Tag Archives: selling

In This White House Almost Every Statement is a Sales Pitch

Models, Problem Practices, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , , , , , , ,

He has neither the mind of innovative architect nor an eye for sophisticated interiors. But he has the motivation to sell anything as a branded vision of what he touts as the Trump magic.

With the forced glee of a commercial pitchman, Donald Trump turns the most dire human issues of war and dislocation into opportunities to sell whatever is left on the showroom floor. Gaza will be converted into another Rivera. Venezuela will become a successful petro-state in partnership with the U.S. And various policy ideas or administrative actions will transform “failing” programs into new and shiny opportunities.  And “shiny” is the operative term. In the light of day he tends to cover his animosity toward others in golden phrases and optimistic projections.

Apparently growing up in a tasteful Tudor-style home in Queens did not prepare him for the opulence he would discover in classical Greek architecture in Southern Europe, or the Palace of Versailles and the Arc de Triomphe in France. More recently, he has described as the “filthy” reflecting pool at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. It is now being redone by a Trump contractor who was instructed to paint the bottom to match the pools in Miami Beach.

He has neither the mind of innovative architect nor an eye for sophisticated interiors. But he has the motivation to sell anything as a branded vision of what he proudly sees as the Trump magic. As Barry Golson of the Tampa Bay Times notes,

Trump was a real estate guy way before he was a reality star. He built his own Trump Tower first, then bought hotels and co-op apartment buildings and seared them all with his branding iron. He pivoted to buying Atlantic City casinos, which he renamed with mounting grandiosity: Trump Plaza, Trump Castle, Trump Taj Mahal, all of which, incidentally, went bankrupt. . . .

Meanwhile, like any developer, Trump had strong ideas on interior design. This is how the Oval Office — in a White House that Thomas Jefferson insisted should reflect “republican simplicity”— was turned into a cringey, gaudy gold-leaf Caesar’s Palace high-roller suite.

The tropes of selling may seem tainted and tired, but they are quintessentially American.  We all know some Willie Lomans who persist to the end. In our many commercial corridors everything has a price and a potential buyer. Clearly this dynamic still entices Trump, who revels in the maximalist language that still comes with real estate listings of everything from simple condos to high-rise apartments. This is a vernacular that pivots between the simplified supplications of sellers and the presumed needs of eager buyers. Trump’s language is rife with descriptions of “fantastic deals,” the “best,” the “biggest,” “the greatest,” or the “pristine.”  “Winning” at the expense of others is the essence of this presidential swagger, delivered with a fervor that replaces what most other political leaders would offer as more somber assessments of the economic and political challenges facing the nation.

Meanwhile, diplomatic and policy failures of this administration have begun to stack up like the decks of unfinished buildings, reflecting what was marketer Trump’s habit to put his name on projects before their unsustainable finances push their investors toward insolvency. The Trump brand—everything from wine to coffee and even a Bible–was intended to be its own signifier of prestige: offered, touted to the faithful, then mostly ignored or withdrawn. For most others, 160 negative court decisions in one term would represent their own kind of bankruptcies. But not with Trump.

What is interesting about the vocabulary of selling is that it is characterized by undifferentiated qualifiers that ignore individual cases or exceptions. Adjectives for even unique products and services are represented in absolutes, where the sticky details are left for others to figure out. For example, sending Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff on missions to negotiate with Iranian officials could not help but be a fool’s errand. Deep secular and sacred values are woven into Iranian culture, light years away from the material worlds of real estate, where everything has a price. There can be little surprise that their efforts have been mostly ignored.

If the image of a speculator making optimistic promises that will not materialize isn’t ingratiating enough, Americans need only wait until sundown to experience the peculiar presence of an alternate persona that is more overtly hostile. Donald Trump spends most of his late evenings apparently alone and brooding over the real and imagined slights made by opponents. Gone are the daytime blandishments of policies that are “making America great again.” As every American knows, at night he easily surpasses the texting of a rejected teen ready to even up the score with her tormentors. His much rougher versions feature endless ad-hominem and often vile attacks on his perceived enemies. In sheer vitriol he matches the venom of the Glengarry “motivational trainer” that playwright David Mamet created to get rid of other real estate pitchmen not making the grade.

Trump’s dark version of the sundowner syndrome creates a stark contrast to the relentless good news of competence and success he sells while commuting on his plane or during the sprawling news conferences he favors many afternoons. At some levels those midnight texts are as revealing as the torments we are meant to understand from Shakespeare’s troubled kings. As was intended with their carefully revealed backstories, an inflated rhetoric of magisterial control withers when the audience is no longer buying.

 

two color line

Mindful of the Bullseye on Our Backs

Problem Practices, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , , , ,

I wonder what it means to carry the awareness that we have bullseyes painted on our backs.

There’s something inherently disconcerting about being a “target.” The lethality implied in the early use of the term is still with us, more than it should be, but its also obvious that its meaning has clearly broadened.  Even so, the 17th Century origins of the term are grammatically consistent with how we still use it today, namely: to be the object of another’s attempt to have us yield. In the noun form, a “target” is a person. As a verb, to be “targeted” means that we are the quarry of someone else. A word rarely heard by our ancestors is now firmly in the canon of common usage.

In different language, the idea was even a rule of thumb for Aristotle, who instructed citizens of Macedonia on how to assess audiences, adjusting verbal appeals to match their characteristics.

What is so striking about the modern use of the word in marketing and every kind of communication is that it has become ubiquitous. A pitch for almost any ideology, service or product is strategically designed to convince anyone identified as falling within the target audience. This is still standard lingo of Marketing 101. My guess is that even children as young as eight or nine understand this form of exchange in what is too often a one-way transaction. Sellers often seem to reap benefits from their “core demographic” that exceed what comes to the buyer. This “margin” is a bedrock of American consumer culture.

I wonder what it means psychologically to carry the awareness that we have bullseyes painted on our backs. Our daily consciousness can’t help but remind us that we are being tracked for what we represent rather than who we are. We cannot live in this culture without the knowledge that others are interested in us less as free agents and more as bodies ready to comply with particular appeals. Add in just enough delusion, and someone within a target audience may be flattered by the apparent attention. But those who are more aware know better. Even so, the wary will still be among the consumers who collectively lost $3.3 billion in 2020 from online scams and other offers of things or services that were never delivered.

We now occupy a world where software makers target us with appeals to buy computer protection to ward off many others who target us for personal gain. On the internet, easy anonymity and clever algorithms mean that the odds can favor the grifters.

The side calculation of estimating our trust in others

To be sure, targeting is not always easy. It must happen amid an overload of channels and platforms, reducing the effectiveness of any one appeal. Selling today means aiming for prey concealed in a forest of competing distractions. Being noticed is one problem; being persuasive is another.

But the game persists. The uber-strategy of targeting has altered the ways we relate to others. The awareness of being in the crosshairs and about to receive another’s self-serving messages makes us wary. We are often unsure who we can trust. Interestingly, the idea of a person with “good character” who merits our confidence was Aristotle’s gold standard for effective persuasion.  In his words, who we are often speaks louder than what we say. Now, we must now constantly do side calculations to determine who among our many contacts will not violate our the faith we have placed in them.  Every calculation pushes us further into defensiveness and suspicion: realms that, among other things, are fertile ground for conspiracy theorists.

So, rhetorically, we now sit in a very different place. The strategy of the “double game” played for laughs in old classic films like The Music Man (1962) or The Sting (1973) has now taken on the attribute of  a common norm applied to messages that come to us from beyond the small bubble of family and friends. What was once a plot device has become a dominant and darker transactional pattern.