Archive for April 21st, 2010

It’s called "principle": Why tea partiers swayed by a dollar-a-day …

April 21, 2010

Punch line: Tea party supporters are not easily bought off with dollar-a-day tax credits — they resist an emerging culture of dependence.

* * * * *
Excerpted from Washington Examiner, Tea Partiers Fight Culture of Dependence, April 19, 2010

The Obama Democrats’ vast expansion of the size and scope of government — is really not just about economics. It is really a battle about culture, a battle between the culture of dependence and the culture of independence.

The Obama Democrats see a society in which ordinary people cannot fend for themselves, where they need to have their incomes supplemented, their health care insurance regulated and guaranteed, their relationships with their employers governed by union leaders. Highly educated mandarins can make better decisions for them than they can make themselves. That is the culture of dependence.

The tea partiers see things differently.

They’re not looking for lower taxes — half of tea party supporters, a New York Times survey found, think their taxes are fair. Nor are they financially secure — half say someone in their household may lose their job in the next year. Two-thirds say the recession has caused some hardship in their lives.

But they recognize, correctly, that the Obama Democrats are trying to permanently enlarge government and increase citizens’ dependence on it. They believe that this will destroy the culture of independence which has enabled Americans over the past two centuries to make this the most productive and prosperous — and the most charitably generous — nation in the world.

Seeing our political divisions as a battle between the culture of dependence and the culture of independence helps to make sense of the divisions seen in the 2008 election. Barack Obama carried voters with incomes under $50,000 and those with incomes over $200,000, and lost those with incomes in between. He won large margins from those who never graduated from high school and from those with graduate school degrees, and barely exceeded 50 percent among those in between.

The top-and-bottom Obama coalition was in effect a coalition of those dependent on government transfers and benefits and those in “the educated class,” who administer administer those transactions. They are the natural constituency for the culture of dependence.

The in-between people on the income and education ladders, it turns out, are a constituency for the culture of independence.

Tea party supporters are not in the mood to be bought off with $400 tax credits. They have a longer time horizon and can see where the Obama Democrats are trying to take us.

Full article:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/19/tea_partiers_fight_culture_of_dependence.html

Posted in Obama Administration, Tea Party | Leave a Comment »

In this economy, “earned success.” is harder to come by …

April 21, 2010

Punchline: This economy makes job satisfaction a thing of the past … and in the future, will people be happy forking over their earnings to the government or will they find real satisfaction when holding their hands out to the government?

* * * * *
Excerpted from RCP: Under Obama, Reducing Choices for the Future, April 5, 2010

As Americans, we get such satisfaction when we believe the work we are doing — in workplaces and in community activities and voluntary associations — is serving interests broader than our own.

We’re making use of our talents, whatever they may be, to make a contribution to society.

It’s hard to get that kind of satisfaction in this kind of economy.

People say, “At least I’ve got a job.”

Not a satisfying job, not one that it makes full use of their talents and interests, not one that provides a sense of earned success.

Just a job, a source of income.

The kind of job in which you keep looking at the clock, counting the time before you can leave, counting the hours until the weekend comes.

The economy we enjoyed between 1983, when the Ronald Reagan tax cuts kicked in, and 2007, when the housing market collapsed, provided many more jobs in which people could gain such satisfaction.

You could make a living as a master carpenter, as an actor or sewing quilts because steady economic growth and low inflation meant expanded markets for custom goods.

You could do work you really wanted to do. You didn’t have to settle for a data-entry or bolt-attaching job.

The economy we have now doesn’t do that.

Full article:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/05/under_obama_reducing_choices_for_the_future.html

Posted in Employment - Jobs | Leave a Comment »

Gillette’s retaliation may give Shick razor burn

April 21, 2010

Takeaway: For years, the makers of men’s razors have focused on improving their products’ engineering specs, namely by adding blades. Shick has finally broken this cycle of one-upmanship by focusing on the needs of their customers, which center around comfort.

However, in making this potentially breakthrough move, Shick has awakened a giant. P&G’s Gillette will be quick to follow with a relaunched Fusion razor aimed to address the same needs as Shick’s product.

Will Shick’s launch provide the company with a first-mover advantage in comfort positioning? Or, will Gillette’s brand recognition, enormous advertising support, and best-in-class distribution system leave Shick all cut up?

* * * * *
Excerpt from New York Times, “New Razors Place Focus on Comfort, Not Blade Count” by Andrew Adam Newman, April 18, 2010.

When Gillette introduced the first three-bladed razor in the United States in 1998, it struck some as absurd, and “Saturday Night Live” at the time pitched a 14-blade razor in a parody commercial. But blade escalation continued: Rival Schick introduced the four-bladed Quattro in 2003, and Gillette struck back with the five-bladed Fusion in 2005.

Schick is introducing a new razor, the Hydro, however, and this time it is not raising the blade ante. The new razor is available in both five- and three-blade versions, and advertising focuses less on blades than how a moisturizing gadget reduces irritation.

New television commercials show men getting an unexpected splash from a boxing glove or a soccer ball exploding like a water balloon, drenching the player.

“As you continue to add more blades, there are diminishing returns because more and more blades make a bigger cartridge and that makes it hard to shave in all the nooks and crannies on your face,” said a Schick brand manager. “So instead of more blades, we’re providing a more lubricious, smoother, more comfortable shave.”

The razor replaces the moisturizing strip on the razor’s head with a gel reservoir that exudes aloe and vitamin E.

“It’s by far the biggest launch we’ve ever done, our largest capital commitment for R.& D. and marketing, and by far the best technology we’ve ever come up with,” said a company representative.

Schick, which was bought by Energizer in 2003, is dwarfed in the razor category by Gillette, a Procter & Gamble brand. Gillette has 66 percent and Schick has 25 percent of the nondisposable razor segment. In the $781 million replacement cartridge segment, Gillette commands an 83 percent share, compared with 14 percent for Schick.

“In brand marketing, when you do something and it works, you keep doing it until it stops working, and that’s what it felt like was happening when companies went from one to three to five blades,” said marketing professor at New York University. “They added so many blades that they have unwanted effects, like more irritation. It was absurd, frankly, and it got to be a marketing gimmick.”

While razor makers tend to stress technological advances and performance, which can make razors seem more like racecars, the new Schick campaign focuses more on how it treats skin.

Schick says its internal research found that only 30 percent of men shaved five or more times a week. The company is publicizing a poll it commissioned which found, conveniently enough, that men who shave five or more times a week have sex twice as frequently as the stubbly, and that 82 percent of women prefer cleanly shaven men.

Gillette, meanwhile, will introduce a razor in June that, rather than add another blade, similarly promises to make shaving with five blades less irritating. The Fusion ProGlide, as its name makes clear, will not be an entirely new razor, but rather an extension of Fusion, a brand that Procter & Gamble reports grew faster than any other in its history, earning $1 billion within two years of its introduction.

“If you’re going to address comfort, the place to start is not by adding blades but rather to work on the engineering of the blades themselves,” said Stew Taub, associate director of male premium systems at Gillette.

The ProGlide makes seven comfort-related improvements to the Fusion, including using thinner blades with improved friction-reducing coating. The company also will introduce a preshave facial scrub that causes a warming sensation, as well as a postshave cooling lotion under the ProGlide label.

“Consumers vote with their purchases and have overwhelmingly said Fusion is best, and we’ve chosen to take it up a notch,” said a Gillette spokesman.

Mr. Jones said the innovations in the ProGlide had been in development for years. But some industry analysts think Gillette is rushing a comfort-driven product to market to steal Schick’s thunder.

“It looks like a fairly quick and defensive move on Gillette’s part,” a marketing professor at NYU said. “For me the big news is that Schick, after being almost an afterthought in the category for many years, has staked out some smart territory, and is acting like a real brand marketing company.”

Edit by BHC

* * * * *
Full Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/business/media/19adco.html?ref=media

 

Posted in Mktg - Product & Innovation | Leave a Comment »