There are four people with the surname Walton in the top seven of Forbes‘s 400 Richest Americans of 2008, each of whom possesses net assets greater than $23 billion.[1] They are the daughter, daughter-in-law and sons of Sam Walton, founder and spirit guide of Wal-Mart.

Mr. Walton was not the first modern entrepreneur to understand that very low prices can create very high demand. That title goes to Frank Winfield Woolworth, creator of the “five and dime” retail concept in 1879, and one of the first purveyors of general merchandise to insist that the public be allowed to handle his goods without the physical and emotional barriers of counters and salespeople. As often happens, Woolworth’s early success inspired two capable imitators: Sebastian Sperling Kresge (1897) and George Dayton (1902). By coincidence, the big-box discount stores that grew out of Woolworth’s, Kresge’s and Dayton’s original five and dimes–Woolco, Kmart and Target–all debuted in 1962, exactly the same year Walton’s first Wal-Mart opened.

Given all that, it’s surprising that there aren’t any Woolworths or Kresges or Daytons in the top seven of the Forbes 400, or anywhere else on the list for that matter.

Sam Walton understood something that precious few billionaires ever will: for billions of people, Normal is a steeply aspirational ideal. The fact that you can afford the money and hours needed to buy and read this book probably makes you many, many, many times better off than the proud people of whom I speak. The Walton fortune was built not of the nickels and dimes that made Woolworth rich, but of the Jacksons and Franklins expended in determined pursuit of millennium-era normalcy.

In our media-driven global village, daily life puts all people in contact with all other people. This raises the bar of normalcy, especially where possessions are concerned. Wal-Mart has thrived because it has made the great trophies of our day accessible to legions of people in sixteen countries–big-ticket goods like televisions, home theater, video and audio media, bicycles, gold and silver, diamonds, appliances, china, toys, sneakers, athletic gear and just about everything else worth showing off. Because we humans do like to show off…even if it’s just that we’re Normal.

The example of Wal-Mart demonstrates that the key perception a brand must manage is the consumer’s view of his/her own self. An adulterated marketer defines its position in relation to other brands: “Always Low Prices.” Statements like this make a brand smaller, because they reduce its bandwidth to a single channel. An identity-savvy marketer improves the consumer’s position in relation to other consumers. For Wal-Mart and all other Normal brands, the bull’s eye for consumer self-perception is “I’m normal too.” Wal-Mart helps its consumers belong, and they love the brand for it. Both the consumer and the brand grow larger. Because it reflects the joy of belonging(s!), Wal-Mart’s smiley face is actually a bigger idea than its price claim. As we continue our journey through the chapters, we will see that Normal and the other three consumer display identities always point the way to the biggest brand stories possible.[2]

This is an excerpt from How Sex Sells: The Real Reasons We Buy (a work in process).

[2] For background, see: Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (McGraw-Hill, 1964), Chapter 9, The Written Word.

Brands that take themselves very seriously appeal to consumers operating in the Strong zone. The Strong consumer competes by intimidation, and surrounds himself/herself with highly aggressive brand statements that glare out at the world. The Victoria’s Secret catalog is a curious case in point, a very serious division of an otherwise fun brand.

The Victoria’s Secret catalog is a direct descendent of the infamous Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, that annual feast for the roving eye that depicts peak supermodels lounging about in their unmentionables. The poses that SISI‘s and Victoria’s celebrity bodies strike from issue to issue are identical, and are strictly prescribed by history and convention. They trace their origins back through the predecessor of the Swimsuit Issue, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy, to the colorful illustrated pinups of Joaquin Alberto Vargas y Chávez, commonly known as Alberto Vargas. His idealized cartoon images of nude and barely clad women first appeared in the pages of Esquire in the thirties, then earned fame as government-issue nose art on American World War II bombers. These pictures reminded the boys what they were fighting for, and also burned Vargas’ idealist iconography into the minds of millions of men and women across the globe. (See Fig. A, below.)

There is no precedent to the work of Vargas. The first permanent photograph of any kind was created in 1826, and the first wave of pornography that followed it–while sometimes shockingly frank–was disarmingly human. During the hundred years that elapsed between the 1820s and the 1920s, the female subjects of pornography conformed to no rule or convention. They smiled or didn’t, were beautiful or not, carried too much weight or not enough, wore something or nothing, were sweet or salacious or sometimes even silly, and most importantly, seemed to be in on the joke.[1] The mere fact that women were photographed with the intention of titillation seemed sufficient to provoke and sustain the interest of male consumers. Like it or not, there is an unmistakable innocence to early pornography. (See Fig. B, below.)

That innocence withdrew rapidly under the influence of Vargas. Beginning as an artist for the racy Ziegfeld Follies in 1920s New York, then continuing as a studio art director in 1930s Hollywood, Vargas commandeered natural sexual fun and drove it down a dark and dangerous alley. The chillingly lean Art Deco nudes shot by Ziegfeld photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston beginning around 1920 mark the first appearance of the Vargas poses, and from that moment they absolutely define the modern commercial identity of the sexual female: her smile disappears, she glares at or ignores us, her body and beauty are idealized to a state of untouchable perfection, and her innocent “Yes?” becomes a provocative “No.”  (See Fig. C, below.) By 1930, the male viewer of feminine forms is no longer an innocent bystander; he’s been challenged, and now must choose to dominate or submit to every flash of female power he sees. It is especially disturbing that this change occurs almost simultaneously with the ratification of voting rights for American women on August 26, 1920.

From the standpoint of strategy, the Victoria’s Secret catalog expertly engages the Strong identity in men and women by its abject seriousness. While it is commendable that Victoria’s has the insight and inclination to spread its appeal from the Fun and Affluent zones into Strong, the tactical choice to use objective exploitation as the face of its Strong deployment creates an opportunity for rivals. Even if its only motivation is to maintain control of its category, Victoria’s catalog must make itself a champion of its consumers–a shelter from the storm of oppressive images that swirls about them–even if they’ve been conditioned to love it. For no matter how successful the catalog may be in its present form ($1.5 billion including web sales in 2008), Victoria’s goal must be to be right in all cases, and right now its catalog is seriously wrong.

We will come back to the story of Victoria’s Secret in the next chapter to celebrate the brilliance of its very Fun stores ($4 billion in 2008).

This is an excerpt from How Sex Sells: The Real Reasons We Buy (a work in process).

Figure A:

A classic Alberto Vargas cartoon.

Figure B:

A French Postcard, circa 1900

Figure C:

Ziegfield Girl Hazel Forbes, by Alfred Cheney Johnston, circa 1920

In March of 1996, everyone I talked with complained that the Comet Hyakutake was a disappointment, and frankly I agreed with them. If you looked right at it with the naked eye, Hyakutake was just a fuzzy, dirty little dot in the sky. Through binoculars it looked even blurrier, even more disappointing. 

One night during Hyakutake’s brief visit I needed to bring the recycling up to the head of our driveway. It was a clear moonless night in the country, a pitch-black backwater night. As I stood on a little hill at the crest of the drive I caught a sort of glow in my right peripheral vision. I looked up, and noticed a gigantic, broad swoosh of very faint light that stretched across the entire sky. It all emanated from that one little blurred dot.

The next year, the Comet Hale-Bopp came. It too was just a tiny fleck of light, but it was brighter and sharper and had a little tail and looked every bit like a comet should look. Everyone got all excited about Hale-Bopp. Some cultists even killed themselves in the hope of hopping a ride on it, as you might remember.

The long and the short of this story is that the Comet Hyakutake passed much closer to Earth than Hale-Bopp did. So close, in fact, that you couldn’t comprehend the totality of it unless you looked away and let your peripheral vision process its reflected light. The faint glow that had stretched all the way across the night sky was the tail of Hyakutake, millions of miles long. Had I lived nearer to any city or any other great source of light I would have missed it completely. Since then I have made a point of looking away for a second or two from everything I look at, just in case there is a bigger picture to be seen in the periphery.

Some of the smartest people I know (and all of the dumbest) have told me that sex sells. For many, many years I did not believe them. Then one day, while consulting simultaneously on a beer project and a car project, I looked away for a moment. When I did, I saw that sex does sell, and how.

Sex buys, and that is how sex sells. [1]

I am certain that some people will use this book to justify the insertion of ever more nipple, bulge and ass into the already nipple-, bulge- and ass-laden media. They will shrug slyly when confronted with their prurience, and say simply that sex sells, just as the faithful say amen without ever knowing what it means. [2]

Other people will quietly begin removing the aforementioned body parts from the aforementioned media, and replacing them with far more seductive rhetoric and imagery. This book is dedicated to them.

This is the Preface to How Sex Sells: The Persuasive Power of Identity, a work in process.

[2] Amen means ‘So be it.’

On October 13, 2008, it was announced that Mr. Paul Krugman would receive the Nobel Prize in Economics. Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the “new trade theory,” a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. [1]

On November 3, 2008, one day before the most anticipated presidential election of my lifetime, the same Paul Krugman authored an op-ed article for the New York Times, in which he speculated that the representatives of the Republican party likely to remain in both Houses of Congress–the “Republican Rump”–would be even more conservative than the current composition of the party, and as a result “the G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.” [2]

For what it’s worth, I saw Mr. Krugman’s piece as just more partisan gibbering, another wasted page in a tiresome tale called Democrats v. Republicans.

Democrats v. Republicans is the sad melodrama that has been forced on us by our increasing failure to compete effectively on the world stage. We have a natural compulsion to compete, and when no suitable global competitive diversion exists, we compete among ourselves.

While I’m not a Nobel Prize economist, I understand that part of the job of a lawmaker is to protect the rights of his/her State and its residents, and that these rights sometimes do conflict with the rights of other States and their residents. That said, another important part of the legislator’s job is to work with colleagues from other States when the national interest calls for it. Right now, the national interest is calling at the top of its lungs, yet we continue to dwell on the small picture, the partisan picture, because it is easier to understand.

It disturbs me that a Nobel Prize winner, especially one whose specialty is exactly the international marketplace in which the United States must immediately improve its performance, is wasting his time on this glorious day of days prattling on about the comparatively petty nonsense of politics. I think even Paul Krugman would concede that he is a better man than this, and that it will be a shame if his article of today is remembered as nothing more than a first salvo in the tyranny of a new majority.

This is not an excerpt from How Sex Sells: The Persuasive Power of Identity (a work in process), but it covers the same ground: the sweeping implications of the human compulsion to compete.

[1] This brief bio is taken verbatim from the NY Times website: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html?inline=nyt-per

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/opinion/03krugman.html?hp

To primates, and to the primate part of humans, largeness is a highly threatening display of strength.

The average adult American today weighs 24 pounds more than he (and she) did in the early 1960s.[1]  Normal America is so intimidated by the increasing size of our citizenry that it has propagated an all-out war of stigmatization, defamation and discrimination against fat people.[2]

Medical reports enumerating the dangers of obesity blare out day and night. Public transportation and public buildings scrupulously accommodate every physical challenge but this one. Airlines require large people to buy two seats. Sedans that comfortably suit large people are far more expensive than ones that don’t. Doctors recommend gastric bypass surgery, despite its serious, sometimes fatal complications. Clothing choices for large people are strictly limited. Skinny actresses don fat suits to be treated poorly for ratings. If the media really want to know how it feels to be fat, why don’t they ask fat people? Because Normal society wants to see skinny actresses laughing, not fat people crying. While we tolerate and protect extremes of identity and behavior from every other facet of society, we stubbornly insist that fat people change.

Wendy Kaufman, the beautiful person turned Snapple Lady turned Fatvocate once described her size challenge to me this way: “Sometimes I’m good, and sometimes I’m fat.” While Wendy has since adopted a deservedly more forgiving attitude toward herself, for far too many people big and small, fat is still the opposite of good.

As I see it, fat is really the opposite of weak. Fat is Strong.

While displays of any rebel identity are inherently competitive, the circles of behavior that result from Strong displays are uniquely challenging. Guns beget guns. Gangs beget gangs. Armies beget armies. Wars beget wars.

One’s weight is his/her most obvious and inevitable display of identity. Since everyone sees us react to his/her size, weight is both a very public and a very personal matter. Over time I have come to believe that the increasing size of Americans is simply a natural and very predictable response to the increasing size of Americans. In other words, with our weight we’re simply doing as we often do–we’re fighting Strong with Strong.

To date, the ironic effect of the booming $40 billion a year weight loss industry has been to add an average of twenty-four pounds to each of us since 1960. Perhaps if we stop thinking that big people are doing something wrong and start believing that we/they are doing something natural, then next year’s $40 billion might actually buy us what we’re being promised. I can certainly imagine several intriguing ways to create more identity-savvy weight-loss solutions, and I believe that after just a few more chapters, you’ll be able to also.

This is an excerpt from How Sex Sells: The Real Reasons We Buy, a work in process.

[2] Meira Weiss in Conditional Love [1994] neatly summarizes the key literature on social stigmas, and mentions that some experts believe stigmatization is a response to a perceived threat (pp. 54-5).

Over the past fifteen years, as I clawed my way grudgingly to whatever level of maturity one calls this, two realities overtook me.

First, I grew to understand that I am part of something much bigger. Specifically, there are forces that make things work, and my instinctive judgment is not one of those forces.

Second, I began to see my heroes for what they are. My heroes have always been brands, and what they are now is much, much less than I remember them being. Even those with increasing sales have ceded large measures of their cultural significance.

Coke, Pepsi, 7Up, Dr. Pepper. AT&T, IBM. GM, Chevy, Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac. Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury. Chrysler. Mercedes Benz. Burger King. Macy’s, Sears, Kmart. Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt. Coors, Miller, Heineken. Seagram. Firestone. Schick. Hasbro and Mattel. Barbie. Toys R Us. Nabisco. Sony. Adidas and Reebok. ABC, NBC and CBS. The NBA. The Yankees. America Online. Pan Am, TWA, American, United. The Senate. The Oval Office.

This pantheon of shrinking brands is most noteworthy in light of their past opulence. These were the champion spenders! They had the resources to live large for all eternity. Good people invested those resources with the advice and consent of other good people schooled in the art and science of persuasion. But something went wrong. These hard, glittering badges we collected at no small cost are now soft and tarnished–some beyond remedy.

Implicated in the decline of these great brands are myriad narrow tactical ideas that have masqueraded for too long as strategy–ideas like hip, smart, clever, elegant, proven, human, fresh, retro, artful, stylish, glamorous, trendy, talented, proud, productive, worldly, technical, historic, quirky, American, global, definitive, flashy, cool, glitzy, surprising, educated, authentic, effective, professional, original, noble, extreme, fabulous, magical, soulful, fashionable, unique, new, and many, many others.

This book presents in words and pictures my contention that the prevailing concept of branding strategy is defective. A brand is not a single point in perceptual space, and the boundaries of that space are not a playground for subjective judgment. A brand is not a narrow idea to be hammered home with the force of $millions. A brand is different things to different people, all at once. Am I suggesting that your brand should be all things to all people? Actually, I’m insisting that it must be more things to more people, or risk joining the burgeoning ranks of the less significant. To bolster my dissent, I will propose a new approach to strategy that works much better.

In scientific terms, How Sex Sells is a hypothesis supported by observations. In the parlance of art, this is the work of an Impressionist, sketched quickly with broken strokes of unmixed color. The important colors reappear frequently, so even inveterate skimmers should get the gist of my solitary, cathartic scream.*

This post is an excerpt from How Sex Sells: The Persuasive Power of Identity, a work in process.

Of all the United States, Texas has the clearest brand identity. Aside from its militantly Fun capital,[1] the entire geography and demography of Texas sits deep in the heart of Strong.

Texas takes considerable pride in its proprietary history and culture. Texans proudly note that the flags of six nations have flown over Texas, because it implies that nations come and go, but Texas is forever.[2] For a time, Texas was a republic unto itself. The state flag of Texas depicts a Lone Star on a blue field with a single white and a single red stripe. Simply put, it is the flag of a United State.

Everything about Texas is Strong. Dallas is “Big D.” Texas’s signature industry is Big Oil. Texas leads the nation in executions, with 413 since 1982.[3] And in toxic waste emissions. And in prison construction.[4] The state’s official unofficial motto (official because President George Bush 43 uses it) is “Don’t mess with Texas.” The state’s unofficial unofficial motto is “Everything’s big in Texas.” The University of Texas mascot is the Longhorn. When it became Normal to stop wearing hats in 1960, Texas refused to doff its ten-gallon rebel version, and continues to refuse today.

Dan Rather is from Texas.

Dan Rather is the Alpha journalist who anchored the CBS Evening News for 24 years and one day, from March 9, 1981 through the same date in 2005, the longest service by any anchor in US television history. Rather inherited the ratings leadership from his predecessor Walter Cronkite, lost it, regained it from 1985 to 1989, lost it to Peter Jennings at ABC, and dropped to third place in 1992 when NBC’s Tom Brokaw passed him. Since then, CBS has been unable to move up from third place.

Rather made his name through characteristically tough reporting. He was tough on Nixon. He donned a mujahideen headdress in Afghanistan and was tough on the Soviets. He was so tough on George Bush 41 about the Iran-Contra affair that neither George Bush 41 nor George Bush 43 ever granted him another interview. Saddam Hussein did grant him an interview, and Dan was tough on him, too. His sign-off of choice was “Courage.” It lasted only for one week, but he did reprise it in his last broadcast, his final act of defiance.  

Rather toughened the news culture at CBS so profoundly that his successor in the Evening News anchor chair, Katie Couric, has been unable to leverage her sublimely Normal identity into a higher ranking for her broadcast. CBS seems to have forgotten that Cronkite cried when JFK died, swelled with pride at every success of the space program, and grieved with families as the Vietnam body counts he reported grew nightly. Cronkite was America’s incredibly well-informed uncle. In a word, he was Normal, and we loved him for it. Tom Brokaw was Normal, too. Katie Couric is cut from the same ideal cloth as these two greatest anchors. If she and CBS can embrace the Normal and let go of the Strong, the world is theirs for the taking.

A few weeks after the preceding paragraphs were laid down, in the New York Times dated October 11, 2008, journalist Jacques Steinberg noted the beginnings of a possible turnaround for Couric’s fortunes as anchor. Among similar developments, Steinberg pointed to a recurring segment in Couric’s election coverage called Primary Questions, in which “all of the major candidates…were asked the same 10 questions about character, including the last time they had been angry about something or whether trust in a marriage should be a barometer of trust in office.”[5] At last, it seems that Ms. Couric has turned her gift for the interview format into a quest for answers that will allow Normal people to evaluate a complex issue with supreme confidence and fluency. While she remains third in a three-person race, Ms. Couric’s position on the inside rail of the Normal viewer identity bodes well for her, especially if she has the Courage to press her advantage.

This post is an excerpt from How Sex Sells: The Persuasive Power of Identity, a work in process.

[2] The six flags are, in chronological order: Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, USA, Confederate, USA again.

[3] http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/annual.htm

[4] http://www.onthemedia.org/yore/transcripts/transcripts_012101_popculturetexas.html

[5] New York Times, October 11, 2008, p. C1 and following.

Jude Hammerle

There are three types of president.

The first learns to be president during his term in office (Lincoln, FDR, Truman, Ike, LBJ). The second learns in office, then forgets (Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43). The third never learns (Harding, Hoover, Carter).

No president has ever been truly qualified for the presidency at his first inauguration, and either John McCain or Barack Obama will continue this glorious tradition of first-day incompetence. How could either be prepared? There is no job comparable, and no living president who did it right to draw wisdom from.

This means that Election ’08 is not about preparedness; it is about the ability to learn.

A smart person once told me that people don’t care how smart you are, they only care that you care about them. I’ll go a step further: there is precious little sex to be had at Mensa meetings. Barack Obama is very smart. If he persists in reminding us of this fact, he will lose Election ’08, bad economy or good.

A political sign or bumper sticker is like a fancy house or a tattoo or a buff bod or an “I’m with Stupid” t-shirt with the arrow pointing up. Each is a badge of identity—a means we use to brand ourselves. There are exactly four voter identities, and smart is not one of them. If a voter puts a bumper sticker on his/her car it is because he/she believes it makes him/her look Normal, Affluent, Strong or Fun.

In the Vice Presidential debate of 10/2/08, Governor Sarah Palin struck at Senator Barack Obama’s ability to embody Strong by suggesting that he is too young and inexperienced to govern. Senator Joe Biden struck even more mightily at Senator John McCain’s claim to Strong, by tying McCain so tightly to the weak policies of President George W. Bush that one needed a crowbar to separate the two. To his great credit, Biden did what Obama should have done in the first debate, and must do in the next debate.

In other words, given that Election ’08 is about the ability to learn, step one for Barack Obama is to prove that he has learned from Joe Biden.

Election 2008 will be decided in the same manner as the Bush-Gore nailbiter of 2000. The candidates’ showings in a handful of battleground states will determine the winner, possibly by the narrowest of margins.  

In Election 2000, a Normal near-incumbent, Vice President Al Gore, squared off against a rebel challenger, Governor George Bush. The current election is a tale of two rebels. The most Normal Democrat, John Edwards, and most Normal Republican, Mitt Romney, effectively disappeared from contention by July 1, 2008.

The Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, embodies the Affluent voter identity, as every Republican candidate has since Ronald Reagan.

The Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama, has a hold on the Fun voter identity, by virtue of his youth and the youth of his supporters.

Obama’s tense but convincing victory in the Democratic winnowing process resulted primarily from a miscalculation by Senator Hillary Clinton. Her connection to the Strong/Affluent voter identity, a circumstance of her tenure as First Lady, limited her ability to represent change in the minds of voters, and she did too little to correct this shortcoming.

The competitive dynamics of the general election mirror those of the Clinton-Obama preliminaries, but are even more clearly cut. The Normal voter identity remains diminished by the unpopularity of the present administration. Obama controls the Fun identity, while McCain controls Affluent. Given these circumstances, the key perceptual battle in the general election will be for control of the Strong voter identity in the battleground states.

In terms of their rhetoric and command of facts, McCain and Obama are equally Strong. In terms of their resumes, McCain is considerably more Strong than Obama. The fulcrum of this election lies in the realm of physical identity. Specifically, the key fact in the campaign is that Obama’s physical identity is profoundly Strong, while McCain’s is profoundly weak.

At 72, John McCain would be our oldest first-term President, nearly a year and a half older and considerably less vigorous in demeanor than Ronald Reagan on their respective days of inauguration. By contrast, at 47 Obama would be our fourth-youngest President, just a few days older than Bill Clinton on the day he took office. 

In order to win, McCain must turn Obama’s youth and enthusiasm against him. In their debate of 9/26/2008, McCain did precisely this, repeatedly invoking images of Obama’s presumed naivete and need for on-the-job training. McCain also boasted of his world travel and frequent liaisons with modern, relevant political and military leaders, and reminded voters that Obama lacks similar esteem.

For his part, Obama’s core challenge is to invalidate McCain’s experience by asserting that he is the product of a past that is no longer relevant, a noble old soldier whose time to fade away has come. Obama can justify this assertion by linking McCain more convincingly to the disastrous outcomes of the current regime’s policies: the inefficient war, the FEMA flop, the energy crisis, the financial meltdown. In their first debate, Obama failed to accomplish this. While McCain staked a strategic claim to the Strong voter, Obama skirmished tactically, parrying facts with facts.

Given that the contest will be decided in the Strong sector of the identity battlefield, and given McCain’s appropriately Strong showing, Obama’s performance in this first debate seemed dangerously weak.