#33 Are Your Numbers Fake and Boring? Or Are They Sexy?

 

Issue #33 - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 

 

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2018/11/33-are-your-numbers-fake-and-boring-or.html

Posted by Denny Hatch

Are Your Numbers Fake and Boring?
Or Are They Sexy?
 

Do You Believe These Numbers?

My opinion: rounded-off numbers are boring, contrived and basically dishonest.

TIME publishes the 100 World’s Most Influential People. How many not-so-influential people were shoehorned into the list to make it an even 100? Or… who was left out? Why not THE TIME 97 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE? Or 103?

Same nonsense every year with the FORTUNE 500 companies and the Forbes 400 richest people.

Sloppy Copy by a Lazy Brit Copywriter

On November 15^th Peggy and I were in London and decided to attend Evensong at Christopher Wren’s magnificent St. Paul’s Cathedral.

It turned out to be a very special evening—the 60^th Anniversary of the Dedication of the American Memorial Chapel, which is directly behind the main altar.

In attendance were the American Ambassador, The Hon. Woody Johnson, and Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Gloucester. The Introit was the African-American spiritual Steal Away to Jesus and the opening hymn was The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

For this honorably discharged U.S. Army veteran, (1958-1960) I felt the same rush of pride as I did 60 years ago on the Ft. Dix and Ft. Jay parade ground marching to Sousa’s Stars & Stripes Forever and the snapping of American flags in the wind.

In the American Memorial Chapel the Inscription reads:

THIS CHAPEL COMMEMORATES THE COMMON SACRIFICES OF THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN PEOPLE DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND ESPECIALLY THOSE AMERICAN SERVICE MEN WHOSE NAMES ARE RECORDED IN ITS ROLL OF HONOUR THIS TABLET WAS UNVEILED BY H.M. QUEEN ELIZABETH II ON 26 NOVEMBER, 1958 IN THE PRESENCE OF RICHARD M. NIXON THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

 

From the program booklet of the service was this paragraph of truly sloppy copy that irritated me then and irritates me now:

The Roll of Honour, containing the names of twenty

eight thousand servicemen who died, was presented

for safe keeping by General Dwight D. Eisenhower at

a special service held on 4^th July 1951. A page of this

book is turned every day.

Long Odds

The odds of precisely 28,000 servicemen dying are a thousand to one.

It was more like 27,624 or 28,092.

Clearly this untrained copywriter at St. Paul’s was too lazy to research the precise number. It’s always easier to round the number off to the nearest thousand.

What the copy is saying: “Somewhere around 28,000 Americans died. That’s a big bunch of dead Yanks.”

Sorry, Brits. We Americans believe every single tragic young life snuffed out by war is precious and deserves recognition. Their loved ones and fellow Americans want to know that each hero is being remembered individually and honored. Do you know precisely how many names are in the book: Do you care?

For Example…

Spend a moment to Google Maya Lin’s wrenching Vietnam Memorial. You’ll learn instantly 51,318 names are carved in the marble.

The American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach in Normandy contains 9,387 American military dead.

Our apartment in Philly overlooks Washington Square Park where more Revolutionary War soldiers are buried than anywhere else in the country. Sadly no count and no roster of names exist.

But they are revered. In the center of the park is a bronze statue of George Washington and an eternal flame. It is a tourist Mecca.

Same Principle in the Commercial World

People have a strange attraction to numbers. From the Ten Commandments to the “Seven out of ten people who...” to the “19 reasons why” to the “16 people who believe that...” Not only do people read the headline and then start reading the copy, but—more amazingly—they feel they have to read down to the last number mentioned.”

—Murray Raphel, Retail Consultant

I subscribe to the digital edition of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and one or two of their newsletters such as:

According to editor Gerard Baker (and his successor Matt Murray), every day of the week brings exactly 10 new items to make up his 10-Point column.

Wouldn’t this newsletter be more compelling—more real—if Murray came up with 3-Points one day and the following day featured 13- Points?

“Neatness rejects involvement,” said my great mentor Lew Smith.

By omitting some stories and padding other stories, quite simply Matt Murray is creating Donald Trump’s plague: FAKE NEWS!

One Monday (08-06-18) the Journal’s 10-POINT blog was “edited and curated” by Jessica Menton.

By my count it contained 18 items.

She was forced to call it “The Top Ten.”

Ten is neat. 18 is messy.

Journalists—print, broadcast and digital—are precise.

Alas, it’s sad sack editors—desperate to be tidy—that turn these reportorial masters into chumps.

Herschell Gordon Lewis on

Verisimilitude and Numbers

Verisimilitude is the appearance of truth.

Raw truth has weeds in it; verisimilitude is an unblemished garden.

         Truth: “Although the survey shows that readers spend more time with Fortune, and Forbes attracts greater advertising response, this magazine has shown a greater percentage of circulation growth.” 

         Verisimilitude:  “The marketplace knows what’s best! We outstrip both Fortune and Forbes in rate of circulation growth.”

         Verisimilitude is also a brake on claims.  I call this The Ballooning Number Rule:

          The farther a number rises beyond the typical

          reader’s personal experiential background, the

          less emotion the number generates.

So referring to the national debt in trillions of dollars has less impact than “You owe...”

Computer monitor manufacturers whose copy talks about 16 million colors may be truthful, but they’re outside the verisimilitude loop.

One more point about verisimilitude: It thrives on specificity.  Example: Instead of:

        “We’ve been in business a long time...”

A verisimilitude-conscious writer would say:

        “My father opened his first store at 30th and Main

          thirty-two years ago...”

And…

I have an insurance client whose business began in 1784—“five years before George Washington became president.”

In my opinion this is considerably stronger than “That’s well over 200 years ago.”

Think through the use of numbers.

This watch is accurate within five seconds per month

— or —

Accurate within sixty seconds per year

         “Five seconds per month” wins, because it seems to be less time.

         “Accurate within ten minutes over a ten-year span” would be a miracle of accuracy ... but the reader thinks, “Uh-oh, I’ll be ten minutes late and miss my plane.”

Which phrase will sell more for you?

 “Two percent a month”

  — or —

“Twenty-four percent a year”

         If you’re writing about what someone pays, it’s two percent a month; if you’re writing about what someone gets, it’s twenty-four percent a year.

Takeaways to Consider

• People have a strange attraction to numbers. From the Ten Commandments to the “Seven out of ten people who...” to the “19 reasons why” to the “16 people who believe that...” Not only do people read the headline and then start reading the copy, but—more amazingly—they feel they have to read down to the last number mentioned.” 
—Murray Raphel, Retail Consultant

• “Neatness rejects involvement.”  
 —Lew Smith, EVP, Wunderman Agency.

• “Specifics sell. Generalities do not.”
—Andrew J. Byrne, Freelancer.

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#32 Is Obamacare Costing Consumers $1.3 Trillion?

Issue #32 - Monday, November 12, 2018 

 
http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2018/11/32-is-obamacare-costing-consumers-13_41.html

Posted by Denny Hatch

Is Obamacare Costing Consumers $1.3 Trillion?

This past year at age 83 I had a horrific 3-week bout with health problems. Included were myriad doctors and specialists, ER, OR, recovery room, ICU, meds, CAT scans, X-Rays and hospitalization—the whole megillah.

 

The bill (so far) is $97,349.41.

 

 No kidding. Here's one of the actual bills. 

 

Imagine a young family or a single mom—with no health care—getting smooshed in a car crash and facing $97,000 in health care bills when 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency bill.

Financial ruin on top of physical wreckage.

Okay. I have Medicare.

What do you have?

I Remember Medicare

I was thirty in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law.

• My father loved it! He had contracted tuberculosis of the bone 60 years earlier and underwent 19 excruciating operations. He ended up with a shriveled right leg and was on crutches all his life. My family could afford it. If not, I wouldn't be here.

• I do not recall any wringing of hands or national debate how Medicare would be paid for. Congress and the president simply said, "Make it so."

• I thought it was nuts!

• Why only take care of geezers? I wondered.

• For God's sake everybody should be insured. The most important are those working people who are paying taxes and contributing to the economy. They should be able to get back on the job as fast as possible.

In terms of Health Care, the U.S. is alone in stupidity.

World Health Care

  Universal Health Care (Green), Free Health Care (Blue) 

Countries in Red Have No Free or Universal Health Care

Look at the bright red United States on the map above. No Universal Health Care—just like the primitive nations of Africa and Asia where the sick and injured die like flies.

      Even with Medicare, Medicaid, corporate paid health plans and Obamacare, 28 million of us have no health care.

Twenty-eight million is roughly the population of Yemen (which has no Universal Health Care).

      In Yemen, the under-five child mortality rate is 100 deaths per 1,000 births. That means 10% of all children under five dies.

      A Yemeni's life expectancy is 64.95 years.

 

Universal Health Care—AKA Single Payer—

Is a Simple, No-brainer Marketing Challenge

 When I was an NBC page (usher) part time while at Columbia College, FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) was deducted from every paycheck. FICA deductions continued throughout my 60-year career.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are no routinely dubbed "entitlements" by sad sack politicians.

        "To balance the budget," Congress whines, "we must cut entitlements!"

        "Entitlements" sound like we are all lazy leeches sucking undeserved cash out of the government and each other.

        Let's get one thing straight:

        Since 1935, FICA has been a financial contract from birth to death forced on us by the government. When a weasel politician threatens to "cut entitlements" he is advocating a breech of contract.

 

Obama's Grotesque Rip-off: The Affordable Care Act

The original Affordable Care Act runs 955 pages of dense, often indecipherable and twisted legalese. It could have been reduced to 10 words:

 

Medicare is hereby expanded to include Americans of all ages.

 

The FICA deduction should be substantially increased to cover Medicare for all. Like Social Security, there should be no choice of plans. No opting out. Healthy youngsters, sick oldies, everybody with pre-existing conditions—all much participate in the scheme. Yeah, this means raising taxes.

 

Taxes are good. 

"Taxes are what we pay for civilized society," said Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.—words inscribed over the entrance of IRS headquarters.

Taxes pay for the necessities of life—schools, infrastructure, military, courts and jails, legislative bodies, education, police and fire protection, clean water, disease control, FEMA, paying down the national debt, etc., etc. You cannot order these necessities from Amazon. They come from tax dollars.

Taxes should pay for Universal Health Care, just like every other civilized country in the world.

 

Our Impoverished Congress

Every member of Congress has one overarching agenda that trumps all else: Get re-elected."

         Base salary of a Senator or House member is a beggarly $174,000 a year. Other "earned" income cannot exceed 15% of that. Honoraria are disallowed.

 

The average Congressperson spends 4 hours a day—every work day—out of the office in a telemarketing boiler room with a script pleading with donors for campaign contributions. 

Congresspersons need to raise $18,000 a day every workday or find another job.

On the first Wednesday morning in November after Election Day the four-hour-a-day fundraising starts again so they can buy their jobs in the next cycle.

 

 Bribing Congress with $414.1 Million a Year

In 2009-2010 the Affordable Care Act was being enacted.

That year—and every subsequent year—the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries bought their way into Obamacare with contributions to the campaign funds and private PACs of financially strapped members of the House and Senate:

Industry                                       Bribes to Congress

Health Insurance Industry               $168.4 million

Pharmaceutical Industry                  $245.7 million

              Total Bribes                      $414.1 million

 

ROI on $414.1 Million Bribes to Congress

Industry                                        Annual Revenues 

Health Insurance Industry               $938 Billion

Pharmaceutical Industry                  $450 Billion

Single payer health coverage would eliminate the health insurance industry and free up $938 billion annually that could go directly health care. 

What Do Bribes to Pill Peddlers Buy? No Negotiating Prices!

"Under current law, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is explicitly prohibited from negotiating directly with drug manufacturers on behalf of Medicare Part D enrollee." 

(Unlike with the Veteran's Administration.) 

If drug prices were 20% lower, that wold free up another $90 billion that could go directly to health care.

Add these two amounts together—eliminate health insurance ($938 billion) and get drugs 20% cheaper ($90 million) in my opinion insurance companies and big pharma are stealing $1.3 trillion from health care.

 The Utter Failure of Obama's Marketing

The premise of Obamacare: involve every prospect in the deep weeds of health care. Give them choices to join or opt out (and pay a small fee) and offer myriad plans.

In the United States, 50% of adults cannot read a book at the 8th grade level. Thus half the country had no idea what the hell the Obamacare website was talking about.

Duh.

The Fact Is...

People do not want choices. They want to check a YES box that enables them to pay afforable premiums and be guaranteed they will be taken care of if they get sick or injured.

Obama's Non-P.R. Campaign

 I am a student and long-time practitioner of Public Relations/Publicity.

At age 15, as an apprentice (intern) at the Ivoryton, Connecticut summer playhouse, my teacher was Evelyn Lawson, a hard drinking, heavy smoking ex-Ziegfeld Follies showgirl. Evelyn said:

"Successful P.R. is letting people in on what you are doing."

"Editors are basically lazy. If you can give them a story they can use, they'll run it rather than going to the trouble of writing something original." 

 For starters, on opening day the HealthCare.gov website crashed and remained comatose for days.

Thirty million said the hell with it and opted out.

The financial viability of Obamacare was crushed at the outset.

Shudda. Wudda. Cudda.

What the White House should have done was hire a great P.R. Firm—e.g., Bob Dilenschneider, Edelman, Weber Shandwick, Ogilvy—consummate professionals that know the secrets of influencing public opinion.

From the moment Obamacare was signed into law, the country should have been blitzed seven day a week with heartfelt, deeply individual stories of men, women and especially children whose lives and family fortunes were being saved by Obamacare. (Or destroyed by having opted out.)

This P.R. coverage of Obamacare news should have been filled with the key copy drivers—the emotional hot buttons that make people act:

Fear - Greed - Guilt - Anger - Exclusivity - Salvation - Flattery

The ultimate hot button: FEAR. Scare the Bejeezus out of everybody without health care.

Instead nothing. Nada. Zippo.

"The sale begins when the customer says yes," is the mantra of the great freelancer Bill Christensen of Ellicott City, Maryland.

All politics is theater.

"We don't do theater" was the mantra of Team Obama.

And so this rogue legislation squeaked through, whereupon the White House did not follow-up and went on to other business.

Fast Forward to 2018

In the November midterm elections, Donald Trump held rallies all over the country scaring the wits out of his base these specious terrifying issues:

    Immigration

    Caravan of Foreign Invaders from Mexico

    15,000 U.S. Army Troops Being Sent to the Boarder

    The Wall

    War with Public Enemy #1: the Media and Fake News

    Witch Hunt Investigations

    Replacing Obamacare

    Blame Hillary Clinton and the Democrats

Health Care: The Issue That Threw the Rascals Out!

"A plurality of 41 percent identified health care as the issue most important to their vote, which Democrats made the centerpiece of their campaign races throughout the country." —Benjy Sarlin, NBC NEWS  

Will Congress and the Executive Branch get it right?

Not in my lifetime.

Alas, the Herculean struggle to get re-elected dominates the life of every single member of Congress.

Too many of them are emotionally—and financially—incapable of doing the right thing.

Takeaways to Consider

• "The definition of an honest politician is one who, when bought, stays bought." —Simon Cameron (1799-1899) U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, Lincoln's Secretary of War.

 

• By eliminating health insurance and knocking 20% off drug prices, $1.3 trillion could go directly to health care.

• Single Payer Universal Health Care must be paid for by higher taxes.

• Taxes are good.

• Taxes pay for the necessities of life—schools, infrastructure, military, courts and jails, legislative bodies, education, police and fire protection, clean water, disease control FEMA, paying down the national debt, etc., etc.

• In the U.S. we pay the lowest taxes in the world!

• 44% of Americans pay no federal taxes.

• Jared Kushner (Trump's son-in-law with net worth of $324 million) paid little or no taxes 2009-2016.

• With the looming $30 trillion national debt, we are human lemmings inexorably headed for financial Armageddon.

•Yeah, let's raise taxes and start to pay down the debt. We can afford it.

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#31 The Bankers That Trashed a Beloved USP

Issue #31 – Thursday, November 8, 2018

 
http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2018/11/31-bankers-that-trashed-beloved-usp.html

Posted by Denny Hatch

The Bankers That Trashed a Beloved USP

 

For my money, loose change is a pain in the neck.

Especially pennies. The U.S. Mint—which spends 1.82¢ to make a penny—lost $69 million last year producing pennies.

(Actually that’s a good deal. It costs the Mint 7¢ to produce a nickel!)

For many years we had a change jar into which went our spare change at the end of the day. Every three months or so, the jar overflowed. So began sorting, stacking, squeezing stacked coins into paper tubes and carting them down to the bank.

It probably takes one hour to sort, stack and stuff coins into tubes. This is not only boring and time consuming, but also a lousy ROI (Return on Irritation).

 

Commerce Bank’s Crown Jewel

Imagine our delight when two blocks from our house in Center City Philadelphia, Commerce Bank opened a branch with all normal banking services.

Plus a crown jewel—the magnificent Penny Arcade coin counter you see at the top of this post.

We immediately opened accounts at Commerce Bank—personal checking, corporate and savings. As a welcome goodie, they gave us a free safe deposit box for a year.

Easy Peasy No More Squeezy!

Instead of squeezing stacked coins into flattened paper tubes, we could take a plastic shopping bag of mixed coinage down to the bank and dump it into the Penny Arcade.

We ended up with a little printed receipt that could be presented to a teller who would give us cash (bills and a few coins) or simply deposit the total in our checking account.

In terms of P.R., the Penny Arcade was brilliant.

Little kids were delighted because a goofy recorded voice talked them through the process. The whirring and clanking sounds heightened the excitement—like a circus orchestra.

Kids could also win a prize for guessing in advance the total amount their coins would bring it.

It was a hoot—a veritable automated Frank Brock, who was The World’s Greatest Banker! Brock, president of the First Bank of Troy, Idaho had 6,000 active accounts worldwide in a town of 555 residents. How? He got children into the bank and kept them for life. 

The Penny Arcade Was a Beloved USP!

Remember the USP—the memorable Unique Selling Proposition—that feature/benefit that makes your product or service stand out from the competition:

Memorable USPs—Unique Selling Propositions

           “99 and 44/100% pure.” —Ivory Soap (Procter & Gamble, 1892)

           “The skin you love to touch.” —Woodbury Soap, (J. Walter Thompson Co., 1911)

           “When it rains it pours.” —Morton Salt (N.W. Ayer & Son, 1912)

           “We try harder.” —Avis (Doyle Dane Bernbach, 1983)

           “We’ll leave the light on for you.” —Motel 6 (Richards Group, 1988)

           “Bags fly free.” —Southwest Airlines (GSD&M, 2010)
 

 

 Trashing the USP

In 2007, TDBank (Toronto Dominion) bought Commerce Bank for $8.5 billion. Nine years later Peggy and I moved six blocks and began doing business with the Penny Arcade at the TDBank branch nearest us.

Two years ago I lugged a bag of coins to my TD Bank branch.

The Penny Arcade coin sorter was gone!

“Where’s the coin sorter?" I asked a young officer at desk in the lobby.

“We’ve discontinued the service.”

“What? Why?”

“Management decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.”

“Does another branch have a coin counter?”

“They’ve been removed from all 1,300 branches.”

“Can I take these coins to a teller and get them counted?”

“Bring them in rolls and we can accept them. You won’t be charged for the service.”

Enter Lawyers

The bank was the subject of both a New York lawsuit and a report on NBC, which found the machines short changed multiple deposits of $300 worth of coins by as little as 5 cents and as much as $43.10. "Offering free coin-counting to our customers has been a long-standing service at TD," said Michael Rhodes, the head of TD's consumer banking. "However, recent accounts regarding the performance of our Penny machines have led us to reassess this offering. We have determined that it is difficult to ensure a consistently great experience for our customers." —Chris Isidore, CNN Money

Here’s How to Get Your Money Back

The bank, headquartered in Cherry Hill, removed all the coin counters. But they still faced a class-action lawsuit from plaintiffs in three states seeking to recoup the amount they believe they were shortchanged over the years. Now, after four mediation sessions and much back and forth, the bank has agreed to a settlement that would cost it more than $9 million dollars. Of that, nearly $7.5 million will be shared among customers who used the machines, if the settlement gets final approval. —New Jersey Real-Time News

The End

Takeaways to Consider

• With no Unique Selling Proposition, TDBank can no longer call itself “America’s Most Convenient Bank.” It’s like every other dreary local bank.

• If 50 Penny Arcade users in each of TDBank’s 2450 U.S. and Canadian branches are unhappy, that’s 122,500 pissed-off customers.

• Commerce/TDBank exhibited sloppy research by lazy incompetent decision makers.

• The result: CRM (Customer Relationship Misery).

• All banks have machines in the back that can measure coinage to the penny.

• A quick search on Google turned up four industrial coin counter manufacturers: Cummins Allison, SCAN COIN, CTcoin and GLORY.

• It seems to me any one of the above would be delighted with an order 2450 coin counters, would be thrilled to gussy them up for consumer use and keep them running perfectly under a maintenance contract.

• A bank with a public coin counter that cannot accurately count coins is a jerkwater institution and a good reason to switch banks.

• “Always go first class.” —Bob Teufel, President of Rodale Press

• The only people who make money on class action suits are lawyers.

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