consumer reports

A few weeks ago, I read a really interesting book about Toyota and the policies behind its reputation for excellence and dominance of the auto market. I had bought the book for a dollar on clearance at Borders, a few days after one of my first posts about how the decline of US auto manufacturing was worrisome to me.

-- 30 minute interruption because a guy randomly walks in and asks me to do a computerized drawing of a construction plan ... what the hell, i accede --

This book -- The Elegant Solution by Matthew May -- talks about how, from the start, quality was never a question at Toyota. A basic principle from the inception of the company was that good business is about maximizing quality and minimizing cost. Notice how quality is the goal, not revenue -- though the implication is that rational people will always buy high-quality stuff for a good price. Quality is sustainable and attainable, and it adds value to the world. Maximizing revenue without attention to quality, on the other hand, is evil. It´s all about cutting corners and being manipulative, and it eventually burns out and hurts everyone, just like GM and Chrysler and subprime loans have.

In the book, May invites readers to take Totoya´s philosophy into their own places of work. As a starter, he says we should think about how a job isn´t just a job, but is something that adds value to the world. If we want to take pride in our work, we should start out by reminding ourselves of its positive benefit on the world. As I read this, I stopped to think about whether this could really apply to all jobs. In the end, pretty much any job I could think of provided a worthy service to the world. Except advertising.

I remember when, in the last year of high school, my good friend Max told me he was thinking about studying advertising. To be a good advertiser, he told me, you have to be creative and sharp and you have to have a good understanding of American demographics and tastes. This is all true, I replied, and I had no doubt that some of the funniest and most creative Americans work in advertising. But, I also reminded Max, advertising is fundamentally about tricking people. It´s about fooling them to buy certain products against their independent judgment. What could be more degrading? Max agreed -- he´s doing civil engineering now.

Luana is a huge fan of this Japanese snack food company called Yoki. I think they´re the Japanese equivalent of Frito-Lay. As we were munching on surprisingly addictive ham-flavored corn shells -- enriched with 10 vitamins! -- I told her how nice it was to be able to open up a bag and see it completely full. Opening bags of junk food in the US -- rarely more a third full -- can be so depressing. But it´s exactly what you come to expect when you know that Frito-Lay is pumping its money into ads, manipulating the American consumer to crave a decidedly bad product. And if Frito cuts prices by putting less food in the same bag, we know the competitors are going to be screwed if they don´t do the same. If a competitor put more food in the same bag for a slightly higher price, Americans wouldn´t have the willpower to do the math and determine the smartest buy. (Grocery stores do a great service by calculating price-per-ounce ratios, but snack bags from vending machines and counter lines fall outside of this system).

As I told Luana about this frustrating state of affairs, she reminded me that if advertising is evil, it is a necessary evil. How else could people learn about new products? My response that word-of-mouth and impartial consumer reports are sufficient sounded characteristically naive. But then again, I wondered, doesn´t the internet make reliable and effective consumer reports laughably easy? There are already tons of smart consumers who turn to internet for product reviews. If there were just one centralized, user-friendly site dedicated entirely to consumer reports, I imagine that we´d have a stronger shield against advertisement.

Web advertisement is much simpler and much less manipulative because it just places product links in places where people are likely to find them helpful. When Google becomes the epicenter of all our media, I think we´ll all be refreshed to encouter this less intrusive kind of advertising in our lives. As in other parts of the world, manipulative advertising -- especially in politics -- will be viewed as an insult to intelligence.

No major updates from Brazil. Things are the same. I skimmed through Antonio Damasio´s Descartes´Error (much of which I read in college) last week and now I´m reading Peter Brown´s The Rise of Western Christendom. See everybody in three weeks!