07.05.11
The contrived business success story
One favorite of the business press is the love of small business success stories. Because of economic failure and mass unemployment, they’re totally irresistible, particularly when they purport to finding someone who has made it after being fired.
The most notable case in recent news revolves around the woman seen all over the country in television ads for Chase Ink credit cards, the Jamie Dimon creation.
Beer and cupcakes, says the woman named Marlo, who started a bistro to serve them. That was the ticket.
In this video at MSN, you can see all the publicity the business, called Sweet Revenge, has garnered.
It’s advertised as a tale of revenge, satisfaction and triumph against all odds. Marlo was fired, so she started Sweet Revenge before the cash ran out. And the business almost failed.
No one was interested. You can’t give free food and drinks away in NYC, apparently. I believe it.
Anyway, it took a fluke — delivering cupcakes to Martha Stewart and a subsequent guest appearance — to save the operation.
It was publicity no money could buy. And what isn’t mentioned in the story is that, knowing how the media works, I’m positive the press ignored Sweet Revenge, even though it was a unique idea, until it showed up on Stewart.
Anyway, these kinds of things are, as here, peddled as answers to corporate America’s animosity toward US labor.
Start your own business! That’s how we’ll all innovate our way to success.
It’s totally unworkable in a country the size of the US. Delusional, actually.
It requires miracles and astonishing strokes of good luck on the order of grains of sand on an acre of beach to make it work for millions of unemployed, even assuming they’re all perfectly disposed to being entrepreneurial.