click the download link and this pops-up.

This quick registration, before getting the free gift, separates prospects from muffin men. It also gives permission to be contacted by the Common Short Code Administration, which I know, and/or NeuStar. Kostermans (2007, p. 2) says that we should make it clear what action we want readers to take. In this case, we want them to register with us to get the Nielsen report. Vanides (2009, p 2) reports using a similar technique in a Hughes 500D campaign to register interested prospects for follow-up, in her case at a later conference.

If I am interested in mobile marketing, I should know short codes and the CSCA. As Spiller and Baier recommend, the NeuStar body copy gives the benefits and ends with a call for action. The sentences are short and active. I type and submit. The Nielsen report appears and I save it (here at Nielsen Mobile Marketing).

Not surprisingly, the report mentions NeuStar. After the download, I have the option to connect to the NeuStar Web site, which I do. Here it is: their snazzy Web site Although, I have never heard of NeuStar, they have partnered with names I do know and trust. Moreover, I am interested in Nielsen’s views on mobile marketing, which is a free gift (if I register).

I watch the NeuStar produced video and its quiet clarity is professional enough to direct market to direct marketers. I now believe that NeuStar is an important player in corporate communications. I’d be willing to talk with them about Mobile Marketing as well as communications infrastructure topics.

In summary, I find this NeuStar direct response ad to direct marketers to be effective because as Kostermans (p. 6) recommends, it is “solving a problem for them – not touting how great your product is.” The solution is for mobile marketing. Helped by big names, Nielsen and CSCA, NeuStar registers prospects with an interest in the NeuStar mobile marketing, short code solution.

References

Kostermans, J (3/12/2007).Lead Generation Top Tips: 28 Ways to Optimize Direct Mail Design. LeadGenesis. Retrieved from WVU IMC 626 Week Four Readings on September 9, 2009.

Spiller, L and M Baier, (2005). Contemporary Direct Marketing. Pearson/Prentice-Hall

Vanides, Alexia (2009). Lesson 4: Proven Creative Strategies for B-to-B DM Implementation. Retrieved from WVU IMC 626 Week Four Lesson on September 9, 2009.

Tracking Attitude with CRM and EFM Systems

Tracking attitude is essential according to Beasty (2007, p 32). The dated practice of unique surveys that are discarded after use is being replaced by the use of templates in EFM systems. Beasty says that "by making previous templates and survey results accessible" companies can re-issue a survey and track how customer attitudes are changing. The old ways, where every survey had a different set of questions, had limited utility because analysts could not reference to previous work to identify trends.

Musico (2009, p 30) says that "predictive analytics" lets us do what-if analysis on future consequences based on current attitudes. This again is part of the feedback funnel enabled by EFM. He goes on to say that this is an absolute must. Who knows, maybe the distinct smell of Chapter 13 in the air will get senior management to ferry their attention through a slide presentation and then give their blessing to these techniques before the lethal swing of customer disatisfaction cuts them down.

References
Beasty, C. (February 2007) Feedback Mountain. Customer Relationship Management. Retrieved on September 4, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Musico, C (January 2009). The Feedback Funnel. Customer Relationship Management. Retrieved from EBSCOHOST on September 6, 2009.

CRM and Market Communications

Markets are conversations among many players. So says the Cluetrain Manifesto. First published online and then as a book, The Cluetrain Manifesto (see 95 Theses ) is an apocalyptic warning. Things are unraveling. Systems are broken. The Internet has unleashed long-term trends that will assert themselves.

Cluetrain has nailed 95 theses to the door. Here are a few that caught my attention:

3. "Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice."
12. "There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone." (Customer Satisfaction Studies may in fact be an effective way of getting such feedback).
27. "By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, [companies] build walls to keep markets at bay."

On CustomerThink.com, Thompson (2007, p 2) says we need to become customer-centric by understanding customers and giving them "what they want." I think this could be the 96th thesis.

References
Thompson , B. (Jan. 22, 2007). Why "CRM" Must Die for Customer-Centric Business To Thrive. CustomerThink Corp. Retrieved on September 8, 2009 from www.customerthink.com.

Tracking Customer Satisfaction Especially Important for New Products

Learning of and responding to customer dissatisfaction is especially important for newly introduced products or services. Gladwell (2002, p 278) asks what kind of people are willing to risk purchase of new products? His answer, mavens - the influencers who are information founts for others in the organization or network.

Getting feedback quickly and responding effectively can make or break such a new product. No one expects perfection but if we are not listening and fixing, that word quickly spreads throughout the network and the product is finished. With that in mind, CRM and EFM should be tuned and focused appropriately for customers using new products.

References
Gladwell, M (2002). The Tipping Point. Back Bay Books.

CRM and EFM Systems Compenstae for Bounded Rationality

EFM and CRM support good solid decision making in an unexpected way also. Psychologists and management theorists assert that bounded rationality confines our decision making (see Weick, 1979, p. 20 or Simon, 1960, pp 80-84). Bounded rationality means that all of us have perceptual and information processing limits. We may always intend to act fully rational but usually we act on easy to get to knowledge, use undemanding rules to search for a conclusion, and take shortcuts whenever possible.

EFM and CRM can extend the boundaries of our decision making through easy access to more and better information. In addition, they can impose rules on our account handling so we can't always take undemanding short-cuts. EFM and CRM define a process out of a chaotic void. A process can be changed and improved. Chaos remains chaos. Transparency demands that I reveal my profession is IT, one biased to processes.

Reference
Simon, H.A. (1960). Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization. Macmillan.

Customer Communications

Scott (2007, pp 162-3) says that after a deal is closed with a new customer it is essential to keep a dialog with them. We need to give them ample opportunity to give us feedback, which helps us make the products better, as well as keeping them as customers. He goes on to review SugarCRM and concludes (p. 165) that to be effective, marketing must constantly measure and improve. This to me is what CRM and especially EFM systems are all about.

Musico (2009. p. 33) says we need to know our racket. This means it is crucial to have a comprehensive view of the customer, “because the only way to get that needed view of the customer …is through improved analytics.” Such an improved view of the customer can improve revenues. Musico speculates that feedback can also help improve efficiency.

References
Musico, C (2009). SERVING UP SERVICE STRATEGIES. Customer Relationship Management. Retrieved on September 9, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Scott, D (2007). The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Wiley.

Situational Awareness with CRM and EFM

At the shore, Sandpipers walk in brisk and purposeful fashion in their pursuit of opportunities. There is a ridiculous joy watching them go about their business. As I move towards them they move away in unison to stay at a safe distance. When I move away, they likewise retake the territory. With their quick reaction time they appear to be reading the mind of a beachcomber like me. This is situational awareness and it makes them an apex survivor.

Customer Relationship Management and Enterprise Feedback Management systems are tools that help less capable survivors like us obtain such situational awareness. According to the Aberdeen Group, these “technologies have helped many [organizations] apply structure into the management of their customer relationships and improve customer sales, service, and profitability.” In addition, Doyle, et al (2003, p 1) report that people using these systems have the highest success rates in the business. Why? “The reason is simple: salespeople actually use it. It’s the solution they love….”

To answer the Discussion Topic posed in the WVU IMC 626 Course, I disagree that CRM/EFM are “not the way to go with large customers.” To be fair, the tool under comment was customer sat studies, but as Gartner points out, customer sat surveys are the tactical end of EFM (see Kolsky, 2006, pp 3-5). Vanides (2009, p 4) points out that CRM is the who, what, when, where and how of customers. EFM is the why. In addition, EFM provides the surveying framework for customer management. Vanides sums it up by saying (p. 1) that everyone in the organization needs sales analytics specific to his or her role.

She goes on to say (p. 4) “Measuring and predicting a customer’s attitude toward a company and/or its products, however, is still quite new, and represents the third piece of the customer data trifecta when combined with behavioral and transactional information.” She mentions predicting. This predicting makes us quicker. We become just like Sandpipers and appear to be reading our customer’s minds.

Beasty (2007, p 29) says that companies now want to know what customers are thinking. They are turning to EFM systems for that answer. He also observes that EFMs have helped organize surveys and integrate them with the enterprise data so that the information they return can be used throughout the business (p. 30).

Enterprise Feedback management applications have three levels of functionality, (see Kolsky, 2006, pp 3-5), which are additive, the latter upon the earlier:

• Tactical: Feedback is collected through a single channel, and basic reporting is done to understand opinions and feelings on a specific subject. It lacks historical perspective, centralization, advanced analysis and integration with processes.


• Process: Feedback is used as part of a process to aid or improve profiling and interactions between the enterprise and employees, partners and customers.


• Enterprise: Feedback is accumulated and centralized from internal sources and third parties (such as market research agencies) to analyze information and reach conclusions to establish or modify a strategy, and using data mining to derive unanticipated conclusions.

In reply to our guest visitor, I would say that customer sat surveys are valid by letting us know what is going on and how we can improve to keep our customers happy. The purpose is more than getting a customer tell us they are satisfied but more importantly to learn how to make them happy.

References
Aberdeen Group. Sovereign Bank: Improving Sales Processes and Customer Service with Salesnet. Retrieved on September 4, 2009 from WVU IMC 626 Week Three Readings.

Beasty, C. (February 2007) Feedback Mountain. Customer Relationship Management. Retrieved on September 4, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Doyle, M., Starr D., and R. Martin (2003). Salesnet: Change or Die. Retrieved on September 4, 2009 from WVU IMC 626 Week Three Readings.

Kolsky, E (May 6, 2005). Making the Transition from Surveys to Enterprise Feedback Management Systems. Gartner Research. Gartner ID# G00126781

Kolsky, E (July 5, 2006). How to Decide Which Enterprise Feedback Management Tool is Right for You. . Gartner Research. Gartner ID# G00140842

Vanides, Alexia (2009). Lesson 3: Developing OST for B-to-B DM Campaigns, About Lead Generation Management. Retrieved from WVU IMC 626 Week Three Lesson on September 4, 2009.

Differentiating Fungible Products Through Brand Alliances

Brand alliances can be an effective method for differentiating especially a fungible product, say like bananas. In a commodity war of declining profits and upstart retail chains, one tactic a marketer and distributor like Chiquita Banana can use to differentiate itself is by co-branding its wares with Gerber baby food, Ben & Jerry's, or Mrs. Smith's Banana Cream Pies.

Keller (2008, p 289) says that co-branding can both broaden the meaning of a product and increase its access points. Co-Branding can (p. 290) create "compelling points of difference" and create access to a higher profit margin category. Spiller and Baier (2005, p 320) note that often a manufaturing intermediary has an inelastic demand for the price of a banana in comparison to shoppers at Wal-Mart (be nervous about any 800 pound gorillas in a closet with you). This is because the cost of a banana in a Cream Pie is a small part of the total cost of the ware.

References
Keller, K (2008), Strategic Brand Management. Pearson/Prentice-Hall.

Spiller, Lisa and Martin Baier (2005). Contemporary Direct Marketing. Pearson/Prentice-Hall

Symbiotic Co-Marketing Expenditures Increasing

Duncan (2005, p 510) reports that symbiotic, co-marketing expenditures have increased over the past decade at the expense of traditional consumer promotions and advertising. The reason? Several factors he says: lost effectiveness of traditional advertising, economic changes have forced marketing managers to be accountable, and finally there has been a power shift from manufacturers to retailers. Sounds like Wal-Mart and Chiquita Brands.

Duncan does say (p. 507) that a sales team must take precautions with the hippos in the channel, however. Retailers especially are often more interested in building their own brand and use co-marketing funds to subtlely do that. How to counter this misuse? Manufacturer sales teams produce their own ads or tv spots for the retailers/channel to use. The local retail outlet has a time slice to give name and address.

Reference
Duncan, T (2005). Prinicples of Advertising & IMC. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Using Equivocality in Sales Team Interaction with the Channel

Equivocality in the information a sales team presents to the channel should be varied depending on the relationship with the individual channel intermediaries. For someone not in our fold, we may be able to capture their attention and involvement by increasing equivocality in the information we exchange with them. In his work “The Social Psychology of Organizing”, Weick (1979, p 174) describes equivocality as inputs or messages that have multiple significance.

He notes that if we enter enough equivocality into the information we send to a group, that group must deal with our messages in a non-routine manner because that information will not make immediate sense and will not fit neatly into the classifications understood by the group. In other words, they question their retained beliefs about their environment, which is what we want if they are not a card-carrying, loyal customer. On the other hand, for one of our loyal customers, we would instead want our messages to erase all ambiguity in their retained beliefs about us. The information we send should re-enchant them with our offering, and reduce equivocality.

As a marketing example of a sales team using equivocality, in the late 90s, Sun Microsystems used it by raising doubts about the Air Force directory system. In turn, this impacted Microsoft Exchange, which relied heavily on the existing directory approach. Sun did not compare its messaging solution with Exchange but instead created doubt about a more fundamental USAF process that Exchange needed. Sun's proposed solution: Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI). Sun's questions about the fundamental USAF process resulted in the USAF discarding their retained beliefs about how to identify both people and resources, the essential purpose of a directory. Then Sun stepped in with the solution, which happened to use their offering, with implications for other more valuable systems downstream like Exchange messaging. This is from my own experience on a Microsoft sales team.

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and Borland, reported in the Neale-May (2005, p. 2) article, also used equivocality. They did not first talk about the characteristics of their offering. First they raised doubt by highlighting the organizational vulnerability to obsolete software. The vehicle was a survey to C-level execs. The survey had the intended effect of challenging the orderly world view that these execs had about their information systems. As the equivocality, the little recognized discontinuity, worked its powerful wreckage on retained beliefs, Cognizant steps in and offers expertise for a solution.

I think this a useful marketing tactic with big customers, B-to-B or B-to-C. More is needed than a comparison of our offering with our competitors. Creating a point of pain that challenges retained beliefs is a better first step. Then step in with a solution. Neale-May says:

"Winning companies today go well beyond the trumpeting of product features and functions. They are now putting their solutions and services into context by mapping the market landscape to identify pain points and little-recognized vulnerabilities, risks or costs."

An equivocality is something that causes our perception of the environment to no longer make perfect sense, and it creates a need to rethink things. It can be fear, uncertainty, doubt, vulnerabilities, risks, costs and the like. Weick calls them Equivoques. They can create big reversals in the status quo.

Cognizant and Borland are a perfect example of using equivocality to create favorable change for themselves. Their survey introduced the worry over the risk and cost of obsolete software. It was information that did not fit into the orderly worldview of the C-level execs. Instead it challenged that view with a sense of vulnerability that caused them to rethink their retained beliefs about their organizations.

Wallace (1960, pp 146-52) describes the stages we go through in such a transformation.
1. Orderly Steady State
2. Increased stress in individuals
3. Organization distortions in attempting to deal with the issue and reformulate beliefs
4. Period of Revitalization - some solution is reached, communicated and the organization transformed to reflect it
5. New Steady State

The PC revolution was another like the Cognizant and Borland effort.

References
Neale-May, Donovan (September 12, 2005). Using intellectual capital to build market capital. Retrieved 9/1/2009 from http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050912/FREE/509120725

Wallace, A (1961). Culture and Personality. Random House.

Weick, Karl (1979). The Social Psychology of Organizing, 2nd Edition. McGraw-Hill.

Push-Pull Strategies in Symbiotic Relationships

In symbiotic relationships in nature, one party provides an instrumental service to another that benefits both. The great Canadian anthropologist Anthony Wallace (1960, pp 31-8) analyzed instrumental and consummatory acts to model symbiotic relationships between groups or even individuals. His work applies really well to push/pull strategies.

By using an immersive mix of both push and pull strategies, you can revitalize your intermediary channel from a disorganized gang of the living dead, zombies clothed in rotted medical bandages to a crisp and professional new face for your company, one that ultimate customers hold dear. This, however, requires you to perform an instrumental act of training the channel intermediaries on the advantageous differences of your offering: Symbiotic on your part.

You may also need to create awareness of these advantageous differences with the ultimate consumer, another instrumental act. This will motivate the channel to become a better partner. Both intermediary and end consumers will also perform the consummatory act of buying your offering. Voila!

The alternative is to die a horrible death at the hands of the zombies and let them turn you into one of them when they eat your tissue or worse, turn your offering into a commodity that competes on price. Our assigned comment captures with attractive eloquence the purposes of push and pull strategies.

Spiller and Baier (2005, p271) give a more academic explanation of the concepts. In a push strategy, our sales efforts are directed at the channel to encourage intermediaries to buy our products. This is the “how [our] offering satisfies existing business customers’ desires….” A push strategy is part of supply management, making sure the channel provides our offering to the end users.

Vanides (2009, p 7) says that a serious barrier in reaching the “right prospects” is time deficit disorder. Proper preparation and understanding is a must for all would be Oxpeckers. In our readings, Omniture (2007, p 3) tells how to establish understanding through profiles or personas of our various intermediaries. So does Wallace but in 1960 personas were called modal personalities.

To continue with Spiller and Baier, a pull strategy is marketing activities directed at the ultimate consumer with the purpose of creating destination demand that pulls our offering through the intermediate channel. This is the “Sometimes demand patterns must be modified for the business customer…” in our comment. A pull strategy is demand management, making sure the end consumer demands the unique characteristics of our offering from our channel.

Two pull campaigns come to mind. “Intel Inside” and DuPont’s “Miracles of Science.” Or in a prior age, before having a chemical halo was unsightly, DuPont’s “Better living through chemistry.” Vanides (2009, p 2) lists general DM campaign objectives including money but also responsibility to community. DuPont has something to say about this.

According to Butler (2001, p 2), DuPont’s objective in this pull strategy is to inform the buying public “what products we make and how they are used, to demonstrate that these do improve the quality of life, and therefore that DuPont is a good and useful institution that deserves political consent and business patronage.” It is an umbrella for numerous product campaigns also.

The goal of these push/pull strategies is to make it easier for our intermediaries to sell their products by accepting our support from both ends, a symbiotic relationship. Here we are now with a few of our channel intermediaries trying to keep them healthy and presentable for the viewing pleasure of our ultimate consumers.

References
Butler, Steve (10/08/2001). DuPont. Chemical Market Reporter. Retrieved on August 28, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Omniture (February 2007). Online Marketer‘s Segmentation Guide. Retrieved Retrieved from WVU IMC 626 Week Two Readings on August 29, 2009

Spiller, L and M Baier, (2005). Contemporary Direct Marketing. Pearson/Prentice-Hall

Vanides, Alexia (2009). Developing OST for B-to-B DM Campaigns, About Lead Generation Management. Retrieved from WVU IMC 626 Week Two Lesson on August 29, 2009.

Wallace, AFC (1960). Culture and Personality. Random House

Mad Men

Yeah, I watch Mad Men too. The cigarette smoking going on is not dramatic hyperbole. My dad smoked 3-4 packs a day back then. The Mad Men have mini-bars in office and drink freely all times of day. This was considered the golden age of sex – after the curative effects of penicillin had been discovered, and with a wide-ranging comfort and confidence in present and future outlooks. It was before religious revival in the 70s and there seemed to be a lack of concern about consequence.

The show also brings to mind “The Lonely Crowd,” I read in high school in the mid-sixties. The various characters in the show are tradition-directed, inner-directed or other-directed but regardless of type all of them seem to be breaking apart before our eyes, to me the picture of an unhealthy society. Change was inevitable and that is the real curative to potentially deadly defects. “My station will change after while.”

Social Capital and Channel Loyalty

An important aspect of strong channel loyalty is social captial. Social capital is existing, defined relationships that make transactions easy to accomplish (see Buchanan, 2002, 201-204). Microsoft, takes care to understand how to market to each information technology segment. The intent of such understanding is to help Microsoft establish more powerful social capital than its competitors.

They especially focus on “Strategic Buyers.” Las Vegas calls them whales. These are customers who follow the 80/20 power rule - the 10% of customers who buy 90% of the goods. Microsoft sales teams visit “strategic buyers” periodically and promptly answer phone calls. Microsoft is very good at relationship marketing. Every sales team has an architectural engineer assigned to it with the mission of understanding the information technology plan of assigned corporations, their enterprise architecture and how to advantageously apply Microsoft technology to affect solutions.

Social Capital is an important advantage for Microsoft when competing with Google or Open Source. It's easier to do business with Microsoft because Microsoft has made an effort to make it so. There is someone a strategic buyer can call at any time. There are agreements and understandings from repeated meetings. Microsoft has researched and understands each customer. They know how to do business with them, they have done business with them, and have set up a repeatable process for doing business.

People may say that IBM had this social capital when Microsoft started out. The difference between Microsoft and Google is that Microsoft partnered with IBM for a decade while it learned the ropes. That's why I think Microsoft will survive Google and Open Source.

References
Buchanan, Mark (2002). Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks. Norton.

Personalized URL's - PURLS

A personal landing page fashioned around a specific customer is a great integration of a customer database with online technology. Offers of interest and meaningful incentives can be presented rather than the "one size fits all" approach. According to Andrus (2008, p1), a PURL "creates a one-to-one dialogue with consumers...." She goes on to say that activity tracking can be used to "contiually refine the content or offer to that specific individual."

Andrus quotes David Rosenthal that over 30% of direct mail recipients prefer to respond online. I know that's true for me. One concern that people have about PURL is the publication of PII, personally indentifiable information. Rosenthal recommends using pass codes to protect the Web page in such cases.

References
Andrus, A (09/01/2008). Personalized URLS. Marketing News. Retrieved on August 26, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Differences between B-to-C and B-to-B

The character of the product is different. Industrial goods are used as raw materials or other types of input to further production. Spiller and Baier (2005, p 318) inform us that B2B is marketing and sales to “industrial market intermediaries.” Such sales usually involve the sales teams of the seller visiting the buyer, whereas with B2C sales the customer visits the seller (p 319).

Furthermore, the buyer is different. Unlike with B2C, the buyer is really the buyer team. It’s more than the purchase agent. As Spiller and Baier observe (p. 331), it is more likely that “engineers, chemists, architects,” and other specialists will make the decision. The purchase agent is the liaison between the real buyers and procurement.

Another difference is the nature of the market. Industrial markets are much smaller in number (see Spiller and Baier, p. 326). In addition, there is a greater diversity of activities in each market so market segmentation is more important in B2B than B2C. This naturally brings us to the customer database. Cluster analysis (p. 330) using statistical techniques such as correlation and regression, are an essential part of the B2B marketing effort.


References
Spiller, Lisa and Martin Baier (2005). Contemporary Direct Marketing. Pearson/Prentice-Hall

Studying Schaeffer in the field of Humanities Enriches our Understanding of Consumer Behavior

Religion is a study in communication, but more than that, it is a study in human behavior. This article is an analysis by one of the most powerful minds of 20th century Christian apologetics. Dr. Schaeffer presents a clear justification for the Christian faith and explains the demise of its nemesis during the past few centuries, Rationalism. He is considered a founder of the Christian right (see Wikipedia, 2009, p. 1) and is often compared to C.S. Lewis or Michael Polanyi (see Burson, 1996, p. 1). Studying Schaeffer enhances our understanding of Consumer Behavior in three ways.

First it is a fundamental characteristic of a significant group of consumers in the United States and gives us understanding of that group’s behavior. According to Hawkins, et al (2007, p. 181), 79% of Americans believe in God, more than 50% say religion is an important part of their lives and 36% say they regularly attend services. Secondly, religion provides insight about human behavior. Finally, marketing is itself a religion with a commercial ratio that parallels traditional religion.

Marketing is a religion in that it is a meaning making process. Marketing creates an identity and negotiates its meaning and therefore its image with a target audience (see Drewniany and Jewler, 2008, pp 36-45). Marketing breathes life into the image in the imagination of the audience through communications based on a model of self-concept and perception for the audience (see Hawkins, 2007, pp 434). Redemption for those of us who worship the marketing image is through consumption rather than faith.

Schaeffer’s article analyzes the essence of the meaning making process: self-concept and perception. He tells us that the failure of Rationalism and its attendant secular humanism should not be a concern for Christians, or by extrapolation to marketers, because the presuppositions, the fundamental assumptions, of Rationalism were flawed. He argues that we can know each other, or in other words, we can know an audience. He further, convincingly, asserts that meaningful communication is possible.

Christians formed early science with the perspective that a reasonable God created the universe so therefore our communication and interaction to understand it is reasonable as well. Do we find the same perspective in early marketing, advertising and consumer behavior? According to Twitchell (1996, p. 36), there is what he calls a preponderance of “evangelical con artists” in the formation of modern marketing. He lists a dozen of the leading apostles of the then new science who were Christian preachers or sons and daughters of preachers, some founding agencies that continue to dominate today. One luminary is Helen Lansdowne.

She was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and she studied three years at Princeton Theological before devoting herself to advertising (Twitchell, 1996, p. 33). Wikipedia (2009a, p. 1) notes that while Stanley Resor was the executive during the rise to prominence of J. Walter Thompson, Helen Lansdowne was “the creative genius behind JWT's ad campaigns.”

Pope (2003, p. 8) relates that Lansdowne’s first innovation was to advertise to the consumer’s concerns rather than about a product’s qualities. Based on her consumer findings, (p. 9) she developed the catch phrase “A Skin You Love to Touch” that she added to “gauzily romantic paintings of elegant young ladies, happily receiving the admiring attention of dashing young gentlemen.” This was not the life situation for most of the audience but she had found it to be their aspiration.

She was also the first to use sex appeal in advertising.

Schaeffer’s argument is important, postmodern despair is not any more correct than failed Rationalism. Reason can be applied to our endeavors, rather than resigning ourselves to the overwhelming effect of randomness. The consumer behavior model initiated by bible thumpers has worked and is still in use, much enhanced today by the application of reason from both academia and practice.

The self-concept of an audience can be discovered sufficiently. Meaningful communications can be made. This requires research but there should be optimism it will succeed. Hawkins, et al (2007, p. 434), like Schaeffer, divide self-concept into inner and outer spheres, they designate as the private self and the social self. They further categorize self-concept and establish relationships with it and life-styles (p. 441). This implicitly reaffirms Schaeffer’s point that although Rationalism failed as a basis to explain such actions, Christian epistemology does support the concepts of categories, self-concept, and associations between subject and the world that can be communicated.

Another area of consumer behavior that Schaeffer’s article can illuminate is an understanding of the 79% of the American public that is Christian (see Hawkins, 2007, p. 181). Hawkins, et al go on to say (p. 183) that Catholics and Protestants represent a significant subculture in the United States. They also note (p. 84) that Christians tend to be more conservative in beliefs and are active in action against non-Christian proposals such as liquor, gambling, pornography and other marketing activities. This is consistent with the activism promoted by Schaeffer, especially his later work A Christian Manifesto.

This has resulted in actions by some Christians such as boycotts. One such boycott (see Hawkins, 2007, p. 184) is against Disney. This was not only because of Disney’s support for gay and lesbian life-styles but also for a continuing practice of sexual messaging. In addition to Hawkins, et al, see Vitigliano (1997, pp 1-2), Tucker (2008, p. 1), and Anomalies Unlimited (2005, p. 1). Representative is the penis subliminal messaging in the Little Mermaid.

This caused concern, as did Disney’s misrepresentations about the relationship with the artist who admitted doing this in other work for Disney as well. It illustrates the extent some Christians pursue a company once it becomes part of their activated consciousness.

Implications for Consumer Behavior of Schaeffer’s Work
Schaeffer emphasizes the vital importance of imagination in the experience of human beings. The advertising consultant Roy Williams (2001, pp 20-1) suggests that reality begins with imagination, quoting the master philosopher Henri Poincare. Here Williams suggests that imagination becomes reality when we put energy behind it. He goes on (p. 68) to say that powerful marketing communications with the consumer begin by first engaging their imagination, “and take it where you will.” When reviewing the work of Dr. Jorge Martin de Oliveria, Williams (p. 18) extends Oliveria’s findings to marketing communications by asserting that the central aspect of all efforts in human persuasion is “the fact that people can only do what they have first imagined.”

WALLACE SAYS THAT CREATIVITY IS MOTIVATED BY THE NEED TO REDUCE THE DISONACE BETWEEN IMAGINATION AND REALITY.

A prominent example of imagination in marketing and consumer influence was by one of the most extraordinary persons of the 20th century, Greta Garbo. She captured the imagination of women in the 20s and 30s and is now considered the first new woman by feminists (see Fischer, 2001, p. 90). Both the style of her screen persona and the facts of her personal life inflamed the imaginations of her audience, primarily women. I have seen most of her movies and there is a theme in them all, a triangle – she is married to an older, overbearing man and having an affair with a younger man (see for example Vieira, 2005, p. 8). When discovered in the act, she is neither embarrassed nor repentant but instead is contemptuous, weary or angry with her older man. Conveniently for her character and to the relief of the audience, he is killed or dies off, leaving her to her virile suitor. She played her characters as women with mastery over their own image.

In her personal life, after her first films proved extremely popular and profitable, she challenged the MGM power structure. She ignored studio dictates, refused to participate in staged publicity and premiers, did not wear traditional foundational garments beneath her clothes, and was in general insubordinate, all of which created a growing tension. It reached the tipping point when she demanded seven times her salary to become the highest paid professional in the business and refused to do the film Women Love Diamonds because she thought it foolish (see Paris, 1994, pp127-8).

MGM finally detonated, finding her in breach of contract, and issued her a cease and desist letter. She went over their heads to Loews Inc., the parent company, and focused on the factual errors in the letter (see Vieira, 2005, pp 45-8). It was also observed that had MGM listened to her they would not have lost $30,000 with Women Love Diamonds (MGM went on with it using a different actress). Loews agreed, and MGM was forced to capitulate to the 21-year-old girl. The humiliation of the best brains in a place like MGM rocked Hollywood (see Paris, 1994, pp 129-30). She was given the salary and creative license and for the next decade produced a series of extremely profitable films.

In addition to her mastery of the moviegoers’ imagination, her own imagination played an important role in her success. Paris (1993, p. 9) quotes her reflecting back on her life alone, “Even as a tiny girl I preferred being alone….I could give my imagination free rein and live in a world of lovely dreams.” He also reports (p. 19) that she received intense religious training from her Lutheran church when young and later in life worked at converting to Catholicism.

Not one of my textbooks in the WVU IMC program has an index topic of imagination. Of course, I did find some by practioners such as Williams cited above. This seems to be an oversight in current academic thinking about consumer behavior. Imagination is a critical aspect of people. People of Garbo’s stature have used the imagination of their audience to create a world that could be but isn’t. Imagination is fertile ground for an aspiration that people may not have thought of or considered. Marketing that creates an imaginary world that engages the imagination of the consumer can also have the towering success that someone like Garbo achieved.

Another implication is Schaeffer’s reference to Chomsky’s Basic Grammar categories to make a point. After an exhaustive literature search on it, I found only one article not imbued with extensive mathematical symbolism, Talmy’s The Cognitive Culture System.
Talmy (1995, p 4) says there may be a correlation between Chomsky’s linguistic categories and the universals of cultural structure that Murdock reported in 1966. Murdock found the following seventy-three cultural categories in every culture:

age-grading, athletic sports, bodily adornment, calendar, cleanliness training, community organization, cooking, cooperative labor, cosmology, courtship, dancing, decorative art, divination, division of labor, dream interpretation, education, eschatology, ethics, ethnobotany, etiquette, faith healing, family, feasting, fire-making, folklore, food taboos, funeral rites, games, gestures, gift-giving, government, greetings, hair-styles, hospitality, housing, hygiene, incest taboos, inheritance rules, joking, kin groups, kinship nomenclature, language, law, luck superstitions, magic, marriage, meal times, medicine, modesty concerning natural functions, mourning, music, mythology, numerals, obstetrics, penal sanctions, personal names, population policy, postnatal care, pregnancy usages, property rights, propitiation of supernatural beings, puberty customs, religious ritual, residence rules, sexual restrictions, soul concepts, status differentiation, surgery, tool making, trade visiting, weaning, weather control.

I think this is the start of a useful taxonomy to organize our understanding of a culture, especially differences. I am not suggesting that cultures are the same in these categories as far as marketing communications is concerned. I do suggest that these seventy-three common categories would be a way of organizing culturally relevant information.

A less mathematic, more up-to-date and more actionable study in this area could benefit consumer behavior. One area that comes to mind is avoiding embarrassing cross-cultural marketing mistakes. As examples, three of the cultural cognitive categories are mourning, numerals, and athletics. The category mourning would store the aspects of mourning in different cultures, aspects such as symbolic colors, white is Asia, black in the west, and brown in India; also numerals - 13 bad luck in the U.S., and 4 is bad luck in Japan; as well as athletics - use local sports stars - Nike wasted years pushing American sports stars in Europe to no effect.

List of Figures
Figure 1 Francis Schaeffer, retrieved on April 11, 2009 from http://www.rationalpi.com/theshelter/

Figure 2 L’Abri Retreat, retrieved on April 11, 2009 from http://www.labri.org/swiss/photo.html

Figure 3 Jose Ortega y Gasset, retrieved on April 11, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ortega_y_Gasset

Figure 4 Resor and Lansdowne, retrieved on April 11, 2009 from http://adage.com/century/people014.html

Figure 5 Woodbury Soap ad by Lansdowne, retrieved on April 11, 2009 from http://www.paperboynews.com/links.asp?catagory=4&sub_id=528

Figure 6 Disconcerting Disney Artwork, retrieved on April 11, 2009 from http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Disney/Mermaid.html

Figure 7 Greta Garbo in Mysterious Lady, digital rights owned by George Ray


(these images are incorporated according to the Fair Use provisions of the copyright laws for educational purpose)

References
Anomolies Unlimited (2005). Well, it does look like one. Retrieved on April 10, 2009 from http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Disney/Mermaid.html

Burson, Scott R. (Summer 1996). A Comparative Analysis of C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer-The Most Influential Apologists of Our Time. Lamp-Post of the Southern California C. S. Lewis Society 1996 Summer; 20 (2): 4-29. Retrieved on April 5, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Clarkson, Frederick (1994). "Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence". The Public Eye Magazine VIII (1 & 2). Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre2.html

Cochrane, Matthew (April 24, 2007). Book Review: A Christian Manifesto. Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://www.notconformedthoughts.com/displayone.cfm?docid=2857

Drewniany, B and J Jewler (2008). Creative Strategy in Advertising. Wadsworth.

Elliott, Hannah (November 20, 2006 ) Baylor prof says Francis Schaeffer returned to fundamentalist views. Associated Baptist Press. Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1628&Itemid=119

Gelles, John (Oct 12, 2007). Ann Coulter's Ridiculous Claim that Jews Are Christians! Retrieved on April 10, 2009 from http://www.amazon.com/tag/politics/forum?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1S3QSZRUL93V8&cdPage=6&cdThread=Tx2MR9D14ZDZGZA&cdShowEdit=Mx300RQENP9YDC7

Hamilton, Gregory W. (2007). A Review of “A Christian Manifesto” in the Light of Scriptural Revelation. Liberty Express journal. Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://www.nrla.com/article.php?id=29

Hawkins, Del, David Mothersbaugh and Roger Best (2007). Consumer Behavior. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Kaplan, Robert (2001). The Coming Anarchy. Vintage.

Olasky, Marvin (March 03, 2005). Francis Schaeffer's political legacy. TownHall.Com. Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://townhall.com/columnists/MarvinOlasky/2005/03/03/francis_schaeffers_political_legacy

Parkhurst, L.G. (2008). Francis and Edith Schaeffer. Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://labri.net/FAS/content/view/27/27/

Pope, Daniel (6/13/2003). Making Sense of Advertisements. George Mason University.
Retrieved on April 8, 2009 from http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/ads/ads.pdf )

Schaefer, Francis (January 1972). He is There and He is not Silent. Bibliotheca Sacra. Retrieved on April 2, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Spanos, William (4/22/2003 ). The Detective and The Boundary: Some Notes on PostModern Literary Imagination. State University of New York at Binghamton. Retrieved on April 7, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Taleb, Nassim Nickolas (2007). The Black Swan. Random House.

Talmy, Leonard (Jan 95). The cognitive culture system. Monist; Jan95, Vol. 78 Issue 1, p80, 35p. Retrieved on April 8, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Tucker, Maryanne (2008). Subliminal Messaging and The Disney Corporation. Retrieved on April 10, 2009 from http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~jporter/maryanne_web/index_files/Page766.htm

Twitchell, James (1996). AdCult USA. Columbia Press.

Vitagliano, Ed (1997). Why Boycott Disney? AFA Journal. Retrieved on April 10, 2009 from http://www.solargeneral.com/ja/disney/why_boycott_disney.htm

Wallace, AFC (1963). Culture and Personality. Random House.

Wikipedia (2009). Francis Schaeffer. Retrieved on April 7, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Schaeffer

Wikipedia (2009a). Stanley Resor. Retrieved on April 7, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_B._Resor

Whitehead, John W. (3/8/2007). Is the Christian Right a Fascist Movement? The Rutherford Institute. Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://www.rutherford.org/articles_db/commentary.asp?record_id=462

Williams, Roy (2001). Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads. Bard Press.

Critque of Francis Schaefer’s Article "He is There and He is not Silent" from Bibliotheca Sacra

Primary Strengths
Dr. Schaeffer looks beyond the failure of Rationalism, because its failure does not require us to abandon the hope it failed to justify. It masqueraded as a foundation for the hope of improving the human condition but has been exposed by philosophy as groundless. In contrast, the nemesis to despair is an ancient epistemology that Rationalism rose up to challenge some three hundred years ago. Schaeffer argues convincingly that this framework for knowledge and reason is true; it has withstood the test of free inquiry by skeptics.

This is important in all realms of human life and Schaeffer uses early science as an illustration. Early science, that of Galileo, Copernicus, Newton and the others was based on the ancient epistemology, while modern science is based on Rationalism. The fall of Rationalism has taken modern science down with it.

The implications for the failure of modern science are profound. Schaeffer says science will die, becoming only technology. By this he means that it is no longer a process for discovery but merely a mechanism to record evidence. He further asserts that science has become a game of splintering its body of findings into ever more finite categories. Science is disappearing.

Kaplan (2001, pp 172-3, 183) notes that this splintering produces “grave deformities” and “vicious forms of human existence.” He recounts the 1929 work of Jose Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses.
Mass man knows expertly his small island but is ignorant of the rest of the world and has no bridge to reach it. So it is with the splinters of modern science. There has supposedly been a rapid expansion of knowledge but how much is useful, how much is even usable? Gasset finds an inverse relation between wisdom and specialization. Schaeffer’s anticipation of this is impressive.

The failure of Rationalism has infected other realms with its despair. Spanos (2003, p. 148) informs us that the underlying motif in Postmodern literature, dread, has its source in the rejection of Logical Positivism, an ineffectual last stand of Rationalism. Dread is defined as anxiety with no specific object, distinct from fear that does have a specific object. This manifests itself in Postmodern literature as a rejection of the ending as a solution to the narrative (p. 152), and a refusal to “fulfill causally oriented expectations” (p. 148). In other words, it is a rejection (p. 154) of the “detective story,” which has a rational solution “generated by the scientific analysis of the man-in-the-world.” Consumer behavior and marketing communications form a detective story in an ad campaign. Postmodern literature rejects this format.

Worse comes. Schaeffer effectively argues that a failure of Rationalism was its inability to establish reasonable principles or universals, something that has always been possible from the Judeo-Christian position. This inability may lead to the disappearance of principle-based policy in the postmodern world. Consensus, the compromise of principles (that we are unsure of anyway) becomes the guiding principle. Kaplan (2001, pp 169-185) sees a danger in peace as a primary goal because this “implies that you will [compromise] any principle for the sake of it.”
Why did Rationalism fail? Taleb (2007, pp 52-3,55,65,69,101,220) recounts numerous points of failure such as round-trip fallacies, domain specificity, naïve empiricism, post hoc rationalization, the narrative fallacy, silent evidence and others. While he uses sound reasoning, Taleb is hesitant to generalize to find a root cause.

On the other hand, Schaeffer is willing to propose the root cause that explains all the others. The presupposition of Rationalism did not explain mankind or our world; it is impossible to derive a uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. Today it’s more intellectual to say there are no answers – Schaeffer says that is exactly the point of Christ. Man starting from himself is lost. Schaeffer finds the worst failure of Rationalism is its inability to understand mankind – our self-concept, our communications, and our free will. We are not a machine to be manipulated in a closed system. Nor are we entirely subject to the whims of randomness.

Problems with the Article “He is There and He is not Silent”
As noted above, the political activism of the Christian Right, especially with George W. Bush, has accelerated an increasing polarization. Schaeffer was conciliatory in reaching out to people but introduced a strident and defensive attitude to the Rationalistic and Humanistic attacks on Christianity. He researched and counter-attacked these viewpoints, and his stridence is evident in this article. The modern Christian Right has not been conciliatory in its dealings with people. Ann Coulter is a prime example. She has been outspoken in her attack on Humanism and its stepchild, liberalism. Gelles (2007, p1) quotes her

"I'm a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it."

“Christianity fuels everything I write. Being a Christian means that I am called upon to do battle against lies, injustice, cruelty, hypocrisy - you know, all the virtues in the church of liberalism."

She is attractive and eloquent but I would fear being in a casual conversation with her.

Another problem with Schaeffer’s article is it presumes knowledge of theological and philosophical terms and concepts. It starts with the knowledge that Rationalism is dead, but many are not so aware of its demise, even scientists. In addition to its philosophic death, leading intellects such as Einstein attacked it as biased and false, such as in his article “Physics and Reality” in the March 1936 edition of the Journal of the Franklin Institute. The eminent scientist Michael Polanyi demolished Rationalism and the positivism of the scientific method in his epic work Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (1958). A bibliography of articles on the failure of Rationalism that led to postmodernism, linguistic analysis and other replacement epistemologies would be helpful. It is presumed the reader already has such knowledge.

How to Improve He is There and He is not Silent
This article attempted to cover substantial ground in a short 19 pages. A major improvement is to provide more canvas to fully develop the ideas in this article. This is what happened after the 1972 lecture at Dallas Theological Seminary and the Bibliotheca Sacra article. Schaeffer authored a book by the same name, which was published after the article.

Was the Study Biased
Yes. Schaeffer was an evangelical Christian and that is clear throughout all his writings. The article itself was published in a theological journal. Not all critics of Rationalism share Schaeffer’s optimism. Most notably to my knowledge, Nassim Taleb who is not a Christian and I will review his Book, The Black Swan next week. While the Schaeffer article is biased, it is transparent. He does not try to persuade the reader of the correctness of the Christian position while hiding the fact that he is a Christian.

References
Anomolies Unlimited (2005). Well, it does look like one. Retrieved on April 10, 2009 from http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Disney/Mermaid.html

Burson, Scott R. (Summer 1996). A Comparative Analysis of C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer-The Most Influential Apologists of Our Time. Lamp-Post of the Southern California C. S. Lewis Society 1996 Summer; 20 (2): 4-29. Retrieved on April 5, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Clarkson, Frederick (1994). "Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence". The Public Eye Magazine VIII (1 & 2). Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre2.html

Cochrane, Matthew (April 24, 2007). Book Review: A Christian Manifesto. Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://www.notconformedthoughts.com/displayone.cfm?docid=2857

Drewniany, B and J Jewler (2008). Creative Strategy in Advertising. Wadsworth.

Elliott, Hannah (November 20, 2006 ) Baylor prof says Francis Schaeffer returned to fundamentalist views. Associated Baptist Press. Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1628&Itemid=119

Gelles, John (Oct 12, 2007). Ann Coulter's Ridiculous Claim that Jews Are Christians! Retrieved on April 10, 2009 from http://www.amazon.com/tag/politics/forum?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1S3QSZRUL93V8&cdPage=6&cdThread=Tx2MR9D14ZDZGZA&cdShowEdit=Mx300RQENP9YDC7

Hamilton, Gregory W. (2007). A Review of “A Christian Manifesto” in the Light of Scriptural Revelation. Liberty Express journal. Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://www.nrla.com/article.php?id=29

Hawkins, Del, David Mothersbaugh and Roger Best (2007). Consumer Behavior. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Kaplan, Robert (2001). The Coming Anarchy. Vintage.

Olasky, Marvin (March 03, 2005). Francis Schaeffer's political legacy. TownHall.Com. Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://townhall.com/columnists/MarvinOlasky/2005/03/03/francis_schaeffers_political_legacy

Parkhurst, L.G. (2008). Francis and Edith Schaeffer. Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://labri.net/FAS/content/view/27/27/

Pope, Daniel (6/13/2003). Making Sense of Advertisements. George Mason University.
Retrieved on April 8, 2009 from http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/ads/ads.pdf )

Schaefer, Francis (January 1972). He is There and He is not Silent. Bibliotheca Sacra. Retrieved on April 2, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Spanos, William (4/22/2003 ). The Detective and The Boundary: Some Notes on PostModern Literary Imagination. State University of New York at Binghamton. Retrieved on April 7, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Taleb, Nassim Nickolas (2007). The Black Swan. Random House.

Talmy, Leonard (Jan 95). The cognitive culture system. Monist; Jan95, Vol. 78 Issue 1, p80, 35p. Retrieved on April 8, 2009 from EBSCOHOST.

Tucker, Maryanne (2008). Subliminal Messaging and The Disney Corporation. Retrieved on April 10, 2009 from http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~jporter/maryanne_web/index_files/Page766.htm

Twitchell, James (1996). AdCult USA. Columbia Press.

Vitagliano, Ed (1997). Why Boycott Disney? AFA Journal. Retrieved on April 10, 2009 from http://www.solargeneral.com/ja/disney/why_boycott_disney.htm

Wallace, AFC (1963). Culture and Personality. Random House.

Wikipedia (2009). Francis Schaeffer. Retrieved on April 7, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Schaeffer

Wikipedia (2009a). Stanley Resor. Retrieved on April 7, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_B._Resor

Whitehead, John W. (3/8/2007). Is the Christian Right a Fascist Movement? The Rutherford Institute. Retrieved on April 9, 2009 from http://www.rutherford.org/articles_db/commentary.asp?record_id=462

Williams, Roy (2001). Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads. Bard Press.