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The Brian Lehrer Show
Are the "Internet Married" the Next "Soccer Moms"?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Mark Penn, political strategist, pollster, and author of Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes, identifies the small groups that win elections.
Microtrends is available for purchase at Amazon.com
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"I predicted a few weeks ago that we would start to see more stories about the bizarrely conflicting roles of one Mark Penn, who holds down the job of "Worldwide President and CEO" of the fifth-largest public relations firm in the universe (Burson-Marsteller) while also apparently being the de facto campaign manager for Senator Clinton's presidential bid. Ari Berman of the Nation has now opened the bidding with a superb article revealing much of what it actually means to be Worldwide President and CEO of Burson-Marsteller, including presiding over more than one Republican lobbying operation and a union-busting outfit that was once prominently featured on the Burson-Marsteller website but was quickly given the "Commissar Vanishes" treatment after I mentioned it in passing. I wasn't actually that interested in Penn's conflicts of interest as in the nature of his advice and his polling, and its influence on American politics. (I'm told that Berman will have more about Penn-as-pollster in the print edition of the Nation.)"
-- Mark Stein, from TPM Cafe
"In mid-2007, the dual role of Mark Penn as the CEO of the PR firm Busron-Marsteller and chief strategist for the Democratic Party's Presidential aspirant Hilliary Clinton, irked some labor leaders. The New York Times reported that labor leaders Bruce Raynor of UniteHere, and James Hoffa of the Teamsters union, wrote to Clinton expressing their concern about B-M's anti-labor work. "He cannot serve two masters, working for a pro-union candidate and working for anti-union companies," Teamsters President Jim Hoffa said. [6]
Subsequently, Penn told Atlantic Online "I have recused myself from working on any management-side labor relations work." [8]
Ari Berman, who has written on Penn's PR life in The Nation is unimpressed. Penn, he wrote, is "not distancing himself from the money the "labor relations" wing brings in and the other controversial clients B-M represents in the defense, pharmaceutical and energy industries and the Republican lobbyists he oversees." Berman views Penn's "recusal" pledge is "a phony gesture that fails to address the underlying problems or the reasons prominent labor leaders are upset with Clinton's campaign."
from Sourcewatch.org
"There is another kind of polling that can be useful to campaigns and which appears to be Penn's specialty, which tries to understand the population by breaking it down into different groups based on demographics and values. This can be hugely revealing and extremely valuable. The Pew Research Center's periodic studies of "Political Typology" are a premiere example of this work, creating categories such as "Upbeats" and "Pro-Government Conservatives" that generally share attitudes on policy and have much in common demographically. Such an analysis is highly complex, as you essentially put all the data together and try to find natural "clusters" of demographics and values that emerge, trying not to impose categories on the data. You can't do it without a fairly large sample size (2,000 in the Pew poll) and a long questionnaire. Pollster Stan Greenberg did a similar analysis, explained most fully in his book, The Two Americas, in which he created such memorable categories as "F-You Boys" -- poorly educated white men under 50, a key part of the Bush base. If these categories are real and robust, it can help a political strategist figure out how to construct a majority -- for example, if you know you're going to capture very few of the "F-You Boys," then what do you need from other categories?
---Mark Stein, from TPM Cafe
When Penn markets categories such as "soccer moms" and "office park dads," he seems to be doing the same kind of analysis. But it's hard to know, because unlike almost any other Democratic pollster, he never shows his work. Indeed, my first criticism of Penn was here in TPM Cafe last July, responding to an op-ed he co-wrote with James Carville making broad assertions such as that "Democratic and even independent women are thrilled with the idea" of Senator Clinton running for president, all without a single piece of data to support them. It is telling to compare the web sites of Penn, Schoen and Berland and that of Greenberg's firm, Greenberg, Quinlan & Rosner: Both firms do plenty of work that is proprietary, and both have corporate clients. But Greenberg's site is full of actual data -- the link above goes to a page with 192 reports on U.S. politics, eleven since the beginning of this year alone! Penn's site has nothing; a link to "read samples of our thinking" goes to a page with links to those same data-free op-eds! In short, we have no way of knowing whether Penn's demographic analysis of the electorate is as rigorous as Pew's or Greenberg's or whether he, if you'll forgive me some technical jargon, pulls it out of his ass. "
- Mark Stein, from TPM Cafe
"I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too. "Oh, you know what Bill's doing? He's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man. I am not doing that, you f****** evil scumbags! "Oh, you know what Bill's doing now? He's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. Lot of people are feeling that indignation, we've done research. Huge market. He's doing a good thing." God damn it, I'm not doing that, you scumbags. Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every f****** thing on this planet! "Oh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a f****** web. "Oh, the trapped dollar. Big dollar, huge dollar. Good market, look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar …" How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like f****** babies at night, don't you? "What did you do today, honey?" "Oh, we made arsenic childhood food. Now, good night. Yeah, we just said, you know, is your baby really too loud? You know … yeah, the mums will love it, yeah." Sleep like f****** children, don't you? This is your world, isn't it? "
--Bill Hicks
thanks Trevor. Brian would be remiss not to ask Mark Penn about his Union busting PR firm, and how that affects Hillary's Campaign. see the article in the Nation from May of this year.
what does it say about Hillary that this guy is running her campaign?
Please be sure to thank Mr. Penn for his hard work at reducing the people of the United States into programmable sub-units of culture. In a new century, when we perhaps have the opportunity to find ways to unite ourselves under one banner and work together for the common good, it's nice to see someone attempting to create artificial divisions to further divisiveness in our society. And all in the name of politics, that hotbed of selflessness and altruism!
did I link to a blog?
Thanks to folks turning off the boob tube and surfing the web instead, according to their interests:
The "Informed Voter." As an independent, the 08 elections have fielded the most inspiring candidates in years, and talking about all the right things.
What recommendations would Mr. Penn make to aged 60+ baby boomers looking to capitalize on micro trends? (I'm thinking career, relationships, etc.)
Thanks!
sorry WNYC, I didn't mean to spam you. Your guest today just makes me physically ill.
All due respect to the talents of your guest - one view might be that the last thing anyone wants is another Karl Rove type spinning the candidate. Wouldn't Hillary be better off just letting us understand who she is rather than being Hillary filtered through the poll numbers targeted to the right demographics to win.
He keeps saying 'both candidates' clearly intentionally! How about John Edwards and the others!!! DON'T LET HIM GET AWAY WITH THIS! IT IS A CLINTON STRATEGY! THEY ARE MOST AFRAID OF EDWARDS!!!
Bull....it's not "the people" who want this, it's corporations and advertisers
This is really silly...."sun-haters"?
Yes, in this world where people find reasons to dislike anyone who is different themselves let's find ways to divide and partition ourselves up even more
I mean reall..."sun-haters"
well gee, I could do this too:
I just discovered some new groups:
sandwich-eaters
energy drink-drinkers
e-bay users
NPR listeners
hey....will you have me on the show now?
He keeps saying 'both candidates' clearly intentionally! How about John Edwards and the others!!! DON'T LET HIM GET AWAY WITH THIS! IT IS A CLINTON STRATEGY! THEY ARE MOST AFRAID OF EDWARDS!!
Yes, indeedy, Mr. & Mrs. Edwards scare them. But truly, this is as much about marketing as politics. Does he really think tattoo parlors need to go upscale to sell them to the ridiculous-looking, overweight, midlle-aged, middle class tools looking for "self-expression"? They acheive this by scarring themselves with Chinese characters they can't read?
I saw that your guest's book mentions teen knitters as a group. Speaking as a 38 year old knitter, I think he's right about knitters, wrong to break it out by age. I'm on a 4 month old internet knitting community called Ravelry that's still in beta. We have over 10,000 members and 20,000 more waiting to get in. Very few of these are teens.
ab, don't forget nap-takers!
Yawn, the same ol' rehash and bullcrap. I mean really is there anyone left who isn't a hypocrite? Hasn't any one of these blabbers figured out that we've reached the saturation point and most people now see thru the nonsense that's spewed on us by these talking mouths! (Talking heads implies they have a thinking brain.)
great comment Mike- that's exactly right, they are afraid of Edwards.
How can you "recuse" yourself when you are CEO? your company is profiting off of UNION BUSTING!!! if you want to recuse yourself, either quit or get rid of the client.
Re this wk's segments --
September is the New August
Mr. Penn deals in stereotypes, and fundamentally, I believe they are wrong. Does the media - does NPR, the only radio station to which I listen - have a similar bias for Mrs. Clinton and against Barack Obama? It sure seems like it. Almost everyone I know is an Obama-supporter, a Green, or a Republican. Who, and where is the mass of Clintonites to which Mr. Penn refers? She voted for the war; she is a poor public speaker; and inevitably, without the iron-handed Democratic "machine" that might include at this point major media outlets, on her own merit, she'd be a distant 2nd, at bes. The Democratic machine won in 2006, but that was easy - can it beat Rudy, or Fred Thompson? I'm going for Obama in the primary, and like many Democrats, relying on our sense of party patriotism to get us out in a national election for Mrs. Clinton, should she be the candidate, is another misguided "lesser of two evils" vote that for some reason, the Republicans often seem to in.
Jean, one of your "elitists",
New York
smidely, thanks for redeeming that segment with a laugh!
What is your definition of a political Hack? If we are supposed to listen to your radio show when you have these vested interested parties pretending to be hawking a book to enlighten us then I say you have become a partner in hackdom. BTW tattoos are not an expression of individuality any more than tie dyed tee shirts and bell bottoms were expressions of individuality in the 60's-70's. What a poor interview.
The more I find out about Hillary, the more I want Barack. I was not for Barack to begin with and don't trust Edwards - Hillary is just too much in bed with the wrong people for me.
Seems to me we just live in a soul-murdering system and Hillary is aligned with soul-murderers. I am disappointed because she's so bright and capable.
Brian,
It seems to me that ordinary Iraquis citizens must feel that very insecure knowing that there is a group that doesn’t report to the US Army officers and that can’t be prosecuted by the Iraquis court system. Not only do they have to worry about insurgent fighters but they have to worry about the Blackwater hired guns
Arnie
Brian,
this segment and your guess was completely inane. though you did redeem yourself with the Blackwater story! so, not a complete lost of time.
Brian
I can relate to his analysis.
Being plugged in the Online World, I started reflecting and writing about the Dearth of Attention to people 'Just Over 50 and Not Dead Yet' (like myself) what I would call early boomers (not quite ready for the AARP).
It prompted me to offer to run a Panel on the Topic at 'South by Southwest' Interactive.
It is currently being voted upon.
Find out more on my blog 'Serge the Concierge'
http://www.sergetheconcierge.com/2007/09/just-over-50onl.html
Take care
Serge
'The French Guy from New Jersey'
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