This is not fake news

I know that sometimes I link to a story in the Onion, and I don't always make clear that it's not a real news article. Well, please let me point out that this next bit is a real news article, from the Wall Street Journal:

Marketers Pursue the Shallow-Pocketed

Now McCann is launching a $2 million research project to seek clues to tapping demand among Latin America's less-well-off. Starting in March, staffers will spend a week to two weeks living with 100 low-income families in a half-dozen countries, including Colombia, Chile and Mexico, looking to understand how they are influenced by brands, what symbols and celebrities motivate them, and to find innovative ways to influence what they buy….

In recent years, marketing to the poor has become a hot subject. University of Michigan economist C.K. Prahalad helped popularize the idea with his 2004 book "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid," which argued big companies could profit and help the world's four billion poor or low-income people by finding innovative ways to sell them soap and refrigerators.

There is so much wrong with this, but I'm not going to rant. Nope. I am zen, man, zen.