Merlot's Approach to the Dragons of Eden

Greetings Voignier and Kind Readers,

Last night was uneventful. The university dean of students with whom we ate and drank, while Mike and Ronbo distributed boxed wine to an estimated 40% of his student body, was a rather ego intensive person. As he spent most of the night expending a great deal of effort to capture the attention of Dr. Emily, who was more than happy to discuss the Dobe !Kung culture of Africa's Dobe region of Botswana, our researchers held wine tastings, and inteviews with students at various stages of their intoxication. For his part, it appears our dean had spent some time there studying Dobe !Kung economics, the details of which he was quite proud to present to Dr. Emily, myself and the three tables of diners around us. It was quite a relief, have had my ears talked off by Dr. Emily over the past three days, as we have toured from college to college on the Magic Bus, if you will. The dean's rapt attention was a welcome diversion from the cabin fever Dr. Emily were feeling toward each other and the others on the bus, which lately lead us to referring to each other by the pet names "jack ass" and "booze-hound", along with the preposition "shut up", often through clenched teeth. And so this dinner was a welcome change.

As those two spoke of the nuts, yams, and giraffe meat upon which the Dobe (click)Kung live, I was free to observe and speculate as to which brands of wine in our restaurant were "on code" if you will, and which were clearly "off code". Next, I made an effort to determine which wine brands were near code, and which were just off center from code. "Code" of course is a term of art, an industry term we marketing experts use to distinguish which products and more at issue, which brands penetrate the American consumer's mind to reach and tickle the reptilian brain, which is the driver of human kind's deepest emotions. The theory, of dubious origins was hatched and is being promoted by various well healed French psychiatrists, German semoticians, Dutch deconstructionists and American behavioral psychologists, amouts to this: find out what makes a product on code, and consumers will fall deeply and hopelessly in love with your brand, which will allow you to charge your client a reasonable percentage of a very large number of unit sales, as the free spending American consumer goes ass wild, falling over each other to buy it. iPod is a good example of such a brand, along with the wide mouthed Avian water, the Prada handbag, the Movado watch and the Startac cellphone, which has been reborn as the Moto Razor if you will.

What these products have in common, according to these code theories, if you will, is their brand's ability to reach into the consumer's "reptile mind," a concept popularized by the late, great Carl Sagan, via his billions and billions paperbacks, which outlined his bastardized theories of human brain evolution,making "the reptile mind story" an easy pitch for marketers to convey to the MBAs who sign our checks, and measure the size, weight, time to market and number of things we sell. In his perfect airport read, Dragon's of Eden, Sagan laid a highly entertaining foundation for marketing researchers to construct a fabulous castles in the sky extending high into the air like sharp edges of Gothic churches, built in a time when responsible bands of men threw their passions to the heavens in stone, as if to show their God what men can do when guided by a new faith in themselves, and in reason, along with sharper swords, more powerful arrows, better ploughs, and grander schemes with democratic tendencies.

Our challenge Voignier, is to find the code for wine, and more particularly boxed wine, and to advise our clients to offer boxed wine that is on code if you will. If we can do so, I believe we can finally get through to the America consumer that wine can be, and should be a viable option to accompany every meal. That the consumer is king and is queen, and as king or queen, he or she can, and should drink anything they wish. In a nation where that has made every man and woman a king or queen, and given them enough disposable income to pick and choose as kings and queens of yesterday's means of production, boxed wine should be the nectar of their choosing. We must make boxed wine less a choice than the default choice of millions, the first "flavored water" if you will, the life blood of living well, without shame, like a French Noble, Arab Prince, Friend of Bill, or C Level officer brandishing a charge card attached to OPM (other people's money) if you will.

Finding the code is no small task. We can only speculate without putting in service our team of marketing researchers from The Riverside Park, and Boat Basin. With just 8, we can hardly hope reach the reptilian minds of our Ameican college students. And so, we shall request more money to hire our teams, as we construct a methodology for the study of boxed wine brands that are on code, off code and can be brought up to code, if you will. I shall request 500,000 dollars from our sponsors, and will let you know their reply as soon as I am able to state the case for our search for the code that will make boxed wine a break out beverage, putting Lite beer in the dust bin of history, where it most certainly belongs.