marketing promotion investment

by Kenneth Rudich

With the economy slumping, many businesses have been forced to trim costs wherever they can.  Under the circumstances, this is a natural and prudent course of action. 

But it is not necessarily a good idea to do it straight across the board.  In fact, it may be counterproductive in at least one area, possibly even deadly.

In every recession of the last thirty years I’ve heard the same piece of advice consistently given out by those with a knack for survival.  It goes something like this: in the face of an economic downturn, you should try to maintain or even increase your marketing promotion investment.  After all, it’s the one area of your business that offers a reason to keep hope alive in the midst of a fragile economy.

internet marketing now more than ever

Those who believed this was true in the past may have more reason than ever to believe in it now.

One of the things that makes this recession unique – apart from the magnitude of it – is the degree to which the internet has grown as a cost-effective mechanism for marketing and promotion.  

The timing has never been better to get involved with internet marketing if you haven’t already, or to consider broadening your initiative if you already have.  The reach of it, combined with an estimated 400 million daily searches, presents an untold potential for those willing to give it a try.

Part of what makes the timing so good is the element of novelty it continues to hold.  Despite the gains it has made, internet marketing is still in its infancy.  The ramifications of this can work to your advantage.

First, the idea of what constitutes best practices is constantly evolving as the tools and techniques get better and better.  This makes it hard for any business to become so thoroughly entrenched as to be entirely safe.  By keeping the playing field fluid and flowing, the internet consistently provides an equal opportunity for all.  Any business can suddenly soar based off its internet marketing success.  Many already have (think Zappos, Amazon, Google, Facebook and others who seemingly came out of nowhere), and many more undoubtedly will. 

Second, while the cost of internet marketing is comparatively low when paired against traditional options, it may be even lower yet while in the throes of a recession. 

Businesses that offer internet marketing services are prone to the consequences of a turbulent economy like anyone else.  They too are concerned with keeping themselves afloat.  It’s a competitive field, and it’s become something of a buyer’s market. 

That may suck for them but it’s good for you.  For instance, SEO providers typically offer different package deals to enhance their appeal across businesses of varying sizes.  One of the more interesting package deals I’ve seen of late, however, is called “No Results, No Pay.”  In other words, the client only pays if he or she gets measurable results.  It completely eliminates the upfront risk normally associated with this kind of investment.  Now how often do you come across a deal like that?

Package deals like this reflect the sobering reality of a flagging economy.  It’s a scenario straight out of Herb Cohen’s best-selling book, “You can Negotiate Anything.”  In this case, you probably can negotiate anything.  That tidbit of knowledge alone should cause the negotiator in you to stir with restless ambition.

If you still have no plans to invest in internet marketing, or see no reason to consider expanding on what you’re currently doing to extract more benefits out of it, then I suggest you shutter the windows and lock the doors.  Because, truth be told, you probably already have but just don’t know it yet.                      

fitness as a social good

by Kenneth Rudich

Fitness speaks to the body’s ability to function efficiently and effectively.

why push fitness?

Remaining fit helps to increase the quality and years of a healthy life in three significant ways.

First, it aids with promoting individual fitness – where the ness is a state of being, the product of being fit.  It results in your body functioning efficiently and effectively.  Anybody at any age has the potential for achieving or improving fitness (but always check with your doctor before starting a fitness program).

The second significant contribution is to reduce the risk for disease.   A sedentary lifestyle – one in which there is too little movement – can make an individual prone to unhealthy conditions like diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity, back problems, and premature aging.  It also invites the advent of cardiovascular disease such as heart attacks, clogged arteries, and strokes. 

Third, a substantial absence of fitness within any sizable population can cause larger social ills in the form of decreased productivity, higher workplace absenteeism, skyrocketing healthcare costs, and rising insurance rates.  This not only hurts the community as a whole, but it also affects the individuals within it.  Furthermore, let’s be honest: asking a government to help contain the cost of healthcare when the citizens themselves are doing little about it is more than just a little hypocritical.

These are just a few of the reasons for advocating the pursuit of fitness among individuals, groups and society at-large.  I’ll bet you can think of at least a handful more.

advocating fitness 

By advocate, I mean promoting two characteristics in particular.

The first is knowledge about fitness – in other words, for you to become an educated fitness, health and wellness consumer.  This entails matters like knowing the types of activities that are recommended and/or ill-advised, the various aspects of a sound fitness program, and possessing the skill to assess and manage your own fitness rather than remain wholly dependent on someone else always telling you what to do. 

The second is to adopt a healthy lifestyle for now and into the future.  This suggests that you personally embrace a healthy lifestyle and hold yourself accountable for sustaining it.  This last part is the reason for suggesting the first form of advocacy above.

i’m not an expert, and I won’t try to play one either

As part of the social good campaign, I will re-visit this subject often in the weeks ahead. 

The bulk of the information I provide will be based on nearly twenty years of collaborating with Dr. Charles Corbin, a now emeritus professor of Exercise and Wellness from a major university in the United States.  He is the content expert.  I merely worked with him over the years to package the content for distance and online learning.  Google his name if you want to go to the source of this information about fitness and wellness – and a quite renowned source, I might add – especially if you want to enlighten your understanding of how to incorporate more of both into your life.

Meanwhile, I will try to be a faithful conduit for advocating and promoting the pursuit of health and wellness; and I will never pretend to be anything more than just that and that alone.

My definition of success for this endeavor is to whet your appetite to learn more, to want to become an educated consumer and, most importantly, to nudge you toward adopting a healthy lifestyle if you haven’t already. 

Perhaps you’ll even find yourself advocating it to others, like family and friends.

U.S. education system

by Kenneth Rudich

Famous science fiction writer H.G. Wells once made his own quaint observation about the role of education.  “Human history,” he quipped, “becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” 

I’ve written before about the soon-to-be widely released documentary “Waiting for Superman,” directed by Davis Guggenheim, who is also known for directing “An Inconvenient Truth.”  Some believe this work will raise awareness about the dilapidated state of the U.S. education system in a manner similar to what “An Inconvenient Truth” did for global warming. 

At the same time, however, it also offers some cause to hold out hope for a rebound and recovery.  And for that reason I don’t mind taking a moment to help market and promote it, of my own free volition. 

grave issues abound in all directions

Admittedly, there is no shortage of issues begging for urgent attention in our contemporary world.  I think most of us, if not all, truly get that.  In fact, it very much seems like this moment in human history, the here and now, is ripe for either untold good or untold bad to happen.  It’s like an inflection point, and we’re awkwardly tottering along with barely a sense of what lies ahead.

Still, we can’t lose sight of the central role education plays in all of this.  It’s a cornerstone piece.  All else is pretty much destined to collapse without it.  Consequently, it must continue to remain right up there with every other thing that also beckons our concern.

the marketing of a marathon

H. G. Wells’ metaphor of a race is better served if it is thought about in terms of a marathon rather than a dash.  It’s one that spans generations, and the legacy each current generation leaves for the one that follows will be the true measure of its greatness…or not. 

So it’s a marathon, but it’s also one that involves the successful handing off of a baton, hopefully.     

The race itself is about trying to eliminate the elements that threaten (or inhibit) our social, economic and environmental well-being, and instead replace them with alternatives that lift us to an ever better place: things that make us more successful, healthy, happy, safe, and secure; things that help us transform our businesses and foster improved trade; things that save us time; and things that contribute to our understanding, appreciation, preservation and enjoyment of the world in which we live. 

Averting catastrophe is certainly part of the goal, but making our lives better is the ultimate prize.  

Now I’m not going to suggest education is a be-all-end-all solution; that it is a guaranteed panacea; or that all other concerns will cease to exist if only we can right the ship. 

But I do agree – verily – with the assessment made by Nicholas Negroponte, Co-founder of MIT’s Media Lab.  He asserts, “If you take any world problem — any issue on the planet, peace, the environment, poverty — the solution to the problem certainly includes education.  And if you have a solution that doesn’t include education, than it’s not a solution at all.”        

new business book

by Kenneth Rudich

Like countless other bloggers, I received a free advanced copy of a new business book titled “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose,” by Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.  The hard cover version officially launches today, so I imagine you’ll see a veritable explosion of reviews in the next few days.

Despite being a little incredulous over the title “Delivering Happiness,” which, by the way, I still regard as a bit overstated, the book did deliver something I wasn’t expecting.  Something an individual like me, who preaches the gospel of a value chain approach to marketing, could absolutely appreciate.  But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

about the book

At around 250 pages, there are two main parts to the book.  One is an autobiographical sketch of the author’s already storied life for someone so young, and the other is an account of how Zappos came to be the Zappos of emerging legend.

In case you don’t know, Hsieh co-founded LinkExchange in 1996, which was then sold to Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million.  In 1999, he got involved with Zappos and eventually became the CEO.  The company went from almost no sales in 1999 to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales, annually.  Amazon acquired Zappos in 2009 in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing. 

The narrative of the book, which is written in a somewhat breezy style, walks you through Tony’s personal angst and development prior to the events leading up to those colossal achievements.  It’s a largely unexceptional life until somewhere in his early twenties (or maybe even late teens), when he and a few buddies became consumed with an idea that would eventually spawn LinkExchange.  After that it gets much more interesting, especially if you like to live a little vicariously every once in a while.

the account of Zappos

For the most part, the book is about Zappos – its start-up, the early growing pains, and the trials and tribulations of assembling a value chain that could fulfill the value proposition they were shooting for.

This part of the book reads a little more like a case study, which makes it good for the business-minded members of the audience.  It contains a neatly woven tapestry of stories that ultimately provide value chain-related insights for the reader to ponder. 

For instance, there were a few developmental mistakes that threatened to undermine Zappos viability almost from the outset.  One involved the distribution channels component of the value chain.  An early decision to outsource warehousing and distribution quickly went awry and threw the company into a terrible tailspin.  The effort that was required to pull out of it was nothing short of monumental.

That near catastrophe clearly illustrated the importance of critically evaluating the core competencies a company must have in-house – or build – at each point along the value chain in order to ensure its own survival.  While outsourcing may be a suitable solution at some points along the value chain, it can be a death knell at others.  Zappos came scant inches from finding that out the hard way.

There are also triumphs along the value chain.  Customer care is perhaps the most notable among them.  The amount of resources Zappos invests in this area of its business has yielded untold dividends in the form of both a memorable brand and strong customer satisfaction.  Zappos employees are at the heart of this endeavor, and they have collectively created a company culture that stands apart as the best of breed.  The story of how they managed to cultivate this unique culture may well be the single biggest take away for anyone who reads the book.  (In fact, I highly recommend it as mandatory reading for the employees of a certain petroleum company.  Nuff said.)

in summary

In this day and age of the internet’s virtual world, Delivering Happiness makes it abundantly clear that business still is, and will forever be, about people, not the technology that supports it.  Said another way, the task of developing a strong value chain must keep the focus squarely fixed on the good of the people involved – both inside and outside the organization.

save lives, donate blood

by Kenneth Rudich (another installment for the “Social Good” campaign.)

The prick of the penetrating needle barely registered in my brain.  The attendant possessed remarkable skill.  It was clean and quick, like it had been guided into my arm without meeting any resistance at all. 

I watched as the first surge of blood looped through the coiled tubing and flowed with effortless ease into the clear plastic bag at the opposite end.  The base of it began to slowly expand.  It was collecting every last drop.

Nothing more to do but sit back and wait.  I closed my eyes against the dull glare of the fluorescent lights and started mapping out the rest of the day.  Enough chores lay ahead to keep me occupied for the balance of it.  I went through each in my mind, sorting and prioritizing them. 

About twenty minutes and one orange juice later, the procedure was done.  And as I exited the door, the sun smiled down from its perch up above.  The feeling of inner serenity that follows a good deed had already settled in, and a dumb-but-nonetheless-real smile appeared on my face.

why donate blood?

It is estimated about 60% of the population will need blood or blood constituents at some point in their lives.  It could be you, someone in your family, a co-worker, a close friend, a neighbor, or a totally grateful stranger.  You never know who fate has targeted, or how.  See “Blood Recipient Stories and Thanks.” 

Yet only 3 out of 100 people in America donate blood.

Volunteer donors are constantly needed to help maintain the community supply.  Give blood and save lives.  It’s one of the noblest gestures you’ll ever be able to make.

You can give blood three times a year, host a blood drive, coordinate a blood drive, and encourage others to do likewise.  To find out more, visit:

United Blood Services  

The American Red Cross

Blood Recipient Stories and Thanks 

google seo

by Kenneth Rudich

With SEO being a sizzling hot topic in the world of internet marketing these days, I began to wonder how the Google search engine website would rank for certain keywords on, of all places, the Google search engine website.

With that in mind, I chose two keyword phrases that struck me as perfect for this exercise: “internet search engines” and “search engines.”  For two months thereafter, I periodically entered both into the Google search engine field, executed the search, and then waited to see what would appear on the first page of it.

Though admittedly unscientific by any measure, the results are now in.  What’s your best guess of how Google did?

intuitive versus counter-intuitive seo results

Part of what prompted this test centered on the question of whether the outcome would be intuitive or counter-intuitive in nature.  Let me explain what I mean.

One school of thought makes it easy to assume Google would perform consistently well in its own search engine.  After all, who should know how to work the algorithms for a favorable standing better than the inventor of them?  Who’d be more aware of the factors that matter most in these rankings than the one who decides what those factors are? 

Consider this comparable analogy.  Imagine two people in a darkened house, where one knows the house intimately well, and the other is in it for the very first time.  Let’s place them just inside the front door, and then give them the task of finding the master bedroom from there.  Would not the one familiar with the house likely be the first to find the bedroom?

Wouldn’t Google know its own house?

the other school of thought for google seo

The other school of thought, however, must examine the relationship between what Google does to make a living, and what an SEO practitioner does to make a living.  In reality, they are adversaries.

An SEO practitioner tries his or her best to manipulate Google’s algorithms to gain not only a ranking advantage, but also, in many cases, to undermine the integrity of what Google is striving to achieve.  In fact, SEO seeks to introduce a bias into the search engine results, whereas Google’s quest is to keep it unbiased. 

There is a natural and fluid conflict between the SEO practitioner’s purpose and Google’s objective.  Each is constantly trying to outwit the other in what amounts to a game of intellectual leapfrog.  That’s why Google frequently tweaks its rankings methodology, because the last thing it wants is to be bested by an SEO practitioner.

so what should google do about its own seo rankings?

All of which begs the question: what does Google then do when it comes to obtaining a ranking on its own search engine website?

Would a high ranking, and especially a consistently high ranking, indicate its algorithms are underperforming, that a powerfully strong and unwavering bias has successfully infiltrated the search engine?   That the integrity of it has been breached?  By its own hand, no less? 

Or would poor rankings suggest Google is inept at SEO?  And how could it possibly be a highly regarded search engine business if it doesn’t understand its own engine well enough to rank high on it?

Or would poor rankings maybe mean Google is actually adept at SEO, and that’s precisely why it has a successful search engine business?

How would you call it?

drum roll please-the seo results

Save for one day, Google never appeared on the first page of the search results performed on its own website using the keyword phrases “internet search engines” and “search engines.”

The one day it did come up on the first page, it happened to draw the top spot for an organic ranking.  It also happened to occur on April Fools’ Day 2010, when, as reported by the Kansas City Star, the search engine changed its name to Topeka.

In fact, it was the Star’s news report, and not Google SEO (although it was Google’s prank), that got it to rank number one for that day.

What do you think?

Is Google inept at SEO?  Or is Google adept at SEO, and that’s exactly why it has such a successful search engine business?

common courtesy

by Kenneth Rudich (This is another installment for the “Promote a Social Good” marketing campaign.  If you’d like to contribute your own installment, please let me know.)

Though the law where I live explicitly states that pedestrians have the right-of-way over cars at an intersection, it has become apparent there are some motorists who either don’t care or are oblivious to it.

It’s bad that drivers will blow through an intersection without showing the slightest inclination to stop at the stop sign.  Even when I’m approaching from an easily seen angle, with my dog trotting several steps ahead on a leash, they’ll glide past with no hesitation whatsoever.  Extra caution on my part has saved both me and the dog from rudely being introduced to the front grill of a car – in fact, on more occasions than I care to recall.  What’s worse is that it usually happens in broad daylight, in an area with an unobstructed view.

A few drivers have even shot me a last second glance of seething irritation, as if momentarily debating the thought of pausing to reprimand me for being there and nearly forcing them to stop.  Only, for them to actually stop would be irony so they don’t. 

To all my fellow flesh and bone human beings who fall into this category of behavior, I have this and only this to say: The brakes on your vehicle will always be a better ally than the gas pedal ever will.  Road kill is never pretty.  Indeed, it can ruin your whole day.  Learn that and you will have mastered a universally important lesson in life.

the well-mannered experience by comparison

By my estimation, the majority of motorists do stop, and they’ll patiently wait for me and my canine friend to cross the street. 

When that happens, I acknowledge their courtesy with a friendly wave and mouth the words, “Thank you” while passing in front of them.  They typically nod or smile in return and mouth the words, “You’re welcome.” 

And with that supremely simple gesture, we have reinforced our common commitment to preserving humanity for the sake of…well, preserving humanity.

revere the common courtesy

I like to think most people recognize the great and good of common courtesy – how a supremely simple gesture like saying please, thank you, or excuse me can emotionally enrich a given moment, even if only fleeting in nature. 

It can make a rough day just a bit smoother, and it can elevate a good day even higher.  It can slow the passage of time just long enough to have noticed and be noticed.  To paraphrase Neil Armstrong’s famous words, the common courtesy can be a small step for man, and a giant leap for mankind.

The option to be courteous is available to everyone.  It’s a choice to be made.  And to those of you that choose to regularly exercise common courtesy, I just want to say, “Thank you.”  

education as a social good

by Kenneth Rudich (another installment for the “Promote a Social Good” campaign)

Few people are likely to express real surprise over hearing yet again about a broken U.S. education system.  The backslide that brought it here has been a festering wound for quite some time.

waiting for “superman”

Nonetheless, it’s always good to keep this issue squarely in the public eye, held high aloft where no one can ignore it.  That’s the only possible hope for ever having it restored back to its formerly respectable self.

Davis Guggenheim, Director of “An Inconvenient Truth,” has joined the mix of people attempting to keep this problem in the spotlight.  In his new documentary titled “Waiting for Superman,” viewers are exposed to another sobering dose of what has become an extraordinarily beleaguered education system.
 
According to the film, the U.S. is ranked 25th in math and 21st in science among 30 developed countries.  As recently as twenty years ago, the U.S. was ranked among the highest in both categories.
 
Oddly, U.S. students are first in confidence despite their poor rankings elsewhere.
 
One partial explanation for this may rest with a discovery made by Stanford sociologist Sanford Dorenbush.  He found a distinct difference between the behavior patterns of American parents and their Asian counterparts as it pertains to instilling a sense of commitment for attaining the best possible education.
 
Dr. Dorenbush says, “While most American parents are willing to accept a child’s weak areas and emphasize the strengths, for Asians, the attitude is that if you’re not doing well, to get up and study earlier in the morning.  They believe anyone can do well in school with the right effort.”

Low expectations, little discipline, and high under-achievement are perfect if you want to be timid about success.  Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that Korea ranks second in Math and Japan is sixth.

Another disturbing trend revolves around the negative attitude certain groups and communities foster about education.  In those communities, children who want to learn and do well in school are shunned by their peers. In the strangest of twists, they are treated like misfits by misfits.  Now that’s just plain warped.
   
The House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor reports that 7,000 students drop out every day and only about 70% of students graduate with a regular high school diploma.  Another study suggests that, in the 50 largest cities, the on time graduation rate drops to 53%.

foundational cracks always eventually show up

Even when students make it past high school, issues often arise at the college or university level.  In a 2005 Associated Press story, education writer Justin Pope reported, “Just 54 percent of students entering four-year colleges in 1997 had a degree six years later — and even fewer Hispanics and blacks did, according to some of the latest government figures.”

While the disparity between enrollment and graduation can be attributed to many factors, perhaps the most unsettling of them lies in the argument that the “gap results at least in part from the fact that large numbers of high school students have less-than-adequate college preparation.” 

The Institute for Higher Education Policy asserts, “Many studies have documented a substantial gap between the academic performance of students from low-income families and minority students and the performance of other students.  Inadequate academic preparation is one of the significant barriers to access in higher education.”  That means the fastest growing population of students — 40% of high school graduates will be minority by 2012, according to one report — is also having the biggest performance problems.
 
In an earlier post to this blog, “U.S. Labor Force Shortfall of Educated Workers by 2020,” Robert Craves, President and CEO of the National Education Foundation, summed it up this way: “We’re doing a great job of educating the affluent kids…We’re doing a poor job of educating the poor kids.”

A recent report by the McKinsey Corporation showed that if minority student performance had reached white students by 1998, the GDP in 2009 would have been between $310 billion and $525 billion higher – or approximately 2 to 4 percent of GDP.  The report also says the achievement gaps in this country are the same as having “a permanent national recession.” 

what’s next?

Think of a house infected with termites, how the structural foundation is slowly eaten away until the day finally arrives when it collapses.  The U.S. education system, the future quality of the U.S. workforce, the hope for economic prosperity ahead, is a house infected with termites.

Unfortunately, it is far easier to document the problem than it is to fix it.  It is said the title of Guggenheim’s film, “Waiting for Superman,” is a reference to the childhood dream of being rescued.

Right about now, I think too many of us are waiting for Superman.  And that may in fact be the problem in a nutshell.  It’s time to stop waiting and start doing.  And I mean all of us!  We need to show an outrage over just how unacceptable this situation has become.

As Albert Einstein once said, “You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.”

access to higher education

by Kenneth Rudich (author’s note: this is the “promote a social good” campaign submission for this week)
 
If you’re among the rapidly growing number of adults with an ambition to pursue higher education, or part of the 88 million strong baby boom echo (the children of the baby boomers) that has been, and will continue to be, coming of college age between 2000 and 2015, then there’s a good chance you’re either in the midst of, or about to be introduced to, the controversial issue of access in U.S. higher education.

access: the ability to attend college

The National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education defines “access” as the ability to attend college.  Expressed this way, it is, without doubt, an admirable concept, one made all the better by being adorned with the attribute of elegant simplicity.

But simple concepts often have a way of withering under closer examination, and this one is no exception.
 
Take, for instance, the word “ability,” which itself is open-ended.  Are they talking about financial ability, physical ability, technical ability, mental ability?  Who should be responsible for facilitating ability — the government, the education system, the students, the private sector, parents, taxpayers?
 
Should ability include an entitlement to attend the college or university of choice?  Or guarantee a spot in a selected field of study?  And are there wider world implications — social, political, economic, environmental, technological — that come with providing (or failing to provide) ability?
 
When put to the test, even an apparently simple matter like access can be stubbornly difficult to reconcile.  The reason, explains Carol Twigg from The National Center for Academic Transformation, is because “access means different things to different people.”

another defining moment for access in the u.s.

Dating back to 1862, the U.S. has struggled mightily with the issue of providing its citizens with access to higher education, and it now finds itself poised at another defining moment in that history.
   
So far, the quest for universal access has been something of a bittersweet story — that is, it has been accomplished, but only to a limited extent.  Robert Craves, President and CEO of the National Education Foundation, sums it up this way: “We’re doing a great job of educating the affluent kids…We’re doing a poor job of educating the poor kids.”

From the start, the hope for access was to give first-generation college students from middle and low-income families the opportunity to participate in higher education.
 
Moreover, such a notion has recently become more important than ever, given what we know about the changing U.S. population.  “In 1960, for example, about 7 percent of U.S. High School graduates were members of minority groups,” says Thomas G. Mortenson, Senior Scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, “by 2012, about 40 percent will be.”

But the untidy business of rising higher education costs, alongside growing government deficits at both state and federal levels, is threatening to adversely affect the amount of financial aid made available for sustaining access, let alone improving it.
 
In addition, The Institute of Higher Education has identified numerous other problems that put access at risk, including:

• social and cultural barriers to access, including academically qualified students who are insufficiently informed about the benefits of higher education;
• inadequate K-12 preparation or not academically qualified;
• academically qualified but lack the ability to pay for higher education;
• how can student loan programs be effectively used to overcome financial barriers to access;
• how does tax policy impact access for better or worse;
• projections that higher education will lack sufficient capacity to meet demand;
• why does college cost as much as it does, especially in the eyes of parents and families;
• are colleges and universities being held appropriately accountable for the quality of their activities;
• what is the scope of federal regulatory burden on colleges and universities.

why does it matter anyway?

The baleful consequence of failing to do better has the potential for putting the U.S. in a terrible bind.
 
In his 1964 book, “Human Capital,” economist Gary Becker defended the economic value of higher education by showing that an investment in people was akin to an investment in physical capital, and it could be measured in much the same way.  He devised a method to compute an economic rate of return from it, from both a private good and public good standpoint.  “The result,” says University of Virginia economist David W. Breneman “was a powerful analytical model that provided hard economic evidence of the value of higher education in the labor market.” 

Other economists have since reaffirmed the legitimacy of Becker’s work, which makes it possible to gauge the nation’s capacity to meet its future workforce needs.  On this subject, a report released by The Institute for Higher Education Policy is unavoidably somber and ineluctably clear: “If current trends continue, the nation will face a deficit of approximately 12 million workers with at least some college education by 2020.”
 
Dennis P. Jones of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems claims, “Anything that limits access, even indirectly, becomes cause for concern and attention.”  Apart from undercutting a much-cherished ideal – “The ideal of transforming higher education from the preserve of the elite and affluent to a resource for many,” says Jones — it also impedes the development of human capital, which may well be the single most important asset a state, region or nation can have in the midst of these trying times.

in summary

With workforce needs growing ever more complex in this era of the knowledge age, the notion of increasing access to higher education in the U.S. is at a crossroads once again, and the concept of time – or rather, the passage of it — cannot necessarily be counted upon as an ally in that quest.    

three sides to every dispute

by Kenneth Rudich (author’s note: I sometimes take a time out to write a commentary.  This is one of those timeouts.)

An old saying claims there are three sides to every disagreement: his, hers, and the truth.

The saga in Arizona over the recent signing of a new immigration law fits into the three-sided category.

Unlike the seemingly spontaneous eruption represented in the media, the angst over illegal immigration in Arizona has been boiling for a long time, and it had been simmering for quite a while before even that.
 
We know two sides of the argument, but the third has yet to be adequately told.

the immigration law protest side

The signing of the new immigration law has wrought apprehensions about giving police a nod of approval to engage in racial prejudice and profiling based on the color of someone’s skin.  This wouldn’t be so bad, really, if skin color automatically and definitively equated into illegal immigrant status.  But it does not, nor should it.

Legal citizens of color, those who pay taxes and contribute to the good of the community, are vulnerable under the law to the insult and humiliation of having to prove their legal status, possibly on a recurring basis.  This is, without doubt, a substantial and legitimate concern.  To be sure, it threatens an injustice of some significant magnitude.

Apart from that, there also is an argument that favors the idea of welcoming the illegal immigrants.  After all, they often take jobs with harsh working conditions, low pay, and little, if any, gratification.  These are jobs most native citizens decline to do.  Moreover, the fact that the work is done at a lower cost for the producer often translates into lower prices for consumers at places like the grocery store.

These same illegal aliens contribute to social security with slim hope of ever receiving a benefit back.  They get to work – and pay into it – because they often have fake social security cards.  But they can’t seek anything in return without risking deportation.  Some estimate that the federal government’s so-called suspense file, where unclaimed funds like these are kept, is growing by upwards of $50 billion a year.  Officials are unclear exactly how much of this comes from illegal immigrants, but they suspect it’s a sizable portion.
 
Then there are those who roil over the question of why the government doesn’t do more to target the employers that hire illegal immigrants.  Aren’t they the kindling that fuels the fire?
 
Finally, there is confusion over what the new law will actually accomplish.  One estimate puts the cost of successfully deporting a quarter of Arizona’s illegal immigrants at a whopping $11.5 billion.  So few for so much is a good deal?  For a state already suffocating under an abysmal amount of debt, no less?

the immigration law advocate side

While recently visiting “The Tonight Show,” California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared he would never support such a law in his state.  The Mayor of San Francisco, meanwhile, has curtailed city supported travel to Arizona.  On the surface, these public displays resemble earnest actions born of noble sensibilities.

Except each politician conveniently neglected to mention that, since the federal government tightened up the California border fifteen years ago, Arizona has become a major conduit to the U.S., with almost 700,000 people caught in the last two and a half years alone.  The considerable relief California has gotten from shifting the problem onto Arizona puts their thinly disguised benevolence in a new light, making it suspect as the product of a blatant ulterior motive.

According to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) databases, there are roughly 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona.  Sixty-five percent of illegal aliens are from Mexico and twenty percent are from Central/South America.  There are 6.5 million total residents in the state, and 28.8% are Latino.  One out of thirteen residents qualifies as an illegal alien, and one out of five Latinos is illegal.  At what point does basic statistical trend detection become racial profiling?

And before you start showering Arizona with your utmost incredulity and disdain, also know this.  Many of its legal citizens perceive the illegal immigration problem as growing not by incremental stages, but by exponential leaps and bounds; and, for more than a decade, they’ve been watching it suck the marrow out of the state’s infrastructural bones.
 
Where does that perception derive from, you ask?  The answer is daily observation.
 
Hospital emergency rooms are visibly choked to the point of overflowing with people who legally must be treated, though they have no way of footing the bill.  The estimated percentage of illegal immigrants who fit into this category can range as high as 25% of the uncompensated care.
  
And this does not even address related costs like emergency transportation or other support services.  Nor does it factor in the idea that legal citizens can find themselves waiting longer for emergency care because of it.
 
The public school system has felt the weight of the onslaught.  Children of illegal immigrants that attend school take up much needed space and consume already scarce resources that come from citizen paid tax dollars.  If they have remedial needs, the burden runs higher yet.  Then there are the children who don’t attend school.  It stretches the imagination to suggest they are making constructive use of their time out on the streets.

Though illegal immigrants are in fact disqualified from getting many social services, know that their children, the ones born in the U.S., do qualify for those services.  Food stamps are but one example.

And then there is the issue of crime.  Does anyone really need to say more about that?
       
In light of all this, why would taxpayers be content to let so much misappropriation of public funding continue to go on?  Far from adding a wholesome form of nourishment, illegal immigration has been crippling quality of life and eroding communities throughout Arizona.

then there’s the third side

The unfortunate thing is that the current focus on the new law, and the subsequent protests against it, are at the exhaust end of the problem, what’s coming out of the tailpipe rather than what’s going on in the engine.  Not unlike the shoreline of Louisiana, Arizona has a foreign substance gumming up its engine.  And that, as it turns out, leads to the greatest injustice of all.
   
If you dig down through the several layers of groups being adversely affected by it, you’ll find good, honest, hard-working, legal citizens stuck at the bottom.  Upwards of 6 million strong, they have nothing to do with the cause of the problem, but yet they still bear the full force of effect.  And if you look real close, you’ll discover they come in all colors, shapes, sizes, and backgrounds.
 
For them, it’s a no-win situation.  They are the innocent victims of new laws, of angry protests, of hastily called boycotts, frankly, of it all.
 
And that’s the unvarnished truth.     

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by Kenneth Rudich

This week’s post for “promote a social good” and the Social Good Campaign centers on education.
 
Sometimes characterized as consisting of the three R’s – reading, writing, and arithmetic (or should it be reading, riting, and rithmetic?) – the concept of education is really much bigger and broader than that simple description alone could ever suggest.
 
At heart, education aims to do socially productive work.
 
Part of the social good stems from the act of teaching – and thereby spreading – the knowledge we already possess as a society.
 
Another part comes from fueling the discovery of new knowledge.  This entails much more than the mere ability to pass on knowledge.  It involves the capacity to endow people with higher order cognitive skills, like an aptitude for critical thinking and problem solving.  An often heard adage, which some claim is an old Chinese proverb, says, “The mind is a fire to be lighted, not a vessel to be filled.”  Education is about lighting the fire.
   
So while education perhaps starts with the three R’s, the big picture pursuit is to improve quality of life.  Consider just a few of the countless advancements of the 20th century as a case and point.  Antibiotics like penicillin, the transistor, the laser, the microchip, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, molecular biology, the intricacies of genes, chromosome structures, and DNA – all of these have turned into springboards for products and services that never would have seen the light of day were it not for the education process behind it.

But education does not stop there, either.  It strives to be much more than just the studies customary for preparation in a trade or profession.  As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace in society.”  Consequently, it also includes the effort to mold young individuals into well-rounded citizens – tackling the challenge of what Penn State University President Graham Spanier describes as “developing character, conscience, citizenship, tolerance and social responsibility.”
        
Said another way, education is about the quality and robustness of the social systems that emerge from it.
 
Noted scholar and author Dr. Deepak Chopra asserts that a well-nourished sense of community is capable of producing a phenomenon he calls the “critical mass of intentionality.”  This theory says, when a community of intent reaches a critical mass the intent is amplified, which produces a kind of energy field that propels it forward with even greater force or momentum.
 
A key purpose of education is to help cultivate individual desire to actively participate as a community member, to be personally involved and thereby become part of the critical mass of intentionality.  Whether at the local, state, national or international level, a society can flourish only if bright, hard-working people are making positive contributions to it. 

who benefits from education?

Individual students of course benefit from the experience of becoming educated.   But others use the product of education — the knowledge, values, literacy, and critical thinking skills acquired by the graduates — rather than experience it.  Employers are among these, as are governmental and community agencies.  Still another is society.

In reality, our collective common good stands to reap the greatest benefit of all – improved lives and better living. 

what can be done to promote education?

Here’s what can be done to advance the social marketing of education:

• raise the educational aspirations of our youth, starting at the earliest possible age to
  ensure that all children are ready to learn before they enter school
• boost the quality of teaching and learning in our elementary and secondary schools
• increase high school, college and university graduation rates
• expand adult lifelong learning, worker training, and professional development
• increase the level of activity in university research and development
• create a framework to sustain those commitments and strengthen accountability for the public agenda 

clean land

by Kenneth Rudich

In the course of writing an earlier post about social marketing, I committed to dedicating at least one post per week to promoting a social good.
 
Let me reiterate that social marketing differs from social media marketing.  Social marketing promotes the cause of a social good.  A social good is anything that helps to improve our collective human experience.  It includes causes we can all readily unite around – such as clean air, clean water, and clean land.
      
Further, I encouraged others who publish content, in whatever form it takes, to join in and make it a crusade for arousing greater awareness, interest and action in our well-being as a species.  To exhibit a universal care and caring like the world has never seen before.
          
Given the various forms of communication now at our disposal, and given the pressing needs that surround us, there’s no better time than the present to become an active participant.

today’s social marketing – help keep our environment clean

There are at least three different levels of involvement one can embrace when it comes to keeping our landscapes, cityscapes, seascapes, and every other kind of earthly space free from the blight of human litter.  They range from minimal-but-nonetheless-important participation to maximum activism.

1. Refrain from contributing to the problem.  This is the easiest of all.  If everyone did this and only this, there’d be virtually no problem at all.
2. As you come across small pieces of trash others have left behind, pick it up, at least when possible, and deposit it in a proper receptacle.  This is a slightly more proactive approach, in which you extend yourself to become a more aggressive part of the solution.  For instance, plucking a soda can out of the sand on the beach and placing it in a trash can.
3. Spearhead, support, or participate in campaigns to clean up the environment, ranging anywhere from within your local community to even perhaps on a global scale.

positive is better than negative

Any of these three levels represent a positive step, and any series of positive steps can fuel forward momentum.  If we generate enough forward momentum, the planet will surely be the better for it.

Social marketing can be a loyal ally for improving the human condition.   

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by Kenneth Rudich

I recently accepted an invitation to write a guest post for a blog belonging to my friends at http://halogendesigns.com/.  The post is titled “Use Social Marketing to Your Business Advantage,” and it discusses the advisability of doing exactly what it suggests.

Not to be confused with social media marketing, social marketing is the formal application of marketing concepts to support a social good, such as a wear your seatbelts campaign for example.  Allying your business with a social good can lead to the creation of good will for your business, which can in turn produce a win-win situation for everyone concerned.  If you want to learn more about this concept, I recommend clicking on the title and reading the post for details.

but before you go

I’d like to share a brief story about the events that led me to choose that particular subject.

A day earlier, while walking my dog on the sidewalk of the city I live in, I witnessed two separate instances of blatant disregard for the environment within a span of twenty minutes.  Both were not only inexcusable, but arguably reprehensible too.

The first occurred when a woman drove past in a nice sedan and flicked her cigarette butt out the driver’s side window onto the street.  As someone who is familiar with the amenities of a vehicle like that, I know it has an ashtray installed at the base of the dashboard, and that there is an implied intent to use it rather than toss the butt out the window at the expense of the environment.
 
A few moments later, the second such event unfolded about thirty yards ahead of me when a jogger paused to let her dog relieve himself with what clearly entailed a bowel movement.  Despite signs posted everywhere with the message to clean up after your dog – It’s the Law! – she did not even so much as hesitate to resume her jog the moment he was done, leaving behind that unsightly deposit for others to see.

On the rest of the way with my dog, I soon found myself experiencing a growing awareness of what I came to regard as an alarming amount of man-made litter scattered about the streets and sidewalks and landscaping, including more cigarette butts and dog poop.  This was surprising, in part, because I live in a city that has in the past won national awards for its cleanliness.

By the time I’d arrived home, I’d decided to write about the good business practice of engaging in social marketing.  Apart from the argument that says you’ll be advancing a worthy cause alongside your business objectives, I must also say, after having taken that walk, we just plain need more of it.

Further, I’ve decided to dedicate at least one post per week to the cause of promoting a social good in some fashion or form.  I am going to call it the “Social Good Campaign,” and I’m going to make it one of the featured topics on the upper left side of this blog. 

But I don’t want this to be my crusade alone.  Instead, I’d like to encourage everyone with a voice, however you happen to come by it, to join in and promote the social good on a continuing basis.  The more visible this campaign becomes, the better off our planet will be.

in closing

I now carry extra doggie bags on my walks – biodegradable ones – and I have developed the habit of picking up what others carelessly leave behind.  I’m looking forward to the day when I no longer find it necessary to do that anymore.

Please help to keep our environment clean. 

That’s my social marketing message for today.

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by Kenneth Rudich 

Here’s a marketing riddle for you: when is old new and new old? 

The answer: when you bring the Grateful Dead into a discussion about contemporary online marketing. 

For those of you in the dark about the identity of the Grateful Dead, they were an American rock band formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965.  For those of you in the know, that simple description, if left as is, may well be the biggest understatement of the last five decades.
 
Lurking behind the laid back image of the band’s hippie subculture persona was a business enterprise worthy of idolatry.  Which probably goes a long way toward explaining why modern pundits and business practitioners alike are…well…marveling over it to the point of idolizing it.
 
One could arguably say they created the groundwork for much of contemporary online marketing — long before the internet even existed, no less. 

It’s a strange twist of fate when you think about it.  Instead of being motivated by the internet, the Dead were driven by a desire to be anti-establishment.  Anti-establishment meant unconventional, which they resoundingly were – in their art, their business, and their marketing.  They shrewdly pioneered ideas and techniques that made them stand well apart from corporate America, in isolation, all by themselves.  They were the epitome of anti-establishment. 

But I guess the joke – to the tune of probably hundreds of millions of dollars – was ultimately on them.  Because now corporate America, the so-called establishment they wanted so badly to distance themselves from, is widely adopting their ideas and practices.  The Grateful Dead is now the establishment that fostered the new establishment, at least in business and marketing terms. 

so what did they do?

Here’s just a brief summary: 

The band brought together a community of people based on common interests.  These people formed tight-knit friendships even though they were geographically separated.  Indeed, the bonds became so strong that the band accumulated a following of fans that would crisscross the country with them while they were on tour.  This following was known as the “Deadheads,” and they truly wanted to be camping out together with each other as much as they wanted to be with the band.  This scenario, of course, describes a social media marketer’s most cherished dream.  

The Dead focused intensely on creating value for their most loyal fans.  They established a telephone hotline that alerted fans to upcoming tours before any public announcements were made.  They reserved seats for their fans and capped the ticket prices, which they distributed through their own mail-order house.  As a result, fans never had to travel to far away cities just to buy tickets, or camp out to get them, and they got the best seats available.  If you read “An Economy Built on Quicksand” in this blog, you’ll recall that corporate America didn’t come close to showing this kind of customer care until about the mid-1980’s, and that was only because the competition from Japan forced them into it.  Remember, the Dead formed in 1965.  

The Grateful Dead incorporated early on and founded a profitable merchandising enterprise.  They even went so far as to let fans tape their live shows, foregoing those potential record sales, knowing that the viral effects of having it freely shared would ultimately pay off  in the sales of their tickets and merchandise.  And that was all before anyone had ever even heard the term viral marketing.  

old marketing, new marketing, old marketing?

I could go on, but I think the point is well made. 

For all the online marketers who pride themselves as having been the inspiration behind the nouveau marketing practiced on today’s internet, you may want to pause a moment and tip your hat to the real predecessors of that nouveau marketing.  After all, it’s a clear-cut case of old is new and new is old.

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by Kenneth Rudich

Please be forewarned from the outset that this post contains some sensitive subject matter.  It has material I would not ordinarily choose to write about except I came across a CNN News Report that struck me as relevant, given that I’d published a blog post titled “Going Viral from A to Z” a few days earlier.

In that blog post, I introduced two fictional characters named “A-Viral the Good” and his evil twin “Z-viral the bad.”  It noted that going viral can be a double-edged sword.  It depends on who you feed, and what you feed him.  After that, it can go anywhere from A to Z.
 
The point I was trying to make is that you can’t really control or predict viral marketing, certainly not like you can other forms of marketing.  At any time, it can take a life of its own and become an entity unto itself.  When that happens, mostly all you can do is sit back and watch.  And if it goes wrong for you, it can go terribly wrong.

the story

The story I’m about to discuss is a cautionary tale because of its strange twist.  Actually, it has a few strange twists and an outcome that was unwittingly produced in the wake of trying to raise people’s consciousness about a socially sensitive subject.

It begins with an interactive, animated computer game produced in Japan.  The game players are invited to engage in the sordid business of sexually violating a teenage girl on a subway.  It is graphic, violent, and openly vindictive toward women.  And it was placed in the market for sale.
 
None too surprisingly, the game ignited international outrage among women’s groups.  They wanted it pulled off store shelves worldwide, and they wanted to call attention to how socially inappropriate it was.  They launched a marketing campaign with those objectives in mind.
 
And that’s when irony struck.

the irony

While the campaign did in fact succeed at smothering sales, this does not necessarily mean that it achieved its true goal.
 
You see, in the quest to create widespread awareness of the game being too controversial to be in the market, it also created widespread awareness of – and morbid curiosity about – the game.  The next thing anyone new, the game went viral and was being downloaded from the internet, often for free.
 
As for the women behind the campaign, all they could do is sit back and watch in dismay as sales plunged but circulation soared.  

a teachable moment for marketers

In my post with the fictional character Z-viral the bad, he is described as bent on inflicting his sinister intent whenever and wherever he can.  All he needs is the slightest exploitable weakness and he’ll pounce like a cougar on prey.

I would venture to say the exploitable weakness of the women’s campaign was in underestimating the human trait of morbid curiosity and the role it can play.  It’s the same kind of curiosity that prompts people to rubberneck when driving past a car accident.  In a situation like this, with a wildly lurid aspect involved, it merits asking what could potentially happen with interest and action once awareness is created.

So in fact the campaign to raise awareness did raise awareness…but it did it for both.  And, in the process, it unwittingly, inadvertently, never wanting to, helped the computer game to go viral.

What do you think?  Is this a teachable moment for those of us in marketing?  Like maybe, beware circumstances in which you must also consider the prospect of unintended viral marketing?

click on image to enlarge

by Kenneth Rudich 

This post is about A-Viral the Good and his evil twin Z-viral the bad.  The only thing they have in common is a mutual desire to go viral.  Other than that, they are complete opposites in character and personality.  Indeed, the phrase “two sides of the same coin” couldn’t be more fitting. 

z-viral the bad

Z-viral the bad – or just “Z,” as friends’ malware, adware and spyware like to call him – is bent on inflicting his sinister intent wherever and whenever he can.  The bigger, the broader, the more widespread…the better for him.
  
One recent foray involved an ambitious plan to upset the health and welfare of people all over the world.  You might have heard of it.  It was called H1N1 or the Swine flu.  What he did was let it loose in Veracruz, Mexico, and then he sat back and waited for what he knew would naturally occur.
   
The real genius of his plan lay in having it spread person to person through respiratory droplets.  Z was well aware that modern transportation methods give people the mobility to crisscross the globe with relative ease, so he set out to use the social tendencies of the species against itself.
 
And it worked like a charm!  In almost no time at all the swine flu achieved a broad global reach, with countless clinics overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people infected with it.  The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic in 2009.  According to one source, Z launched into dancing an impromptu jig upon hearing the news. 

It bears repeating that Z-viral the bad is really quite indiscriminate about when, where, and how he will ply his devices.  He has an equally strong affinity for attacking computer files and networks.  This is yet another domain where he has shown himself to be majorly clever.  His viruses have the capacity to replicate themselves with such harrowing speed that an army of anti-virus practitioners had to be formed in hopes of slowing him down.
  
Tarnishing brands and spoiling reputations are part of his repertoire, too.  The mere idea of thrusting these into the throes of disgrace causes the grin on his face to twist with delight.  All he needs is the slightest exploitable weakness — one little slip, stumble, lapse, miscue, or indiscretion — and he’ll pounce like a cougar on prey.
   
Some describe his appetite for wreaking havoc as shamelessly heartless and utterly relentless.  Personally, I’d rather live in obscurity than be in his unmerciful hands. 

a-viral the good

A-Viral the Good, meanwhile, is a friend of the human condition.  He has a knack for giving exposure to things that are brilliantly executed and genuinely deserve lots of attention.
 
Got an interesting video or picture?  Let him see it!  Know of a captivating trend?  Show him!  Heard some awe-inspiring words?  Pass it on!  Saw an object of outstanding merit?  Send it to him!
   
Then watch it resonate all over the place, getting recognition beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
  
A-Viral epitomizes the embraceable side of all worthy human endeavor.  He takes ingenuity, grace, compassion, and soul, and lifts it up high for everyone to see.  His talent lies in an uncanny ability to share like no one else ever possibly could.
   
Getting in A-Viral’s good graces is like winning the lottery not once but twice.  And who among men — and women — wouldn’t want that to happen to them? 

going viral  

Going viral is neither inherently good nor inherently bad.
 
Rather, it’s about who you feed, and what you feed him.  Depending on that, it can go anywhere from A to Z.

Related Posts:

Unintended Viral Marketing

on a beer budget?

by Kenneth Rudich

At the same time the United States has been grappling with a major recession, it has also racked up a staggering amount of debt.  The Obama administration budget plan released on Feb. 1 projected an unprecedented deficit of $1.56 trillion for this year.  On top of that, the outlook for getting relief from having to repay it…never mind. 
   
According to an article in the Huffington Post written by AP Business Writer Bernard Condon, this may be dampening the appeal of U.S. Treasury Bills.  

Foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury Bills saw a record plunge of $53 billion in December.  It surpassed the last record drop in April 2009, at $44.5 billion.  If these trends continue, the U.S. may have to pay a higher interest rate on its Treasury Bills, which could have the dual consequence of making the national debt soar even higher while stock prices tumble.  If you don’t know what that means, just assume it will drive the wedge ever so deeper.  
 
China stood at the front of the reduction line and shed its holdings of U.S. Treasury Securities by $34.2 billion in December.  Carnegie Mellon University economics professor Alan Meltzer regards this as a sign that China may be worried the U.S. has “an unsustainable debt level and no real plan for dealing with it.”        

Japan, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to share China’s trepidation.  It actually increased its holdings by $11.5 billion, making it America’s biggest creditor once again.  Japan now holds $768.8 billion in treasurys as compared to China’s paltry $755.4 billion.  Neither of these stunning figures strike me as oozing with fear about recouping a handsome gain on their investments.         
 
And yet, for all of 2009, foreign holdings in U.S. Treasury Bills still decreased by $500 million.
 
Just by virtue of how whopping these numbers really are, it does beg the question: what is the U.S. left holding after all this…a maxed out credit card in one hand and a mortgaged future in the other?
 
Economists as a whole seem divided about the severity of this circumstance.  Some don’t believe too much should be read into it.  They argue that the drop was in short-term treasury debt, which tends to be volatile from month to month.  They claim the trend could easily be reversed in the coming months.  

They also pointed out that longer-term U.S. treasury debt purchases climbed by $70 billion in December (is this a good thing?  isn’t the general outcome of selling more debt…well, more indebtedness?).             

Other economists see these trends as an early indication of growing unease over the depth and weight of the current U.S. debt.           

Me?  I’m thinking the U.S. might want to consider revamping its marketing strategy, up to and including, finding something else to sell other than debt.  Maybe something with a return on investment for a change.  Just a thought.         

What do you think?   How would you characterize the U.S. prospects for staying marketable in the years ahead?