#Reframing Haiti

[fritzinie]

The Haiti You Don’t Know

I don’t know the Haiti that you’ve all heard aboutSo allow me to introduce you to The Haiti that’s not on the news or your social media feedsThe Haiti that’s not trailing behind every charity eventI don’t think you’ve heard about my haitiThe haiti where your neighbors can lend you a dollarOr a table spoon of butterYou don’t know the type of generosity and understanding that weights on everyone’s…

[mariacallous]

In May 1954, less than a decade after the founding of the United Nations, then-Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold concluded an address to the University of California, Berkeley by asserting that the organization “was not created in order to bring us to heaven but in order to save us from hell.” His words now seem a clear-eyed description of both the world body’s raison d’être and its limitations: The U.N. cannot necessarily prevent wars, but it may be able to disincentivize their worst excesses.

The collegiate audience would have understood “hell” as referring to the horrors of World War II. Hammarskjold also spoke just one year after the end of the Korean War, the first conflict in which the U.N. took a side, supporting South Korea. The Korean armistice created the Demilitarized Zone, freeing those south of the line from the invading communists but trapping those north under a despotic regime. The decision was seen as preferable to allowing the entire Korean Peninsula to fall.

Today, the Security Council, the U.N. organ with primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, finds itself at an impasse. Council members are often unable to agree on when to make demands of member states, and when the council does make demands, they are seldom implemented. This institutional paralysis harms U.N. credibility and affects the conflicts currently dominating headlines—in Gaza and Ukraine—and those raging just offscreen, such as in Haiti and Sudan.

Some world powers, chief among them Russia, are using the deadlock on the Security Council to deflect from their own actions—distractions that can quickly reverberate around the world. Both Israel and the Palestinians have recently used the platform to hone their messaging on the war in Gaza. Palestine’s permanent observer to the U.N. has accused Israel of exaggerating some details of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, when militants killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted 253 others. Israel has invited diplomats, politicians, and journalists (including this reporter) to view footage from the attack.

Nearly six months into the war, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry estimates that some 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, many of them women and children, and many more have been seriously injured. Israel says at least 134 hostages remain in Gaza, and some are presumed dead. On March 25, after months of back and forth, the Security Council adopted a resolution, drafted by the 10 elected members of the body, demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and the unconditional release of all hostages.

The United States abstained, allowing the resolution to go through—days after Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-drafted resolution also calling for a cease-fire. (A Security Council resolution requires nine votes in favor, with no vetoes from the five permanent members.) The United States used its own veto to stop three previous Gaza cease-fire resolutions. In those cases, it cited Israel’s right to self-defense, ongoing negotiations in the Middle East, or the council’s failure to condemn the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, which Washington and other capitals consider a terrorist organization.

The competing Gaza resolutions show how, in the 70 years since Hammarskjold’s speech, the body politic that makes up the U.N. has grown further apart. This polarization disturbs the heading of the organization’s moral compass. Increasingly, the needle swings according to the interest of the dominant faction during a given crisis, which has proved useful to parties seeking to reframe public perceptions—and to nudge this needle in the direction of their choosing.

In the clash of wills over Gaza on the Security Council, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, accused the 11 council members that voted for the recent U.S.-drafted resolution of “cover[ing] themselves in disgrace.” He then stated, without irony, that Russia understood its role as a founding member of the U.N. and recognized the “historical global responsibility we shoulder for the maintenance of international peace and security.” When both Russia and China vetoed the U.S. draft, it was a bit of déjà vu: Last October, the two powers vetoed a humanitarian-focused resolution on Gaza submitted by the United States.

Of course, the latest round of Security Council ping-pong has played out while Russia has a particular incentive to distract from its ongoing war in Ukraine. For her part, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Russia and China vetoed the U.S.-drafted resolution for two cynical reasons: first, she speculated, because they could not bring themselves to “condemn Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Oct. 7,” and second, because Russia and China simply didn’t want to vote for a draft written by the United States, because they “would rather see us fail than to see this council succeed.”

Meanwhile, Israel has continued its own lobbying. As months dragged on without the Security Council condemning the Oct. 7 attack, Israel’s U.N. envoy began calling on the U.N. secretary-general to resign and addressing Security Council meetings wearing a yellow Star of David. Two weeks before the council considered the latest cease-fire resolutions, Israel’s foreign minister came to New York—accompanied by family members of hostages—to speak to a Security Council meeting about a U.N. report detailing sexual violence on Oct. 7 and to demand that the council designate Hamas as a terrorist organization and impose sanctions.

Israel’s messaging has made some impact. Some countries have paused their financial support for UNRWA, the U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees, over Israeli accusations that it employs Hamas members, including some involved in the Oct. 7 attack. The U.N. created a working group chaired by Catherine Colonna, who was until recently France’s foreign minister, to restore confidence in the agency; she is due to release a report in April with recommendations on how to strengthen its neutrality.

Until recently, the fiercest tug of war on the Security Council was over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv has now shifted its diplomatic strategy away from the U.N., two years after Moscow’s veto power blocked the Security Council from condemning the invasion. In February 2022 and 2023, the 193-member General Assembly twice voted overwhelmingly to demand Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine—votes that are nonbinding but are widely seen as reflecting global opinion. However, by the time of the second anniversary of the invasion, the mood had darkened.

The General Assembly did not hold another symbolic vote, but if it had, diplomats say some Middle Eastern countries that once supported Ukraine may have abstained because Kyiv abstained on resolutions calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

When Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba emerged from the session marking the second anniversary in February, asked what he expected from the U.N. General Assembly, he told reporters, “My main audience today was our fellow colleagues from Asia, from Africa, from Latin America.” His priority was to explain Ukraine’s peace formula and the peace summit the country was planning with Switzerland, he said: “We want them to understand this initiative. We want them to understand that Ukraine wants peace more than anyone else.”

Kuleba’s answer was telling. He has clearly grasped the need to shore up Ukraine’s support in the global south, where Russia has made headway, and Kyiv is venturing further afield of the Security Council. At the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, last year, G-7 leaders declared their intention to work on a series of bilateral security arrangements with Ukraine. Today, more than 30 countries are in bilateral negotiations to help shore up Ukraine’s defenses.

And when it comes to pursuing peace, the center of gravity has also shifted away from the U.N. headquarters in New York—to Switzerland for Ukrainians and to Qatar or Egypt for Palestinians. “I think that everyone quietly understands that the political deals necessary to end the Hamas-Israel war and the Russia-Ukraine war will not come out of the U.N.,” said Richard Gowan, the International Crisis Group’s U.N. director. “Instead, the U.N. is a platform for governments to vent and cast symbolic votes. It’s a venue for public messaging in these cases, not real diplomacy.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov turned up in New York for a series of meetings on Gaza in January, a week after the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland—where Russian officials and oligarchs have not been welcome for two years. An old hand at the U.N., Lavrov swept through the U.N. headquarters as if it were his own Davos. He convened a side meeting of envoys of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and held bilateral meetings with the Palestinian permanent observer to the U.N. and with foreign ministers from a swath of Middle Eastern countries, including NATO member Turkey, current Security Council member Algeria, and Iran, which financially backs Hamas.

At the time, Russia’s hard-fought battle to capture Avdiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine, was reaching its climax—and Moscow was arguing vociferously in the Security Council for a cease-fire in Gaza. This strategy has distracted from some of Russia’s other actions, including making North Korea a key supplier for ammunition, artillery, and missiles in violation of Security Council resolutions. Last week, Russia used its veto power to shield North Korea from a long-running U.N. monitoring program to enforce these sanctions after April. (China abstained, and the 13 other council members voted in favor.)

In February, South Korea and Japan, two current Security Council members, both expressed concern that Russian weapons transfers could end up aiding North Korea’s ballistic missile or nuclear weapons program—another global security threat.

There are benefits to dialogue between adversaries at the U.N. The closed-door meetings of the Security Council, where resolutions are hashed out in advance of a public meeting, provide rare opportunities for U.S. and Russian diplomats to interact. “I heard Americans saying that they appreciate talking to Russians at the closed meetings, even if they fight, but that’s the only place where they can actually interact with the Russians,” a diplomat recently said, speaking anonymously under diplomatic rules.

But when the Security Council approves resolutions, there can be little to show for it on the ground. Last October, the council authorized a peacekeeping force manned by Kenyan security personnel to grapple with the breakdown in public order in Haiti, but the deployment has been delayed amid spiraling violence. In Mali, where Russia’s Wagner Group forces have sealed a protection deal with the country’s military leaders, the junta forced out U.N. peacekeepers in December. The Security Council recently called for a Ramadan cease-fire in Sudan; three weeks into the Muslim holy month, the guns have not been silenced.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was one of the bright spots of U.N. diplomacy—until it wasn’t. The U.N. and Turkey brokered a deal to permit Russian and Ukrainian food and fertilizer shipments through the Black Sea. When the Kremlin withdrew from the arrangement last summer, the U.N. warned that the end of this deal might result in sharply higher global food prices and even famine in vulnerable countries.

In the end, the worst didn’t come to pass, in large part because Ukraine called Russia’s bluff that it would sink commercial vessels and kept the sea lanes open by sinking Russian military vessels in a series of sea drone and missile strikes. It wasn’t the United Nations’ moral compass that averted catastrophe—it was warfare.

Some analysts have unfavorably compared today’s U.N. to its predecessor, the League of Nations, which failed to prevent World War II. Others have suggested that it should be condemned to the dustbin of history. Things have changed since Hammarskjold’s 1954 speech. The Security Council’s commitment to support South Korea would not happen today; at the time, the Soviet Union was boycotting the council, and China was represented at the U.N. not by the Chinese Communist Party, which had just seized power, but by the Republic of China, the government that had fled to Taiwan.

But the challenges that the U.N. faces now are not new. The most significant change to the body in the last eight decades was the composition of the Security Council, and there have long been calls for reform to better reflect today’s world. The council expanded from 11 to 15 members in 1965, but there is no consensus on how to fairly add more. And more to the point, increasing the number of council members with veto power might enhance equity while further impairing the body’s effectiveness. Focusing on reforming procedures, including the veto power, may be more productive.

None of this accounts for the fact that the U.N. has become more polarized over the last decade because the world has too—both between countries and within them. But in the end, it would be a mistake to write off the U.N., which still ultimately aims toward Hammarskjold’s vision. The international community must hope against hope that these good intentions push the needle back in the right direction.

[finishinglinepress]

FLP POETRY BOOK OF THE DAY: Dreams of Diaspora by S.K. Rancy

ADVANCE ORDER: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/dreams-of-diaspora-by-s-k-rancy/

“Confronting the fragmented narratives of slavery and colonization in the Caribbean, DREAMS OF DIASPORA grapples with questions of place, belonging, and identity of the dispossessed. In scales both intimate and epic, probing the region’s revolutionary and literary legacies, these poems wander the seas of the Americas, centering the roles of class, race, economics, and history in the decimation of Haiti and the migration of peoples around the globe. At once eulogy and song, DREAMS OF DIASPORA forges a new understanding of self for the Caribbean’s decolonized, reframing what it means to be home.”

SK RANCY is a writer born to Haitian immigrants in South Florida. His poetry has been a finalist for Tupelo Quarterly’s Poetry Prize, and has been published or is forthcoming in Apogee, The Seventh Wave, Moko Magazine, The Adirondack Review, Porridge Magazine, Sargasso: A Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language & Culture, and others. Currently, he is at work on a novel. In his spare time, he is a surgical resident. DREAMS OF DIASPORA is his first publication.

PRAISE FOR Dreams of Diaspora by S.K. Rancy

Dextrous and commanding, Dreams of Diaspora is a love song to those who move across oceans and borders, celebrating the revolutionary traditions of the Americas while acknowledging the ways in which the region is still marked by colonialism. Rancy recognizes the Black diaspora as an important vantage point, one that allows us to see in many directions, including the ancestral past and a decolonized future. With language both searing and delicate, Dreams of Diaspora is revelatory and prescient.

—Desiree C. Bailey, Author of What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press, 2021), desireecbailey.com, she/her

S.K. Rancy‘s exquisite poem-explosions are so many wide-open windows onto the contradictions of a deeply diasporic Black American life. Full at once with fury and with hope, these are stories told by one who knows and feels this country intimately, but still sits / sits still just outside its subtle borders – living, observing at a distance not-quite-safe. To read Rancy’s words is to sit with him and feel, too, how the spiral of shared history simmers beneath every moment of our divided present. His work is a gentle proposition for healing in a reimagined time-space of home.

–Kaiama L. Glover, Ph.D., author; translator; co-editor of archipelagos | a journal of Caribbean digital praxis; Professor of French & Africana Studies at Barnard College of Columbia University; and awardee of PEN/Heim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Mellon Foundation

Please share/please repost [PROMO]#flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry #read #poetrybook #poems #slavery #colonization #caribbean

[fatehbaz]

Writing a total social history of 18th Century New Orleans, Cécile Vidal offers to reframe it as a Caribbean outpost of the French Empire rather than [primarily] as a North American frontier town. [...] [Vidal] proposes [...] [the French] colonial period as one primarily affected by the relations with the main French colony of Saint-Domingue [Haiti] that “exhorted a profound influence on New Orleans society” (p. 9). More largely, this vantage point on the city aims at [...] situating “early North America history on the periphery of Caribbean history”, and, more broadly, “all American colonial and slave societies as parts of a continuum” (p .2). [...]

---

[S]tructural developments in the city’s history under French rule were often found at “the intersection between the North American and West Indian worlds” (p.23). [...] While exploring the contours of the city’s founding era until the 1731 Crown takeover, [Vidal’s first chapter] puts great care in replacing the city’s emergence within the specific imperial, Atlantic, and regional conditions, that ultimately led to the “Caribbeanization of New Orleans and Louisiana society” (p. 29).

Then, the colony came to a turning point in November 1729 after a deadly Natchez Indians’ attack on Fort Rosalie that “could have led to a complete inversion of the colonial order” (p. 106). The revolt [...] truly forms a turning point in this relation between race and empire analyzed throughout the book. It prompted a sharp migratory trend from the plantations back to the capital that eventually concentrated both the white and slave populations within the same area. For white colonists, this pitted the lower ranks of the urban population against the top urban dwellers formed by administrative officials and clergymen who sought to distinguish themselves by acquiring nearby plantations. For slaves, the general direction adopted was similar but the strategies different. 

A “rival geography”, as Vidal puts it, was developed by slaves many of whom resorted to a petit marronage made of short-term escapes from their plantations or households in and around New Orleans, but also by a desire to find temporary employment, sometimes a one-day task, in the city, in order to “enjoy a more autonomous life” (p. 130) and attain a “measure of anonymity” (p. 131). Nevertheless, “disappearing was not easy” (p. 131) in a locale where patrolling militias and networks of control had been patiently built in the aftermath of the Natchez revolt. [...] [T]he apex of the Louisianan colonial project became centered on New Orleans after 1731 after another plot among the Bambara slaves was discovered and suppressed. 

The administrative capital progressively became the ville above all other cities where “a sense of community among white urbanites” (p. 141) developed against the sources of disorder represented by Indians and Africans. [...]

---

Against generalizations on the “Creole” character of Louisiana, Chapter IX finally examines how the use of particular labels was contingent to racial and political understandings of what constituted a pays, and, then, later on, during the 1768 revolt against the new Spanish governor Ulloa, a nation. For the white population, “ethno-labels” (p. 468) were varied and referred to the origins of French speaking migrants whether these were Canadiens or Provençal or from another pays in continental France. [...] These attempts at differentiation found echoes later with the larger debates on racial degeneracy initiated by Cornelius De Pauw and Buffon in the metropole. [...] This tendency to define and exclude through different ethno-labels thus achieved its apex with “Creole” from the 1740s onward when both authors with a colonial background and enlightened metropolitan critics attached a “Creole” identity with “a person’s purity with blood”, and guarded against “the suspicion of métissage” (p. 455) [...]

Furthermore, this study goes beyond the encyclopedic exercise on secondary literature as it also presents detailed archival references in both local (American) and colonial (French) archival centers, the whole constituting the most erudite and synthetic study of a colonial city since Anne Pérotin-Dumon’s book on Pointe-à-Pitre and Basse-Terre, published in 2000. Carribean New Orleans remarkably concludes decades of research conducted by the author [...]. [T]his total social history of the city will help scholars to move away from the “creole singularity” paradigm and finally “draw comparisons between New Orleans and other places within the greater Caribbean, the French empire, and the Atlantic world.”

---

All text above by: Andy Cabot. “Was New Orleans Caribbean?” Books and Ideas (College de France). Published online 20 April 2020. At: booksnadideas.net/Was-New-Orleans-Caribbean. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Article refers to Cecile Vidal’s book Caribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society (2019).]

[brooklynmuseum]

In anticipation of the (now virtual) New York Caribbean Week and the annual Labor Day Parade, this August we’re highlighting artworks in the Museum’s collection that celebrate the presence of Caribbean culture and its diasporas.

On first seeing the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1981, artist Lorraine O’Grady wrote, “I knew what I was looking at; and what I didn't know, I sensed. I never had to translate Jean-Michel, perhaps because I too came from a Caribbean-American family of a certain class.” What does it mean to sense connection with an artwork? For O’Grady, Basquiat’s work resonated because he was speaking from a shared heritage, what she described as "kids no longer Caribbean and not yet American." O’Grady also witnessed how Basquiat was framed in a Eurocentric context as he rose to fame in a predominantly white art world. Reframing the artist’s work through his Caribbean and Afro-descendent heritage, and roots in Puerto Rico and Haiti, reveals how Basquiat was also making art in dialogue with Yoruba religion, Mandé culture, the history of slavery in the Americas, and postcolonial perspectives.  

Posted by Forrest Pelsue Brooklyn Museum, Installation views, Basquiat, March 11, 2005 through June 5, 2005. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

[haitilegends]

🎥 "DJ Producer Michael Brun talks to CNN about Haiti" on YouTube

https://youtu.be/2mJ3GvgKcbI

By Michael Brun

"I spoke with @lyndakinkade on CNN this morning about Haiti.

I believe it’s important to help amplify more voices from the country with my platform and reframe the narrative. A majority of the successful relief efforts in #Haiti after the recent earthquake have been coming from local #Haitian Doctors, Engineers, and professionals. We need to continue to support them and share their stories."

🇭🇹❤️

Source:

@michaelbrun

https://instagram.com/michaelbrun

_________

Jean Jean-Pierre

HAÏTI⭐LEGENDS

#MichaelBrun #CNN

#HaitiEarthquakeRelief

#Haitiearthquake2021

#Haitilegends

#ZamarHaiti #jeanjeanpierre #iamgabrisan

[haitianhistory]

Gaffield, Julia, ed. The Haitian Declaration of Independence: Creation, Context, and Legacy. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016, 296pp.

Liberté ou la mort: Placing the Haitian Revolution in the Age of Revolution and Atlantic History

In the words of the publisher: “While the Age of Revolution has long been associated with the French and American Revolutions, increasing attention is being paid to the Haitian Revolution as the third great event in the making of the modern world. A product of the only successful slave revolution in history, Haiti’s Declaration of Independence in 1804 stands at a major turning point in the trajectory of social, economic, and political relations in the modern world. This declaration created the second independent country in the Americas and certified a new genre of political writing. Despite Haiti’s global significance, however, scholars are only now beginning to understand the context, content, and implications of the Haitian Declaration of Independence.”

“This collection represents the first in-depth, interdisciplinary, and integrated analysis by American, British, and Haitian scholars of the creation and dissemination of the document, its content and reception, and its legacy. Throughout, the contributors use newly discovered archival materials and innovative research methods to reframe the importance of Haiti within the Age of Revolution and to reinterpret the declaration as a founding document of the nineteenth-century Atlantic World.”

“The authors offer new research about the key figures involved in the writing and styling of the document, its publication and dissemination, the significance of the declaration in the creation of a new nation-state, and its implications for neighboring islands. The contributors also use diverse sources to understand the lasting impact of the declaration on the country more broadly, its annual celebration and importance in the formation of a national identity, and its memory and celebration in Haitian Vodou song and ceremony. Taken together, these essays offer a clearer and more thorough understanding of the intricacies and complexities of the world’s second declaration of independence to create a lasting nation-state.”

Gaffield is an Assistant Professor of History at Georgia State University. Her faculty page notes that she is “a historian of the early-modern Atlantic World. She completed her Ph.D. in the Department of History at Duke University in 2012. Her research focuses on the early independence period in Haiti and seeks to understand the connections between Haiti and other Atlantic colonies, countries, and empires in the early 19th century.”

*You can read a review of this collaborative effort here (by Prof. Roberto Breña). 

[growninhaiti]

Very few things are as satisfying as turning raw/reclaimed wood into something smooth and polished with nothing but hand tools (meaning no power tools). Hoping to reframe one of our widows before it starts to rain. Learned a lot since I first made it and using better wood that won’t rot so easily. Learning more everyday🤓 ・・・ #growninhaiti #woodworking #framing #spanishcedar #haiti #ayiti #handtools #forgottencrafts #homeimprovements #tinyhouse #diy #doityourself #learnsomethingneweveryday https://www.instagram.com/p/B-mdzrilciz/?igshid=16wifpoidfigd

[stardustbijoux]

Stunning #1960s #vintage Haitian artwork - painted by G Leveque. the #art was was reframed in the #original frame, using museum grade mats, backing, mounting and UV protection glass. * The art has been professionally framed using museum grade mats, backing, mounting and UV protection glass. visit our jewelry shop for more great finds! http://www.etsy.com/shop/stardustbijoux #haitian #artwork #Gleveque #Leveque #haiti https://www.instagram.com/p/BpvhQY2hYTQ/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1vpxeczntyas2

[trascapades]

🎬#ArtIsAWeapon

"Exterminate All The Brutes" is a vast, unflinching examination of white supremacy's origins, European colonization and world history. It unravels the true creation of America and the false narratives we've been fed about this country's mythological "exceptionalism."

In this clip, writer and director #RaoulPeck shares his intentions for creating and the significance of this four-hour series, which is streaming on @hbomax.

THIS IS NECESSARY VIEWING! I have been watching for weeks - taking breaks (it is a LOT), rewinding and writing notes. It requires your full attention! Please see and spread the word about this series, and also check its "re-education" materials available at: www.hbo.com/exterminate-all-the-brutes

Reposted from @hbo:

"Exterminate All the Brutes," from acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro, HBO’s Sometimes in April), is a four-part hybrid docuseries that provides a visually arresting journey through time, into the darkest hours of humanity. Through his personal voyage, Peck deconstructs the making and masking of history, digging deep into the exploitative and genocidal aspects of European colonialism — from America to Africa and its impact on society today.

Based on works by three authors and scholars — Sven Lindqvist’s Exterminate All the Brutes, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past — Exterminate All the Brutes revisits and reframes the profound meaning of the Native American genocide and American slavery and their fundamental implications for our present.

The series disrupts formal and artistic film conventions by weaving together rich documentary footage and archival material, as well as animation and interpretive scripted scenes that offer a counter-narrative to white Eurocentric history. Through a sweeping story in which history, contemporary life and fiction are wholly intertwined, the series challenges the audience to re-think the very notion of how history is being written.

#ExterminateAllTheBrutes

#AllTheBrutesHBO #WhiteSupremacy @velvet_film #BlackArtists #BlackFilmmakers #Haiti #BlackGirlFilmGeeks

[go-redgirl]

Blackburn: ‘Nothing’ Will Stop Amy Coney Barrett Vote Before Election

As Democrats push to stop Supreme Court justice nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) advised on Tuesday that there is “nothing” that would stop the confirmation hearings and vote from taking place before the presidential election.

Blackburn said on Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Company” that Democrats’ efforts to delay the process and call into question the adoption of her two Haitian children “incredibly inappropriate” and “unseemly.”

Host Stuart Varney asked Blackburn, “Can you see anything that stops a vote in the confirmation of the judge before the election?”

“There is nothing that would stop the vote, Stuart,” Blackburn began, “and we know that Senator Durbin admitted as much as this weekend on TV. What they’re trying to do is delay. What they’re trying to do is reframe the argument, and the treatment that they are giving Judge Barrett, I think, is just incredibly inappropriate. But they did this to Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh, and it looks like they want to get back to their old tricks.”

“But to say we need to investigate these adoptions from Haiti of the two children that they have adopted, I think that that is just so unseemly,” she concluded.

READ MORE STORIES ABOUT:

Clip sPolitics Amy Coney Barrett Fox Business Network Marsha Blackburn Varney & Company

[thewyrdwritere]

Natives

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala My rating: 5 of 5 stars "Blood a go run, if justice na come" Within the first few pages of Akala Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire the reader is confronted with a Black history that is often at odds with the general narrative of Britain being ‘Great’. Born into the tumultuous decade of the 1980s Akala fuses is own life experiences with Britain’s political history to fire a polemic that reframes the readers perspectives on identity, class and power in a post-imperial Britain. Natives is anchored by Akala’s memoirs, his upbringing in Camden and his response to being racialized as Black. It is often a violent, harrowing and tragic account of being Black within a socio-political system that has historically been designed to dehumanise Black identity. It is not always an easy read. Akala’s recollection of his youth is a litany of petty inter-personal racism and racial profiling colliding with the failure of state educations, a fusion that seeks to explain the extreme bravado and violence that comes with being young, Black, male and marginalised. Similarly, dehumanisation is exposed through the deconstruction of the Black sporting identity, lambasting the media’s physical ridicule of Olympic sprinter Linford Christie despite his talent and hard work and gutting the racist tropes of ‘slave-bred’ physicality through a patient explanation of the local cultural and national factors that affect sporting glory. Akala’s deep connections to Caribbean community and pan-African Saturday schools nurtured his abilities where state school couldn’t or wouldn’t and it these generational and cultural connections that gives access to perspectives and information that has generally been omitted from mainstream education. Akala has the ability to shift the perspectives on Britain’s socio-political history and attitudes to Black identity. Akala uses his own personal traumas as a springboard into white supremacist history reframing the myths of Wilberforce as the sole proponent of abolitionism, elucidating on the revolutionary history of Haiti, exposing the contradictions of Britain’s governments claiming to be the home of freedom, democracy and justice whilst at times supporting Apartheid or opening Kenyan concentration camps. Natives is full of facts and perspective that reframes the propaganda and rhetoric of the 20th Century, from championing Cuba’s role in ending Apartheid to its impressive Health Care or proposing that Nazi Germany was the culmination of Western white supremacy rather than the aberration of ‘pure evil’. Natives is a book that will test many preconceived notions and Akala’s somnolent snark as he takes-down racist denial is an absolute joy. Akala’s bone is not just picked at the easy target of personal racism by ‘white people’ but at the monolithic and longstanding institutional injustice and inequality of the Western political systems that seek to place all below the gilded ‘elites’. Natives is a powerful message and Akala’s life experiences coupled with his shrewd and ranging intellect exposes the power structures, particularly racism, that exposes the lie of Britain being a meritocracy. View all my reviews

[newstfionline]

With Trump’s Insult, African Nations Find Ace In the ‘Hole’

By Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Joe Parkinson, WSJ, Jan. 31, 2018

NAIROBI, Kenya--Sometimes, there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Across Africa--from the savanna to the Atlantic Coast--tourism professionals are reframing President Donald Trump’s alleged “shithole” comment to lure visitors, parlaying the global attention--and outcry--the obscenity drew into tongue-in-cheek guerrilla marketing.

Two U.S. senators--one Democratic, one Republican--confirmed that Mr. Trump made the incendiary comment during a private meeting in mid-January to discuss legislation to replace the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Mr. Trump denied using the specific slur against immigrants from Africa, El Salvador and Haiti.

Governments, corporations and small businesses in more than a dozen countries have launched themed tourism campaigns and merchandise.

African tour operators are hoping the efforts provide a shot in the arm to a largely unsung economic-success story in the world’s poorest continent, fueled by a surge of visitors from Asia, Europe and the Middle East, along with a rise from the U.S.

Thanks to a rapid expansion in holiday options, from packaged safaris and beach holidays to budding urban tourism, the number of foreign tourists visiting sub-Saharan African countries swelled to some 40 million annually in 2017 from just over 20 million a decade earlier, according to data aggregated by the World Travel and Tourism Council.

Now, some tourism executives with a sense of humor and an eye for a good opportunity have embraced the moment.

In the southwest African nation of Namibia--famed for its sunburst-colored sand dunes--a private tourism operator called the Gondwana Collection has released a video featuring wildlife and natural beauty narrated by a Trump impersonator inviting people to visit “Africa’s No. 1 shithole.”

“It’s really tough out here.…Namibia has over 300 days of sunshine every year,” the narrator says, before reminding viewers of an earlier gaffe when Mr. Trump met African leaders and mistakenly referred to the country as “Nambia.”

Silicon Valley giant Airbnb also joined the fray, launching an ad campaign with an enticing new slogan: “We heard there’s been some expletive-filled interest in these beautiful destinations.”

The company said it was immediately spending $100,000 on ad purchases specifically promoting properties in Africa, El Salvador and Haiti.

A Facebook page run by a marketing group promoting tourism in Zambia--famed for the Zambezi River that feeds the spectacular Victoria Falls--includes an image of a vehicle in a rugged setting and a slogan welcoming visitors to “shithole Zambia.” “Where beautiful vistas and breathtaking wildlife are our Trump card!” says an accompanying post.

Botswana’s government, which summoned the U.S. ambassador to explain Mr. Trump’s comment, is rebranding the nation a “Waterhole Country.” A tweet from the official government account last week read, “Botswana is a waterhole country. #MyWaterHoleCountry.” It was shared by thousands of followers.

South Africa, where Mr. Trump’s daughter and adviser, Ivanka, and her husband and fellow adviser, Jared Kushner, honeymooned in 2012, relies on its celebrated tourism sector for some 10% of its gross domestic product, or about $35 billion annually.

That income has been a crucial source of foreign currency in recent years as the economy has struggled with tepid growth and corruption allegations.

Elsewhere on the continent, dependence on tourism is even more pronounced. For tiny island nations like Cape Verde, tourism represents as much as half of annual income.

The sector is a massive direct and indirect employer of a youthful, multilingual and burgeoning population: Roughly one in 10 Kenyans works in tourism or related services; in Namibia it is one in five.

But visitors from developed countries with little nuanced knowledge of the continent can be fickle. When Ebola affected three West African countries, especially in 2014-15, cancellations hit Kenya, which has never had any incidence of the virus and was located roughly as far from the outbreak as Canada is from Brazil.

African residents and businesses are well-practiced at finding a positive spin for negative or offensive comments.

In 2015 Kenyans reacted angrily when CNN declared the country “a hotbed of terror” just before a state visit by then-President Barack Obama. The hashtag #SomeoneTellCNN was retweeted more than 100,000 times, and the country’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, responded that Kenya was a “hotbed of vibrant culture and spectacular natural beauty and infinite possibility.”

[hoursofreading]

Even the alliterations Farmer uses in the titles of his books poetically point to ties between local incidences of ill-health and the global organization of inequality and power. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (Farmer, 2005) directly connects the spread and deadly impact of health pathogens (biological agents that cause disease) with the economic and political forces that Farmer finds to be the most pathogenic in creating contexts of risk for the development of disease and the systemization of suffering. This is why he argues that “it is in the context of these global forces that the suffering of individuals acquires its own appropriate context” (2005: 41). Such contexts, Farmer shows, are not distributed randomly, but rather are steeply skewed by the “inegalitarian social structures” that produce what he so usefully labels “structural violence” (2005: 230-231). Likewise Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues (Farmer, 1999) ties the ongoing scourge of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, meningitis and malaria to the context of grinding poverty in the Global South, all the while underlining that the processes producing this poverty are intimately interlinked with economic life in richer parts of the world where the diseases have been largely controlled. And also adding attention to international economic structures and long distance political decisions to his epidemiological account, Farmer’s brilliant first book AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame (Farmer, 1992) links the emergence of AIDS in Haiti to transnational interconnections and uneven development. He shows that the resulting poverty of Haitians and the resulting turn by some to prostitution combined with visits from American tourists to bring HIV to Haiti (see al so Kidder, 2003: 199). By reframing the medical story this way and focusing on the transnational ties of money, moving people and microbes, Farmer is able to debunk the erroneous idea that Haiti was the original infection point from where HIV entered America.

Globalization and Paul Farmer’s Reframing of Care | Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity

[sexypinkon]

Questions of cultural identity

Ebony G Patterson | Thomas J Price | Zadie Xa

31 March–6 May 2017 Preview: 30 March, 6–8:30pm #HalesGallery

Questions of cultural identity – feelings of belonging to a particular group – seem especially relevant in today’s troubled Western society, increasingly international and yet as riven as ever with conflict and fear of others. How are our perceptions of identity formed; which stereotypes, fictions or representations have informed them? How do the categories of class, gender, race and nationality intersect and overlap to create one’s sense of self (and other)?

For the three artists in this exhibition – Ebony G Patterson, Thomas J Price and Zadie Xa – visual and material forms of representation provide a potent strategy through which to pose these challenging and timely questions. Working in a diverse range of media, including sculpture, video, textiles and photography, these artists are united by their shared engagement with form, process and material. They each amalgamate different social and cultural references, fashions and art historical traditions to create new layered, hybrid mythologies that express the multi-faceted nature of identity in the 21st century. Through a simultaneous process of seduction and deconstruction, they powerfully challenge our conventional associations, assumptions and archetypes.

Ebony Patterson

Ebony G Patterson’s fantastically ornate images and installations explore the performance of identity among disenfranchised communities within post-colonial contexts. Patterson’s bold, seductive aesthetic reflects the artist’s desire to claim space and authority for subjects whom society so often deems unworthy of visibility, whilst refusing to shy away from the more complicated or contradictory elements of different identities.

Entourage (2010), the first piece from Patterson’s ‘Fambily’ series of photographic installations (2010–13), explores the role of the gang as a surrogate family – a complex structure whose positive elements are usually ignored in favour of lazy stigmatisation. A large-scale studio photograph printed on a nylon banner and installed dramatically on floral-wallpapered walls, makes an immediate claim for attention. The depicted subjects, too, are elaborately costumed and made-up, reflecting the flamboyant visual language of Jamaica’s popular Dancehall culture. The individuals in the photograph, however, are all models. Central to the work’s heightened sense of theatricality is the concept of identity as performative, shifting and contradictory, the hyper-masculinity of the gang patriarch expressed through a conventionally feminised aesthetic of tight, colourful clothing, jewellery, and even artificially whitened skin as a mode of erasure and illumination.

Thomas J Price makes figurative sculptures depicting imaginary black, male subjects, playing with material, scale and modes of display in order to explore the relationship between representation and perception. This exhibition presents Price’s most recent work, the Untitled (Icon) series: a new sequence of fictional portraits that are amalgamations of a range of sources, from classical sculpture to individuals observed in Price’s everyday life.

Constantly experimenting with materials and technologies, for the Untitled (Icon) series Price has adopted two techniques for the first time: gilding, and 3D modelling. The use of 24 carat gold leaf has a powerful cultural resonance, as a technique which dates back to ancient Egypt and continues to signify luxury, splendour and exultation. The subjects depicted in these gilded sculptures, placed upon marble plinths in a classical style, are cast as ‘icons’ of a modern age, despite their anonymous, ‘untitled’ identities. Price subtly subverts the viewer’s expectations, reframing the image and associations of black men in contemporary society and in art. This sense of subversion is heightened by the knowledge that these heads were sculpted using cutting-edge 3D modelling techniques before being cast in aluminium composite, a digital amalgamation of features with no rooting in reality. We are led to wonder whether the individual’s ‘true’ identity really exists, amidst or beneath the layers of constructed presentation and conditioned perception.

Zadie Xa’s work across media layers and samples pre-existing forms to create new images and objects which explores the construction and performance of identity, navigating her position within the Asian diaspora. Whether working in video or creating highly textural mixed media works, this process of layering combines racial tropes used to identify Asian bodies as ‘other’ (the commodified yin-yang symbol, ‘monolid’ eyes, sword blades) with diverse material from a range of personally relevant sources – music, digital technology, fashion and art, as well as Xa’s own research into her cultural heritage – in order to conjure an alternative narrative of Asian identity.

Xa’s recent practice is represented in this exhibition with three interconnected works: video Moodrings, Crystals and Opal-coloured Stones (2016); Asian Gucci (2016), an over-sized fan; and SVN Stacks/Moon Marauder (2015), one of Xa’s self-described ‘magical garments’ existing on the border between costume and painting. The fabric surface of the garment is textured with a series of coded forms, notably the ‘monolid’ and the initial ‘G’, which refers to the Ganggangsullae,an ancient Korean women’s folk dance. Performance footage of the Ganggangsullae is incorporated into Moodrings, Crystals and Opal-coloured Stones, whose central narrative is based on Xa’s own journey retracing a different traditional Korean practice: the initiation rituals for female shamans, known as mudang, which Xa imaginatively re-enacts costumed in her self-made garment. One of the transformative mudang rituals known as the ‘riding of the blades’ is invoked also in the shiny silver knife blades that embellish the surface of Asian Gucci. Across these multi-layered works, the mysterious, performative and transformational nature of identity is expressed, and the concept of a fixed, authentic self is thrown into doubt.

Ebony G Patterson (b. 1981, Kingston, Jamaica) studied at Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts (2000–04) and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis (2004–06). Patterson’s work has been exhibited in numerous international solo and group exhibitions, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York (USA), the Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Museum of the Americas, Washington D.C. (USA), Bermuda National Gallery (Bermuda), Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas (USA), Perez Art Museum, Miami (USA), 12th Havana Biennial (Cuba), the Museum of Arts and Design, New York (USA), the 32nd Bienal de Sao Paulo (Brazil) and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (USA). Since 2006 Patterson’s work has been selected for inclusion in the Jamaica Biennial, winning the Aaron Matalon award for most outstanding contribution in 2014. Patterson is also the subject of a forthcoming solo exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (USA). Work by Patterson is included in a number of international collections including Studio Museum in Harlem (USA), the Nasher Museum, Duke University (USA), Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art (France)  and the National Gallery of Jamaica (Jamaica). She has taught at the University of Virginia and is currently an Associate Professor in Painting and Mixed Media at the University of Kentucky.

Thomas J Price

Thomas J Price (b. London, UK, 1981) studied at Chelsea College of Art (2001–04) and received an MA at the Royal College of Art, Sculpture School (2004–06). In 2009, Price was featured alongside Grayson Perry, Michael Landy, Sir Anthony Caro and Cornelia Parker on the BBC 4 television documentary, Where is Modern Art Now?, presented by Gus Casely-Hayford. In 2010, he featured on BBC 4's How to Get A Head in Sculpture, also featuring Marc Quinn and Sir Anthony Caro. In 2010, Price was an invited artist at the Royal Academy Summer Show. In 2013, during his second solo show with Hales Gallery, Price presented his first large scale sculpture Network. The work subsequently was placed on display at the prestigious Yorkshire Sculpture Park, coinciding with Price's solo display at the Park (2014), and was selected for the 2015 inauguration of London's art walk The Line. Selected solo exhibitions have been held at prestigious institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, London (UK), Royal Academy of Arts, London (UK), Mac Birmingham (UK), Royal College of Art, London (UK), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (UK), Harewood House (UK) and Hales London (UK). Price’s work has also been included in shows in the US and Europe. Price's work is included in a number of private and public collections including Derwent London (UK), Murderme (UK) and the Rennie Collection (Canada).  Price lives and works in London.

Zadie Xa

Zadie Xa (b. 1983, Vancouver, Canada) received an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2014 and a BFA at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2007. Recent exhibitions, performances and screenings of Xa’s work have been held at a range of institutions, including the Serpentine Gallery, London (UK), Whitechapel Gallery, London (UK), Assembly Point, London (UK), CGP London (UK), Cafe OTO, London (UK), Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (UK), Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome (Italy) and Schwabinger Tor, Munich (Germany). Upcoming exhibitions and performances include Block Universe 2017, Pumphouse Gallery (solo) London (UK), and Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (Canada). Xa currently lives and works in London.

[glenmenlow]

Marketing For Agency Strategists

Curiously, many people find their way to advertising agencies or in-house marketing departments at major brands without being educated or trained in the basics of marketing. And inside agencies, even more curiously, there is no additional training in marketing beyond the on the job variety. Which is a wonderful way to ensure that you will always be at least one step behind the MBAs.

Let’s cover some of the key concepts today starting with the marketing mix – the Four P’s which was developed in the late 1950s. Of the four, three of them – Product, Price and Place – are assigned to the agency 99% of the time. The agency gets to skin the last P, Promotion. This is flawed. Separating promotion from the other parts is an outmoded thought. This is especially true with digital products, which may actually only have 2 Ps. Product, Place and Promotion may all be the same thing.

Agencies have become much more involved in Place. There are countless great examples of experiential campaigns and executions that help re-contextualize the Product or brand for consumers. For example, 360i helped Nestle’s Lean Cuisine reframe the promise of the product by executing an experiential campaign in public spaces like New York’s Grand Central Station. They invited women to define how they would like to be measured instead of weight – choosing attributes and descriptions of their accomplishments instead of pounds. An artist helped bring each to life by painting a scale which the women were invited to hand in an exhibit showcasing all of the scales. Women used phrases like “Back in College at 55” or “Caring for over 200 homeless children per day” to show that lives are more than just one metric on the scale.

The most effective client/agency relationships allow for collaboration across the spectrum of the marketing mix.

When Crispin Porter + Bogusky found research that showed consumers were eating even more on the go than was understood in 2004, they created a product – not an ad – for Burger King: Chicken Fries. The packaging is designed to fit in a car’s cupholder. The product was an initial hit, and when the brand pulled Chicken Fries off the menu, fans begged for their return via reddit and other online forums. They’ve been on the menu ever since.

Takeaway: If you are going to make an impact on your client’s business, you need to be thinking about the entire business and not waiting for the last P. Understanding how they arrived at the product and pricing – if not advising on those elements proactively – is critical.

I’m not the first to suggest the Four Ps are no longer relevant. There were attempts to add three more P’s (People, Process, Physical Evidence). There are also dozens of models that have been introduced to replace it. For example, The Four C’s. There are probably five models called the Four Cs that can be found. Professor Bob Lauterborn introduced his Four C’s in the early 1990’s which updated the Four P’s with modern terms. Consumer Wants and Needs which replaces Product, Convenience to Buy which replaces Place, Cost to Satisfy standing in for Price and Communication for Promotion. Professor Koichi Shimizu authored his own updated version: Commodity, Cost, Communication, Channel.

Another version of the next Four C’s adds new dimension. Clarity means making your message simple and understandable. Consistency means reinforcing that simple message repeatedly to break through. Credibility means serving messages that consumers can find believable and worthy of paying attention to. Competitiveness means explaining how the brand or product is different or better than competitors.

Before we go too far with messaging nuance, let’s look at overarching modes of communication. Today, there is a push towards the societal concept of marketing management (think: Toms Shoes or Even Stevens subs). Some brands are thinking more broadly about their message, a far cry from product or selling concept. Product concept says if we create something great, we will not need to market it. Selling concept says if we promote the hell out of our product we will drive sales. Marketing concept says we should identify a consumer need and design products to meet that need. This is known today as product market fit. In the product concept, we are much more tactical and less focused on the brand promise. This usually applies to highly specialized products and markets today. Societal concept is most interesting because in essence it closes a loop back to a product focus, while hiding that fact in a brand message that is powerful to a specific audience.

Toms Shoes offers a powerful societal message. For each pair you buy you trigger a donation to someone with no shoes. That is a powerful and unique value proposition. Could this work with a luxury car or private jet flight? Not likely. Because most of us don’t consume those things, or think people are truly ‘in need’ of them. It wouldn’t work for private jet flight, but might work for coach domestic air travel. Pay attention to the types of products and brands that use the societal concept. They are typically lower in the commodity chain. In fact, the first designs of Toms Shoes were on the plain side. People didn’t buy them for looks. They bought them because compared to Keds or another utilitarian type of footwear, they served the same purpose, made a statement normally hard to share – and actually helped someone.

Ridesharing brands like Uber and Lyft would never be able to use the societal concept. Until maybe now. Initially, Uber was treated like a luxury; the private driver for everyone. In fact, the approach used was initially marketing concept, then transitioned to product concept. In Uber’s case, 70% of the communication you’ve ever seen has been recruiting for drivers – not recruiting customers!

With the emergence of Lyft, Flywheel and dozens of other brands the time might be right for a rideshare brand to use societal concept. In fact, Lyft was initially conceived as a social good to reduce the number of cars (and their ecological damage) on the road but this hasn’t made it into their consumer marketing as they’ve scaled.

Now that ride sharing has become widely accepted and commoditized, a brand could shift. For every ride, we donate to a transit service in Haiti or donate subway cards in inner cities. That might be a meaningful differentiator between Brand A and Brand B in this space.

What I’m describing is part of product positioning. How do people think about the product in the context of their category. There are a lot of shoe brands, Toms is the one that gives back. There are a lot of rideshare brands, Uber is the evil one. Axe deodorant creates desirability for those who wear it but Degree keeps you drier longer, a factor in social acceptance.

Takeaway: All of this is usually decided by the brand’s marketing team before they brief you. Sometimes, the claim they ask you to make isn’t very strong or might be true but isn’t compelling. Make it your business to understand and have a point of view on how you will sell, based on what will motivate the audience.

Joy – Pain = Value

To describe all the mental processes we make when we consider a brand I would have to write all about neuroeconomics. Luckily, Phil Barden already wrote Decoded.

To boil down what is critical for strategists to understand – different sets of mental operators drive the way we think as consumers. We essentially weigh the joy we will derive from a product. This is heavily skewed by our perception of the brand.

Once our brains score how much joy the thing will provide, we begin deducting points for pain. This could be things like high price, effort to buy or waiting for delivery. If the pain doesn’t cut too far into the joy, we act. We click. We subscribe. We buy.

Inside an agency, there is often fierce debate about brand ads versus promotional ads. It’s possible to do both, as many great restaurant brands have proven in their TV ads, with 25 seconds for branding and five seconds for the value or promotion.

But this goes further than the brand and the offer. People lose joy whenever they encounter friction. Starbucks has mastered reducing friction. Customers walk in, order, wave their phone and leave. Better yet, they order on the app before they arrive, pick up their drink and leave. It’s no coincidence that sales increased shortly after they introduced this feature to their app. It reduced pain and increased value.

But, sales started to wane because there was different pain being caused. Non-users waiting while mobile orders were prepared ahead of theirs. A reduction in conversation and engagement with baristas due to technology. For non-users of the app, pain increased and value decreased.

Takeaway:  As you think about messaging in campaigns, find the right weight for increasing the joy and diminishing the pain. As you think about execution, find ways to make it easier for people to engage. Increase joy. Decrease pain. Whatever those may be to the end user.

Satisfaction Is Not Enough

Satisfaction is a traditional and now weak measure of brand or product success. This is often measured and reported by Consumer Reports and J.D. Power among others.

When you last ate at McDonald’s were you satisfied? Were your very basic needs and expectations met? Most likely yes. Great! Success for the brand! What if I asked if you to rank the experience at McDonald’s on a scale from 1-10 with 10 being Nordstrom service with Lyft convenience and Houston’s food? Still satisfied?

What if I asked you the basic Net Promoter question – would you recommend this McDonald’s based on this experience? Comparing the value of ‘satisfied’ customers to the value of Net Promoters tells us that satisfaction is baseline. If customers aren’t satisfied you don’t have a business. But it takes much more to sustain and grow.

Takeaway: Satisfaction was a common measurement device before brands began designing delightful experiences. Just satisfying customers means losing them soon. Design programs to overachieve and measure more significant indicators to prove success and brand growth. Satisfaction is now meaningless. Aim higher.

You don’t need an MBA to think strategically about brand marketing. But you do need to understand the key concepts well enough to communicate and to know what they’re trying to do. The concepts above are basic items that are often discussed on the brand side, and rarely mentioned inside the agency.

A lot of the foundational pieces of marketing don’t make sense anymore given the way consumers find products. And the way consumers market for products on behalf of brands. But it’s important to understand. Most musical virtuosos don’t start that way. They learn the basics before breaking the rules and creating their own. Understand how marketing works so you can know how to bend it to your goals.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Adam Pierno. Excerpted and adapted from his book Under Think It.

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