KnowsJack

In the season of jingling of bells and the comforting hustle-bustle of our many holidays and celebrations, the Dec 25^th Northwest Airlines bombing attempt appears to be inviting recriminations, condemnations, and even some political hay-making around this almost-tragic event.  Our president has labeled it a “systemic failure” – of a system that, despite his year in office, he disclaims all ownership of – and the broader rhetoric seems to be around how we’re just not doing it right.  As if only there were a playbook or a Master’s degree that someone could use as a template for managing the assault of a Global Jihad.

Given that nobody died from this, KnowsJack is taking a rare journey into global politics to take a look at the other side of the coin: what Al Qaeda brought us for the holidays, and strange as it may sound, why we should be (very) grateful, in a It’s a Wonderful Life kind of way, for what we have accomplished and also what this event will bring us.

Seeing the other side of seemingly un-hoped-for gifts is a recently acquired skill for KJ, harking back to when the soon-to-be Mrs. KJ and I celebrated our first holiday.  I was shocked by the gifts that I received from her, and especially, from her family.  Old, time-worn paperbacks wrapped in last year’s wrapping paper, or even worse, newspaper.  Re-used greeting cards, and frankly, a bunch of what felt like take-to-your-favorite-charity stuff.  My own memories of a barren-wasteland childhood amplified this need to be given to, and the fact that they spent little money nor bought any of the big items that I wanted, led me to feel like they had not given me anything at all.

Years passed, and eventually I got it and learned to laugh at it, even make some good ones myself (my verse below, on a re-wrapped gift box that they had sent us, now containing tangerines).

Knock-knock.

Who’s There?

Orange?

Orange Who?

Orange you glad we came to see you at Christmas?

I learned from them what it is to be given to, regardless of the actual gift itself.  Wifey’s family, as it turns out, packs more thoughtfulness, love and caring into their economically insignificant gifts (my parents were economists) than most any other gift-givers in the world.  Fun little notes, often riddles about what it inside and how it relates to your life, and frankly, once I realized that size doesn’t matter, their gifts were more reflective and acknowledging of me than most things I had ever received before.   Point taken: it’s not the gift itself, but it is the giving.

So let’s see if we can look inside this poorly-wrapped, ineptly-delivered “gift” from Al Qeada, and find the blessings, albeit unintended, and have some thankfulness for what those blessings bring to our lives.

Gift #1: Nobody died.

As menacing as it is to have Global Jihad waged against your country, I think we can all be grateful for the fact that, in this recent case, it was waged so poorly.  Al Qaeda does have its moments of competence (human tragedies, all of them), but I find myself grateful that they have such a rag-tag crew, one that falls all over itself, almost Jacques Clouseau style, in trying to do their brand of terror.  Not to deprecate the real pain and suffering that they have wrought, but to note that in this case, it could have been far worse.

Think back to the cold-war terror inflicted by the likes of East German Stasi or the Soviet Union’s KGB (okay, you may not have to think back for that one), and the Al Qaeda team is way, way more amateur – less like the ruthless terror of assassination by polonium-90 in one’s tea, and more like some kids trying to make a bomb by taping a bunch of firecrackers together.  Thank you for your well-timed incompetence, Al Qaeda.  You must have a closet full of these Richard Reid-types of guys — what next, flaming toupees?

Gift #2: Nobody died on Christmas.

I have a friend whose birthday is September 11^th, and her birthday will in some ways never be the same as a result of the terror unleashed in 2001 on that date.  A small thing, I know, but I have learned to appreciate even the small stocking-stuffer gifts on Christmas.  This year, in my stocking (which is a heavily-darned but still pretty worn-out wool flight sock from my father-in-law’s long career as an USAF pilot) I got a miniature slinky and some chocolate Santas.

While I find the current news coverage of this event plenty annoying, I am grateful that the event is less newsworthy than touted. And we would hear about it year after year, as my friend does. It would have changed the meaning of Dec 25^th.   I’m grateful for that, and St. Nick and JC have got to be a little grateful as well.

Gift #3:  A reminder that it is not over, and won’t be for a long while.

This was real.  The attack, and yes, it was an attack,  failed because the terrorist failed, not because we prevented it.  KJ would even argue, that in many ways it was a successful terrorist attack.  True, it did not result in death, but it did inject terror into our lives.  As a nation, we are likely to become more fearful of those we do not know, newcomers to our great land, or even people who just don’t look like us or live as we do.  Those are normal human behaviors, of course, but the attack will amplify them and to some degree polarize us as a people.

This is a little like the Starbuck’s instant coffee single-use packets that I got as a gift.  I’m legendary when visiting Wifey’s family for my early morning trek to the nearest Starbuck’s — they all drink that thin stuff called “drip”.  First reaction upon seeing my gift: “Instant coffee?  Me?”  Second reaction: “What the hell, give it a try.”  Third reaction: “Not bad.  Maybe life is possible without a Starbuck’s shop nearby.”

I think it is safe to say that we have been feeling like we have this Al Qaeda terrorist thing licked, right?  No large buildings collapsing, no domestic airplanes falling from the sky, no mass bombings in heavily populated public venues – you know, all the stuff that happens to other countries but not ours.  Well we don’t have it licked.

And to a large degree, it is un-lickable.  I hope that we all understand better from this that freedom, liberty and privacy are often at odds with security and safety.  We have been reminded that there is an asymmetric threat called Al Qaeda, that is so wholly committed, yet decentralized, so adaptive it its methods, locations, resources, and so pure to its aims and so well-established, that in the near term we cannot conquer them, but only resist them.

So thanks for the strong black coffee on Christmas morning, Al Qaeda – all the better to see our gifts with our eyes wide open.

Gift #4:  Reality-check: We are at War with Al Qaeda.

I know that we have a long history of choosing our wars, both where and when we fight.  And thanks to some great neighbors, we rarely have to fight a war on our own soil.  We are a little spoiled in this respect.  To paraphrase the Las Vegas motto: Whatever happens in war, stays (over there) in war. War happens somewhere else, not here. We come home from war, not to war.

It happens when we choose it to. Or so we have thought. This has been the case since the 1880’s, but it is no longer true.  Globalization and modernization make us more interconnected, and they also make a Global Jihad much easier to wage.  I saw a report that Al Qaeda had used the comments section on YouTube as a communications tool.  This War will come to us on jetliners, trains, and the internet.  It will have its visa granted.

You don’t get to choose when someone wages Global Holy War upon you, and once they do, you are at war.  We’re just not used to it being that way.  If Canada (bless their peace-loving hearts) decided to declare war on the US and started attacking, we would be at war, right?  Al Qaeda has been attacking for a while, is a credible antagonist, therefore, We Are At War.

So we may not call it the “War On Terror” anymore, and we may play nice with the enemy combatants by sending them through our court system, but it still is a war.  Our government knows it too – they bomb the crap out of Al Qaeda bases in Pakistan, Afganistan and Yemen.  Smells like war, looks like war, talks like war…must be war.

One of my nieces just discovered that there is no such thing as Santa Claus – she is the youngest of them and the last to fall, so to speak, into the reality of our consumerism-driven holiday.  She was sort of depressed for a half of a day.  And then she was fine.  Santa Claus doesn’t exist – her new guitar does.

The gift is that we are reminded that there is a war going on.  We are good at going to war – some may say too good.  I tend to think that we’re pretty thoughtful about it.  We try to do what is right and find a balance.  We allow, even encourage, debate.  We’ll need to debate this one as well, because many of the best protections from asymmetric threats (like Al Qaeda) compromise our purist views of privacy and liberty.  Holding these “…truths to be self-evident….”, is probably not the same as saying that they should not be compromised at any price.

The rest of the world knows this.

So, thanks, Al Qaeda, for bringing us a little bit closer to an understanding of what we need to do counter your efforts, and for reminding us how, in the absence of you accepting our friendship,  we need to be the most vigilant of enemies.

Gift #5:  It is America that is being attacked.

Hey – George W. Bush isn’t even in the US anymore, is he?  Or at least I haven’t seen him in a while.  And President Obama has demonstrated that he wants dialogue.  He writes letters, sends envoys, shuns the Dalai Lama, and he even has a Shiite muslim-ish middle name!  Yet we find ourselves still being attacked.  What’s up with that?  I thought if I voted for Obama that we would just sit down with these scary jihadists and dictators and work it all out.

Not so.  Things don’t appear to be getting better.  As recently noted by a former RAND colleague, Brian Jenkins, there were more terror incidents (12), including thwarted plots, on U.S. soil in 2009 than in any year since 2001.  Brian is a renowned terrorism expert, and unlike the impression that you probably get from this picture of him, he is a really nice guy too.  He never said, “…but then I would have to kill you.”  Not once.

Dear Santa: Next year I want a picture like this of me.  Thanks.

Those on the right argue that Obama’s policies are too soft, much as those on the left argued that GW Bush’s policies were too harsh.  These folks all miss the main point – America is the target.  And America is not about the president or current policy, but it is about a much larger footprint: us, our culture(s), our economic reach, our freedoms, our tolerance, etc.  We are under attack not because we are bigots, but because we do not share Al Qaeda’s bigotry!  As a nation, we strive to be open and accepting.  We allow freedom of speech and thought.  They do not.

So thanks, Al Qaeda, for reminding us that whatever differences us Americans may have on the politics of the moment, we are, in fact, very united on our principles.  Two hundred-plus years ago we all agreed that bigotry was wrong.  We all have a right to be happy, even the infidels.  That’s why we’re in this war with you.  We didn’t choose it, but it is why we’re here.  We’ve fought for this before.

Gift #6:  The world changes…and we will survive.

Welcome to the real world, America.  We will never be less vulnerable than we are now…at least in our lifetimes.  We will increasingly be under attack.  It isn’t the end of the world, nor ours beloved American Life, but it is a change.

We survived 9/11.  The Spanish survived the Madrid bombing.  The Indians survived the Mumbai bombing.  The Israelis survive an unimaginable onslaught of neighbor-state terrorism.  America is looking more and more like the rest of the world.  The main difference, as far as I can tell, is that our broadcast media, lacking ability to gain perspective or actually find news that is not spoon-fed to them, tends to be pretty hyperbolic about events such as this.

The real news today is Iran — that’s where freedom is on the line.  News is not, nor is it ever, our own politico’s pleadings about how we, the imperfect humans that we are, while balancing the need for privacy and freedom with the need for security and information, should be able to flawlessly track 550,000 known threats and pick the most miniscule needle out of the most massive of haystacks.  Yes, it is obvious the We Are Not Doing It Right.  Gimme a break.

No matter what anyone says, America is not going away any time soon.  Say what you want about declines in our economic prominence, our culture and values, our quality of government – hell, some of it may even be true, although we tend to over estimate how much things matter – but we still have one of the best countries in the world.  FYI, we’ll have good lives even if we aren’t the “best nation” on some lists, and what makes our country great is not really changing much at all.

I got two harmonicas (don’t ask) and a jar of lingonberry sauce.  Lingonberries are big in Norway, where as a sauce they are slathered on reindeer meat – pretty tasty.  KJ has a bit of a reputation with Wifey’s family as a gourmet cook.  The giver (I think she would be called my second-step-aunt) said she didn’t know what you would use lingonberry jam for, but that I would probably know.  So true.  Now, how to find that reindeer….

So, finally, thank you, Al Qaeda, for this last gift, though boozily-wrapped and missing a card, which reminds us of what we are good at.  That we need to do what we do five (or more) out of every seven days for the whole year: keep our great engine of commerce alive, work to make things better, find the strength and compassion to be tolerant and caring of our fellow humans, and to fight the good fight when called upon.

I was speaking with a close friend the other day and she mentioned that the popular breath-freshener, Breath Asure, had been “crushed” out of the market by the big, bad, evil corporate pharma-mega-corps who had sued the brand into oblivion (this may be a slight embellishment, but fairly true to her intent, I believe.  Update: make that two friends).   Breath Asure, for those of you unfamiliar, was a gel-capsule that contained some herbs that functioned as “the internal breath freshener” to remove food odors from your stomach, and therefore (?) from your breath.

The KnowsJack perspective is always one of assuming that there is more to the story, that processes actually work better than we think, and that life, in fact, despite our complaints, is pretty damn good.  So it seems appropriate to shine the KnowsJack “Spotlight” on plight of Breath Asure.

There are some other things going on in the non-prescription drug market as well.  You may have noticed that Airborne, the vitamin-C based cold preventative for use at airports, disappeared for a little while, returning recently with new packaging.  Since yours truly has been an Airborne user as well as a Breath Asure customer since the their respective beginnings (but have never been a power user of either), I would be the first to agree that many people think these are useful if not effective products.

The Feds and your medicine cabinet – the strange world of FDA regulation.

When you walk down the OTC (over the counter) medicine aisle in your local drug store, you’re seeing a big industry in action.  It’s an industry whose marketing and competition is profoundly shaped by the FDA,…but probably not in the way that you think.  Let’s take as examples, Kava-Kava, Airborne, Claritin and Paxil.  The last of these is not in the OTC aisle but it is the most prescribed drug this year, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates both prescription and non-prescription drugs.  The contract between big pharma drugs (Claritin and Paxil) and the “lesser” OTC drugs is pretty interesting and plays to the heart of the matter.

Claritin has a similar pedigree to Paxil, in  that it was a prescription drug and later allowed to be sold as an over-the-counter (OTC) drug in 2002.  Both Claritin and Paxil have established “claims” that have been verified by the FDA – Claritin provides relief from symptoms of allergies (allergic rhinitis) and Paxil is effective in treating various psychological maladies.  They can make these claims (health claims) because they have proven them.  And that is the primary mechanism of the FDA: if you make a health claim, then it needs to be recognized by the FDA as being valid.  To be more specific, if you claim that either an ingredient (called the active ingredient for that claim) or the whole formulation has a health benefit, then that claim has to be recognized by the FDA.  It is interesting to note that the main function of the FDA is to regulate claims that are made, as opposed to regulating drugs, per se.  This is largely historical and we’ll come back to it.

Getting approval for a new drug (a claim and the ingredient(s) that provides the claimed benefit) is expensive – most of the cost is the clinical trials – and runs several million dollars for even the simplest of ingredients.  Good news for the smaller drug companies is that the FDA also has a list of chemicals and compounds, for which when used in the approved way (ex: saline rinse for clearing your eyes), you are allowed to make the claim.  They’re called GRASE (Generally Recognized As Safe and Effective), and they include those things that are well understood, as well as “grandfathered” drugs that have been used historically, have not been tested, but are not contraindicated by data.  So, although not likely, KnowsJack could offer a line of saline eye drops (named “KJ’s Hope-Will-Lead-Us-Out-of-the-Recession See Clear Saline Eye Drops”) for our readers, the bleary-eyed businesspeople.  Making the claim that the KJ Hope Eye Drops soothe tired eyes is probably fine with the FDA, but I couldn’t make the claim that they would, for example, help you sleep since well since saline, when used in the eyes is not recognized as a sleep aid.   And I can’t get tricky about it either and name my eye drops: “KJ’s Sleep-Well-During-This-Recession Saline Eye Drops”, as the FDA includes a sort of “totality of your marketing test” – if you say it, or if it would be reasonable to assume it based on the messaging, then you are making the claim.

And what of Kava-Kava?  I remember drinking Kava-Kava “tea” when on a trip to Fiji, where it is drank socially and makes one quite mellow.  I look at the label and it says “May Promote Relaxation”…I seem to remember a whole bunch of people that looked like they were a bit more than just “relaxed” back in Fiji!  But it hasn’t been proven to the FDA, so they can’t claim it.  There is probably research that suggests that relaxation may improve, but mere research doesn’t allow you to make a claim.  So what’s a poor Kava-Kava marketer to do?

And now we enter the world of off-label drugs and “GRASE-labeling”.

Being clever,  I could make “KJ’s Global Recession-Buster Easy-Sleep with Kava-Kava” and claim that it is a sleep aid, despite the fact that the FDA doesn’t recognize Kava Kava as having any health benefits.  How do I do that?  I’ll just add acetaminophen (aka Tylenol, recognized as an FDA OTC GRASE sleep aid) and will claim it as the active ingredient.  So you’re buying Kava Kava with some Tylenol in it, and I get to claim that it will help you sleep.  The sneaky little implication (perceptual at least) is that Kava Kava somehow contributes to this.  And here is the interesting piece: in general, this implication is allowed as long as the claim is valid and only applies to the active ingredient.  Here’s my label concept:

1) Images and background: Show sleepy-moon, downward stock chart, etc.

2) Claim 1: “Helps you sleep”

3) Claim 2: “Contains Small-batch Organic Kava-Kava Grown by Indigenous Famers using 3rd-World Micro-loans”

4) Back label: “Active ingredient: acetaminophen.  Inactive ingredient: Kava Kava.”

But what if Kava-Kava actually works?  What if it is a sleep aid?  How does it get on that GRASE list?  Can I ever claim “sleep like a care-free South Pacific Islander”?  The answer is that I would need to spend millions of dollars to take the new drug “Kava Kava taken orally as a sleep aid” through FDA clinical trials.  And even if Kava Kava was a fantastic sleep aid, nobody would ever pay the millions needed to get it approved.  Because once those millions have been spent and it is on the GRASE list, anyone can sell it and make that claim.  The businessman in me was hoping for some, how-you-say, ex-clus-ivity.  The only way to get that would be to protect it with a patent, just like the big pharmas do with drugs like Claritin and Paxil.  But patents must be unique and novel, as in non-obvious, as in nobody has thought of it before….  Given the legions of Kava-Kava-induced comatose South Pacific islanders and the centuries-long heritage of its use, there is nothing to patent…they got there first.  And this is why the big pharmas like “new molecules” – they can discover them, patent them, push them through the FDA and then through your wallet on the way down your throat.

So What Do We Know, Jack?

And you would think…and here is the point…that the most novel drug, most researched, the one that is pushed through the FDA at the price of million$ and time, would be the best.  And likewise, the one that is least known, least certified and least understood is the worst.  And that’s not true.

There are products on the OTC shelf at your local drug store that are good for you, and yet nobody can make those specific claims, because they are not proven.  And there can be products that have no health claims that do nothing or that may be bad for you, and the FDA does nothing.   And…there are drugs that make FDA-approved claims that don’t really work.  Pretty crazy.  Check it out.

Let’s take Claritin, the former prescription drug that became a “blockbuster OTC” in 2005, selling $300Mn+ in the US alone.  The claims are that it alleviates symptoms of allergic rhinitis without drowsiness, is that true?  No.  In fact, Claritin doesn’t work for a lot of people (less than 50%) at the specified dosage…and if you increase the dosage, then it makes most people drowsy.  Yet it is approved.  So not all claims are what they appear to be – YMMV.

So let’s fly back over to Airborne – what is going on there?  Flu season and you can’t buy it?  My vintage 2005 tube of Airborne says: “Take at the FIRST sign of cold symptom or before entering crowded environments.”  Great instructions!  I KNOW exactly what this product does!

The new package (saw it while buying my 22.5lb turkey at Costco) says: “Take Airborne whenever you feel your immune system needs support.” (!)  What the hell happened?  The old one OBVIOUSLY fights cold, right, and the new one…well, how the hell do I know when my immune system needs support?  It always needs support, right?  And does the new one fight colds like the old one?

Well, as it turns out, it doesn’t.  And the folks who make Airborne had to pay 23.3Mn to those of us who bought their claims: “In the class action, the Plaintiff alleges that the Defendants made untrue and misleading statements about the Airborne Products by claiming, among other things, that the Airborne Products cure or prevent colds.”  Or so states the settlement agreement.

And what does the FDA have to say about Kava Kava?  In fact, KJ’s Recession-Buster formulation may cause liver damage (from the Kava-Kava and from the acetaminophen) or even heighten anxiety in the presence of other drugs.   And yet I COULD sell it, such is the enforcement gap between drug that make claims and those that don’t.  Oh well, another KJ Blockbuster Product down the tubes.

KJ says “Caveat Emptor” to all his free-marketer friends.

I actually like this system, even though it sounds a little wacky.  At the end of the day it means that we must all understand what we are putting in our bodies, which is a good thing.  And the FDA pretty much makes sure that nobody makes outlandish claims like those that existed in the early 1900’s when tonics and elixirs were hawked with life-saving properties, when many of them just turned out to be, um, brown sugar-water.  If the FDA says that a drug works, then that is your starting point, not the ending point – you still need to find out if it works for you.  And if they say nothing about it, then you need to start doing your work.

At least we have Breath Asure…so simple, so effective!  Or we did.  Or was it?  I bought (Chewy) Ora-Blast  (from Breath Asure, “A blast of minty freshness”) in 2008. You can’t find either product now.  And the real story behind Breath Asure’s demise now comes into focus….

Did “Big Pharma” crush Breath Asure?  Yes, they did.  But not by relentlessly suing them into oblivion.  Rather, Warner-Lambert (Certs, Clorets, Listerine, and Dentyne) did this by subjecting Breath Asure’s claims to legal scrutiny.  They asked the Better Business Bureau to investigate and the BBB (actually its National Advertising Division) found them guilty of making false and misleading claims.  And at the subsequent trial, prior to declaring bankruptcy, the makers of Breath Asure admitted that: “…that BreathAsure and BreathAsure-D are not effective in reducing bad breath.”

Wow!  They lied?  They got sued by a competitor for lying.?  And they went bankrupt?  I’m not feeling sad about this.

So, no more Breath Asure?  Of course not!  They just had to abandon their brand name as part of the judgment.  All those snaky (as in sneaky and slimy) off-label marketers never really die, they just come up with a new version of their product.  It doesn’t take muchg looking to find something that looks a heck of a lot like our old non-effective friend Breath Asure: Health Asure Mint Assure.

Wow, that’s working pretty hard to leverage the bygone brand and use the GRASE properties of mint (menthol) — notice that they say “fresh breath” (describes a scent) rather than “bad breath” (describes a (potential) health condition).   Snaky, like I said.

And it’s a KnowsJack kind of ending.  They made a product that people liked — good for them.  They lied about the product to consumers — not so good.  They got spanked for doing so — justice is served.  They are still free to market the product and you can still buy it — the system works.

Well, the perils of re-Branding without a License may be apparent in October’s announcement that Condé-Nast will shutter Gourmet magazine after 60+ years of existence.

The magazine had been attempting a transformation of sorts over the last year or so, with multiple new layouts, oversaturated photography, Millenial and Gen-X models and a strange mix of features and voice.  Many of the loyal readers had objected to these changes, and even KJ himself opened a can of Brand Experience whup-ass for Editor Ruth Reichl and team, as she notes in her editorial in the October 2008 issue.

And over the 4+ years that we had a subscription, we saw the magazine drift to-and-fro, as they grappled with their identity somewhat schizophrenically.   So what went wrong?

Many claim that it was the bone-crushing hard times or the basic economics of the print magazine business.  But Condé-Nast didn’t shutter their whole business, rather, they shuttered what I would argue is one of the most venerable titles in their portfolio.  Let’s take a look at the numbers — here are some simple demographics of Gourmet and several other food mags:

• Gourmet Magazine: Median Age: 49.5, Median Household Income:$77,899.00, Male/Female: 26%/74%

• Bon Appetit: Median Age: 50.5, Median Household Income:$81,278.00, Male/Female: 25%/75% (also owned by Condé-Nast)

• Food & Wine: Median Age: 45.8, Median Household Income:$74,930.00, Male/Female: 37%/63%

• Saveur: Median Age: 51, Median Household Income:$152,666.00, Male/Female: 47%/53%

The top three had roughly the same circulation, with Food & Wine topping the list at about 1.3mn readers.  Saveur has a circulation of about 300k from what I can tell.  So why nuke Gourmet?  As chance would have it, I bought copies of all of these magazines in September in preparations to abandon Gourmet when our subscription lapsed at the end of this year.  And I am, strangely enough, right in the middle of the demographics above…an old guy who likes (okay, loves) food and is not afraid to spend money on glossy pictures of same.  Food porn.

So what did I see?  I can tell you that I almost filled out the mail-in card for Saveur within the first 5 minutes.  The magazine “gets it” and delivers the goods, with a classic and well-though out format and a great selection of revisited classics and new culinary adventures.  Food & Wine was almost as good, and I think Mrs. KJ has probably signed us up for both of these already.  Again, great articles, layout, voice and focus.  Bon Appetit was a little less dialed in, maybe experiencing some of the drift that had plagued it’s sister publication, but still better than Gourmet.

So either they just drifted away from their key demographic…or maybe someone at Condé-Nast figured out that they had two magazines that were almost exactly the same and given the graying of their respective audiences, it might be a reeeaaaly good time to find some new audiences.  And let’s assume that it was Gourmet that they chose to do that with.  If we work backwards from that assumption and do a sort-of “Brand Reflection” exercise using the inside contents of a few issues (we’ll come back to the cover in a sec), my read is that they were trying to go after a “Kimberly” persona.  This would be women who are roughly young Gen-X or older Millenials, married, somewhat career-engaged, very fashion conscious, urban-but-rural-nostalgic (numerous images of rustic meals in rustic settings with folks in their 30’s and 70’s — grandparents, no parents), back-to-basics (seemed like every issue had a rutabaga or parsnip recipe), and additional nostalgia for the community of friends (a la The Big Chill), and (judging from the advertising) they likely have kids…which then has the unexpected implication that the recipes are more aspirational than practical — Kimberly doesn’t have time for recipes that span 24 hours and involve cooking the same piece of food three different ways.  But she has time to read about what she might have (once?) done.

Here is an example of the new look that they were using for article images:

Frankly, it isn’t half-bad psychographic targeting on their part.  It isn’t me they’re going after, but the contents actually have some coherence if you view them from the Kimberly perspective, and I think that they might have been on to something.  And that brings me to where I think that they failed: the brand.  What does Gourmet (the brand) stand for?  The demographics above suggest that the 1mn existing readers may not have shared much of Kimberly’s perspective, and most important, when one looks at the cover (the brand signal) and what it speaks of…well, you make the call.  Here are four from the recent style of the magazine:

So what do these covers say?  I think they say “Classic Gourmet Food”.  Combine that with the Logo Type and I get “Classy Classic Gourmet Food”.  Food for 50-year-olds who have “made it”.  And inside?  Lifestyle, travel, fashion, rustic cuisines and coordinates, all with  rural-retro-romance for Kimberly…none of which are apparent from the cover.  They had a well-established brand and they changed the brand experience, and they did nothing to reposition expectations.

Did this lead to the demise of Gourmet?  Probably not directly — the fashion police do exist, but they don’t close magazines.  More likely, I think, and I thank the many readers who commented on this, is that the McKinsey consultants who spent three months doing a review of Conde-Nast’s operations said that it made no sense to have two of the same magazine (based on subject, focus and target customer) fighting over advertisers budgets.  And that someone must chose.  In fact, they may have chosen.  Given the choice between a publication that was veering towards a younger, less print-intensive, green sensitive, online sort of consumer, and a publication that was, well, staying more on-focus,…let’s just say that’s about as simple a problem and answer as the interview case studies that McKinsey uses for its new hires.  Simpler, actually.

If you read Ruth Reichl’s editorial fully, you’ll see that they were wandering in focus a year ago: “Your letters, which told us so much about the way that you use the magazine….”, as if changing the brand experience is an effective way to learn about your customer.   Sad to read now, Ruth goes on somewhat ironically, “…but we’re tired of the latest, the hippest, the coolest.” — and since when was that part of Gourmet? — ending prophetically, “In times like these you want to remember that some things do last….”  If only.

Farewell Gourmet magazine.  We’ll miss you.

You can see the sad, final moments at the Gourmet offices here.

(This post has been slightly updated from reader feedback — thanks again!)

(Note: If you had a subscription remaining, you’ll get Bon Appetit instead.)

Seems like folks are feeling cautiously optimistic these days, what with the DJIA peeking above 10,000 for a few moments this last week and Google, one of the barometers of the New Economy, back up in the stratospheric 500’s.  During the far-darker days of almost a year ago a lot of us Americans voted for Hope, a moment immortalized in poster form by Shepard Fairey, and in some ways its name a reminder of the Book The Audacity of Hope that our now-president had penned.  And as much as our young president is hoping to lead us out of recession while we are at the same time hoping that he and the Congress aren’t just delivering more budget-busting politics as usual, there is a different Hope that will lead us there, the Other Hope, the one that has been with us forever and upon which our great society has been built: Our Hope.

Hope is one of those words that we don’t really stop to think about – it is so essential and integral to our lives, yet we don’t recognize it for what it is: the single greatest defining attribute of our humanity. Big claim, yes.  And I can back that up.

The verb “hope” means to “wish or feel that something desired may happen.”  So hope is about the future.

But what do we know about the future?  Not much.  We may all be dead tomorrow.  Things may be worse, they may be better, but we really don’t know.  That’s sort of how the future works.

So we hope.  We wish and even feel that something desired may happen.  And we are largely alone in the Animal Kingdom in this respect.  Our ability to imagine a future that is both different from the present and that incorporates our memories of the past both good and bad, is unique to our species.  Sure, others in our branch of the genetic tree have some of these skills.  But we didn’t ascend this evolutionary ladder on good looks alone.  No, we hoped our way here.

We aspire.  Especially in the West, but pretty much everywhere in the world, our dialog is permeated with references to what could be (the possibilities), what can be (our hopes), and how the present or past does or doesn’t conform to what we had hoped for (our disappointment or joy).  It seems to be pretty much accepted fact at this point that few of us are capable of observing the present, past or future without referring to our hope of what they could-of been or could be.

At the core of this is our  amazing ability to understand that many tomorrows exist and contemplate what could be like.  We use this ability to contemplate our future to help us plan, to prepare, to scheme, and yes, to hope.  We will work hard now and today and for many days that follow, all in the hope that some day far-distant from today will turn out in a way that we desire.  All that, in the face of the fact that the hoped-for day may never happen; by the time that tomorrow comes, we may have died, or failed, or life and chance just combined in some way and our dear hoped-for was never to be.  We fail more often than we succeed in this endeavor.  We know this, and yet we persist.  That’s some serious hoping.

And look where it has gotten us – we have dreamed up some pretty wonderful things.  Our standard of living is very high.  Poverty and malnutrition are lower during this era than in any other time in recorded history.  We have freedoms and opportunities that liberate us from a rest-of-the-animals-like existence into something close to gods.  We can “change the course of history” – and realize that we are doing it at the same time.  Amazing.

Hope has a dark side as well – that same striving, planning and hoping in the face of uncertainty about the future has another face: risk-taking.  Not necessarily bad, but as we have seen recently, excessive risk-taking can be bad, and when combined with greed and some highly-optimistic hoping (try saying: “Home prices will never go down” three times) Hope seems to be culpable in getting us into the recession in the first place.  At some point on the “Hope continuum”, this risk-taking behavior becomes gambling, an addiction that can destroy your life and your future, and yes, even your hope.

Buddhists will claim that a supreme enlightenment occurs when one has abandoned all sense of hope – of needing the future to be something in particular.  But for the rest of us, the complete loss of hope is pretty much the end of the game, as if our very life-force has been drained out of us.  Many, actually lacking hope, will in fact make that life-end a reality.  We fight wars to liberate people who have lost hope, even when they are us.  That’s how important hope is to us.

Let’s get back to the good news on hope.  We seem to have an endless supply.  We are born with it and on average have enough for ourselves and often for all of those around us throughout our entire lifetime.  We can give it to each other freely.  We can share hope and discover newfound hope, and even better, hoping itself is free.  We even hope just for the fun of it…what if I won the Lottery? One need only look back a couple of hundred years to understand the hope that filled hearts and minds when our Declaration of Independence was first shared.  Look what happened.

Even in our darkest hours, hope is what rallies us.   Here is one of the most hopeful proclamations ever made:

“…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

In these powerful ten words the case is succinctly made that the fear of a far less desirable future is, in fact, the greatest barrier to Hope.  Hope is the antidote to fear, our elixir, the irresistible force that will actually beget a more desirable future.  If you have never read the complete text from president Franklin Roosevelt’s first inaugural speech I encourage you to do so – a short read, but stunning in terms of its use of hope and vision.

Our ability to hope drives our economy.  Like it or not, that’s the way Capitalism works.  We work a bit harder in the hope that we will be better off or financially safer.  We buy a new product in the hope that it will be better for us.  We invest and take risks in the hope that we will gain from them.   We invent things in the hope that we will become famous, rich or both.  Productivity, Consumption, Investment and Innovation.  These offspring of our ceaseless hoping have fueled our current level of prosperity and freedom.

And in the end, the hope for our economy lies not in our President, nor anything that the Congress nor The Fed can do, but rather, it lies in our ability to reclaim hope.  One could argue that the best thing that those in Washington can do right now is to make sure that we can all feel hope, more so with each passing day.  That investors can feel hopeful about investing,  business owners feel hopeful in hiring, consumers feel hopeful in saving and buying, and everyone feels that together, the strength of our hope makes tomorrow a welcome day.

As to President “Audacious Hope” Obama, let us all pause for a moment and recognize the Nobel Committee’s award of the Nobel Peace (aka Hope) Prize to our President for what it is – collective hope, albeit unrealized as of yet.  And in doing so we recognize him as symbolizing our need for a brighter future.  The world has again noted that the USA is a source of Hope for much of the world.  Nice.

And in that way, let’s not think of Hope as being Audacious.  Nor as something that belongs to Nobel Peace Prize Winner Obama.  Let’s celebrate it as Ubiquitous.   It belongs to all of us. We’re hopelessly infected with it and there is no vaccine.  It may drive us to do somewhat silly or even downright stupid things — even Shepard Fairey let Hope get in the way of better judgment — but at the end of the day, it always seems to be our hope, no, I mean Our Hope, that saves us.

Throughout human history and still true today, the only thing that we need ever to hope for is Hope itself.  Hope will lead us out of recession this time, as it has in the past.  Just watch.

Did I mention that Hope is infectious?  Pass it on.

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt