Flattery or Irreverence: Getting Close to Culture

Although it is not the topic of this post, we collected data yesterday on our 60th and final participant for our research project involving rural West Texas Hispanics and anti-Diabetes public service announcements (PSAs).

We wrote and produced the PSAs, and we took some care to make them culturally relevant. One of our experimental manipulations involved culture. Some of the PSAs stressed maintaining eating habits that were part of the culture. Other PSAs stressed changing behavior (e.g., Hugo) that are not part of the culture.

While shooting one of the PSAs, one of the actors (we'll call him Johnny, since according to our scripts, every male Hispanic is named Johnny) kept cracking jokes. He'd say things such as, "This house is way too clean to be a Hispanic's house."

My favorite was: "Where are the channel locks on the stove if this is a Hispanic's house?"

Johnny was hilarious.

And somehow, obviously, he was closer to real Hispanic culture than we were.

Yet, there is no way we could have gone where he went.

That is, Carlos Mencia can make jokes that we just cannot make. And I get it. And I respect it.

But as a scientist, it drives me crazy! What defines that line?

More specifically, how do you best market to Hispanics? We were culturally sensitive. We used Hispanic actors and actresses. We had culturally relevant items, such as a decorative tortilla press, but we clearly did not dress the actors in serapes and sombreros.

With that in mind, consider the following campaign for NaCo, a hip Mexican clothing company looking to make it big in the U.S. market.

According to a story in Advertising Age, "In Mexican Spanish, naco is a derogatory slang term for lower-class tackiness, but NaCo has reinterpreted it as an inside joke that treats kitsch as cool. The Spanish-language slogan the company hopes to also use in the U.S. if enough people here understand it -- a topic of debate within NaCo -- is 'Ser naco es chido' ('Tacky is cool')."




NaCo is purposefully going after irreverence. Here is one T-shirt that got pulled from the 17 Texas and Atlanta Macy's stores carrying the $25 women's shirts:

"Brown Is the New White"

"Estar guars" (Star Wars)

And my personal favorite:

"M is for Mija" (Note to self: Wes's birthday gift)

According to Ad Age, the goal of the merchandise and related marketing is to "appeal to emotions ranging from self-mockery to nostalgia."

The verdict is still out. Not surprisingly, Fox "News" reacted violently , which led in part to the pulling of the "Brown Is the New White" shirt. Other similarly minded viewers likened Macy's red star to communism, according to Ad Age. [Seriously, people?!?!?!]

I don't know the answer. Irreverence is a delicate matter. The line between clever and mean and/or racist is a fine one. Yet the fact that these T-shirts made it into the market suggest that there is an underlying market to be served.

Thinking of Home: Can You Smell the Folger's?

Fifteen years ago this month, Emily and I packed up her car and left Kansas City.

In many ways, it was a sad day. As I've written before, I was as big an advocate for Kansas City as you'll ever find. I suppose that if I were still around, they might joke and call me the "mayor" of Kansas City the way I make that same joke when someone knows everything about Lubbock.

But events broke as they did, and we took off that July morning for the dry heat of Arizona.

So began the great journey of our adult lives.

It's been almost half of my life since leaving K.C. It's been long enough that I've worn out two Royals ball caps. It's been long enough that I haven't replaced the second one.

In a complete coincidence, I am wearing an old, tattered Chiefs shirt as I type.

Emily have been bi-coastal since leaving the Heartland. We lived in California. We lived in upstate New York. Perhaps as a testament to our Midwest roots, neither stay lasted long.

This past weekend, Kansas City Royals radio announcer Denny Matthews was inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame. The Kansas City Star carried a nice story this morning. Thanks to the Internet, they also carried sound clips.

Listening to them is like the past 15 years never happened. Like I am a kid again. Things were right in the world. George Brett was over there on third base, like he should be. Frank White was on second. Kevin Appier was pitching, and Jeff Montgomery warmed up in the bullpen. More importantly, the Royals mattered.

A sound can take you back. So can a few lines of well-crafted prose. Here are a few words from the Star's Joe Posnanski this morning in a piece about Matthews. Those of you from Kansas City will understand the relevance:

"Denny Matthews is, I believe, a very good baseball announcer. He doesn’t stumble. He tells you about the game with an economy of words. He slips in some funny lines without making himself the show. He may not always sound entirely thrilled to be watching another 12-3 game, and he may not sound excited enough when the Royals hit a big home run. I like what Denny says about that. He says, “How about this: I’ll call the game. You scream.”

"But, more than any of that, he’s Kansas City’s baseball voice, as much a part of the city as the humidity, the backup going into the Grandview Triangle, the mansions along Ward Parkway and the smell of coffee as you pass the Folger’s Coffee Company downtown."

I'm Done Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood

Update: Chili's chicken ranch sandwich tasty as always.

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So long, Applebee's.

It was fun while it lasted. Reasonable food at reasonable prices. Balloons for my kids. The Brewtus beer when I was an undergraduate.

Applebee's was one of the first chain restaurants in Las Cruces, so we'd eat there as undergraduates. We also spent many happy hours there after working at the NMSU student newspaper.

To tell you the truth, I always liked Chili's better. The food is a lot better. In fact, we may have to go to Chili's for lunch today.

But until this week, Applebee's was a Kansas City (metro area) company. And I'm a Kansas City guy. Born and raised.

[ More fountains than any place other than Rome! ]

So I felt some loyalty to Applebee's. In part, I still have Sprint cell phone service largely for this reason.

Anyway, this week it was announced that IHOP is buying Applebee's for $2.1 billion.

What? IHOP?

I hate IHOP.

Their food is mediocre and overpriced, and their service is worse. And now they want to franchise out most of the company-owned Applebee's restaurants.

Great! Lousy service!

Actually, to be more fair, the franchising means completely unpredictable service.

Take McDonald's, for example. You might walk into a McDonald's and get great service. But if you walk into a McDonald's in Lubbock, Texas, Santa Rosa, N.M., or Roswell, N.M., the service will be awful. In fact, the average jellyfish would provide better service than McDonald's employees in these three cities.

Even worse, IHOP is headquartered in Glendale, California. No loyalty there.

So, my kids' love for your 2 cent balloons and my hometown roots used to get me in the door.

That's over now. Just another corporate takeover killing off the identity of a brand. I get profits. I am a capitalist. But to me, as a consumer, almost nothing good ever comes from these giant mergers.

Indirectly, perhaps, I get some benefit from my retirement mutual funds. But as a consumer, I see little benefit.

I Have Stood at 18th and Vine

I grew up in Kansas City. I loved that town. When anyone talked trash about K.C., I used to attack as if someone had insulted my mother.

I'm not sure what my parents did to instill this pride, but I loved that town. I can remember riding ski lifts in Colorado as a teen or pre-teen extolling the virtues of Kansas City on some poor stranger.

I spent almost every free minute from ages 15 to 18 (a weird farm-based quirk allows kids in the Sunflower State to get a restricted license at 15) driving the streets of that city. That's almost all we did was drive. Here. There. Everywhere.

I probably should have been mayor of Kansas City.

In the spring of 1992, my dad took a job in Phoenix, Arizona. Things had not been going well in life (a story for another day), and an 18-year-old version of me decided to abandon my hometown and move to the Southwest with my parents. Luckily for me, my eventual wife, Emily, decided to join us for the move.

Reading this, you probably think, "people move." And it's true. And that makes it especially difficult to explain how unlikely it was that I would ever leave Kansas City. I remember the stunned reaction of a close friend at the time.

"But you love Kansas City," she said when learning of the pending move.

Emily and I overloaded her Chevy Cavalier and headed down I-35 on July 18, 1992. Although we were excited about the adventure, it was a difficult drive.

As you may know, Phoenix has many paradise-like qualities, and there was much to love. But given the depth of my roots, there was much to miss.

Already a Chiefs fan, the football team somehow came to embody my hometown. The more I missed home, the more the Chiefs came to represent what I left behind. I lived and died with the team that year.

They don't carry many Kansas City games on television in Phoenix. And that was before ESPN.com even existed (I think). Our house in Scottsdale was well beyond the Chiefs radio network, so I was stuck watching the stupid 10 minute ticker during some other NFL game that meant nothing to me.

One day I ventured to a sports bar with my half brother Lance. We watched the Chiefs play Denver, which was a mistake. Denver is far closer than Kansas City to Phoenix, and neither Lance nor I are what you would call "good sports." He and I are pretty different characters, but he is one person that I know detests losing as much as me.

The Chiefs seems to have it wrapped up at Mile High that day, but John Elway did what he always seemed to do to Chiefs' coach Marty Schottenheimer. There were a lot of obnoxious Denver fans there, and I am still not sure how we got out of there without coming to blows. I don't watch many games at bars anymore.

The Chiefs had a decent season, finishing 10-6 and headed to San Diego to face a Chargers team they had twice defeated during the regular season.

If that game had been at a Vegas table, I would have been "all in." I overinvested in that game like an Enron pension fund.

Of course the damned Chiefs lost. They got shut out, 17-0. It killed me.

When paired with my existing homesickness, that game caused some serious depression. I wasn't myself again for weeks. I worked for Super Shuttle at the time, and I can remember standing on the curb at Terminal 2 shortly after the game (it may have been the same day; memory fails me). As sophomoric as it may sound now, it seemed difficult to avoid assault incoming passengers from San Diego.

As someone who studies media effects, I try to never forget that experience.

I wrote this post as I watched the Chicago Bears advance to the Super Bowl. Congratulations, Chicago (star linebacker Brian Urlacher grew up in Lovington, New Mexico, just 2 hours from here). It struck me when the announcers said that Chicago fans had waited 21 years to return to the Super Bowl.

That rung a little hollow to me. The Chiefs have not been to the Super Bowl in my lifetime, and I'm just a bit older than 21.

Three times in recent years the Chiefs have gone 13-3 during the regular season only to lose their first playoff game, twice to the Indianapolis Colts. On my pessimistic days, I think that the Chiefs exist solely to torture my soul these days.

Two weeks ago, the Chiefs lost again to the Colts in the playoffs. I couldn't watch. You see, I learned something that day in January 1993. There's only so must emotional angst to which I will voluntarily expose myself. When I expect to lose, I don't watch.

Sports media research does not get much respect. I still say that it should. Very few things in life reach right into your core and pull you around like strong identification with a sports team. And the media link us to those teams.

If you ever get the chance to go to Kansas City, I recommend it. It's not the hick cowtown that you might think. More fountains than any city other than Rome. The Plaza shopping area is an outdoor shopping area patterned after the sister city in Seville, Spain.

I like the place. I still read the Kansas City Star 0nline every day.

Emotional Power of TV Still Amazes Me

I spent a lot of years trying to find a job that I loved. I gave up along the way and went back to graduate school. Then a funny thing happened: I accidentally found a job that I love.

I spend my time trying to understand the power of TV's emotion. Why do silly stories written by people I'll never meet move me so?

Sometimes when I am writing a manuscript, it will feel as if I am overstating things. And then I watch the television, and I understand that I am overstating nothing.

Grey's Anatomy was on tonight. George O'Malley's father dies. My father was in the hospital this month (he's better now). That made the fictional TV show a little too real.

I survived tonight's episode only by silently repeating "it's only a story" in my head over and over. It also helped to read the scrolling school closings along the bottom of the screen.

When I took introduction to theatre at NMSU, they talked about the "willing suspension of disbelief." It seemed plausible at the time.

But now it is completely absurd. When you sit down in a theatre or in front of a TV, the narrative starts to grab a hold of you. Eventually it will get you, and you will be sucked in. The suspension of disbelief is automatic. In fact, you have to work damned hard to keep the disbelief going.

This is an endless fascination to me. I'm like a kid in a candy store. Figuring out how this works in the brain is too cool.

P.S. I was over at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center today, and none of those people looked like the people at Seattle Grace. Hmmm. They might be lying to us. Well, there was this one really cute nurse.

Homers Mark New Twist to Red, Blue States

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Technically I do not study public opinion. Because it is a branch of communication research, it interests me nonetheless.

I am interested in how various publics come to identify with objects, especially made-up ones such as brands and sports teams.

As a former sports journalist, I try not to be a homer. That is, I try to be objective about my sports teams. But as we know from experimental psychology, I cannot. I love what I love.

Checking my regular news sources today, I noticed an interesting poll on ESPN.com. Through their Sports Nation section, they were conducting a virtual college football playoff. The first poll pitted Ohio State against Oklahoma. The Buckeyes received the No. 1 seed, and the Sooners received the No. 8 seed.

As the seeds suggest, 87% of Americans thought that OSU would win this match-up. Although I do not often vote in these polls, I put in my click for the Bucks. Then I noticed the "View Map" button.

You can see the result above. State-by-state voting results show that sports fans in every state think the Bucks would win ... except one. Defying logic, 76% of Oklahomers think that the Sooners would win.

Instantly, a light bulb went off in my head. Identification!

Later -- but not now -- there was a poll pitting No. 2 Florida versus No. 7 Wisconsin. This was even more fascinating. You see, The Badgers play in the Big Ten (11).

Here the results were not so overwhelming. Most of the country favored the Gators. Not Wisconsin. Or Minnesota. Or Michigan. All Big Ten states, they were blue. Fellow Big Ten states Indiana and Ohio were grey. Fifty percent of Hoosiers and Buckeyes sided with their conference over the seeding.

Fascinating stuff, people!

Our hearts beat out our minds. I'd bet that some of these results would change if people had to lay money down. But when it comes to siding with our friends, we're all a bit Homer.

Building brand loyalty

In an ideal academic world, research and teaching feed off one another. In my observation, this is too seldom the case. Recently I accidentally backed into such an overlap involving the human connection with brands. For several years, I have been interested in the emotional relationship that humans make with inanimate brands. During a recent class that I taught at Indiana University, I showed part of an excellent video from Frontline titled The Persuaders. During this video, Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts talks about his book, Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands.

Roberts talks about building “loyalty beyond reason.” Others in the video dismiss such connections as infrequent. However, if you reflect upon your own life, you will see many connections beyond reason. How many generic brand labels fill your cabinets? For most people, there will be few or none. Pepsi. Starbucks. Tide. Abercrombie & Fitch. Although many of these brands may be superior in quality, they cannot be superior in proportion to their increased price since they spend so much on advertising. Thus, much of the extra money that you pay for a brand name goes into advertising to reinforce your brand relationship.

My curiosity piqued, I am now moving my research agenda in this direction. I am exploring Roberts’ notion of loyalty beyond reason. I am not formally trained in marketing, but I do know a thing or two about attention, emotion, and memory. I am going to use this training to drag the brand relationship into my psychophysiological laboratory. Hopefully, I will help elucidate this loyalty that moves beyond reason. Stay tuned. The results will find their way here.