Author: Jim Eltringham

Political consultant specializing in grassroots mobilization, online media, and public relations.

Gosnell, perception, and reality

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Before today’s Gosnell verdict, Gallup demonstrated that Americans’ views on abortion were holding steady.  Incidentally, “holding steady” means that most Americans believe that abortion is, at least in some cases, wrong.

To hear the election rhetoric last November, you wouldn’t think 72% of Americans feel like abortion should be completely illegal or legal “only in some circumstances.”   Remember the Republican “War on Women“?  Recall the successful efforts to link Mitt Romney to Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin?

In reality, most Americans – regardless of where they would fall on the issue of abortion – probably think that Kermit Gosnell is a monster and a murderer.  His conviction is no reason to crow victoriously.  Gallup’s numbers suggest that there is support for the pro-life side; last November suggests that support is generally silent.

People are pro-life, but they don’t identify with the pro-life movement.  For a movement that has gained enormous traction over the past four decades, conquering this hurdle is the next obvious step.

Benghazi and Cultural Stickyness

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Today the Washington Post pointed out analytics that showed interest in the Benghazi hearings was largely older, whiter men.  That may have a bit to do with the demographics of people working inside the Beltway who would be most likely to tune in, but it won’t be the final determination of whether this scandal has legs.

One of the reasons Watergate remains so ubiquitous in American political is that its unique moniker has kept it alive.  When political scandals erupt, the suffix “-gate” is immediately added.  No one references the Teapot Dome scandal that way.

Linguistically, the Benghazi scandal has that potential.  Too many lavish, taxpayer-financed vacations for the President?  Travelghazi.  Donors receiving special access to the President in exchange for campaign cash?  Sounds like a “Donorghazi” program.  And you can throw in Cubaghazi for that one couple that raised a bunch of money for the President and then magically got to go to a country that normal schlubs aren’t allowed to go to.)

It won’t be testimony in a stuffy hearing room that gives the administration’s misdirection gravity beyond the  halls of Congress.

A Matter of Trust

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The catchy headline is that more people trust a guy who talked to an empty chair than the President of the United States, but that’s the Reader’s Digest account of the Reader’s Digest poll on the celebrities we trust the most.

Consider the top five: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Maya Angelou.  This poll is probably fun to report on, but did the respondents really give it that much thought?

If Hanks knocks on your door at 11:00 p.m. dressed in drag and imploring you to help him move Peter Scoleri’s lifeless corpse,  that trust would likely wear off pretty quick.

Calling these people trustworthy is a version of the word association game.  It’s a knee-jerk reaction, and not necessarily rational.  It’s fleeting, but it helps contextualize what we read or ear about them – even the bad stuff – so long as we are distant from it.

On the other hand, 45% seems low for a sitting President, and it seems like a number that could get beaten down – maybe with a steady drumbeat of stories about Benghazi.  Not a deluge of Republican arm-waving and histrionics, but a steady drip of stories about inconsistencies in testimony or incompetencies in strategy will keep the idea alive that the President is not 100% forthcoming.  The reverberations could extend into his legislative agenda and clip his wings as he tries to foist Speaker Pelosi back onto the country.

Benghazi probably won’t drive him from office, but as long as the story has legs it will whittle away the President’s shrinking cache of trust.

J.C. Penney: Remembering The Golden Rule?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

After a year and a half of missteps, J.C. Penney may have gotten something right with their new commercial:

Remembering the Golden Rule

Here’s a fun fact: the first store opened by the J.C. Penney company was called The Golden Rule.  The idea was to run a business where customers were treated fair and square.  This could have been a running theme over the past year, as the new “JCP” sought to push low price points.  The disastrous mis-marketing of the last year instead tried to divorce JCP from any connection of the pre-2012.

That was a mistake.  This ad, on the other hand, mixes old images of J.C. Penney stores with modern Instagram-ish clips of young customers.  The final image of the commercial includes the company’s full name, J.C. Penney, rather than the JCP square logo that had punctuated previous ads.

The design is still minimalist, but there is no doubt that the commercial embraces J.C. Penney’s past.

Owning the Mistake

Frank apology ads are usually the domain of politicians.  This ad makes as frank an admission as a company can in a television spot.  Most of J.C. Penney’s failure came from trying to dictate to consumers how to shop; this level of honesty sends a message that the company understands why customers left and won’t insult their intelligence by  pretending like the last year and a half didn’t happen.

Will It Last?

It’s easier to make a good commercial than to save a business that has alienated many customers.  The last 18 months showed that customers do not hold blind allegiances to their department stores, and that their shopping habits are not set in stone.

Those customers might come back to J.C. Penney, but there real challenges remain for a department store still stuck between the discount prices of Target and Wal-Mart and the loftier tags of Nordstrom’s and Macy’s.  Johnson may have been a bad CEO for the company, but there were plenty of others who didn’t know how to turn the rudder, either.

At least they should have an idea about what doesn’t work.

Overreacting to Jason Collins

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

If you follow sports this week – in particular the NBA – you may have heard in passing that Jason Collins came out.

In the current cultural environment, Collins’s admission is big but not Earth-shattering.  There haven’t been any active openly gay athletes before – and there might not be now, since Collins is a free agent – but most people probably assumed the operative word there was “openly.”  (To hear the enlightened, cosmopolitan Bostonians tell it, the Yankees have fielded a team of 25 fornicating homosexuals each year since 1946.  So brave.)

Now begins the overreaction.

From the right, Peter Roff imagines a double standard, opining that Tim Tebow was punished because of his overt Christian faith, while Collins’s sexual preference is lauded by the media.

Said Roff: “When he arrived at the Meadowlands he was treated more like a circus freak than the guy who helped Denver make the playoffs the previous year and might just be the thing to get the Jets offense in line.”

It’s true, and it’s because Tebow is a circus freak.  Denver’s push to the second round of the 2011 playoffs had as much to do with luck as anything else.  At this point in his career, Tebow can’t throw the ball with enough strength and accuracy to be a viable NFL quarterback, which is why he spent all his time on the bench last year.

(Heck, Ray Lewis talks about God all the time, and the media overlooks a lot of negatives about him.  Two in particular come to mind.)

On the other side – and even worse – is MoveOn.org, which is apparently still around.  The erstwhile leading organization of the American left is demanding a suspension of ESPN’s Chris Broussard over his reaction to Collins’s announcement.  (Well, at least they are demanding it as much as one can demand anything with an online petition.)

MoveOn either didn’t listen to or didn’t care what Broussard actually said.  The short version: Broussard doesn’t condone sex outside of traditional marriage, doesn’t live his life that way, but doesn’t judge others who do.  It’s a calm, reasoned explanation that could be a good start to civil discourse.

Or, it could be a flash point for some bottom feeding organization to glom onto a much-discussed topic, bump up their search results, raise some money, and be marginally relevant.

Mel Kiper for Pandora?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Contextual advertising is a good thing.  The NFL Draft is the biggest sports story going on, so the ads Pandora placed on ESPN encouraging husbands to “pick the right gift” is pretty clever.  (And let’s be honest – this is definitely about targeting a guy buying for his wife or baby mama and staying out of the dog house.  There’s nothing wrong with that.)

But the image of Mel Kiper peeking from the bottom?  That’s unnecessary… and maybe a little creepy.

Kiper Ad

Thank the first responders, then enjoy the SPAM

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Everyone has been standing with Boston and Massachusetts over the past week.  Finally, according to the Boston Globe, some political folks figured out a way to benefit from it.  The Democrats get the dubious honor of finishing first in the race to tastelessness:

Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was behind this tasteless tactic, sending out an email and tweet asking people to sign a supposed “thank you note” to the first responders. That would be nice except for the fact that in order to “sign” the note, you have to give the Democratic party your email account and ZIP code.

“We’ll collect every note we get and deliver them to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Tom Men­ino so they can pass along your 
 sentiments,” 
 Wasserman 
 Schultz writes.

A note to the brave police and firefighters?  How sweet.  All you have to do to “sign” it is yield enough information that the DNC can figure out who your Member of Congress is and a way to contact you.  More important, they can tag you as someone who cares about first responders.  Then, if they were so inclined during the next budget crisis and certainly during  the next campaign, the Democrats can reach out to you and tell you how voting for their person means safety, while voting for the Republican means a living in a post-apocalyptic war zone where warlords fight each other over guns and gasoline while neo-feudal serfs cower in terror.

That is, if the Democrats were interested in using first responders as political chess pieces, which they would never do.

If nothing changes, everything will stay like this!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Today, Politico opines that immigration reform will give Democrats a big edge in future elections:

The immigration proposal pending in Congress would transform the nation’s political landscape for a generation or more — pumping as many as 11 million new Hispanic voters into the electorate a decade from now in ways that, if current trends hold, would produce an electoral bonanza for Democrats and cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily.

Even Politico admits that this type of projection is “speculative” given that the newly eligible voters wouldn’t be casting President ballots until 2020 or 2028.  It doesn’t keep them from speculating, though.

This sounds similar to the countless pundits on the right who have been wringing their hands for the last six months over the Great Question of What Went Wrong in 2012.  How, they ask desperately, are we ever to win again?  We don’t speak to minority groups!  We don’t use Big Data!  Our candidates are bad!  Our messages are out of touch!  Look at all the support for President Obama in 2012!

Republicans who feel bad about this should review the last several candidates for President produced by the Democratic party before they struck gold with Obama:

  • John Kerry, an aristocrat out of Massachusetts who couldn’t beat a vulnerable sitting President.
  • Al Gore.
  • Bill Clinton, who was likable enough to score a second term but not ideological enough to move the ball for liberalism.
  • Michael Dukakis.
  • Walter Mondale.
  • Jimmy Carter.
  • George McGovern, an unabashed liberal who was thoroughly crushed.
  • Hubert H. Humphrey.
  • Lyndon Johnson, whose most liberal policies didn’t come out until he one re-election on the coattails of John F. Kennedy’s legacy.
  • JFK, a charismatic and media-friendly candidate who was able to ignite the electorate and win wide popular support.

If you’re scoring at home, that’s 48 years between exciting Democratic candidates.  If you want to find another Democratic candidate who helped the party ideologically, you have to go back to Franklin Roosevelt.

You could make a similar list for Republicans, of course.  The point is, political environments are fleeting and not static.  In eight years, GOP messaging could be very different, and the voices delivering those messages will be different, too – while left-leaning activists may be quoting the Great and Powerful Barack Obama the way today’s conservatives wistfully remember Ronald Reagan.

 

 

Failure at JCP

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Ron Johnson is out as J.C. Penney’s CEO.  The hallmark of Johnson’s short tenure was a radical shift away from the mid-range department store that J.C. Penney had been for years in favor of the more cosmopolitan “JCP,” an attempt to identify at once as both upscale and discount.

The failure is predictable to anyone who has observed JCP closely.  (I have, because I have owned stock in the company, had old friends who work at corporate HQ, have shopped there almost religiously since I knew how to spend money, and most importantly because my Dad and sister worked there for a combined 44 years.  Most of that time belongs to my Dad.)

Johnson’s background involves Target and Apple, and that’s telling – especially the Apple connection.  The most obvious visual changes was the stylized retail environment and the iPhone-powered mobile checkout units that replaced some counters.  The pricing structure famously moved from a sale-driven model to more stable prices that were never slashed – not even for Labor Day or Memorial Day.  There were more nuanced changes, too: St. John’s Bay left the shelves.  The styles got trendier and skinnier.  The labels came to dominate the product; buying “Arizona Jeans” was more important than buying a pair of jeans.

It sounds a bit like Apple, doesn’t it?  Remember the late Steve Jobs’s War on Flash;  The Apple mogul said he didn’t care what websites like YouTube used, he didn’t think Flash was worth supporting on iPhones, iPods, and eventually iPads.  Apple customers must accept that Apple sets the rules for the walled garden.  And they do: Apple is a very large and valuable company.  Here’s the problem, though: Apple customers are different from typical customers.  They are early adopters, and are even willing to spend more for style points.  They don’t necessarily spend like drunken sailors, but price is not the main driver.

If an Apple user were more price conscious, they might end up buying a cheaper Dell or HP laptop over a MacBook, or an Android phone or tablet instead of an iPhone or iPad.  In fact, that’s probably a big reason Android enjoys higher market share than iPhone.

J.C. Penney legacy customers have shopped sales and sought low prices for generations.  Changing the store’s philosophy would have worked if they were the only player in the space, or if JCP customers had the unwavering loyalty of Apple disciples.

Stuck in between discount clothing stores like Wal-Mart and Target and higher-end department stores like Nordstrom, there’s no doubt that J.C. Penney needed a facelift.  Johnson tried to perform a face lift, breast augmentation, and liposuction at the same time.  One wonders if Johnson ever shopped at J.C. Penney before his time as CEO.

A better strategy might have started with more in-depth analysis and testing in select markets before rolling out national shot-in-the-dark initiatives like the the “No Coupons Ever” debacle.  Had Johnson been more patient, he might have been able to carry out smaller changes, such as incorporating online sales into the in-store shopping experience or redesigning the retail environment without alienating the core shopper.

Instead, Johnson’s year and a half of leadership led to a rudderless company that somehow felt it could dictate terms to its customers.  Brand loyalty, for most people, extends only so far as price; not every brand can sell the way Apple does.  Learning that lesson cost Ron Johnson his job.