Cancelling Dr. Seuss
I want to talk a bit about Dr. Seuss.
First, I want to talk about what actually happened.
Then, I want to talk about why this is a “big deal”. I’ll dig into the political motivations that make this a significant political discussion in the US.
Finally, I’ll talk a bit about marketing, and the new techniques that have entered the media landscape over the last few years.
So what happened with Dr. Seuss?
On March 2nd, the Dr. Seuss Enterprises — the people in charge of the Dr. Seuss’ intellectual property — decided to discontinue publication of six Dr. Seuss books. These books would still be available in libraries, and on secondary markets — they would simply no longer be available for fresh publication each year.
Again, the six books are:
1) And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,
2) If I Ran the Zoo,
3) McElligot’s Pool,
4) On Beyond Zebra!,
5) Scrambled Eggs Super!, and
6) The Cat’s Quizzer.
The issues with the books were mostly some drawings that include blackface and East Asian caricatures.
An example of this can be seen below, taken from “If I Ran the Zoo”:
It is worth noting Dr. Seuss wrote over 50 books, and before this week, these were some of the least-popular Dr. Seuss books. These six books are still widely available on secondary markets and even in most libraries. The government hasn’t been involved in any way in this decision.
If you think about the classic Dr. Seuss books you read as a kid — the ones you might have bought for your own kids, the ones maybe sitting on your shelf right now — are any of the above on that list?
Note that The Grinch, Green Eggs and Ham, Oh The Places You’ll Go, and the other classics are not on the list above.
Before you read them above, did you know these discontinued Dr. Seuss books existed?
Why is this a big deal?
This story — about a private company discontinuing less than 10% of its product line — was one of the biggest political stories this week. On March 2nd the above post was made by Dr. Seuss Enterprises. By March 4th, this story was everywhere.
Fox News.com hosted 24 separate articles across a span of 3 days on the subject, including a major segment from headliner Tucker Carlson. This has been a major storyline in conservative media this week.
From a sample of these articles, the storyline goes something like this:
Progressives / “the left” are coming after yet another thing you love — Dr. Seuss. Can you believe how crazy they are?
They have cancelled Dr. Seuss.
Then, there is inference. The articles will make some reference to Joe Biden, or the Biden Administration, or Hollywood Elites, or Cancel Culture. They know their audience will do the rest of the work for them.
“Can you believe the hypocrisy of the left? In recent history, look at all of these liberals endorsing Dr. Seuss, or reading his books to children! And now, suddenly, he’s cancelled! Clearly, we are on the right side of history, and these liberals are irrational and dangerous and want to come take the things you hold dear. No more Grinch, no more Oh The Places You’ll Go. Forget about Red Fish Blue Fish.”
Note, again, almost no reference is given to the baseline facts about what happened — a private company, under virtually no public pressure, discontinued 6 of its least-popular books that very few people remember.
And so, then, abstracted from this original context, and with the inference fully imbibed, the social media machine kicks into gear. I am subscribed to a few right-wing private groups to better understand the conversations happening in conservative media.
Here are some of the memes this week from private conservative Facebook groups:
Now, if you are anywhere left of centre, you may not have even noticed this story in the news at all. According to the right-wing narrative, the left — as one unified group — has driven a massive cancel movement on Dr. Seuss. Amongst conversation I heard on the left, I nearly didn’t see this story at all. This is a non-story — just a private company updating its publishing list. Mundane. A non-issue.
Check out these Google Trendwords graphs of Dr. Seuss search terms from the last few weeks:
Note which states these searches are coming from: West Virginia, South Dakota, Wyoming… all Republican strongholds. This is a big story on the Republican front, but a quiet one everywhere else.
I find all of this really fascinating, especially in context of what I think are otherwise the biggest political stories in the US, which seem to be very quiet within Conservative media.
Firstly, there is a hard push by the Dems in the US to pass a Coronavirus relief bill (which, update, passed this evening). This would include additional payments to Americans ($1400 was the initial ask, but it looks like that will be coming down).
This is WIDELY popular amongst Democrat and Republican constituents. A recent Monmouth University poll (A+ rating on fivethirtyeight.com) noted that 53% of Americans think $1400 is the right amount, with 28% wanting larger payments. Only 14% wanted smaller or no payments.
The only thing holding these payments up is Republican support in the Senate. This is a dangerous political issue for Republicans, because if this discussion becomes the dominant narrative, it will be difficult for them to change public support on the issue. A reframe around “fiscal responsibility” hasn’t moved the opinion poll needle much.
A second major conversation is around vaccinations / reopening. Vaccinations appear to be moving quickly, and alongside this, many Republican states are beginning to fully reopen. This appears to be a complicated issue politically. While Republicans are more in support of reopening, general trust amongst Republican leadership on Coronavirus issues is low (only 25% trust Republicans to handle the pandemic more than Democrats). There is not a clear wedge or distinction here that can be useful as political fodder.
Finally, this week was March 4th — which in conspiracy theory land was when Trump was supposed to be inaugurated to make his shadow government public. This is of course ridiculous, but if you haven’t been following what has been happening with Qanon — whew, it is a whole barrel of crazy to dive down. This may seem nuts, but back in December, an NPR/ Ipsos poll found that 23% of Republicans believed in Qanon. Coming out for or against Q, recognizing or pushing back against it, risks splitting Republican audiences.
All of these stories — important though they are — are dangerous for right-wing media outlets and social media machines that thrive based on unified polarization. Ezra Klein’s book, “Why We Are Polarised” , dives into this massive increase in polarization.
So, if these storylines are difficult ground, what is easy? Like a photographer shaking their keys to get a baby to look in the right direction, these “culture war” stories resonate deeply with a demographic that feels the world changing quickly beneath them. Again — Fox News did **24** separate articles within a 3 day window. This is comfort food, and easy clicks. And it makes for an amazing distraction.
And so we have Kevin McCarthy (House Minority Leader) reinforcing the distraction by reading Green Eggs and Ham on Twitter in protest to Dr. Seuss being cancelled.
Remember, Green Eggs and Hams was not one of the discontinued books.
This tweet received 31,100 likes — his usual tweets are lucky to receive 500. McCarthy is in a delicate position, opposing a Covid bill that is otherwise popular.
This is all an incredibly useful distraction.
Finally, I want to talk a bit about the “outrage marketing” strategy that Dr. Seuss Enterprises has clearly benefitted from here, intentionally or not.
On November 10th, 2017, the president of Media Matters, Angelo Carusone, tweeted at Keurig Dr. Pepper — the makers of the Keurig coffee machine — that they were advertising on Sean Hannity’s show while he was defending Senator Roy Moore.
You might remember that Moore was accused of sexual assault by three women, all underage. At the time, he was a pivotal vote in the Senate.
President Donald Trump stood up for Moore and gestured to the rest of republican media to follow suite.
Sean Hannity followed Trump’s lead, acting as a shield to try to calm calls for Moore’s removal. Carusone’s argument was that Keurig was tacitly supporting the defense of a sexual predator.
Keurig pulled their advertising, and amongst a far-right demographic, there was a significant backlash. People videotaped themselves smashing Keurig coffee machines. This became a major story on the right and the left.
Crisis for Keurig, right? Well…
Amongst the left, Keurig was facing skepticism about the environmental impact of K-cups. Suddenly, Keurig was scoring points for pulling advertising from Fox News. Sales in that demo increased.
But then the other foot dropped. Memory is short, and nobody really pays attention to boycotts. But that free marketing and increase in name recognition… that sticks around.
The following year went better than expected for Keurig Dr. Pepper:
Between 2017 and 2018, Keurig nearly doubled shareholder value, after seeing flat growth the two years previous. The marketing they gleaned off the Hannity controversy worked.
Keurig had struck marketing gold — and the old rule in marketing is that if it works, it is quickly replicated until it works no longer.
In 2018, Nike hired Colin Kaepernick in what is a really beautiful commercial about “sacrificing everything” for your dreams.
Kaepernick, you’ll remember, was let go from the 49ers because of his political statements, including kneeling in support of Black Lives Matters. This had been a wedge issue in US politics, and a Culture War talking point amongst the political right. Hiring Kaepernick for the ad was designed to make it go viral through controversy with the political right.
Predictably, this led to boycotts amongst the right, and heaps of free media press all around. If you followed right wing media or Facebook groups during this period, you might believe that Nike was really feeling the pain from all of these boycotts.
This boycot publicity was the advertisement.
Over the next year, Nike’s value increased by $6 billion. This campaign was widely seen as a massive success in advertising circles.
Again, in 2019, Gilette stepped into this arena with their “Best a Man Can Get” campaign.
Again, a really beautiful campaign from where I’m standing, but one designed to play on culture war grievances for free advertising exposure.
Social critic youtuber Hbomberguy has a fantastic video on this phenomina:
The Dr. Seuss case, intentional or not, has led to a similar circumstance to the campaigns above, but with an important twist. The controversy surrounding the action of discontinuing 6 books didn’t come from a marketing campaign like in the Nike and Gillette cases. The instigating company action was a quiet post on their website, and only gained attention through amplification in the right-wing media — again, 24 posts in 3 days from Fox News.
The amplification has now broken through, one week later, with massive media impressions amongst right-wing demographics, and minor impressions amongst the left (mostly articles in the mainstream documenting the right-wing distraction, which in effect still brings attention to the discontinuing of the books for racist tropes).
Amongst the left AND the right, this is a narrative that places Dr. Seuss and company as the hero. In either domain, it is positive press — and it is free press, driven by outrage on one side and spectacle on the other.
In either case, though, the villain instigating the outrage isn’t the company as it was in all previous recent cases of outrage advertising. In this unique case, the villain is the amorphous “left”, or “cancel culture”, or even Joe Biden. On either side, Dr. Seuss is the hero.
Currently, 8/10 top selling books in the US are Dr. Seuss books.
I would like to think that the motivation to discontinue those six books was motivated by altruistic intentions to not reproduce the racist tropes included in those books. Maybe this was the case — but Dr. Seuss Enterprises isn’t a charity. It is a business, and it needs to manage risks. From a risk management perspective discontinuing these books was an obvious move. Even though there was no active widespread campaign against these books from the left (outside of perhaps small fringe support) eventual public backlash may have come at some point over the next decade. From a risk management perspective, to discontinue six very low selling books that may be a brand liability to high value property is an obvious choice, and is simply capitalist market economics at work.
I don’t think the motivation by Dr. Seuss Enterprises was to use this as a publicity campaign to increase market sales. But, the end result is that this will likely be the best quarter they have had in the last decade.
And when something in marketing works, it will be copied.
So what is the point?
I think a few things are notable here.
1) The outrage here by the far right is real, but the instigating event is nothing like it is being represented in conservative media. The truth isn’t the point — the outrage is the point. This is another example of truth moving much slower than media and memes. By next week, this story will be mostly forgotten as the next thing comes into focus.
2) Outrage is, of course, a useful distraction for politicians who don’t want to talk about more delicate issues.
3) The sheer difference in level of attention on the right and left media bubbles is a great example of how different our social media worlds are.
4) Anything effective is replicated — if it can be. We may be witnessing the birth of a new marketing technique — where an outrage campaign is instigated with the company being positioned as the victim instead of the villain to instigate outrage with a fringe demographic. It is uncertain if this technique can be replicated, but if it can be, we will see this again.
