I’ve been working on a project that has caused my to read Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and re-read “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser. I’m pretty much in agreement with the pro-natural food, anti-factory food arguments made in both books. However, I found the polemicizing in one book far more compelling for reasons that are worth noting by marketers.
Pollan follows four meals from farm to table and makes commentary along the way as to how the food is raised and processed. The first meal is fast food, and the villain is “big ag” which seeks to coopt sustainable sources, organic standards, traditional family farms and foods free of drugs and pesticides in order to deliver something that follows the letter of the law while totally disrespecting the spirit by which honest, healthy meals have traditionally come to the table. So far so good.
The problem is that his is a holistic outrage; you need to totally buy into his argument to accept each part of it. And while in most cases I was nodding my head, at one point I found myself thinking “that’s actually pretty cool” when he described all the things you can make with corn. This is preaching to the choir and to the extent that Pollan wants to make new converts, I don’t know that he is doing it.
Schlosser, by contrast, adopts a “but wait, there’s more” approach to layer on the outrages of eating at McDonalds et al. It starts modestly, even acknowledging that the stuff can taste pretty good. Nothing here to make a Big Mac lover put down the book. But he gradually adds outrages and pulls you in. “You don’t like the feces in the beef? Well, let me tell you about the factory workers that get their limbs chopped off.” You’re led to agreement in baby steps, and thus potentially converted.
We direct marketers are happy to ignore the 98% or so of our audience that doesn’t pay any attention to our work, and focus on tweaking and maximizing our message to the remaiing 2%. It’s probably a worthy goal for a polemicist to get 2% of his or her readers to change their attitudes somewhat. I think Schlosser does a better job, but I recommend you read both books and decide for yourself.
(This post has been edited. There are four meals described in Pollan’s book and I want to make it clear his fast food outrage is specifically about the first meal, thus offering an apples-to-apples [or fries-to-fries] comparison with Schlosser. Be sure you read on about the other three meals, and don’t miss Angelo and the pigs.)