USA frontier mentality confronts the Empire

A friend sent me this video (the Granny as he called it) with the comment that it provided guidance to understanding current events and sentiments in the USA. I thought a full response was needed to explain my disagreement.

Some thoughts. I am not a Granny sympathiser. She reminds me of Q Anon as well as Christian Zionists. I believe she accurately reflects the views of much of "merica" which in itself is interesting chiefly in it's distortion of wider truths. As an example, increasing the USA deficit will not provide the growth envisaged. The latest figures show that each new dollar of debt generates 20c or less of incremental GDP. The Granny is also wrong when saying that adult reskilling will equip the workforce to meet global challenges. Worker reskilling starts at the kindergarten age. It's a 15 - 20 year project. Going further, she misses the fact that America lags most industrialised competitors in both mid-band and high-band 5G, a minimum requirement for any modern manufacturing facility.

A frontier mindset lurks behind many "mericans" understanding of current events. The Granny is no different. If it's not communists, the Chinese, Covid, then it's sharks, measles and Musk that are about cause America's downfall. Now the USA is being stealthily attacked by the Empire, the City of London which powerful, is hardly a threat. Financial AUM for NY, let alone the USA are about 4 times greater than London ($50-60trillion vs $12-15trillion). The UK is not a new adversary. Historically the USA subjected Britain to extremely punitive repayment terms following loans extended during WW2. Onerous interest charges and punitive trade measures such as restricted/no access to USA markets and tariffs were applied. Furthermore the USA helped Germany recover and prosper quickly seeking a buffer against a resurgence of UK imperialism which might threaten the USA. Michael Hudson has written extensively on this. Even though the UK may currently have "Bell Pottinger" type skills (and less than one functioning battleship), bear in mind that Blackrock, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockeed-Martin and MK-Ultra are USA progeny. To me the story of re-emergent British empire is basically the reinvention of an old benign threat. 

The USA as a global power is in rapid decline. Many theories describe the rise and fall of great powers -  Kondratiev waves, Fourth Turnings, complexity, resource limits, Turchin, etc. Debt is another cause. Debt will not make the USA great again. Trump is wrong. The problem is the interest and the treasury  bonds. Not mentioned in the vid. For interest, what is not shared widely is that USA manufacturing activity is still contracting (yes, negative) and labour too, albeit at slower levels of contraction than recently. Most claimed receipts from new tariffs are also nothing more than that, claims of what could be paid in a year. Internationally I can't believe there is any nation that deliberately embraces Trumps erractic behaviour and seeks closer ties. I sense we will see increasing USA insolation instigated by Trump but imposed by others. Tourists are already voting with their feet. Declining USA relevance is here and with it dollar avoidance. 

Some say BRICS is the enemy Trump is targeting. I am not sure because there is little evidence to show that Trump knows what BRICS is or even who is part of it. There are rumours however about a new trade finance mechanism being built at the behest of China (no BRICS dollar beating currency on the horizon). It's very interesting. Gold lies at the heart of this system which explains the race between reserve banks, especially in the East to acquire gold over the past year, thus driving the price higher. Participating nations will hold gold in their reserve banks which will act as trade finance guarantees using blockchain technolgy. Trade deals will see cross border payments by apportioning the share of gold that changes ownership between trading parties (full or fractional value). This completely bypasses SWIFT, western banks, exchanges and currency dealers. Moreover trades in this system are completely invisible to markets in the west. Price discovery becomes impossible. The negative impact on bourses such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is already felt, where dealers can't get sight of commodity prices.

Lastly, I don't agree that Trump is as skilled a strategist as some, Krainer included, believe he is. Finding and causally linking unrelated events, is easy. It always tells a good story. Americas withdrawal from flashpoints and proxy wars is as much driven by financial and military weakness (comparatively) as Trumps lack of a masterplan.

Brand Insights: How to Get Them

Brand research is a staple element of any marketer’s toolkit. This is the starting point for building insights that are used to develop a strategy or a plan. But many of these terms are generic these days and even experts tend to use them without careful attention to their actual meaning. In fact, “insights” is such an overused term these days that it has clearly usurped the often more applicable term, “observation”, in use and meaning.

Brand research insights are not a given outcome. They are not easily accessible and in most instances are not provided in research reports. Research provides observations - a record of behaviour rather than an explanation for observed behaviour - although some qualitative brand research techniques do provide deeper answers and insights.

Often a research dataset will provide countless data points. These are observations or findings. To link these findings in such a way to create new questions and generate new answers is the process of arriving at the elusive insight. Many researchers and advertising people will say “we have an insight” but in truth they are often describing an observation. They might say … “we know that more people engage with our posts in the evenings” or “the value of the average shopping basket is R550”. but they are merely repeating what is already known.

Insight generation is a process of connecting disparate datapoints and unlocking new questions that in turn, with effort and digging, may generate an elusive insight. This process is time-consuming, often self-defeating, and relies on a deep sense of curiosity. It also relies on an ability to spot something new in an otherwise mundane occurrence. Mankind waited centuries for Newton to figure out that there was something bigger happening when the apple fell on his head.

An insight can also arrive as a eureka moment or from careful observation of behaviour, but in truth it is mostly the result of hard work and relentless data scrutiny and tinkering.

The essence of an insight is that it answers the “why?” rather than the “how?” or “what?”

Upon unlocking a new insight it is often relatively easy to move to the action stage which is the point at which recommendations are made. Recommendations could involve anything from creative direction, media or strategy.

The different steps are described as:

Finding - Something that is apparent from the data

Insight - A conclusion drawn from a finding or a combination of findings and observations

Recommendation - An action taken/to be taken from the insight

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Here's an example of the process as it unfolds in real life.

A large B2C retailer was looking at transaction amounts. They expected a normal distribution with the number of transactions peaking in a typical bell-curve.

But when the actual data was interrogated this was observed:

The ‘hmm’ needed investigation.

It turned out that these transactions weren’t made by their typical shopper — young moms shopping for their kids. They were made by people who would travel from abroad once a year, walk into a store, buy lots of items, take them back to their country and sell them in their own stores. They were resellers who had no special relationship with our retailer.

This modest “discovery” set off a chain reaction of interesting questions on what sorts of products these resellers were buying, what promotional campaigns may be best suited for them, and even how this data could inform multi-national expansion plans.

Source: www.datascience.com

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Insights are hard to get. If everyone had great insights great advertising would be prolific. But in most instances, there are probably not many new things to learn about how brands perform. This is when the emphasis shifts from brand performance to emotional reaction and to value alignment.

For instance, we know how the average washing powder works. There is not much new to say about what it does. But we might find something new about the emotions it unlocks in loyal users, and better still we may discoverer a link to a deep set of cultural value norms such as trust, honesty and loyalty. These are the insights that might then inform a new distinctive and engaging communication campaign.

Make no mistake, while it’s easy to spell out the process it’s very tricky to generate valid insights. Insights can emerge at any point and are frequently ignored if a receptive and imaginative person is not attuned to these triggers. And this is why research data remains a good starting point because diligence and persistence can suffice for creative genius in unlocking a break-through insight.

And finally, in closing, be aware of those recounting mere facts and findings as insightful “discoveries”. More work may still lie ahead.

Tesco: An Opinion on the disaster from afar! (and with limited resources)