Great Moments In Inviting Consumers To Delude Themselves III

Politicians in a democracy have a marketing problem.

They - the good ones, in any case - tend to genuinely want to participate in policy-making for the benefit of their nation.  The problem is that their consumers, the voters, have little understanding of policy issues.  This can be because the subject matter is arcane or because the correct answer simply cannot be known.     

Consider, for example, the insane economics of taxation.  Multiple textbooks have been written on the subject by all manner of very educated people.  But the voter has no time for textbooks worth of economic theories.  Add to that the fact that many taxes aren't designed to raise revenues for the government, so much as they are to reprice certain activities and, in doing so, influence behavior.

As an example, the US government wants to encourage people to invest their money.  So, they create a capital gains tax (which is actually a tax break).  People who keep their money in the market for a long enough time pay a lower percentage of the amount earned than from their other income. 

This was all pretty straightforward until the market for consumer goods started to dry up in 2008.  Then the government tried to use tax policy to encourage spending by sending everybody six hundred dollars.  We had a situation where US tax policy was simultaneously encouraging saving AND spending.  (Incidentally, most people used the rebates to pay off consumer debt, making the whole thing a complete waste of time.)

The upshot is that the voting public doesn't understood any of this.  I don't understand it.  Many economists can't even agree whether they understand it.  And nobody - politician, economist or voter - could reliably predict what the competing tax policies would do to the economy.

So, the politician who wants to talk about this stuff is pretty much out of luck.  Most people aren't going to understand him.  But they like this ...

... even though it makes no sense, because any change in the way the US collects money at all is, technically, a tax of some sort.  If the population increases by four people and you tax them, those are new taxes.  If the population increases by four people and you don't tax them, that increases the relative burden on everybody else and those are still new taxes.

So politicians become products - branded and marketed to consumers like cars, or hotel chains or really patriotic ice cream.  And George H.W. Bush says something that he doesn't even believe (he said as much when he ran against Reagan) to get elected President.

The politician himself is the brand and everything that comes from that politician has to reinforce that image.  It's not a new concept.  Joe McGinniss popularized it in 1968's The Selling of the President.  The one who wins is the one that creates "a concise brand that everyone understands and relates to without much effort."  The candidate has to sell trust, because he can't sell the issues.  That's why voters hate adultery.  They substitute it for any real examination of the candidate's character as a leader, because no one knows how he'll perform as a leader (let alone what long-term effect any of his policies would have).

Our winning Presidents have all invented themselves as brands:


From L to R:  No New Taxes, Yes We Can, I'm Just Like You,
Check Me Out, and Look How Much I'm Not Richard Nixon

And that's what our losers have tended to fail at.  The politician who does not define herself runs the risk of having the opposition do it for her.

Take Sarah Palin.  Please. 

Palin had actually built a fairly stable brand image of herself in Alaska.  She played her cards close to the vest (literally, she never even bothered to inform her staff she was pregnant), took no nonsense, and did whatever the hell she wanted.  That's exactly the brand of person Alaskans love.  In 2007, she had a 93% approval rating.

Then she hit the national stage ... where nobody had ever heard of her.  For arguable reasons, Palin stayed undefined in the voters' minds.  For two whole weeks.  That's how long it took Seth Meyers to write a cold open for Saturday Night Live that presented a concise message about Sarah Palin that everyone could understand without much effort:  Sarah Palin lacks even basic self-awareness.  It changed the debate, it robbed McCain of gravitas, and it may have swayed an election.

The smartest political operatives of 2008, God help us all.

But the third Great Moment In Inviting Consumers To Delude Themselves does not belong to Palin or Obama or Seth Meyers.  It belongs to a man who ran for President long before anyone would ever admit that a candidate was being "marketed" at all.  It belongs to this guy:

Pictured: Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Not Pictured:  Wheelchair

There he is, FDR, standing proudly and waiving to the voters.  You can get plenty of pictures of him standing. Here he is being propped up by his wife.  Here he is leaning against a building.  This is him being held up by the Secret Service.

He was always supported by something.  And there was a reason:  Franklin Roosevelt could not walk.  He couldn't even stand.

GBS is also called Landry's Paralysis after
Joan Allen's character in The Bourne Identity 

In 1921, at the age of 39, he was struck with a painful paralysis that moved up his legs, gradually affecting his arms and face.  It gradually resolved, but left both legs paralyzed and his leg muscles severely atrophied.  It was thought at the time to be polio, but was much more likely Guillain-Barré (learn more about it here).

Roosevelt developed strategies for appearing more able-bodied than he really was.  He wore iron leg braces, held a cane with one hand and leaned all of his weight on someone, usually one of his sons, with the other.  By swiveling his hips, he could make it look like a walk.  Only four seconds of footage of him walking survive today.

FDR almost never allowed himself to be seen in public in a wheelchair.  His braces were painted black and he wore long pants to hide them.  His public appearances were carefully choreographed by the Secret Service to hide how he arrived at and left events.  The press, as was the custom at the time, never mentioned his paralysis and photographers avoided taking pictures of him in his wheelchair.  In fact, only two such pictures are known to exist.

Even with the Secret Service running interference, Roosevelt's paralysis wasn't exactly a well-kept secret.  Dozens of doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and hydrotherapy employees knew.  The entire White House press corps knew.  His whole staff, a bunch of politicians he left in New York, and his political opponents (many of whom hated him) knew.  Pretty much anyone who stood or sat next to him from 1921 on knew, as well.

In fact, everybody knew.  In a 1934 story, Time Magazine accidentally blew his cover.  Some of his detractors mentioned it.  The fabulously-named William Gibbs McAdoo, Jr. may have publicly complained about FDR's ability to win an election as a cripple.    And, as this thread reveals, most all Americans knew Roosevelt was impaired, they just didn't know the extent.

"Hey, I can walk! Vote for me!"

Still, the man helped found the March of Dimes to combat infantile paralysis.  Anybody who wanted to know, could have.  Instead, everybody in America - even people who despised him - ignored it.  Even reporters who could have made money on such a story ignored it.  Roosevelt won four terms in office and became the longest-serving President in US history.

And it is this that certifies this as a great moment in inviting consumers to delude themselves.  Roosevelt not only got an entire nation to believe he could walk, he got them to believe that it somehow qualified him to run the whole country.  He didn't lie exactly.  He just created an atmosphere that allowed people to lie to themselves.

He was a marketing genius.

He even made smoking look cool.

Finding Grass

Previously on Finding Sam Breakstone:

The sun produces energy in the form of sunlight.  People need energy.  People can't use sunlight.  The sun is absolutely useless to the human race.

Luckily, there are some species that are a little more efficient than we are.

Almost all plants are capable of photosynthesis.  The word itself means "making stuff from light."  In scientific terms, the chemical reaction is described as:

6CO₂ + 6H₂O + Sunlight ® C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂


Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air, mix it with water from the ground, expose the whole thing to sunlight and make sugar, which they keep, and oxygen, which they excrete.

How cool is that?  Have you enjoyed breathing today?  That's plant poop you're breathing.  Is that a particularly sweet apple you're eating?  A plant made it out of sunlight and air.

How much mass do plants create from thin air:  100,000,000,000,000 kilograms a year or 220 trillion pounds.  And that's just counting the weight of the carbon, it doesn't even factor in all the water.   In comparison, all of the people on earth total weigh 1 trillion pounds.

Plants eat sunlight using chlorophyll, which is green.  Every green leaf is a solar cell.  Incidentally, purple absorbs light even better than green.  Some scientists think the world was once purple .  

"I made this out of sunlight.  Enjoy your brunch!"

Which brings us, naturally, to grass.  No, the other kind.

Green grass - and there are thousands of species - is found just about everywhere.  If there is land, there is most likely grass.  In many habitats, it is the dominant vegetation.  And there's good reason.  Each blade of grass is its own plant - a single solar cell.  Nothing is wasted on making bark or fruit or flowers.  It's just a tiny panel turning sunlight into food.

There's just one problem.  Green grass, of which there is a lot, is entirely inedible by humans.  We cannot break down the cell walls.  All of the nutrition in grass is completely unavailable to us.

To review:  The sun is the source of all the energy in the world,.  We can't eat sunlight.  Green grass is relatively efficient at turning solar energy into food energy.  We can't eat grass, either.

If only there were some way to convert green grass into something we can eat.

And if only it had something to do with the dairy industry ...

Next:  What this all has to do with the dairy industry.

Nice grass.  I'll take an eighth.

     

Finding Sol

Consider the sun.

Now consider me.  Now back to the sun, now back to me.

"I am the sun your sun could smell like."

The sun is basically a huge nuclear explosion.  Very nearly all of the energy on earth comes from the sun.  And it's a lot of energy.  The sun produces 3.8 x 10²⁶ Joules per second of energy.  Of that, the Earth gets 1.8 x 10¹⁷ Joules every second.  Is that a lot?  Think of it this way:  The sun is transforming 8,000,000,000 pounds of material into energy every second.  Of those eight billion pounds, Earth is getting four and a half - not four and a half billion.  Four and a half pounds total..

Chili's: a day's worth of calories
in hamburger form.

Does that not seem like much?  Consider this:  the total energy consumption of the entire human race - homes, cars, factories, farms, everything - is about 1/10,000 of that.

Does any of this relate to milk, or Breakstone's sour cream in any way?  We can only hope.

The average adult needs about 2,000 calories a day.  That's 8,368 Kilojoules every day.  The earth is getting 180 trillion Kilojoules from the sun every second.  If we could convert sunlight directly into food energy, we could feed 21.5 billion people a second.  We could, using the sun's energy, feed every single person on planet earth for the entire day in a little less than a third of a second.

2.7 hours of this and nobody on earth
 will have to eat for eighty years.

Unfortunately, people can't eat sunlight.  In fact, except for production of Vitamin D, sunlight is completely useless as a source of energy for the human body.  You could live just as well in a cave or, say, Scotland.

Our inability to eat the sun, though poetic, is hardly universal.  What we need is a way to turn solar energy into available calories.  Tomorrow:  Grass.

Finding Skinny Bitches

Jane Austin drank milk and she turned out okay.
I hear she looked a lot like Anne Hathaway.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a computer in possession of a good internet connection must be in want of a crazy person.  Hence, you get dark corners of the web where this is considered normal.

One of the strangest areas of disagreement on the net involves dairy.  There are those who absolutely love milk and those who absolutely hate it.  Depending on what you read, milk either strengthens the immune system or "damages the human immune system."

The one fact that all anti-milk campaigns keep coming back to was well-stated in the popular amateur diet book, Skinny Bitch:

We are the only species on the planet that drinks milk as adults. We are also the only species on the planet that drinks the milk of another species.

They're not entirely right.  There are certain birds and feral animals that have been documented as stealing milk from nursing mothers.  But they are mostly right, humans are the only mammals on earth who habitually drink milk into adulthood, and who drink the milk of other animals.

And if you don't really think about it, that sounds like a very bad thing.  If we are the one exception, chances are we're doing something wrong.  You never hear about lions being in and out of the hospital with intestinal bleeding, or southern wright whales complaining of arthritis and swollen joints.

Ow, my back!

But a couple of moments of reflection reveal some serious logical flaws in this argument:

1. We are the only mammals who consume the milk of other mammals, and into adulthood no less,
2. Thus, we are wrong.    

Note the logical fallacies of:  Appeal to Common Practice; Appeal to Popularity; Begging the Question (in a suppressed premise); Misleading Vividness; and a delightfully tart Red Herring.

They all add up to the same thing:  The fact that only one group does something is not evidence that it is right or wrong.  It is not evidence of anything.

Oh, everybody's getting married today?
Well, I hadn't planned on it, but ...

The question is whether milk is healthy for human adults.  The answer cannot lie in how other species feel about milk, or in how alone we are in using dairy.  It can only be found by examining what milk does for the human body.

There are, of course, plenty of things that would fit in the "Skinny Bitch" quote that show how illogical their argument is:

1. We are the only species on the planet that has ever gone to the moon on purpose.
2. We are the only species on the planet that tries to predict the weather a week in advance.
3. We are the only species on the planet that can write diet books without first receiving a formal education in nutrition.  

Would the authors of "Skinny Bitch" say that we shouldn't be going to the moon, predicting weather, or writing diet books without an adequate grounding in human physiology?

The truth is that there is a good evolutionary reason why cow's milk is a growing part of the human diet - and why fermented milk products like sour cream and cheese are even more important.

Subscribe to the blog to learn how milk saved the world.

Finding The Last Sam Breakstone, The Real One

In these two posts, I combed the historical data to find five men and one girl who's still in law school who are not Sam Breakstone.  Only three remain:

Sam Breakstone #7 doesn't have much going for him.  We have no records of his parents at all.  He was born about 1885 somewhere, as we all were.  His death is not recorded.  He married a woman who may have been named Rebecca in 1907. They had one son, Stanley, born May 10, 1908 in Chicago.  Stanley did not go on to marry or have children.  He died as a baby on June 27, 1909.  And that's all we know about this Sam Breakstone.  Let's hope his small family is resting in peace.

Senator Joe McCarthy was also born in 1908.
Why is it that all the wrong people die in infancy?

That's where he was born.
Are those signs in Yiddish?

Sam Breakstone #8 is born in 1898 in Manhattan.  He was married in 1918 in New York and died in 1981 in Vermont.  He had two girls in the 1920's.  Both of them got married but there are no records of any children or their deaths.

Sam's relations are interesting.  He was the son of a Morris Breakstone, born in 1870.  Morris Breakstone features heavily in the beginnings of Breakstone Brothers, but this seems to be a different person. His genealogy cannot be made to connect to Joseph and Isaac Breakstone.  This Sam just floats alone through time.  Perhaps he was a distant relative who got some work from Breakstone Brothers based on his name.  He couldn't have been that important to the organization because so little is known of him.

I am beginning to suspect that Sam may be too common a name for my tastes.

Sam Breakstone #9 is our very last suspect.  Right out of the gate, he's got a lot to recommend him.

First of all, he was born in New York in 1884, making him old enough to have participated in the early workings of the Breakstone's dairy distributorships in the late 1890's and been a meaningful contributor in the first two decades of the 1900's.

Second, he is the son of Judah (Julius) Breakstone.  Julius was born in Lithuania, like all close Breakstone relatives.  In fact, he was Joe and Isaac's cousin.  Sam was the 1st cousins once removed of Joe and Isaac Breakstone.

We know that, in 1904, a Samuel Breakstone and Abraham Levine began a small dairy company.  About that Sam, we know he had a sister, Sarah.  Sam #9 has a sister Sarah, and he would have been a good working age, 20, when such a concern was started.

Was this Sam Breakstone in competition with his cousins?  Was he running a satellite store, as several Breakstones did?  Was it eventually folding in to the entire Breakstone's operation?  Or was his a separate business that opened and eventually closed on its own?

These questions are, for now unanswered.   No one has yet been able to tell how Breakstone and Levine fit into the story of Breakstone Brothers.

Still, he's our best Breakstone yet.  But which one of these fine eight men and one woman was the inspiration for that character of Sam Breakstone as marketed by Kraft Foods?

The answer after this ...

Jon Lovitz as Michael Vale on season 23 of Saturday Night Live.


And now the moment of revelation.  According to unofficial Breakstone's historian Jeff Marx, the real Sam Breakstone was ...

None of them.

According to Rabbi Marx's research, Sam Breakstone was entirely made up by Kraft and their marketing agency.  He represented no person or amalgam of people who ever lived.  No stories survive in the family of any man similar to him.  No stories survive of any Breakstone being obsessed with his product to such a degree.  Instead, the Breakstones were pragmatists who worked to control as much of the production of dairy items as possible, and to distribute products as efficiently as possible, in order to make the most money.  Sam Breakstone tinkering in his kitchen is completely fictitious.

In contrast, Queen Amidala is 78% real.

Knowing that there was no Sam Breakstone is hardly the end of this inquiry.  It's important to learn how Kraft created the Breakstone character, why they felt so confident inventing history, and how they managed to be so successful.  Knowing Sam Breakstone didn't exist is the first step  Knowing how a fictional spokesperson is born is the next.  Knowing what informs the choices we make about what we eat is the goal.

Finding Time

This has been a busy weekend, if you figure in my naps.

In two previous installments, we examined some of the possible candidates who could have been the real Sam Breakstone.  You can read Part One here, and Part Two here.   Tomorrow night, we'll examine the last two individuals who might be the real Sam Breakstone and we'll hear the final pronouncement of the unofficial genealogist of the Breakstone family as to which of our eight contestants it really is.

Until tomorrow night, why not go back and read about how this all began those many long three weeks ago.

Or, you could enjoy a television commercial for a food product where the brand message was a little off, in that the mad men who wrote this commercial seem never to have met an actual, fully functioning, human female before.

Three speeds.  Can be bolted to a horse saddle.

In the 1960's, Post sold a cereal called Size 8.  This ad, written by D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, appears to make the following assumptions about their target audience:

1. Women around a size 8, really, really want to stay that size.
2. Bigger women should just go find another cereal.
3. Real women with, like, kids and jobs and things suck and shouldn't use our product
4. Women do not care how cereal tastes
5. Women do not care how anything tastes so long as it guarantees some level of weight loss.
6. Men should stay away from this cereal, as should all children not on hormone replacement therapy
7. Nothing about this product matters, women will buy it because of the pretty packaging.
8. There is a sexual innuendo in this ad about how much women like Size 8, I just don't know what it is.

Enjoy the commercial and learn how not to create a brand identity.

Finding A Good Production Still - Do Over

Among the documents that Nancy Vale sent, is this great still photo of Michael Vale as Sam Breakstone.

The picture is undated, but judging by the materials it was sent with, is probably circa 1985.

The original is in color.  That's coming as soon as I figure out how to do that.  I assume I need some sort of equipment.

Note the anachronisms that mark this as marketing for a product.  The microphone is most likely a Calrad 500C, circa the 1950's.  They're supposedly terrible for sound.  They "pill" style followed the success of the RCA 77, which could never be confused with the Calrad 500.  As one website puts it, "These are great for photos, display, prop or loading in a modern element and using on-stage."  In fact, at least one website has devoted a page to finding Calrad 500C's on TV and in print.

Kim Basinger is pretending to sing in front of one in this poster from The Marrying Man.  There's a year in their life I bet they wish they could take back.

So, Breakstone is behind a microphone invented roughly seventy years after he is supposed to have started in the dairy industry in 1882; years after both Joseph and Isaac Breakstone had passed away.

Also note that Breakstone is holding a plastic container of cottage cheese.

This type of polyethylene container did not come into use until the 1970's.  It was the modern product at the time the photo was taken.

Breakstone's hat is a men's straw boater.  They were worn (unironically) from the 1890's to the 1920's.

That's some bad hat, Harry.

One more thing bothers me about the picture:  the head of lettuce.  They are implying a connection between freshness of the produce and a milk product that is, by its very nature, partially spoiled.  They are also implying that Sam Breakstone sold vegetables.  There is little truth to the associations that the marketers are asking us to make.

In all, Sam Breakstone stands before us, representing the goodness of the past, as he passes on the Breakstone's products to a new generation.

Even so, one thing remains clear, this is the highest resolution image of Kraft Foods's Sam Breakstone currently available on the internet.  And that makes me a real journalist.

Follow, link, share and stay tuned.

Finding Mail

In a previous post, I reported on my interview with Nancy Vale, the widow of Sam Breakstone himself, Michael Vale.

He was much better known for the
Dunkin' Donuts commercials. 

Mrs. Vale ended that conversation with the promise to look around her house and send me some stuff from the Breakstone's campaign.

You laugh.  Today in the mail, I received a package of stuff from the Breakstone's campaign.  Included was a color headshot of Vale as Sam Breakstone, which I have to figure out how to scan.  Also included was his contract with Geers Gross, signed by Michael and the advertising agency.

I will be reviewing these documents and publishing them as the law and respect for Mr. and Mrs. Vale allow.

In the meanwhile, let me publicly thank Nancy Vale for not only helping to keep the memory of her husband alive, but for helping to ensure that his contributions to our understanding of commercial marketing, branding, and long-term brand identity are fully recognized.  I think it will result in smarter consumers, increased honesty in commercial communications, and, ultimately, higher quality products.

Now, who's with me!

This blog never has and never will push any commercial advertising on the reader.  However, the Armenia Tree Project is a charitable organization supported by Nancy Vale, and by Michael during his life.  Watch a short video here and please give generously.

Finding Porn Robots and Scott Lyon

The unthinkable has happened!  Finding Sam Breakstone has been discovered by two of the biggest forces on the internet:  1) robots in a personal services industry; and 2) a person in the robot services industry.


The last post, Finding Charlie's Angels, told the story of how Technorati's marketing department had sold my email address to CBS, along with 30,000 of my closest entertainment blogging friends.


For the first time ever, I got comments!


The first was from a wonderful robot named London Escorts.  It wrote:

Finding Charlie's Angels with some social media marketing for the Breakstone's brand. We will send all submitted posts to ABC to review and potentially be included in a widely-released Technocratic conversational media ad slated to receive over 11 million impressions.

By London escorts on Finding Charlie's Angels at 9:51 AM

This is what my prostitutes look like.
Also, my prostitutes are UNICEF ambassadors.

What I appreciate is exactly how little the robot tried.  Because when sending tens of thousands of these things, why make it even look like English?  Just hope that one in ten bloggers lets it go up without moderation for a day or two - long enough for Google to count the links and up your search ranking.  Maybe, somebody actually clicks the link and decides that the one thing his night was missing was a prostitute with bad teeth who sounds like Eliza Doolittle.  

So, this is how the robot composed the message:  "[Title of the blog post] with some [word 10 through end of sentence].  [Twenty-nine words from some random sentence]."

But here's the interesting part - the robot cares a great deal about spelling.  It auto-corrected and took out things that it thought weren't words.  It changed "Technorati" to "technocratic."  And I ask you, who but a robot would think people were talking about technocracy?  That's like Woody Allen thinking he overheard something anti-Semitic.

The robot also dropped the acronym CMAD, which Technorati thinks means Conversational Media Ad.  I can't tell if the robot didn't think it was a word or if it didn't like the fact that it was in parentheses.  Maybe the sex robot just thought it was redundant.  Robots hate redundancy, sex robots doubly so. 

"And Tom Christie said, 'No, JEW?'
Not 'Did you?'...JEW eat? JEW?"

In any case, if you're in Europe and you absolutely have to spend four thousand dollars in half an hour, please give the wonderful women at London Escorts a call.  Their sex robots are standing by.

The second comment was much more pleasant, if decidedly less busty. 

I spent time in my post talking about the sender of the Technorati email, Scott Lyon.  His position is "Blogger Outreach Manager," which I interpreted as a man who sells Technorati's email lists to marketers.  I also complained that it didn't look like Scott Lyon thought about me much, because of how poorly tailored his email was.

It turns out I was wrong.  Scott Lyon left a comment:

Hey Sam,

Scott here, the offending emailer, from Technorati Media.

My apologies for your receipt of the message about the new tv series and I appreciate your response considering the nature and subjects covered in your blog.  We are working on ways and finding tools to better help us connect bloggers with opportunities (some with compensation, depending on what they are) and "news" that they find relevant. It's big challenge, but we're working on it.

A big part of my position is not marketing for clients, but to also promote blogs, bloggers and blogging. I love all the different POVs and connecting them to opportunities they might be interested in.

Sorry I missed the mark with you and good luck with your blog's mission and content.
Best,

Scott

First of all please allow me to just say, Best. Comment. Ever.  


This comment is just about the smoothest and most professional communication I've ever seen.  I have no idea if it was written by Scott or someone on his team, but whomever they are they completely mastered diplomacy.  We should send him to negotiate with the North Koreans.


Look at what he does:

1. He apologizes.
2. He compliments my blog (assuming "appreciate" is a compliment and not just a synonym for "acknowledge").
3. He wishes me luck.
4. He promises to try to tailor his pitches more carefully.

He made me feel good about Technorati and excited to hear from him again.  As far as marketing his own employer, this is an absolute home run.


Lest we get carried away, here's what Scott didn't do:

1. Deny that he sent me an ad for ABC
2. Deny that part of his job includes selling email lists for money
3. Offer me money.  (He kind of hinted that I don't have the clout.)

He called me Sam.  That's weird.  I haven't exactly hidden my true Jordon Davis identity.  


He also called the act of matching bloggers to his customers, "connecting them with opportunities."  That is some serious corporate-speak right there.


In any case:  Scott Lyon, I accept your apology.  I understand that we live in the real world.  I am glad you are good at your job. 


And I have just a couple questions:

This is Scott.  And I'm not lyon.

What exactly is ABC's deal with Technorati?  What services is Technorati contracted to provide?  Did ABC pay a flat fee, or is there some scale for payment based on your success?  Are there different packages and levels of exposure that marketers can buy from Technorati


It would be absolutely great if you could forward me a copy of Technorati's contract with ABC.  If not that, would you please send your blank form contract?  If you won't, would you please explain exactly who in your company refused the request - legal, VP of sales, etc.?


And if you had time for a quick phone interview about yourself and how you came to your current job, that would be amazing as well.  My only goal is to learn how modern marketing works.  And you are on the cutting edge.


Last, just as a general warning to anyone who might read this.  Please be careful what you write.  If Scott Lyon saw this blog, he's watching the entire internet.

Imagine how many times he's seen David After Dentist.

Finding Charlie's Angels

In a previous post, I looked at some of the social media marketing for the Breakstone's brand.  Social media marketing, in general, is just sad.  It never occurred to me that I would get a chance to become part of the sadness.

You ask for miracles, I give you ABC.

Today, I got an email titled "Blogger Outreach" from Technorati.  It's nice of them, I thought, to keep in touch with their 30,242nd ranked blog.  (I'm 3,949th in Entertainment, so fingers crossed.)

This is pretty accurate.

The email, however was on behalf of ABC.  The real ABC.  It said:

We have a first look at ABC's newly announced dramas, Once Upon a Time and Charlie's Angels, just for Technorati blogger partners!

Let's see their blog tackle sour cream.

ABC just announced this morning that they will be picking up Charlie's Angels, a big, loud, fun take on the 1970's smash hit series, and Once Upon A Time, a modern day fairytale from two of Lost's master storytellers for their fall line up. They wanted to provide our entertainment bloggers with exclusive videos for you to report on and discuss the shows and stars.

Download the Once Upon A Time video now at:  Once Upon A Time

Download the Charlie's Angels video now at:   Charlie's Angels

Get More Exposure To Your Blog Via ABC

Once you've published your post, please submit your post at: http://bit.ly/kYSnMG

We will send all submitted posts to ABC to review and potentially be included in a widely-released Technorati conversational media ad (CMAD) slated to receive over 11 million impressions to Entertainment related sites across our advertising network. (View examples at http://technoratimedia.com/portfolio).

It's great additional exposure for your blog and writing!

The official Once Upon a Time and Charlie's Angels press releases follow for more details and information on the series.

Looking forward to reading your posts about Once Upon A Time and Charlie's Angels!

Scott Lyon
Blogger Outreach Manager
Technorati Media

Holy heck!

First of all, I disabled the links to the videos.  I didn't want to give the network any free help with their search engine rankings.  Don't be too disturbed.  The links are NOT to the full pilot episodes, but just to two minute commercials.  They're both available on YouTube if you have to see them.  Incidentally, I was promised that these were "exclusive videos."  They're exclusive to everyone with an internet connection.

But let's look at what really happened.  ABC paid Technorati for access to its email list.  They did give me a chance to unsubscribe, but look how Technorati phrases it:

If you do not want to receive any more newsletters, visit here to unsubscribe. [link disabled]

Technorati calls this a newsletter.  To me, it looks like an ad.

So, ABC paid Technorati real money.  What are they offering to pay me?

Exposure for my blog.
A chance to have my quote included in an internet ad.
Great additional exposure for my blog and my writing.

That's fine.  I like exposure.  And I like writing.  But what do I have to do to get the "exposure" and the "additional exposure"?  Can I say bad things about the shows?

ABC hopes I don't.  In fact, they do more than hope.  Included in the email were long and short descriptions of the shows with cast lists and producer credits.  Here's the one for Once Upon A Time.

Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (Lost, Tron: Legacy) invite you to a bold new vision of the world where fairytales and the modern day are about to collide.

Just click [ctrl}[+] if you want to read
their nonsense.  Otherwise, enjoy this
picture of Jennifer Morrison.

Anna Swan (Jennifer Morrison) knows how to take care of herself. She's a 28-year old bail bonds collector who's been on her own ever since she was abandoned as a baby. But when the son she gave up years ago finds her, everything will change. Henry (Jared Gilmore) is 10 years old now and in desperate need of Anna's help. Henry believes that Anna actually comes from an alternate world... and is Prince Charming (Josh Dallas) and Snow White's (Ginnifer Goodwin) missing daughter. According to his book of fairytales, they sent her away to protect her from the Evil Queen's (Lana Parilla) curse, which trapped the fairytale world forever, frozen in time. Of course Anna doesn't believe a word, but when she brings Henry back to Storybrooke, she
finds herself drawn to this unusual boy and his strange New England town. Concerned for Henry, she decides to stay for a while, but she soon suspects that Storybrooke is more than it seems. It's a place where magic has been forgotten, but is still powerfully close... where fairytale characters are alive, even though they don't remember who they once were--including the Evil Queen who is now Henry's foster mother. The epic battle for the future of all worlds is beginning, but for good to win, Anna will have to accept her destiny and fight like hell. 

Brace yourself for a modern fable with thrilling twists and hints of darkness. Brimming with wonder, and filled with the magic of our most beloved fairytales, Once Upon A Time is a fitting follow up to Lost from two master storytellers.

SHORT: 

Welcome to a world where fairytales are real. Anna Swan is like any other 28 year old, until she discovers she's a lost princess destined to save her world from darkness. Experience the passion project of executive producers/creators Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (Lost, Tron). Once Upon A Time is a thrilling twist of our most beloved stories. 

CAST
Robert Carlyle - Rumplestiltskin
Josh Dallas - Prince Charming/John Doe
James Dornan
Jared Gilmore - Henry
Ginnifer Goodwin - Snow White/Sister Mary Margret Blanchard
Jennifer Morrison - Emma Swan
Lana Parilla - Evil Queen/Regina
Raphael Sbarge - Archie/Jiminy Cricket

So, ABC wants me to blog about their shows and gives me the words I should say to do it.  For free.  Because that's the price the market has set for access to my audience.

And the hurtful thing is that nobody at any stage thought to actually look at my blog, or even to question why I checked the "Television" box when describing my site on Technorati.  If they had, they'd have noticed that Finding Sam Breakstone is about stripping away the marketing and the branding from the products being sold.  It's just not the perfect fit for ABC's needs.  But since the marginal cost of the email to me was free, they weren't actually releasing any exclusive content, and they weren't obligating themselves to listen to me, there was no reason to even think about such things.

Last, allow me to mention Scott Lyon.  He's the Technorati employee who describes himself as the "Blogger Outreach Manager."  He is not.  He's a marketer.  "Outreach" means "selling your email address for money which we keep."  It doesn't make him bad.  It's how the world works.  He has a list of tech-savvy people and others will pay money for it.

The question is:  How many bloggers will take ABC up on their offer?  How many will repeat ABC's marketing department's words as their own?  And how many will be compensated fairly for it?

Now back to looking for Sam Breakstone.

----------------

P.S.  Once Upon A Time looks horrible.  I didn't watch Charlie's Angels, but it stars Minka Kelly, so it's probably great.

P.P.S.  Television Without Pity says they're both terrible.

Finding More Sam Breakstones

Previously on Finding Sam Breakstone, we had examined three candidates and looked at a picture of Dianna Agron from Glee.  And now the thrilling conclusion:

Babe Ruth died in 1948, too.
Did Breakstone ever see him play?
How the hell should I know?

Sam Breakstone #4 was born in 1903 in New York City and died in 1948 in New York City. His father, Jacob, was born in Poland in 1864.  There are no records of this Jacob Breakstone's family.  Sam #4 never married and had no children.  Records for his four siblings are incomplete.

Is this our Sam Breakstone?

Pros:

• He lived his life in New York City
• And that's about it.

Cons:

• He doesn't seem to be related to the rest of the family.
• His birth in 1903 is too late to have had a meaningful impact on the beginnings of the Breakstone Bros. brand.
• Dying at only 45, he seems to have passed too young to have made a lasting impact on the history of value-added dairy.

Chance of being our Sam Breakstone:  0.031%

He missed out on inventing sour cream, but he got to
see the trial of Leopold and Loeb.  So ... fair trade, I guess.

Samuel Breakstone #5 was born in Poland in 1874.  His father Selig, though, was a Lithuanian Breakstone.  In fact, Selig was the younger brother of Nisaniel.  That may not mean much to you, but that makes this Samuel Breakstone the first cousin of Breakstone Bros. founders, Joseph and Isaac.  Samuel emigrated in 1885, at the age of 11, although it's unknown who took him over.  By 1891, he was in Chicago.  He married in Chicago in 1908 and died there in 1955.

Pros:

• He's the first cousin of the founders of Breakstone's.
• It is almost certain that Sam #5 worked for his cousin's growing businesses as a young teen.  Thy were notorious for hiring relatives.
• Breakstone's did have products in Chicago by 1920.

Cons:

• Sam left New York before the Breakstone Bros. started distributing dairy.
• He left for Chicago almost thirty years before Breakstone's had products there.
• Even then, Breakstone's contracted with existing dairies to make their products, and did not have their own factory in the midwest.

This Sam may have worked in the dry goods shops of his cousins.  He may even have distributed Breakstone's in the midwest.  But he didn't create any recipes or products.

Chance of being our Sam Breakstone:  17.5%

And now, for the sake of completeness,

Also born in 1987 - Ellen Page.
  So, yeah, she's pretty young.

Sam Breakstone #6  was born Samantha Allyne Breakstone in 1987.  Not 1887 ... 1987.  She's currently 24 and in law school and I seriously think this is her.  She is the daughter of Jay Breakstone, son of Allen, son of Bernard, son of Hyman, son of Abraham, who was brother of Nisaniel, the father of Joseph and Isaac.  That makes her the 1st cousin, four times removed, from the founders of Breakstone Bros.

Pros:

• Her great-great-great-great grandfather was just the regular grandfather of Joe and Isaac Breakstone.
• How cool is that?

Cons:

• She was born long after the Sam Breakstone commercials ended.
• She didn't return my Facebook friend request.

Chance of being our Sam Breakstone:  0.0% but close to 3,500% in our hearts.

We've gone through six Sam Breakstones so far.  Only two remain.  Subscribe to the RSS feed, get the emails, listen over short-wave, just stay tuned for tomorrow's thrilling conclusion which I realize I promised you at the top of this article but it turns out I was just stringing things along!

Finding (Some) Sam Breakstones

Breakstone Brothers was founded by Joe and Isaac Breakstone in 1897. But where was Sam Breakstone?

We don't have to guess. Thanks to the thirty-year effort of Dr. Walter Miller and Rabbi Jeff Marx, the Breakstone family tree has been preserved in amazing detail.

They didn't just find Sam Breakstone. They found eight of them. But were any of them the right one? A dairyman in turn of the century New York?

This isn't him. It's Saint Albert

of Poland. But he was born in 1845.

So ... there's that.

Samuel Breakstone #1 was born in Poland in 1845. He marries Yetta Braunstein in 1868 and they have a son, Abraham, in 1871. In 1880, the family emigrates to America. Yetta dies in 1908 and is burried in Queens. Strangely, Both Sam and his son Abraham are listed as dying in 1915. Abraham's place of death is listed as Downsville, New York, 130 miles northwest of New York City.

Is this our Sam Breakstone?

Pros:

• Right age.
• In New York at the right time.
• Downsville would become the home of the Breakstone cream cheese plant in 1923.

Cons:

• Born in the wrong country. All the founders of Breakstone Bros. were from Lithuania.
• The Downsville plant was not owned by Breakstone, but by another dairy in 1915.
• This family is not found to be related to any other relatives. They form their own father-mother-son family, outside of the entire Breakstone tree.

Chance of being our Sam Breakstone: 2%

This is what I got when I typed "Annie
Silverman" into Google.  Yoga really
keeps you young.

Samuel Breakstone #2 was born in Lithuania in 1878. He emigrated in 1884 and married Annie Silverman in 1906 in New York City. Their daughter, Beatrice, was born in 1918 and was recorded in the 1930 census. Then, all records about her stop. Sam Breakstone #2 died in 1951.

Pros:

• Born in the right part of the world.
• Was in New York during a time when Breakstone's was active.

Cons:

• Like Sam #1, this Sam cannot be connected to any other members of the Breakstone family. His parents' records are dead ends, as are his wife's, her parents' and their child's.

Chance of being our Sam Breakstone: 2.164%

Dianna Agron from "Glee."  She has nothing to do
with anything.  But she's Jewish, so ... there's that.

Samuel Breakstone #3 was born in 1879, probably in Lithuania (his father, Zelig Breckstein, was born there). He emigrated to New York in 1893. In 1904, he married Lena Purver in Massachusetts. Their first child was born in Massachusetts, but their next two were born in New York City. The next child was born in 1915 in Ohio. Samuel died in 1948, possibly in California. Lena passed away in 1954 and was buried in Chicago.

Pros:

• This Samuel Breakstone is well connected to a huge Breakstone family going back into the 1700s and forward right to today.
• He lived in New York at a time when many Breakstone storefronts were open.
• A Sam Breakstone, with a sister named Sarah, started Breakstone and Levine in 1904, selling butter, cheese and cream. This Sam Breakstone has a sister named Sarah.

Cons:

• This Sam Breakstone cannot be connected to Joe and Isaac Breakstone, their cousin Morris, or any other Breakstone's known to be a part of the operation.
• Sam #3 was under 20 when Breakstone Bros. was founded
• Moving around a whole lot, this Sam Breakstone was in a lot of places that Breakstone's wasn't, especially Massachusetts at the turn of the century and California any time.
• The man who started Breakstone and Levine in New York did so in a year Sam #3 was known to be in Massachusetts and the company ran continuously during a time he was known to have moved to Ohio.
• Sam #3 does have a sister named Sarah, but that's not an uncommon Jewish name. The geneology lists 8 Sarah Breakstones and three Sarah Brecksteins.

Chance of being out Sam Breakstone: 8%

Three naughty Sam Breakstones gone. Five good, sweet little Sam Breakstones left.

Subscribe to the blog and stay tuned.

Finding A New Way To Connect

Now follow the link to the right to subscribe to Finding Sam Breakstone by email.  Never miss a post of "ripped from the headlines" news of a hundred years ago.  And then you can forward the emails because, if you don't, your friends will have bad luck.

Be among the first to learn if I ever do find Sam Breakstone by subscribing to email updates today.

FSB Presents: Great Moments In Inviting Consumers To Delude Themselves II

If ever there was a god of marketing, Phineas Taylor Barnum was it.  The man could sell anything to anyone at any price - including himself.  He got himself elected to the Connecticut state legislature and he was mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut.  Along the way, he promoted some very odd exhibits, like the Fiji Mermaid and brothers Chang and Eng Bunker, famous Siamese twins.

The Greatest Book On Earth!

It's been a little hard to unravel the history of P.T. Barnum.  At least one reason was that almost everything he ever said was a lie of some form or another.  And he said a lot of things.  The definitive biography of the man was written by himself.  Originally published in 1854, Barnum reissued it every couple of years - taking out stories that offended public sensibilities and adding new bits he thought would make him look better.  Finding a true statement in any edition of that book is like finding the one waitress at Hooters who really is into you.

Don't take my word for it.  Read the book.  Barnum surrendered the copyright so others could put as many copies out as possible.





How pernicious are the rumors about Barnum?  Take his most famous quote, "There's a sucker born every minute."  He never said it.  But, in typical Barnum fashion, once it was attributed to him, he claimed to have originated it after all.

Barnum is by no means the bad guy in this story.  In his colorful life, he did such things as introduce real natural wonders to the American people - whales and elephants and other animals never personally seen in the US.  He donated so much money to Tufts University that they adopted his elephant, Jumbo, as their mascot.  He was a believer in abolition and temperance.  He voted in the Connecticut legislature in favor of the 13th Amendment.  In doing so, he made this charming speech that may have been the least racist thing anyone ever said in 1865, "A human soul, ‘that God has created and Christ died for,’ is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot — it is still an immortal spirit."

That quote is true.  They wrote it down and everything.

Barnum worked to keep liquor and prostitution out of Bridgeport, and bring gaslights in.  He was an early debunker of mediums who claimed to communicate with people's deceased relatives.  He created one of the first aquariums in the US.  He was the first president of Bridgport Hospital.

Seriously, who wouldn't want to see
a baby elephant.

He was a con man who wasn't.  He offered the incredible and the astounding, but not the unbelievable.  And he always delivered a show (or an exit into an alley).  His exhibitions were successful because they were what people wanted to see, or what people didn't know they wanted to see until Barnum told them.  Remember that Barnum lived in a time when most people didn't travel, when huge animals were known but never seen, and when dwarfs and conjoined twins were rare enough to gawk at.  Chang and Eng were from Thailand.  For all people knew, they had unicorns and mermaids in Thailand, too.

 But Barnum's greatest attraction wasn't even one of his own devise.  It was neither statue nor animal.  It was an attraction that may have even fooled Barnum himself.  (It probably didn't.)  And it came at the very beginning of Barnum's career, before he even had his own exhibition hall.

It was Joice Heth.

In 1935, P.T. Barnum was a grocer, looking for an entry into show business.  He found it in an exhibit being shown by R. W. Lindsay.  Barnum and his partner bought the exhibit and showed it around the northeast before settling in New York City.  It was the body of the black nursemaid of George Washington, the first President of the United States.  It was 161 years old and it was alive.

This all sounds true ....

Though blind with cataracts, arthritic, paralyzed in both legs, with use of only one arm and extremely ill, Joice Heth entertained visitors for as long as twelve hours a day.

Heth would tell stories of the young George Washington, sing hymns she claimed to have taught him, let the curious inspect her body, and even pray with people.  And just about everybody bought it.  The interesting question is why.  Certainly the world was mysterious enough that a 161 year old person was something that might have been possible, but nobody knew or had heard of a story outside of the bible of anyone living that long.

"I die so that others may live.  But I'm black
so you don't have to feel too bad about it."

At least one thing that helped sell Heth's story was that she was black.  She was an early example of what is now a stock character, the Magical Negro.  This is a character with superhuman spiritual power whose job, in fiction, is to teach a wealthy white person how to connect with the universe.  Consider Michael Clark Duncan.

Also, read this actual scholarly work that isn't a screenshot from a Stephen King movie.

The last thing on Joice Heth's side was the fact that the country in the 1830s was anything but sanguine about race.  The specter of slavery hung like a storm cloud over every event in US history.  We could beat up all the Native Americans we wanted, eventually slavery was going to tear the country apart.


A young nation like the United States needed heroes.  We needed myths.  And George Washington would do just fine.  Joice Heth provided a conduit to transform Washington from real man (who many could still remember) into founding father, destined for greatness since nursed by his magic, immortal nanny.

One question for which no answer remains is whether Heth was Barnum's slave.  In many ways, she was.  Barnum bought her, as had the exhibitor before him.  She went where he said and performed when he said.  In other ways, it seemed Joice had some degree of freedom.  She was never referred to by Barnum as a slave.  She was cared for, and never complained to the throngs of northerners (including abolitionists) who came to see her.  When her twelve hour days prove too much for her, Barnum limited her appearances to eight hours.  And, of course, she was treated far better than a blind, toothless, paralyzed slave would have been.

It's not Barnum who deserves this award, though.  It is Joice Heth.

Isn't she lovely ...

Joice wasn't senile or crazy.  She couldn't have told such consistent stories if she had been.  Instead, she was a black woman who'd had a hard, hard life at the hands of whites.  And now, in her old age, she could be waited on by those same whites while she spun fantastic nonsense stories of being 161 years old and of teaching statesmanship to her dear George.  She must have found the willing gullibility of the public to be quite amusing.

Joice passed away in 1836.  Barnum, sensing opportunity, invited one of the most respected surgeons in New York to perform an autopsy on her ... in public ... while charging onlookers money.  The method of estimating age today is little changed from the 1830s.  Doctors look for the increasing ossification that comes with age.  The surgeon pronounced Ms. Heth not to be over eighty.

Barnum had a bit of a problem with that.  He took possession of the corpse, insisted that the entire autopsy had been a hoax, and claimed Heth was still alive, traveling through Europe, impressing all the crowned heads.

Finding Joice Heth becomes a little difficult.  No one knows what Barnum did with her.  Barnum is buried in Mountain Grove Cemetary and Mausoleum, Bridgeport, Connecticut.

He buried Tom Thumb about 100 feet away.
In a snuff box 

Joice Heth was primarily exhibited in one of the front rooms of the famous Niblo's Garden, a theater, outdoor natural garden, sideshow, dining hall, and ice cream parlor all in one.

If you go shopping at this Forever 21, you'll be pretty close to where Joice Heth entertained idiots a hundred and seventy-five years ago.

And for telling people exactly what they wanted to hear even though they knew it couldn't possibly be true, Joice Heth is remembered for her Great Moment In Inviting Consumers To Delude Themselves.