The Ethical Frames Blog

I hear two competing theories about what our post-pandemic world will be like.  I will sum them up as either reversion to the mean or the pandemic will change everything. But as a recent opinion piece in the NYTimes claimed, no one actually knows anything! But if you are forecasting a business, you…

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about how the concept of VUCA could help us in Market Research. Now that we are in the midst of a pandemic, I thought I would update it and make it relevant to our new reality. VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.  While you may not have…

Last month I posted about the societal and political divide in the attitudes and response to the coronavirus.  This divide continues. While some Republican governors have issued stay at home orders, the holdouts are all Republicans. And today, Easter Sunday, there will be church services in some of…

As we weather the COVID-19 pandemic and try to figure out ways to work from home, we also need to face the idea that attitudes are changing.  The way we approach our brand’s strategy may have to change. It might not be permanent, but it is at least true for the short and medium term. It makes me…

Our country (the USA) is so divided by politics that it even affects views of the COVID-19 epidemic. Ipsos ran an online poll for Reuters on March 2 &3 about attitudes towards the coronavirus outbreak and found that four in ten Democrats think the coronavirus poses an imminent threat but only…

Last year I wrote about the Clif Bar ad that talked about how the disgust response is powerful in advertising but doesn’t work well for food. Well, the folks on the Burger King account must not have read my post or at least they didn’t believe it. Or perhaps they didn’t have enough organizational…

Everyone has an opinion about the Super Bowl commercials. But that’s from their own viewpoint.  Because our media has become polarized, this show may be the only place to see commercials targeted at a very diverse audience.  Here’s my analysis of how the different groups might perceive some of the…

For those of you who haven’t been following the news on the US Census, it is in difficult situation as it prepares to conduct their decennial census this year.  The Trump administration created part of that pressure in their attempt to add a question about citizenship to the shorter questionnaire. …

In December, Hallmark waffled on their decision whether to accept an ad featuring a same sex couple wedding.  At first, they said they wouldn’t accept it because it was controversial, then they changed their minds and “re-established” a partnership with Zola, the advertiser who created the spots.