Branding in Politics: All the Difference in the World

Posted on by Alex M. Hochberger, MBA

Retirement Savings is probably the most challenging economic issue facing the country. I presuppose that the issues with resolving the “crisis” are not political, but marketing.

Nataxis Global Asset Management commissioned a survey, and Time Magazine is reporting that 82% of Millennials support mandatory retirement plans and 75% support mandatory matching contributions.

Intuitively this makes sense, 82% of Boomers are counting on social security, but only 55% of Millennials think that social security will be there for them.

Interesting, if you ask people about expanding or cutting social security, according to Huffington Post, support for increasing social security reaches 70% among Millennials and 75% for Baby Boomers.

What does this mean:

  1. Expanding Social Security is VERY Popular
  2. Mandatory Retirement Savings in personal accounts is VERY Popular
  3. Mandatory Retirement Matches is VERY Popular
  4. Cutting Social Security is VERY Un-Popular

Notice a pattern here? Social Security is funded via a mandatory payroll tax on the employee and employer, a “match” if you will. The “optional” Bush Plan 10 years ago was super complex, was based on optional contributions to private accounts that would reduce benefits, and other confusing options.

What if instead the plan were phrased as:

  1. Expanding Social Security with Mandatory Retirement Accounts
  2. Employees and Employers would be required to contribute
  3. The accounts would be private, and default to Treasury Bills
  4. People could move their Social Security Investment Account to fiduciaries, or not, with limited investment options

That sounds economically, exactly like privatization. But every branding exercise would focus on expanding social security. Now sell your Social Security Expansion plan via Social Media, and you have a winner.

Government Matching Inventors with Manufacturers

Posted on by Alex M. Hochberger, MBA

Three cheers for some smart governmental policy.  Markets do well where there is perfect, or near perfect, information, and limited barriers to entry.  Markets do poorly where there are barriers to entry, particularly if they are information based.  Technology, IT in particularly, has helped shrink businesses by eliminating layers of management because you no longer need a 6:1 reporting ratio because of paper limitation.  Further, Just In Time EVERYTHING, manufacturing, wholesaling, inventory, etc., helps keeps companies lean, just buying things as needed in an open marketplace.

One area where the market failed to make connections was in the manufacturing of products.  Contract manufacturing seemed popular with large companies, but there didn’t ever seem to be options for small businesses.  Strangely, every entrepreneur I know who made a product made it in China, not because of the cost differential (shipping and monitoring eats it up on small lines) but just because they could get it done.

Department of Commerce’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership helped launch Planet Eureka!, the innovation marketplace.  Maybe we’ll be able to get one of my wife’s ideas to market this time around.  Thanks to CNN Money for pointing me in this direction, you can read the artile that I read, “What’s your idea worth?”