Just ... Say ... What?

I keep in close contact, via the Internet, with a bunch of guys from my high school. Most of the talk either is sports-related or revolves around the activities of friends and family. Only a tiny bit ever involves our businesses, and none of it is ever even remotely vulgar.Although our e-mails now focus only on good clean fun, our restraint has nothing to do with high-mindedness. Back in the day, more than a few of these guys had adventures that would make Mick Jagger blush. They are older, somewhat wiser and a lot more Republican these days, but a few still have a distinctly rowdy streak. Nonetheless, all bawdiness is bowdlerized in our now very polite e-correspondence because of a little invention called Nanny Software.You cannot use words like "tip" or "rumor" or phrases like "inside scoop" or "buy out" in any context -- even sports -- because the I.T. departments at some brokerage houses intercept them. You cannot append earthy movie clips because they send up red flags at some law firms and retail chains. After more than a few "You guys wanna get me fired?" e-mails with the swear words automatically ####ed out by the nanny software in the response, our group got the message.Round one to the nannies, who are having a big winter. In Canada, the courts have just freed them up to clamp down very hard on cigarette displays. My colleague Peter Breen takes you through this worrying development in this issue.At a recent Executive Advisory Council meeting of the In-Store Marketing Institute, we heard Kraft executives explain the demographic data behind their decision to emphasize healthy balance in the marketing of food products. Evidently, someone convinced them that because my 17-year-old nephew is overweight -- notwithstanding his propensity for all-night Grand Theft Auto marathons on his PlayStation, armed only with a bag of Oreos, a can of Pringles and a 12-pack of Mountain Dew -- it's their fault. The nannies win again.To top it off, I have just been informed that P-O-P is driving South Dakota's teenagers to drink. According to a Rand Corp. study, "Certain types of alcohol advertising may lead adolescents to begin drinking or increase their use of alcohol. Researchers from Rand Health found that adolescents who more frequently viewed prominent beer advertising displays in grocery and c-stores were more likely to begin drinking alcohol than peers who viewed fewer of these displays."The study, published in the Feb. 5 edition of the journal Addiction, followed 3,111 South Dakota adolescents from seventh grade to ninth grade, collecting information about their alcohol use, television viewing and exposure to advertising. "It appears that it's a combination of message and venue that helps influence adolescent drinking," said its author, Phyllis Ellickson. "Advertising that links alcohol with everyday life -- such as supermarket store displays -- appears to have more influence on drinking initiation."Wow! I can't tell if this is bad news or good news for the P-O-P business. If teenagers really are that impressionable in stores, let's start erecting retail-display-shrines to the virtues of doing your homework, taking out the garbage and not exceeding the speed limit.Nevertheless, a few words of caution are in order. First, I direct your attention to the recurring use of the word "appears" in Ms. Ellickson's quotes (just in case you didn't see all of my added-emphasis already). If Bill Clinton were caught qualifying his statements that overtly, he'd have been laughed right out of the Monica Lewinsky deposition. By his own lawyer.Moreover, the P-O-P part of the testing involved showing kids "a photograph from the refrigerator section of a store that showed stacks of beer and large signs advertising the prices and brands." What? No Coors twins? No St. Pauli Girl? Not even Spuds McKenzie? Considering the very nondescript in-store elements that Rand's researchers used, one has to think that the question, "Have you ever seen beer in a supermarket?" would have yielded pretty much the same results.I am not some red-stater scoffing at all intervention by the state. Being a social progressive by disposition, I happen to believe that school lunch programs for poor kids are the least we can do, that sex education classes are better than nothing at all in a world of preventable STDs, and that a mastery of "creation science" will not help tomorrow's rockets fly any faster.However, when it comes to snacks and fast food and cigarettes and booze, the nanny wannabes are off base. We live in the most vibrant economy the world has ever seen, producing the greatest abundance of goods at the most affordable prices known to man. Quite simply, we have too much of everything within too easy a reach for our own good.I sometimes wish we really could pin the blame for America's overindulgence problem on the power of advertising campaigns, a product's packaging and the posting of signs on a wall. For if that really were the case, then Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No!" campaign would have won the War on Drugs decades ago.

Just ... Say ... What?

P2PI MEMBERS

JOIN P2PI

Related Topics

Business Topic

Market Segment

P2PI MEMBERS

JOIN P2PI

Related Topics

Related Articles

Business Topic

Market Segment