Have you ever seen that episode of the Flinstone’s where the aliens take Fred and then there’s a duplicate-alien Fred running around, and then when the real Fred comes back, no one believes or understands him? That is my worst nightmare. There is nothing so lonely to me – so utterly alone making – than being misunderstood or disbelieved. In my next life maybe I’ll keep a psychiatrist on staff to help me with this. In this life, I surround myself with friends that share my values. And when I heard David Suzuki taking the time, in a public and well attended lecture, to point to a common artifact of our culture and draw out the significance of the apparent contradiction, I felt totally sane.

In conversational language, we use the word “animal” in a way that excludes humans. Rationally and scientifically, everyone admits that humans are animals. But few people care that the sign says something so wrong. ¹

The fact that so few people find these signs to be notable, is partly because so many people, deep down, deep deep down, beneath their scientific and rational brain, actually think we’re not animals. People act as though we’re special. Well, okay, we are kind of special. But it’s more than this. They also act as though we’re outside of, or separate from, or above, or better than, or not fundamentally connected with. And this might explain some of our less than intelligent modes of being in the world. This might be what’s wrong with the sign.

Now let me make this clear: the sign is not the problem. Sure, the sign is part of the problem. It’s at the very least a symptom or a reflection of the problem. But it’s also a state endorsed problem entrencher. It’s a kind of low level, under-the-radar, reinforcement of the idea that humans aren’t animals. The sign is, after all, quite common.

And this is the rub. If you actually talk to the people that act as though humans aren’t animals, they will tell you that humans are animals! Well there’s a fun (apparent) contradiction. The people who behave as if humans aren’t animals, still, intellectually, believe that humans are animals. ² It’s sufficient here to say, simply, that the gap between what we believe intellectually, and how we actually behave in the world, is a gap that is of the utmost interest to advertising, the art of persuasion and social engineering.

We all have a gap between what we think, and how we act. So those of us who read the sign and don’t really notice what’s wrong with it, can at least be excused for being busy. But what is troubling about this sign, is that it was written by someone. Someone was paid to make this sign. Someone was paid to think about the meaning of the words.

Back in Halifax that night, Suzuki argued that this kind of sign is evidence of the human pretension that there is an invisible divide between humans and the nonhuman natural world. He also argued that this idea is at the root of our current incapacity to live in balance with our Earth. He also speculated that this idea, this human pretension, was a result of our Christian heritage. And still to this day, I find this interesting and compelling. Could it be that the mainstream Christian notions of  a soul, a heaven, and a human-centric God lies at the heart of our imbalance with the Earth? It’s possible. ³

It really boils down to this. That all life is inter-related. we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny so that whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. – Martin Luther King, 1967

In order to draw out this comparison, first consider that as of December 10th, reporters and opinion makers were still largely guessing that Tiger Woods wouldn’t lose any sponsors. Well he did. Many of them, I think. Companies became afraid of being associated with Tiger Woods. Wow. Now some didn’t drop him, they just suspended him, I believe. Probably, and I’m totally making this up, some of his sponsors just pretended to drop him and made him sign carefully crafted legal agreements and then forced him to adopt a 9-step process to rebuild his public image.

It is notable that sponsors dropped or suspended Woods in such a short period of time. If you do a site search for “Tiger Woods” on the Calgary Herald website you get a list of 165 articles. Now these articles are listed chronologically. And 12 of those articles occur before they reported on the infamous car crash on November 27th with this article: Woods’ wife rescues golfer from smashed up car. By December 3rd, the Herald published: Sponsors willing to give troubled woods a mulligan. By the 1oth of December the Herald had written: Sponsors begin to shun woods. By February 22nd there had been roughly 150 articles including: Dalai Lama weighs in on Tiger Woods. ¹

Some might argue that this is evidence that the Calgary Herald wastes time and resources writing about socially insignificant issues. Some would argue that the energy that the Herald puts towards this issue is evidence that they lack journalistic integrity. But these issues are not mine today. Perhaps I will quickly note, however, that since these articles are about Tiger Woods, they are actually affecting, even constructing, the public opinion about Tiger Woods. They report the news and they make the news all at once. But this is a digression.

The point, and the point of comparison, is that an individual’s billion dollar brand was tarnished so much that in the span of a couple of weeks, his sponsors had to either drop him, suspend him, pretend to drop him, or at the very least, hold tense stakeholder meetings and press conferences. Wow. Now try to imagine what could possibly happen to the Olympics in order for that to happen. It’s almost impossible to imagine. The brand is too diversified. It’s too secure. And partly, I would argue, the public opinion shapers, like the Calgary Herald, have too much invested in the Olympics and the Olympic machine. When the Woods scandal came out, the companies involved with Woods pulled their ads featuring him. But if there was Olympic scandal involving individuals or teams, they would just switch individuals and teams. There is nothing that could happen that could cause the Olympic brand, in toto, to crash that hard, that fast. Even if some athletes became embroiled in some kind of publicity disaster, there would still be thousands of others. And even if some entire teams, or a few countries of teams became publicly toxic, there would still be entire other countries of teams to cushion the brand.

Of course, knowing this, it’s no wonder that the IOC carefully developed, and then enclosed, and then protected that brand within a vast legal framework in order to sell it to the highest bidders. How better to support the cause of amateur sport and international peace & cooperation?

And it’s not just me. Fair Trade is an important part of coffee culture in Victoria, and beyond. Of course, there are many people who don’t care about these things. There are even those that think that the price controls of Fair Trade coffee is a ruthless attack on market capitalism.

But the vast majority of people that think about Fair Trade coffee, think it’s cool. On my view, you have to understand the coffee trade in the context of four hundred years of colonization to really see why it’s so important. Coffee grown in South America, for example, is grown as a cash crop by regions that have suffered centuries of invasion, debt incurred by corrupt regimes imposed by colonial interests, civil war caused by the resultant political instability, disease, genocide, religious persecution, and human rights atrocities that still continue to this day. So desperate communities will grow coffee beans at great social and environmental cost and sell them for very little. Four centuries of colonial abuse has taken away the ability of many communities to negotiate a better price.

Years ago, some clever do-gooders thought they might be able to help some coffee growing communities to negotiate a better price for their coffee.¹ These do-gooders wanted to get a price for these communities that allowed them to save and build and to do more than live in abject poverty. They reasoned that if some coffee buyers shared the same values they did, that they would pay a little more so that others could live a better life. But how would customers know whether they could trust that the extra money was actually going to the farmers?

The solution was to create an arm’s length third party to assess and approve trade scenarios to certify that communities were actually getting a fair price. Now the term, “fair price,” is an interesting one. Free market purists will scoff at the term, arguing that a price is set by demand and supply and the willingness of individuals to pay. Free market purists will argue that there is no such thing as a “fair price.” But pretty much every other sane human will agree intuitively about the fairness of pricing, and this is all that counted.

So here we are in Victoria, years later, and there are many coffee shops that will serve only certified Fair Trade coffee. The certifications come from Transfair or, I think, a variety of twenty other international certifying bodies. And most coffee drinkers have heard of fair trade coffee. And this idea, “fair trade,” has become a valuable part of the brand of any company doing business in coffee.

And here’s where it gets interesting. It gets interesting because every coffee shop wants to be thought of as community oriented, and socially responsible and a good global citizen.

Starbucks, for example, will take out one page ads in the Globe and Mail telling readers about the way they serve Fair Trade coffee. And when I find myself at a Starbuck’s and the barista asks me whether I want dark or medium, I say, “oh, just give me the Fair Trade one.” The barista will inevitably say that they’re both Fair Trade. Now, inwardly, I’m smiling when this happens. Because I know that Starbucks only brews certified Fair Trade coffee one day a month.² So then I say ask them to show me the label and what certifying body says its actually Fair Trade. And the poor embarrassed, and someone surprised, barista has to admit that it’s just Starbucks that says it’s fairly traded.

And that’s the difference between certified Fair Trade and fair trade or fairly traded. See, any free market capitalist can say the price they pay to cash crop exporters is fair. Anyone can say they serve fairly traded coffee. Yup, we bought this stuff from a family who couldn’t make the mortgage payments and were going bankrupt from medical costs and whose child was born deformed from the pesticides and fertilizers they are required to use, in order to pay the militia that was trained by the CIA – but don’t worry, we payed them a fair price.

This is why the third body certification process is so important. This is why I ask the barista to look for the TransFair logo. See Starbucks may very well pay all of their suppliers a good price. But unless they get certified, I don’t trust it. And I think they’re creating an illusion when their ad has the TransFair logo on it because they brew the certified Fair Trade coffee one day a month. This is pretty effective branding because most consumers don’t pay enough attention to see through this. This is also effective internal branding, since most of their employees even believe that all of their coffee is FairTrade. It’s a very convenient omission.

Now, in their defense, it’s not just Starbucks that does this. Actually that’s not a defense. But it is a dispersal of guilt. Well whatever. The point is that lots of coffee shops serve fairly traded coffee. When pressed on this issue, many coffee shops train their employees to say that they don’t serve certified Fair Trade coffee in order to pay the farmer more. The reasoning goes like this: since the certification body has infrastructure costs to pay, the certification process is more expensive, and that cost takes money away from the farmer.

I think this is unfortunate. I think it’s a fancy way to undermine people’s confidence in the certification process, while getting the benefits of the brand value that the very same certification process created. It sounds to me like the very same argument put forward by companies that claim governments shouldn’t regulate, because it costs the consumer.

Of course, that wasn’t enough to convince me of his points of view and eventually he said, “Meteorologists can’t predict the weather next week, how can scientists claim to predict global warming?” Now when he said this, some kind of alarm bell starting to ring deep down in my brain stem. Maybe he was just a little too slick. Or maybe, since I was so often speaking from a script, I was in a heightened state of script awareness. So at that point, I fell out of my own script and stuck out my hand and introduced myself. And he introduced himself. His name was Tim Ball.

We had an animated conversation about peer reviewed publishing, the dimensions of relative objectivity in science, global cooling, and socialism. Actually he accused me of being a socialist. And that was when my moment of glory came to pass in the form of a question I would ask in return. See, when he accused me of being a socialist I was provoked first to a moment of confusion – it just struck me as a non sequitur. But after the confusion, came clarity. And I asked him, “Do you work for the Fraser Institute?”

I still remember that moment and I remember exactly where we were standing – corner of Government and Yates in front of Eddi Bauer.

His eyes widened a little and he stepped back. Pointedly, he said no. I told him that equating concern for global warming with socialism sounded like something the Fraser Institute or the Heritage Foundation might do. He mumbled something and walked away. I quickly made some notes about the exchange, including writing down his name and went on with my day.

But that night I did a name search online for ‘Tim Ball’. Then I did a name search for ‘Tim Ball’ on the Fraser Institute website. And maybe he wasn’t an employee but I did find his name on lot’s of their communications. I was so excited! I met an important person who was clearly a hired gun for climate change denial and made his cover on one try! It was easy.

But unfortunately, many reporters and journalists have found him convincing over the years. Unfortunately, many so-called journalists continue to find him interesting. As of today, he’s still listed on the Fraser Institute website:

This is how his bio reads on the Fraser Institute website:

Dr. Tim Ball, one of the first Canadians to hold a Ph.D. in climatology, wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of London (England) using the remarkable records of the Hudson’s Bay Company to reconstruct climate change from 1714 – 1952. He has published numerous articles on climate change and its impact on the human condition. Dr. Ball has served on numerous committees at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels on climate, water resources, and environmental issues. He was a professor in the geography department at the University of Winnipeg before retiring. He has written a regular column on weather in the agricultural magazine. Country Guide, for 14 years. He is currently working as an environmental consultant and public speaker based in Victoria and has written, with Dr. Stuart Houston, 18th Century Naturalists on Hudson Bay, a book on the science and climate of the fur trade (McGill-Queens University Press, 2003).

But this is how he’s described in James Hoggan’s recent book, Climate Cover Up, The Crusade to Deny Global Warming:

There are few “skeptical scientists” with as little actual expertise and as much ambition as the Canadian geography professor Dr. Timothy Ball. Never a climate scientist per se, Dr. Ball quit his position as an associate professor at the University of Winnipeg in 1995, apparently ending an academic career that featured a lifetime output of just four peer-reviewed journal articles, none of which addressed atmospheric science. Yet ten years later, Ball-the-climate-expert seemed to be everywhere – on the radio, in the newspapers, on the lecture circuit, even testifying before a committee in the Canadian parliament.

Turns out that Tim Ball is paid by the Friends of Science that is funded through the University of Calgary Science Education Fund, set up by Barry Cooper who is friends with Stephen Harper, which is funded by the Oil patch. He’s also connected to the National Resources Stewardship Program, Tom Harris with APCO Public Relations, High Park Advocacy Group, Canadian Gas Association and the Canadian Electricity Association. He’s effectively a paid mouthpiece with fewer credentials than he and the Fraser Institute claims he has. But I met him and he’s quasi famous and so I guess I met an almost famous guy! And I made him. That was my moment of glory.

This is an interesting kind of repositioning. Now I know that some people don’t like it when I stretch the meaning of “branding” or “positioning” to include, well, everything. But it’s fun and sometimes instructive. And words have constellations of meanings not unlike the kind of things we more conventionally consider to have a brand. So let’s imagine for a minute that the word “fag” has a brand.¹

In this episode of South Park, they point out that the meaning, or brand, of “faggot” has changed considerably over the last couple of centuries – it was sometimes used in reference to old women, sometimes in reference to feeble people. I actually don’t really know if this is true. But it’s plausible. The more contemporary, and slanderous, associations with gay folk is not a necessary part of the brand. There’s usually very little about a brand that is necessary. This is the physical sciences – it’s the social sciences and meaning is just, well, made up.

But shifting the current brand of an idea like “fag” is really a gargantuan task. The campaign we see in this episode of South Park is effective because gay folk, and well, everyone else, start to use the term to refer to inconsiderate and annoying people, and not gay people. As the term gets redeployed, we witness the repositioning of the concept “fag” against, not with, gay.

Of course, it’s just a cartoon. I’m not saying it’s okay to deploy the term. As I’ve said elsewhere, sometimes you can be responsible for more meaning than you make, so we gotta be careful. But it’s interesting nonetheless. Thank you South Park.²

And there are those who suggest that if you’re talking about an ad, or a campaign, or a slogan then that means it’s effective. I don’t believe that either. The thing is that people complain. I do. And more than complain. Talking leads to new behaviour. There are those that disagree with me here, but they’ve probably joined the dark side.

All of this is by way of introducing this bad advertisement. It’s not just distasteful (not a good brand quality for a restaurant), it’s actually quite racist. And that is an interesting thing about brand positioning – when your brand is related to race, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, gender or religious beliefs, there’s a good chance that your brand position is creating the other. Edward Said said it most and best, but I think it’s worth saying again. And I think it’s worth developing an analysis of othering in the context of advertising.