“Did you ever expect a
corporation to have a conscience when it has no soul to be damned and no body
to be kicked?”
Edward Thurlow, 1731-1806
Lord Chancellor of England
Wilberforce, Life of Thurlow
Over the years my brother has
sent me many provocative articles, but for pure nostalgia, nothing beats “Salt
+ Fat2 Divided by Satisfying Crunch x Pleasing Mouth Feel = A Food
Designed to Addict: How the processed food industry creates and keeps selling
the crave,” a New York Times Magazine article
adapted from Michael Moss’ forthcoming book “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food
Giants Hooked Us.”
As he knows, I spent 11 years
with Kraft, much of it – as he may not know – under the boot heel of the Kraft
VP whose speech is highlighted at the beginning of the article: Michael Mudd --
tyrant, toady (everybody above him on the org chart was his master; below him,
a slave), bully, micromanager, liar, diversity-monger (sort of; his diversity
hires kept quitting), consummate corporate politician (he rose to Operating Committee
– The Highest of the High Heights), speechwriter wannabe, and master
bullshitter.
Name is Mudd.
No one is more deserving of
the saying “his name is Mudd.” He is the
David Dirt I have repeatedly cited in my blog posts as the classic example of
the Bad Boss (Mudd ~Dirt, get it?) who got away with it because he knew how to make
his numbers and manage upper management. And he was a master bullshitter, an
almost sociopathic charmer who kissed executive ass and did snarky, disgusting impersonations
of people behind their backs. I can only
wonder what this schmuck did to me.
Early on, we clashed, and I
realized what a control freak he was. He
had a PR message ready before we’d even talked to the exec. Holy shit, what are you, his subconscious? At least give the guy a chance to tell us
what he thinks the company should say.
Pissed Michael off that I didn’t accept this dictation quietly. Good. Fuck you, thought I.
Classic Bad Boss
Michael was, as noted, the
leadoff speaker at a gathering of food industry chieftains, described in the
early paragraphs of the article. It took
place in 1999, when I still worked for Michael, and the is the first I’ve heard
of it, 14 years later.
Not surprising. In contrast to his ingratiating, oleaginous public
charm, Michael was a Bad Boss in every possible way.
His favorite tools with me were
secrecy, ostracism, and assignment-grabbing, even before I was placed within
his reporting structure. He could have included
me in a lot more of what was going on, but he chose not to. He gave others, usually women, assignments
that should have gone to me.
Job-grabbing
He tried to do my job for me. I wasn’t the only one: a male colleague,
qualified enough to be the PR VP of Unisys after he left Kraft, was reduced by
Michael’s assignment-stealing to sitting at his desk and writing a column for
his Porsche newsletter – what a waste.
I guess it was Michael’s way
of showing that everyone but him was dispensable. When I resisted his assignment-grabbing, he
bawled me out for insubordination. I
wore that like a badge of courage.
I suppose he felt threatened
by other men. Only one alpha male per herd, as he demonstrated by keeping the
department 80-90% female the whole decade of the 90s and beyond. His diversity numbers looked great. As a female mid-exec once remarked by way of
explanation, “Michael likes babes.” He married one of his employees. Couldn’t keep his hands off the merchandise.
What Corporate America
rewards
Michael tyrannized people of
both genders and four ethnicities. Several
men worked there and left during his tenure.
All – including the Asian guy who was back at his old job in two weeks –
attributed their departure to Michel’s dictatorial management style.
This is what gets rewarded in
Corporate America. Michael Mudd is by
far the rule, not the exception. Repeat:
the rise and durability of Michael Mudd is due to his ability to dish out the public
BS and schmooze his fellow execs, regardless of how he treats his employees.
Michael is emblematic of
everything that is rotten about American management, most especially the
dictatorial boss-ocracy, the command-and-control hierarchy that ruins so many
employees’ lives (the bookshelves groan with books on how to manage a psychotic
boss, or the like) and, often enough, the company’s performance.
Timing the BS
Oh, yes, almost forgot: his
uncanny ability to strike the right note a moment before it’s too late. The article devotes several paragraphs to his
speech. It makes awed reference to his
intricate presentation with its 114 slides and his “unthinkable” linking of the
food industry’s fortunes with those of the tobacco industry.
He compared present times with
those precipitous days in the early 90s, when the cigarette manufacturers knew
it was all going bad, at least in the US, very quickly. Michael obviously -- and understandably -- didn’t want to see
food industry execs paraded before a Congressional committee and harshly
criticized for the harm their products were doing.
Mudd acknowledged – what a
news flash! – that what happened to tobacco was starting to happen in the food
industry. That’s right folks, as late as
1999, the food industry was getting concerned that its salty, fatty, crunchy,
artificial-color-and-flavor-saturated products were contributing to the
nation’s obesity.
A little late
This is, perhaps, a half
century or more since the widesperead use of processed foods.
It’s been decades since it
was observed that in Western societies, rich people, for the first time in
history, are thin and the poor are fat.
Numerous studies document that immigration to America and adoption of the local
diet frequently lead to health problems in the next generation, if not sooner. And how many years has Kelly Brownell
regarded the processed food industry as a public health menace? And in public dining, how many years has the Center
for Science in the Public Interest been hollering about “heart attacks on a
plate”?
And in 1999, the food
industry was just getting the message.
Mudd directed an equal mea
culpa towards advertising. He recognizes
– another “Duh!” moment – that kids are malleable and that what food companies put
in the ads is just as important as what they put into their food. Huzzah!
Reminds me of when the
industry adopted standards for children’s advertising in general – right about
the time people were starting to draw a bead on it for manipulating small minds
into buying their crap.
He used to defend it.
This is the same hypocrite who,
several years before, defended food advertising with the lame argument that by the
age of 6, kids had already had enough exposure to the world to enable them to
critically view the ads. Michael, what a
load of shit.
And now you’re blowing it out
again. How many time have I heard “we
gotta be part of the solution” because we definitely are part of the problem?
Sounds so good. It’s the corporate PR
knee-jerk reaction. First say it, then
figure out what it means.
Do you think just saying it
makes it so? No, of course not, you have
to pretend to DO something. So in your 1999
speech, you proposed, first, finding out what drives people to overconsume your
products, “to gain a deeper understanding of why people overeat.”
Holy shit, Michael, they
overeat because you design your products to make them overeat! This is a classic example of appearing to do
something while doing nothing, of spinning wheels while figuring out the
obvious. It's a classic government cop-out: form a committee, study the problem.
Mudd also suggested pulling
back on the salt, sugar and fat in food products, but that apparently went
nowhere (or at least the article contains no update, 14 years later), because
Steve Sanger, the next speaker and head of General Mills, said the industry wasn’t
going to budge on taste, which means crunchy, salty, and fat. He’s right – compromise on taste, and you lose
market share.
“Real food -- not our
products”
Michael, there’s a reason why
years ago, a Kraft CEO, planning a management conference with you and me in his
lavish office, said he wanted plenty of food there – “and real food – not our
products.” Surely you remember that
moment.
The name Geoff Bible also
brings back memories. President of Kraft
when I was hired, he was a tough, wiry Aussie, an unapologetic smoker who said
he’d match his health against that of any man his age. A big-hearted guy who drove many corporate
philanthropy projects, a twinkle in his eye, with many years of war stories about
building Philip Morris’ international tobacco business when most countries had
government monopolies.
A wonderful client to write speeches
for. Very big on personal liberty and
responsibility.
The other item that I can
relate to is LunchablesTM.
It almost died before it
reached the market. Top Kraft and Philip Morris execs thought it would be a
dud.
But the technical and
marketing genius behind the whole thing, Bob Drane, persisted, and LunchablesTM , satisfying CareerMom
and her guilty need to have something good to give her kids for lunch…as well
as her kids, who love to open little gift-like boxes and play with their food –
and well, one thing followed another, drinks and desserts got in there, and LunchablesTM became a
billion-dollar-a-year business.
Complaints about the
nutritional value of the boxes has been ongoing, and the company has made a few
tweaks to make the products less of a public health menace. But consumers like LunchablesTM just fine, because it responds to the
needs mentioned above, nutrition be damned..
Speechwriter wannabe
I called Michael a
speechwriter wannabe. You see, I was a
real speechwriter: the speaker’s message in the speaker’s language, and where
that was lacking, I supplied and supplemented it, seamlessly. One CEO’s wife told him, “I can’t believe you
didn’t write that!” The highest
compliment – perfect authenticity, perfect anonymity.
But Michael didn’t know how
to be that kind of speechwriter. His
narcissistic ego wouldn’t allow it. He
simply made the exec a ventriloquist’s dummy and gave him a script. He was good at that, but I don’t know how
often the execs actually delivered his scripts.
I guess it qualifies for “Most
Money Made With an English B.A.”
But as a speechwriter, Michael
was less Winston Churchill, more Paul Josef Goebbels. You didn’t know what he’d sneaked by you
until he’d sneaked it by.
Sneaking by
That’s what happened again at
the High Conclave of Food Execs. He made
them think that they could do business as usual, cutting harmful, addictive
ingredients just enough to make health claims but not enough to affect revenues. It’s a fine line. But then Sanger came along and said they
don’t even have to do that.
This is the food industry’s
perpetual conundrum: to produce food-like products, convince people they’re
good to eat, get them hooked on salt/fat/sugar AND STILL convince the media
and public that the industry is concerned about nutrition and obesity.
There’s no question that the
grocery industry has been one of the major transformative changes in modern
life.
Food preparation used to take
an incredible amount of time. Humble
Jell-O, for instance, was once an upper-class dish; your servants had to start
with sheets of gelatin, which they would melt before adding flavor. Very labor-intensive.
Turning the other way
In exchange for letting
others do 99% of the procurement of our food, we prefer to ignore what it takes
for them to do that – all the stabilizers, colors, emulsifiers, flavors, and
preservatives that enable food to be cooked, packaged, transported long
distances, and kept on a grocery shelf.
The science and technology are invisible but impressive. Even the packages have to be minor
engineering marvels.
We also ignore, at our peril,
the fact that we have entrusted our nutritional needs not to publicly-owned
cooperatives or nonprofit companies, but to profit-making corporations. They are BUSINESSES and as such must generate
growth and rising stock process.
Why food companies exist
That happens only if people
buy more of their products, which is why food companies push snacking as a
fourth (or fifth) meal, why they use the phrase ”mindless munching” (internally
only, of course) as a desired state.
Again: they are not there to
feed or even amuse you (as it might seem, with the KoolAidTM Man all
the different macaroni shapes). They are there to make you eat more. Or in the case of Coke, surely one of the
vilest things you can put in your body, to drink more.
That’s just how it is. Slick pricks like Michael Mudd help sell it
by sounding all caring and earnest and touchy-feely about being part of the
solution. Consider Michael a performance
artist. He once spoke – a brief aside,
but I caught it – of the importance of faking sincerity, of coming out with
exactly the right bullshit at the right moment.
Truly the words of a master.
