All of America’s ad agencies, with all their years of creating focus groups and analyzing trends, are waking up to the fact that they have little idea of how their consumers really feel. This piece in the Wall Street Journal, “Trump’s Win Has Ad Agencies Rethink How They Collect Data, Recruit Staff,” is reminiscent of the millions of dollars spent on how voters, customers and employees feel and behave—are still clueless. And yet, in 1998 law professor Richard Rorty broke the code—and predicted the rise of Trump. Jennifer Senior’s excellent New York Times column reveals the factors that Rorty saw even before the administration of our first African-American president. The enormous level of discontent he observed was the primary driver in the Faas Foundation’s Emotion Revolution in the Workplace initiative. We realized that business, government and media needed to gain a real understanding on how workers feel and why they feel the way they do, and to promote positive change to reduce the unnecessary stress workers feel. We must not allow the ranting of extremists to dominate the issue. Indisputable evidence and practical solutions must trump Trump, his henchmen and the neo-Nazis.
Credit: BIGSTOCK
