The Obama administration would have us all believe that stimulus is the key. If we spend close to a trillion dollars on government programs, we’ll create jobs and get people to buy stuff. Problem is, so far (at least), this stimulus stuff has been a huge flop. The $350 billion allocated under the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) funds to financial institutions has gone from the Federal Reserve to the banks, who in turn, sent it right back to the Fed for safekeeping. Think of it as those bunch of squirrels storing their nuts for a long winter. The banks don’t want to lend the money (the original idea behind the bailout) because they are putting it away for a rainy day. This, in a nutshell (no pun intended) is why stimulus doesn’t work. It’s no surprise that the stats on personal savings show a dramatic uptick for savings accounts in the last quarter of 2008.

So how do we, as marketers, figure out what’s making people tick in this environment? The programs the Dems are pitching are (no matter what anybody says) socialism. It’s all about the government taking over and running things. Those on the right believe that Capitalism dictates when you free up the money supply, people will start buying things. While I am a capitalist, I can tell you, both sides are wrong. The answer? Objectivism.

Objectivism (a philosophy established by author Ayn Rand) holds that people will act in their own rational self-interest. Unstable economy? People will horde assets. Give them a handout? They’ll hang on to it for dear life. Companies act the same way. It’s human nature, and you can’t win against human nature…it’s like swimming upstream. Hard to do, and not much profit in it.

So what’s the answer? Well, I can tell you that the pork-laden “stimulus” bill before the Senate won’t work. When you see line items like $866,000 for Austin, Texas to build a 36-hole Frisbee golf course and $6 million to build  three aquatic centers (with water slides!) in my home town of Shreveport, Louisiana, you gotta figure this is one big government handout. Will projects like that create jobs? Nope.

What will work (but the government will be loathe to do) is to cut taxes. Permanently, and spend less. Government budgets aren’t really that different than personal budgets…when you’re in a hole, the first thing you should do is to stop digging. We don’t need to spend more – we need to have the government cut all non-essential spending. (The sticking point, of course, is what constitutes “non-essential.”)

Okay, but what does this mean for marketing? I mean, if you can’t buck human nature, and human nature is such that people want to horde their money rather than spend it, how can you market around that?

Simple. You either position your product or service as a necessity, you position it as something that will save people money to afford other essentials, or (if your product is strictly a luxury) you position it as a guilty pleasure, and pitch the idea that, every now and then, you owe it to yourself to splurge – just a little – and this is the guilty pleasure to buy as a diversion.

That’s it. That’s my advice. Oh, sure, there’s more to it than that – you have to flesh out the details. But essentially, you have to adapt if you’re going to survive. Recognize the reality of the New Economy, and go with the flow. And that, campers is how to market objectively. Class dismissed.

Now I don’t want to go off the deep end here, but when I use my powers of analysis, I’m beging to wonder if there isn’t some pattern to a lot of what we see in ads, the media, and entertainment. If I were the paranoid sort, I’d be proclaiming some vast, secularist conspiracy. But when a pattern reoccurs often enough, it becomes difficult to ignore what can only be explained away as some kind of massive coincidence.

There’s a new movie coming out this week – Hamlet 2. It’s being marketing as a comedy. Apparently, those who have seen it in advance screenings are saying that it’s 1) incredibly bad, 2) extraordinarily anti-Christian, and 3) not at all funny. I can name a number of other things that could legitimately claim an identical description – say, for instance, the late, unlamented Book of Daniel, which lasted all of about two episodes on NBC.

Most fare that flaunts a jones for bashing Christians and/or Christianity is a lot more subtle. Watch an episode of virtually any prime time fare. If there’s a Christian character, dollars to donuts they’ll be a hypocrite, a letch, a drunk, a phillanderer, or just a narrow-minded, bigoted idiot.

It’s not just Christians and Christianity that are in the crosshairs of pop culture. Fatherhood (when was the last time you saw a show where a father was portrayed as loving, wise, and a leader?), chastity, femininity, hard work, intelligence, fidelity, marriage, tradition, or any of the other so-called “family values.” Don’t believe me? I challenge you to name a show that portrays any of these values in a postive light. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

One school of thought is that the media and entertainment are merely reflections of our society. Somehow, I don’t think so. I hold that they are the trendsetters, and that society follows blindly where the media and entertainment take us.

Another idea is that it’s simply ‘giving the people what they want.’ It may be true that nobody every went broke underestimating the taste of the general public, but that doesn’t make it a wise course of action, nor does it make for a sustainable business model. The problem with relying on pandering to the lowest of the low, is that there is only just so low that you can go. Eventually, four-letter words lose their shock value. Unclothed females no longer merit gawking. and trashing someone’s beliefs becomes an exercise in boredom. How you gonna keep ‘em watchin’ the tube, when they’ve already seen everything?

In one of Ayn Rand’s masterworks, The Fountainhead, a creative type was in a literal battle for his own survival against a newspaper columnist dedicated to obliterating any and everything remarkable or superior. The book’s antagonist, Ellsworth Toohey, is a collectivist, who makes socialism his religion, and the destruction of individualism his mission. Toohey uses the power of the press and public opinion to manipulate the media and the public to literally support mediocrity and condemn talent.

I wonder if The Fountainhead was more prophecy than fiction. It seems to me that media and entertainment conglomerates worship at the altar of mediocrity, and go to great lengths to trivialize anything that is truly outstanding. The thing is, I haven’t figured out why. Is there some vast plot afoot? Are media moguls unwitting stooges or active participants? Is the public being slowly but surely turned into “sheeple” that will accept anything, no matter how lame, as “good”? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But it’s something that worries me. For when we value the collective over the individual, and trade remarkable for mediocre, there is nothing separating us from the worker-bee drones of the worldwide hive.