The Profits and Power-Plays of Superstorm Sandy

Prologue

Back in late 2012 right before Halloween, we were hit with a horrific thrill.  One of the most destructive hurricanes since Katrina was tearing through the Northeast United States.  Sandy was born on October 22nd, 2013 in the Caribbean Sea off of the coast of Nicaragua and grew up in Jamaica.  During her early days as a hurricane, she causes trouble in Jamaica and Haiti, killing 50 people.  She gets older, more powerful and ranks up to a category 3. Motivated by her new status, she travels to Cuba, doing considerable damage to Santiago de Cuba.  After causing mayhem and destruction amongst the human race, Sandy headed northward, planning for a life of solitude.  

Sandy decides to calm down as a hurricane, and even briefly considered the quiet life of a Tropical Storm on October 27th.  After deciding that the quiet life is not the life for her, she powers back up to a hurricane and continues to head north.  Sandy pretty much kept to herself, still toying with her hobby of destruction by sending powerful waves to North Carolina (I think that this was just her own method of flirting).  

Sandy was six days old by this point, and she was once again contemplating retiring from the hurricane life.  However, before she was able to commit, she ran into a bad crowd from the north.  She meets a cold front, and its high pressure convinces her to return to her former glory.  Little does she know her true hurrah hasn't even come.  She turns, and heads towards the United States, with New York City, Baltimore, and Massachusetts in her path.   After building up for 300 miles, Hurricane Sandy hits the shores of New Jersey, transforms into Post-Tropical Nor'easter Sandy, and begins to wreak shit.  What did the elite in the United States do?  Try to be as helpful as possible.  The question that is being asked is, whom were they trying to help more: the public, or themselves?

Part I: What is a Superstorm?

According to the Oxford Dictionaries:

Fair enough, but I'm a man of science. Let's ask NOAA

That must be my mistake.  Let me look closer under the letter "S.":

I am left with mixed feelings after finding this.  On one hand, there is a way for me to be scientifically classified as "supercool." On the other hand, I had been bombarded with messages by the media that something called a "Superstorm" was fucking up my country. 

If nothing can be scientifically classified as a superstorm, then why was Sandy being called a superstorm?

Part II: Alternative Entertainment

The first use of the phrase "Superstorm Sandy" that I could find popped up on October 25th, when Sandy was crossing the Caribbean sea, on the way to Cuba after killing more than 50 people in Haiti.

 You can see the psycho in her eyes

This prediction by Julie Mazur should not be viewed as luck, rather as an act of sorcery.  This makes me very nervous for Hurricane Julia coming up in 2016.

Later on that day, ABC2 Weather tweeted an ominous prediction of Sandy's future.  This could have very well been the first use by a news outlet of the term "Superstorm Sandy."

"The difference between ABC and the other news outlets is that the latter use science, ABC2 Weather uses magic."

Shortly after these spooky predictions, the phrase "Superstorm Sandy" started to get popular.  On October 26th, it registered as a blip on Google Trend's interest rating (the frequency of searches with that query).  News outlets started to pick it up, CNN first used the phrase on October 27th, as did Fox News and ABC. 

The phrase caught on like wildfire.  In no time, it was being used ubiquitously across almost all news outlets and social media platforms.  By October 30th, a day after the storm hit the US, the search interest for "Superstorm Sandy" hit the highest possible point.

Why, though, did this happen?  Why did a few scattered appearances of "Superstorm" turn into a media frenzy?  Before we discuss that question, I have one of my own.  What is the goal of the media?  Not in a philosophical sense, or a societal sense, but in a organizational sense.  Answer:  To make money.  How do they make money?  By sparking your interest enough so that you are willing to wade through television, printed, and online ads to get to the content that you find worthy of your time. 

Back to the original question, how did "Superstorm" become so popular?  Aside from a search-query peak of "Superstorm" back in 2007 (due to a BBC mini-series by the same name), the phrase has remain relatively unused before Sandy. Aside from a few fleeting references to a hurricane or other powerful storm, it never gained much traction.  So, once news stories and articles came out proclaiming Hurricane Sandy to be a "Superstorm," everybody clicked to learn more information. 

There are two terms that come into play here:

1. RPM-Revenue Per Thousand Impressions

2. RPC-Revenue Per Click

These two methods of selling ad space is how the commercial internet has come to be as it is now. They are the key to whether a website is profitable or is just a marketing expense.

As millions of people watched Sandy started barreling right towards the United States, they began to pay attention and read more about it. As humans we naturally pay more attention to the negative than to the positive. So when you present someone with a choice of two articles about the incoming storm, one titled "Hurricane Sandy" and the other "Superstorm Sandy," they are predisposed to choosing the latter. Some outlets tried to push the limits and label Sandy as a "Frankenstorm," in light of the fact that the storm occurred during Halloween. CNN thought better than that though.

The ominous conclusion to draw is that the more tragic and sensationalized the event, the more attention it gets and the more profits it generates for the media tycoons. The sad part about all of this is that they are turning a tragedy into entertainment. Attention-grabbing titles included   "Superstorm Sandy: Death, Damage, and Magnitude," and "Apocolypse NY: Hurricane Sandy Kills 32, takes estimate $20 billion dollar toll on the city after deadly two-day attack."

However, the media wasn't the only ones gaining from the death and destruction: 

Part III: Political Powers Perusing Presidencies

Let us not forget that this "Superstorm" happened right towards the climax of the 2012 US Presidential Campaign.  It was getting ugly. Between the billions of dollars spent on marketing and the national inclination to take it personally whenever somebody has a differing political opinion, the nation was ready for November 6th to come.

When Post-Tropical Nor'easter Sandy hit the US, "Romboma" proclaimed a hiatus from campaigning until the nation had recovered from Sandy. The storm happened one week before the election, so every action by each candidate, political party, politician, and federal agency was crucial. It was, however, the perfect storm for Obama. Any attempt by Romney to campaign during the wake of the storm would harm  his ratings. Mitt pretty much had to sit on his hands and wait for the whole thing to blow over. The most that he could do was to cook up a fundraiser for the victims of the Hurricane (with a dash of politics)

Obama on the other hand was in the fortunate position of continuing his campaign by simply doing his job.  When the storm hit, he invited New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on a date over to the White House. After their intimate meeting, Obama wanted to make this a long-term relationship and he gave Christie his number, telling Christie to call him if Christie needed anything.  As the storm continued to develop, so did their relationship.  Even though they lived in separate states, they still stayed close, talking frequently on the phone (presumably about their feelings).  After spending a lot of time working closely together during the storm, the couple announced their affection to the public, with Christie describing it as being a "great working relationship."   He even tweeted photos of the two talking.  New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who Obama had also been seeing during the storm, felt left out and wanted to remind Obama that they too had been close once, so he joined Christie in praising Obama.  Christie meanwhile was receiving backlash for rebelling against his political parents in the Republican Party, so he reassured everyone that he was not ready to take the relationship all the way by voting for Obama.

So what to make of all of this drama? Why would Christie advocate so passionately for Obama if his political ally was on the home stretch of a neck-and-neck presidential race? The answer lies in the future. The public was so sick of the race by this point that any hint of 2016 was enough to merit getting tarred and feathered. The truth was, however, that the 2016 race was already underway, and while Christie had passed on the 2012 election, he was carefully positioning himself to be in the prime spot of a future presidential candidate. If Romney had won in 2012, Christie would have had to wait until 2020 to run.  However, if Obama won in 'oh 12 then Christie would be a top candidate once the fat lady had sung on old Barack. Christie, like any good investor, knew how to diversify his political assets, hence his very public praise of Obama.

Speaking of Obama, these kind words from Christie were the icing on his cake.  After Romney had been vehemently outspoken during the primaries about his desire to cut FEMA's budget, Obama knew that now was the time to make Romney eat his words by proving the effectiveness of both the agency and him as a president, and eat his words Romney did.

All in all, Hurricane Sandy was to knock-out punch for Romney, securing Obama into another four years of presidency and Christie into a top republican candidate for the 2016 primaries. See guys, not everybody lost everything, just Romney, who was vocal about how the hurricane lost him the election. Poor guy, it's almost worse than losing his home, savings, or life like millions of others did.

Part IV: Capitalism at its Finest

While people were gaining from the store at the macro level, the micro level was full of exploitation and questionable morals.  There are few sources in this part due to the fact that this comes from an account of the storm by a friend of mine, Annalise, who was actually stuck in New York City when the hurricane hit.  The storm headed towards NYC so quickly that her family did not have time to catch a plane before the storm hit.  They had to stay at the Brooklyn Marriot, in addition to the hundreds of other people staying there.  However, due to the higher demand, the hotel hiked their prices to around double than standard.  While Marriot stated that they have a policy against price gouging, she claims that the price of every service in the hotel spiked.  Due to the storm raging on the outside, nobody could leave the hotel.  So, while raising the price of food to around $35 per meal might be frowned upon, there was nothing that people could do to avoid the insane prices. 

The hotel also forced all employees to stay and work during the storm.  receptionists, custodians, chefs, even a lifeguard (maybe they weren't dismissing a Day After Tomorrow scenario).  What happened to the people who were stuck in the area and couldn't afford a hotel? Good question.  Annalise's great aunt and uncle had to drive through the storm and over Brooklyn Bridge before it closed to find a cheaper hotel. 

The day after the storm ended, New York City came back to life, with retail shops, Broadway, and the MET opening back up.  According to Annalise, it was a shopping frenzy.  The stores were filled with people.  She speculated that this is perhaps because they had nothing better to do.  Prices had risen everywhere.  Taxi prices went way up, and businesses were putting large price tags on everything from $5 for charging cell phones to $35 showers.  Hey, at least the MET was free. 

Conclusion

As a marketer, I'm both inspired and excited.  As kids we were always taught to turn lemons into lemonade.  Now I know that it would be much more profitable to wait until somebody else makes lemonade that poisons hundreds of people, then sell novelty t-shirts about the event.  Considering that human beings are naturally captivated by death, destruction, and violence headlines that exist for the purpose of grabbing attention rather than informing the public are more likely to get attention. It's our job as a society to focus on the problem at hand, such as the tendency of people to be killed by mass shooters rather than the success of the massacres and the story of the shooter themselves.  This makes mass shootings more of a high score contest and less of a tragedy.  While it's tempting to make news more entertaining and exciting, these small steps can cause large social problems.  What can we do to solve this paradox?  Perhaps we can have a central agency monitor the media and intervene if they find any article that can cause harm, but wait…  I know!  How about we only report positive news!  Then again, we need to stay inform about potential hazards.  My personal solution is to pay attention to news outlets that discuss social and political issues in an unbiased and critical way, rather than muddle the facts with sensationalism and emotional, flawed rhetoric. This is why my one true love is a lady named Diane Rehm.