EXTRACT: He is also the chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, (part of the British-based WPP Group), a public relations firm that in the course of its career has been retained to winch some sensationally grimy clients out of the mud, such as Union Carbide after Bhopal, the Argentine military junta and Royal Dutch Shell after some very poor publicity in Nigeria.
THE ARTICLE
October 21, 2007
Reviewed by Aledander Cockburn
Mark Pennâs America â the America of Microtrends â is a bright-eyed, mostly upbeat world. As he bowls along, Penn tosses market-researched stats and polling data like confetti, and soon the reader is spattered with golly-gee micro-measurements: growing numbers of home knitters (âknitting is very hipâ), decline of baseball fans, burgeoning population of vegan children, rise of women archers, longer bestselling books, more college-educated nannies, a surge in employees in the nonprofit sector, more kids who are cross-dressers and who, Penn says brightly, âare triggering a large, new tolerance movement in schools and communitiesâ.