Twelve Black Code Monkeys

The U.S. Potato Board seeing a decrease in potato sales, is reacting by starting a new campaign to try to get their numbers back up They attribute the slow sales to new low-carb diets which restrict carbohydrates, the macronutrient that the potato is almost entirely made up of.

I don’t have anything against potatoes There’s nothing inherently wrong with them, at least in their organic state. However, the huge monstrosities served at chain restaurants are so loaded with empty carbs that their skins, with the actual nutrients, are hardly worth all those added calories and carbs from the actual pulp.

The problem lies more in using them as a staple food. It’s fine to have a small potato once in a while, even for someone on the strictest beginning stage of a low-carb diet. But part of the reason so many people are insulin resistant or even diabetic to begin with revolves around the abuse of potatoes and other starches. Huge baked potatoes added on top of a healthy meal just add a lot of extra calories and not a lot of nutrients And the most popular forms of the potato as eaten by Americans (french fries, hash browns, tator tots, etc.) are not only low (or zero) in nutrients, but are often fried in trans fats, making them actually harmful!

The U.S. Potato Board would no doubt love it if we were to eat a large potato (or three - since they are claiming a potato only has 9% of the recommended daily allowance of carbs – whose recommended daily allowance they don’t say, perhaps it is the Potato Board’s?) at every meal. Of course they want people to eat as much of their product as possible - that’s what it’s all about. But how do you reconcile that with what even low-fat advocates would consider to be a food that one should at least limit to some extent?

I know little of farming economics, so my comments may be incredibly naive, but I just wonder - if your market is shrinking in one place, what about trying to find markets in other places? Overseas? What about switching to other crops? Why must a farmer stick only to one plant? Many farmers don’t, they have many different crops. It just baffles me a little that there should be a marketing group for a single plant and I wonder if we will soon see similar announcements from a U.S. Carrot Board, a U.S. Peas Board, a U.S. Lentils Board, a U.S. Corn Board, and a lobbying group for every conceivable individual plant that happens to be going down in sales now that low-carb diets are popular

A Lobbying group for Bread and bakeries I can understand The National Bread Leadership Council is doing something similar, but at least they represent bakers that have one product, and can’t easily change to a completely different one Even so, many smart bakers are actually catering to the trend and offering more whole-grain and low-carb versions of their baked goods Farmers can switch to an entirely new plant Perhaps not easily and with some added expense, but with the same trend that is deemphasizing carby foods like potatoes, other lower carb vegetables will surely see an increase, in particular both cauliflower and turnips both of which can easily be used to make a facsimile of mashed potatoes

Or perhaps farmers could experiment and try breeding new varieties of potatoes or other tubers that are lower in carbs and higher in other nutrients? Maybe creating a potato with a very thick skin (which is mostly nutrients and roughage) that could be used in place of bread for sandwichiches, wraps, etc?

It’s almost as if some electronics manufacturers formed a lobbying group to try to promote VHS tapes despite the onslaught of DVD. Your market is drying up, but instead of understanding the new market realities and catering to them (and perhaps hoping things will eventually come back), you tell people they are wrong for wanting this new thing and that they should really be going back to something they used to use I hardly think you’re going to convince anyone by telling them, directly or indirectly, that they are wrong.

Bang! Getting Your Message Heard in A Noisy World, is a book by the CEO and vie president of the New York advertising firm KTG, Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, plus a third author, Delia Marshal, who was not identified so I assume she was a “ghost writer” of sorts. The book is billed as a manual of sorts for advertising agencies to be affective at creating memorable ads that actually increase business.

I listened to this book as audio via Audible.com, but by the language, and conversational tone, I feel like it would have been a very quick read on paper. The authors throw a lot of humorous analogies at the reader, although some of them are a bit trite and so fall a bit flat. It was a fun read, listening to all the war stories behind different famous ad campaigns (KTG did the AFLAK commercials and one of the authors worked on other very famous ones like Kodak moments, Toys are Us Kids, Herbal Essences Totally organic experience, etc.), how they got from initial ideas to the final product.

Although there was some good general advice in the book, I felt a lot of it was fairly common sense. Take risks, be nice, make ads that are different enough to be noticed but not so out there as to only be understood by a small group of elitist ad connoisseurs, etc. I suppose they are good things to hear about as reminders, but it would have been interesting to learn about somewhat less obvious and more “insider” details. For example, my mother used to be an award-winning advertising copywriter, working at some large New York ad agencies in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, including Bill Bernbach, Leber Kats, Footcone Belding, and more. However, by the mid 80’s when she was in her mid-50’s, she was pushed out of her job and could not land another one no matter where she went. The reason? She was too old. Ageism is one of those things that is rampant in advertising even more so than many other professions - at least for the creative people. It is assumed that if you are older than 35, you are not in touch with the youth culture, and we all know how companies and advertisers faun over the young. Yes, there are products geared towards older people, primarily drugs and other health remedies, and perhaps with the baby boom generation getting older this will mean more advertising firms keeping their creative staffs longer. My mother was actually lucky, looking 5 or 10 years younger than her 55 years.

Perhaps such things were beyond the scope of this book, meant as more of a general treatise on advertising for those who have little or no knowledge or experience with the field. Even with the somewhat general approach, as I mentioned, it was interesting to hear about the stories behind the ads and even stories behind ads that never came to be for one reason or another. So definitely some light, entertaining reading which might be useful to some extent for some, but not any significant resource for all but the most beginning uninitiated.