The Corruption Tango (Part 4 The World's Lawyer)

Part 4 of The Corruption Tango (see previously)

IV. The World's Lawyer

My dear uncle, of blessed memory, used to work at the World Bank
He had a seat at the table, he'd risen to a high rank

With world movers and shakers, many said to be covered in glory
From his vantage point, up close and personal, he saw the backstory

Of many of the headlines that we would later read in the daily news
He was intimately familiar with the ways in which due process was abused

The haste with which the bounds of propriety
   would be promptly set aside
And the board's directors would say the magic words: let's override

It often happened to coincide happily
   with what the American president wants
The fig leaves of accountability
   that were forsaken in light of such demands

A lawyer, he rose in the profession
   to become the bank's top legal counsel
Jokingly, he referred to his job as the restraint of the world's scoundrels

For even though he constantly sided "with the ninety nine percent"
His very salary and position placed him firmly in the one percent

He saw through those demanding structural adjustment and reforms
Shifting the blame to Third World cultural traditions and lax norms

For much of the impetus came from these selfsame First World rogues
Who would emphasize whatever fine words happened to be in vogue

The hubris of people in glass houses and all that
He chose his moments to bring up inconvenient facts

What with his work on matters of compliance in the banking sector
Conversations with him were always revelatory chapters

He was quite jaded, if not cynical, about human fallibility
Hard-boiled even, such are the wages of observing venality

I imagine it was like shooting the breeze with a vice cop
He'd seen it all, try as I could, there was nothing that could shock

The media accounts always focus on
   the weak country and the bribe taker
Scapegoats: the low trust culture, and the willingly suborned insider

Thus it was written, that huhudious drama of the cease and desist
Almost always turned out in practice to amount to a mere slap on the wrist

It makes you wonder who is writing the script
About these scandals and dirty politics

While there would later be an almanac of political corruption
His contribution was to write the book on combating corruption

Human beings were not too far removed from the garden of Eden
When it became second nature for some to deceive and scheme

Lying for money is akin to original sin
Envy, greed, all these can pave the way to embezzling

There's always the other side to these affairs and imbroglios
Recall the old song, it takes two to do the corruption tango

The Corruption Tango: A Playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• Takes22tango by Dwele
  The funky shuffle and irresistible step, see Snoop vibe out to the groove.
• (It Takes) Two To Tango by Lester Young With Oscar Peterson
  A fun romp in the studio. "Take off your drawers ...", now there's a seduction
• It Takes Two by Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston
  Baby... to make a thing go right.
• Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock - It Takes Two
  You better think
• Think (About It) by Lyn Collins
  One of James Brown's great productions. Mama Feelgood herself, duly sampled by Rob Base and countless others.
• Just the Two of Us by Grover Washington, Jr. and Bill Withers
  We can make it we try, you and I
• Two Of Us by Cameo
  Although this is more in the devotional mode, the lyrics are instructive

  You've got to help one another

• Think Twice by Erykah Badu (feat. Roy Hargrove)
  A lazy groove, easy living
• Sleaze by Abstrac'
  "A low down dirty excuse for a man"
• Hypocrites by Alpha Blondy
  I too am scared of hypocrites.
• Thinkin' One Thing and Doin' Another by Miles Davis
  On the Corner, he went for the electric funk.
• Tea For Two by Thelonious Monk
  Well the Criss-Cross album is full of contention. A real cooking session.
• Two-Part Contention by Dave Brubeck
  Continuing in the jazz mode, this is a solo piano piece
• Takes Two To Tango by Ray Charles and Betty Carter
  Two great vocal stylists enjoying their meeting. We know that Ray was one for the ladies, but there's no word on if he was able to corrupt her royal highness.
• Talkin' Out The Side Of Your Neck by Cameo
  Speaking with forked tongue
• Two Can Win Jay Dee
  An ironic title, he samples "only one can win". Dilla's donuts are bananas.
• Baby, You Oughta Think It Over by Bobby Womack
  Walk away with your head held high
• Dinner for Two by Michael Cooper
  The Cameo alumni goes mellow
• Who Do You Think You're Fooling (pt 1 & 2) by Symphonic Four
  Quintessential soul music, a divine lead falsetto and rugged background vocals, the boys are a chorus: "when your mind stinks, you forget your soul"
• Carriage For Two by Tricky
  In the background you hear Lady Day's lyrics: "God bless the child that's got his own". The album title is apposite: Angels With Dirty Faces
• Hypocrites by Bob Marley
• Tea For Two by Jacky Terrasson & Cassandra Wilson
  A delicate, nightly rendezvous

The Corruption Tango

A dance in four movements.

1. A Touch of Sleaze
2. Cease and Desist
3. The Temptation of Black Gold
4. The World's Lawyer

I nominate this internal displacement for The Things Fall Apart series. It's a family tradition to call out Fallen Angels.

File under: corruption, culture, observation, perception, humour, USA, rogues, oil, Black Gold, gremlins, parasites, interplay, capitalism, poetry, economics, regulation, Fallen Angels, Africa, Observers are worried, Things Fall Apart, toli

Writing log: Concept: July 7, 2005; March 11, 2021

The Corruption Tango (Part 3 The Temptation of Black Gold)

Part 3 of The Corruption Tango (see previously)

III. The Temptation of Black Gold

Meanwhile, this century has seen a number of elections in Nigeria
Our West African brethren, branded poster child for chaos and disorder

And the conventional wisdom from, say, The Economist was hardly honorable
Sample headline: Nigeria's elections - Big men, big fraud and big trouble

Home of the hustle, the country is continually in the headlines
Tales of shenanigans galore and the entrenched climate of the 419

You'll read things like "rotten at the core", fodder for scoundrels
But doesn't that also describe the options backdating scandal?

Western media hardly covers the good news in the darkest continent
Would that they would apply the same scrutiny to shell games on their end

I actually think it's miraculous for such a large country to keep moving
And even take more than baby steps after decades of misrule and killing

Everyone wants things to move fast,
   corruption is surely a tax on the common man
But every complex ecosystem has parasites,
   that shouldn't be hard to understand

So there will always be the temptation of black gold
It's human nature, a golden target will never get old

Then there are stories like "Saudi prince received arms cash"
That focus on the recipient, the venal prince with the stash

And not on the British multinational arms company
That so happily disbursed those fistfuls of golden money

Observers are worried, how doth the little crocodile?
It seems as if many prefer to affect denial

There seems to be something rather structural at hand
For perverse incentives, seem to be part of the plan

It doesn't seem to matter that the shadow looms of the regulator
The threat of enforcement actions and severe sanctions hardly matter

High profile companies are unbothered
   by the specter of the compliance officer
Ignored, and written off, with a touch of sleaze
   and the workings of the human factor

Or, more formally, the temptations are an inherent part of the process
In this light, bribery is viewed as part of the cost of doing business

There are two sides to this social disease, it just goes to show
That it takes two to do the corruption tango

Black Gold, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note(spotify version)

• I am the black gold of the sun by Rotary Connection
• Black gold by Gene Harris and the Three Sounds
• Black gold by Flying Lotus
• Black gold by Esperanza Spalding
• I am the black gold of the sun by Nuyorican Soul
• Filthy McNasty by Horace Silver

See also: The Corruption Tango: A Playlist

The Corruption Tango

A dance in four movements.

1. A Touch of Sleaze
2. Cease and Desist
3. The Temptation of Black Gold
4. The World's Lawyer

I nominate this internal displacement for The Things Fall Apart series under the banner of Fallen Angels.

Next: Part 4 The World's Lawyer

File under: corruption, culture, observation, perception, humour, USA, rogues, oil, Black Gold, gremlins, parasites, interplay, capitalism, poetry, economics, regulation, Fallen Angels, Africa, Observers are worried, Things Fall Apart, toli

Writing log. Concept: July 7, 2005; March 10, 2021

The Corruption Tango (Part 2 Cease and Desist)

Part 2 of The Corruption Tango

II. Cease and Desist

I was piqued by a little commented-upon story the other day
Well it was a while ago, a little illustration of the games people play

It happened in the shadow of a tragedy you might have heard in the news
It concerned the dealings of a company that rhymes with Baker Hughes

Baker Hughes then being the world's third-largest oilfield services company
You'd no doubt hear its name in the same breath as other high flying somebodies

Like the more notorious Chevron, Exxon, or say Haliburton
Oil and gas services icons and so forth, etcetera, anon

The company's slogan they extol, I must say, is quite endearing:
Core values of integrity, teamwork, performance and learning

Indeed Baker Hughes completed 100 years of corporate history in 2007
It's a wonderful company, Texas-raised, Katrina relief, volunteer heaven

It couldn't have been good to be front and center in the New York Times
Luckily for them, a couple of fallen towers had changed the headlines

The following passage has to be one of my favourite illustrations
Of the corruption tango's reach, and enduring vexations

In an action that was filed on September 12, 2001,
And received little attention at the time, (imagine that?)
Baker Hughes agreed to a cease-and-desist order
Issued by the Securities and Exchange Commision, which said that
It had (repeatedly) violated the Corrupt Practices Act
By bribing an official in Indonesia.

That cease-and-desist order appeared to have had little impact
On the company's behavior, (they stayed on the wrong track)
The S.E.C. action filed Wednesday indicated
It said the payments in Kazakhstan and Angola
Went on from 1998 to 2003, while those to an agent
Involved in securing business in Russia
And Uzbekistan went on from 1998 to 2004, and payments in Indonesia
Went on from 2000 to 2003. Payments in Nigeria
Were made from 2001 to 2005, the S.E.C. said.

In 2003, the company initiated an investigation,
But, the S.E.C. said, it did not uncover some of the violations,
Which allowed them to continue. (End of digression)

Now we shouldn't tar the company with a broad brush for the sins of bad apples
As we surely know that there are rogue elements in the wild, at any level

We need to tread carefully with allegations of insider trading
The bezzle takes a plethora of forms, not least self dealing

It's a matter of concern that culture can undermine the sinews
Far be it to attack the company that rhymes with Baker Hughes

There is a serious commitment to governance, audit, ethics and the environment
I need not say more, there are vast quantities of material on their web site

And, of course, all companies are made out of people in reality
And there are only people behaving, and sometimes, behaving badly

Go back to the founders, Howard Hughes senior's name adds color to the dance
James Ellroy made American Tabloid pulp out of the sleaze of the son

Heck I know some of those characters, the company's storied alumni include Red Adair
Good old John Wayne depicted him in a great b-movie as a prized hellfighter

So distinguished is the composition of its board, it isn't funny
I guess it's plainly obvious that Big Oil attracts Big Money

Check the resumes: Big Banks, Big Real Estate, and Big Property
Curriculum vitae: Imperial Tobacco, Big Insurance, Big Industry

Big Politics, former U.S. Ambassadors to Israel, Syria, the Pentagon
Big Men, Generals and Comptrollers of the U.S. Army, Federal Credit Unions

Needless to say the lineup of shareholders and executives are storied
How then could they possibly be out of compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley?

With that kind of oversight, no one should ever question their integrity
I only mention the story to highlight the interplay, the weakness of humanity

The logic of capitalism: the perverse incentives for those in the know
It is no secret, after all, that it takes two to do the corruption tango

Cease and Desist: A Playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Don't Be that Way by Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
• Stop Shammin' by Big Daddy Kane
• I Don't Want To Do Wrong by Gladys Knight & the Pips
• Stop! Don't by Count Basie and Joe Williams
• I Don't Need This Trouble by Alice Russell
• Stop by J Dilla
• I Don't Go For That by Quincy Jones
• Stop Think it Over by Jimmy & Eddie
• Stop by Lizz Wright
• It Don't Work Like That by Bugz in the Attic
• You Can't Stop The Rain by Loose Ends
• Can't Stop A Man by Beres Hammond
• I Can't Go For That by Hall & Oates
• Can't Stop by After 7
• Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough by Michael Jackson
  I was tempted to use I Can't Help It instead but I think this message better fits the behavior and modus operandi of the company that rhymes with Baker Hughes and others in that vein.

See also: The Corruption Tango: A Playlist

The Corruption Tango

A dance in four movements.

1. A Touch of Sleaze
2. Cease and Desist
3. The Temptation of Black Gold
4. The World's Lawyer

I nominate this internal displacement for The Things Fall Apart series under the banner of Fallen Angels.

Next: Part 3 The Temptation of Black Gold

File under: corruption, culture, observation, perception, humour, USA, rogues, oil, Black Gold, gremlins, parasites, interplay, capitalism, poetry, economics, regulation, Fallen Angels, Africa, Observers are worried, Things Fall Apart, toli

Writing log: Concept: July 7, 2005; March 9, 2021

The Corruption Tango

A dance in four movements.

I. A Touch of Sleaze

I know, I know, an oil company bribing in Kazakhstan,
Angola, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia and Uzbekistan?

Captain Obvious, who would have thought it? Why bother, very passé
Or, alternatively for the more world weary, isn't that so blasé?

It's the very definition of oil barons everywhere in the wild west
That's how robber barons and monopolists amass their treasure chests

So nineteenth century, so railroad tycoon, so captain of industry
So very Portuguese explorer, so very East India Company

And truth be told, it's really no big thing,
A bit of imperialism or monopolistic trading

To make a such a fetish out of a few bribing actions
In a world of rampant stock market manipulation

Where we celebrate ruthless and unscrupulous business practices
On a frequency and scale worthy of a swaggering industrialist

It's not like rubber farming in Liberia by way of the Dunlop family
It's not like a banana republic run by the United Fruit Company

It's a small thing, just a temporary lapse in ethics
That found ordinary Joes caught looting in a crisis

The post-facto rationalization of age old greed is termed mercantilism
Humbug, as Marx might have remarked, it's the thin veneer of capitalism

Fortune favors the bold, the lure of black gold makes brave men take chances
Well... yes and no. Bear with me if you will, as I invite you to a dance.

We aren't talking of eccentric moguls in wonky health
Using exploitative strategies to amass wealth

Profit making for those with an aversion to shame
Pure pricing power for winners of the great game

Rapacious, these highway bandits, to the third degree
The simple secret of their success is a touch of sleaze

There will be blood, if not exploitation, by these canny merchants
There's always a shortcut when you encounter Never Never Man

The preferred tactic of this nouveau aristocracy
Best exemplified by Rockefeller and Carnegie

Is to scrub reputations with overdue philanthropy
Extravagant gestures, museums and public libraries

Serenely unrepentant in his lifetime was the colossus named Rhodes
Even since, the legacy scrubbing has taken on colleges and scholarships

So manifest was his destiny - his confession of faith doth nakedly appall
That centuries later, the cries continue to ring out that Rhodes must Fall

The biographers can argue about his complicated legacy, of course
But unlike Alfred Nobel's example, there was no buyer's remorse

Fallen angels like him and King Leopold
   practiced the conqueror's catechism
What many forget is that, during their lifetimes,
   they faced the charge of racism

But these are merely the opening steps,
   as when the dancers gather for the show
The intimate legacies of men,
   it takes two to do the corruption tango

The Corruption Tango: A Playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• Takes22tango by Dwele
  The funky shuffle and irresistible step, see Snoop vibe out to the groove.
• (It Takes) Two To Tango by Lester Young With Oscar Peterson
  A fun romp in the studio. "Take off your drawers ...", now there's a seduction
• It Takes Two by Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston
  Baby... to make a thing go right.
• Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock - It Takes Two
  You better think
• Think (About It) by Lyn Collins
  One of James Brown's great productions. Mama Feelgood herself, duly sampled by Rob Base and countless others.
• Just the Two of Us by Grover Washington, Jr. and Bill Withers
  We can make it we try, you and I
• Two Of Us by Cameo
  Although this is more in the devotional mode, the lyrics are instructive

  You've got to help one another

• Think Twice by Erykah Badu (feat. Roy Hargrove)
  A lazy groove, easy living
• Sleaze by Abstrac'
  "A low down dirty excuse for a man"
• Hypocrites by Alpha Blondy
  I too am scared of hypocrites.
• Thinkin' One Thing and Doin' Another by Miles Davis
  On the Corner, he went for the electric funk.
• Tea For Two by Thelonious Monk
  Well the Criss-Cross album is full of contention. A real cooking session.
• Two-Part Contention by Dave Brubeck
  Continuing in the jazz mode, this is a solo piano piece
• Takes Two To Tango by Ray Charles and Betty Carter
  Two great vocal stylists enjoying their meeting. We know that Ray was one for the ladies, but there's no word on if he was able to corrupt her royal highness.
• Talkin' Out The Side Of Your Neck by Cameo
  Speaking with forked tongue
• Two Can Win Jay Dee
  An ironic title, he samples "only one can win". Dilla's donuts are bananas.
• Baby, You Oughta Think It Over by Bobby Womack
  Walk away with your head held high
• Dinner for Two by Michael Cooper
  The Cameo alumni goes mellow
• Who Do You Think You're Fooling (pt 1 & 2) by Symphonic Four
  Quintessential soul music, a divine lead falsetto and rugged background vocals, the boys are a chorus: "when your mind stinks, you forget your soul"
• Carriage For Two by Tricky
  In the background you hear Lady Day's lyrics: "God bless the child that's got his own". The album title is apposite: Angels With Dirty Faces
• Hypocrites by Bob Marley
  Dry land tourists feigning airs
• Tea For Two by Jacky Terrasson & Cassandra Wilson
  A delicate, nightly rendezvous

The Corruption Tango

A dance in four movements.

1. A Touch of Sleaze
2. Cease and Desist
3. The Temptation of Black Gold
4. The World's Lawyer

I nominate this internal displacement for The Things Fall Apart series under the banner of Fallen Angels.

Next: Part 2: Cease and Desist

File under: corruption, culture, observation, perception, humour, USA, rogues, oil, Black Gold, gremlins, parasites, interplay, capitalism, poetry, economics, regulation, Fallen Angels, Africa, Observers are worried, Things Fall Apart, toli

Writing log. Concept: July 7, 2005; March 8, 2021

The New Formula

Some more fodder for a pet topic of mine, the new formula.

What gets my juices flowing is thinking about why it is that Crest no longer makes Smooth Mint Gel replacing it with a multitude of junk bundled with Scope mouthwash! I spend hours thinking about why so many companies these days are tinkering with the formula of their products, worsening things just slightly (but calling the result new and improved) and testing the waters to figure out just how cheap they can make things before it has an noticeable impact on the bottom line. Is that just run-of-the-mill capitalism at work or are we at a historical moment?

A year later I've come to grips with the loss of Smooth Mint Gel (although apparently a few toli readers are as peeved as me on the matter) but I continue to see the wider pursuit of the new formula as inexorable even if I am deeply skeptical. Some recent exhibits...

Pantene Pro-V

Pantene Pro-V conditioner has been given the "new and improved" treatment. It was rebranded and relaunched this spring. Now Pantene is marketed at women and it's not one of the things I use myself but I bought a bottle or two a while back as an attempt to make the apartment more congenial to certain parties. As someone with sensitive skin and hair, The Girlfriend Fiancee immediately pointed out the change.

"I don't know what they've done but it's much worse."

Sensible woman, she hoarded up a few bottles of the old formula that she could still find in shops that hadn't worked through their old inventory. As a historian, she made her prediction:

"Trust me, women are very sensitive to these things, it's not going to work."

She remarked a few months later that Pantene has been struggling. I didn't quite believe her at the time but then I've noticed of late when I pass through CVS or Walgreens that there are fire sales on the new conditioner. Pantene seems to be the only brand that is requiring constant discounts in order to move the product. Did a significant proportion of their clientele notice the change and switch to different products? I wonder if this is like the New Coke debacle albeit less publicized? So ladies, do you use Pantene these days? Did you notice this change and are you bothered? Should we be selling Procter & Gamble stock?

Oil of Olay body wash

Exhibit 2 in our "fiddling with what works" indictment is Oil of Olay sensitive skin body wash, something I settled on 6 years ago moving upmarket from bar soap into yuppiehood.

This one hit me just a couple of weeks ago and I want to nip it in the bud. As I reached up to pick up a replacement I noticed that there were 3 versions on the shelf. Hmmm...

1. Olay Complete Body Wash Sensitive Skin Unscented
   the old faithful
2. New Olay Complete Body Wash Sensitive Unscented
   Really?
3. New and Improved Olay Complete Body Wash Sensitive Skin Unscented Moisture
   This comes with a promotional package with some additional goodies to help the introduction.

At first I thought that this was just your garden-variety marketing subterfuge. First they dropped the "skin" in the "new" version, then in the "new and improved" version, the "skin" returned but now it is a matter of "Unscented Moisture".

What, I ask, is the difference between "Unscented" and "Unscented Moisture"?

Well consumer that I am, I tried all 3 and plainly put the "new" and the "new and improved" versions are worse - the latter version is horrible. Indeed I'm considering returning to plain old soap once I've worked my way through the extra bottles of the original formula that I promptly bought.

Luckily my local Walgreens still has to work through its old inventory and it it looks like the new formula hasn't been launched at the online shops (although I've never bought toiletries online).

If you were journalistically inclined and consulted the labels and the listed active ingredients, you would notice that they have been slowly reducing the amount of soybean oil, presumably replacing it with something cheaper. The labeling of such products is mostly a matter of obfuscation but still I noted that in the "new" version it is no longer "Maleated Soybean Oil", it's just "Soybean Oil". Per Google, maleation is the chemical process of forming a maleate, which is an ester or a salt of maleic acid. So perhaps a step in the manufacturing process was eliminated in the intermediate version. It turns out that in the "new and improved" version there is no trace of soybean oil, maleated or not.

Now as an armchair economist I wanted to test out this theory. I went to look at the charts for the price of soybean oil futures to see if there was any pattern I could discern that could account for the slash and burn of my body wash. The price of soybean, like many commodities has been slowly trending up over the past 5 years, I assume due to the ripple effect of higher transportation costs - everything comes back to oil again. However there must have been a huge shock to the system because in 2004 the price more than doubled in barely 6 months from about $16 to $35 per whatever the unit used in these contracts before returning to around $20 by year end. In 2005 the price has been trending higher to $25. Now I don't know what the lead time is for developing a new formula, but my current theory is that a bean counter decided that the volatility in the soybean oil market could no longer be countenanced and hence there was an imperative to tinker with the formula.

As a sidenote, why is it called Oil of Olay in the USA and Oil of Ulay everywhere else in the world? Is there some trademark dispute going on?

Now this is not to say that what we have is the be and end all of capitalism. I have an uncle who works at Dupont who has spent the best part of the past 25 years developing new compounds. Far be it from me to suggest that the world stand still. We have seen how advances in materials like titanium and graphite have changed the game of tennis and cycling to take just a few obvious applications of technological advances.

Belt-tightening sometimes needs to happen but companies often go too far. The crew on a recent United flight informed us that there would no longer be blankets distributed on their flights. Presumably by cutting on the laundry bill some jobs could be saved. But how about this assault on batteries?

The budget airline Ryanair today took its no-frills approach to new heights by banning its staff from charging their mobile phones at work.

In justifying a move likely to underline its Scrooge-like image, Europe's largest discount airline said it did not believe using a mobile phone charger at work was acceptable.

I work in an industry that wouldn't survive if we weren't marketing the new formula daily. Most users would argue that a lot of software could do with some new formula treatment.

But why can't they leave well enough alone? Why do they want to mess with my shower?

I would also mention the Phisoderm debacle, but that episode was too painful and I've managed (at length) to find a replacement. In any case, I should be all set for the next 6 months of showers, but Oil of Olay, I beg. Stop the nonsense.

Have you noticed any products going through the new formula treatment lately? Are they any better?

A Musical coda

The New Formula is the name of the 1992 album by Today. The thing though is that this, their sophomore album, was not as fulfilling or indeed as successful as their self-titled debut.

Producer Gene Griffen had broken up with Teddy Riley, who was the secret ingredient of the New Jack Swing movement and previous producer. Thus a whole cast of new producers was brought in including Dr Freeze fresh off his Bell Biv Devoe heroics. I suppose it's a decent album but I think the titles of the songs tell the ironic tale and quite apropos the advisability of messing with the formula. Stick to your core competency guys.

• Why you get funky on me
  

  Tell me why
  It ain't cool how you treat me
  So different than the way we were

• I Got The Feeling
  

  That you're doing me wrong.
  I got the feeling
  That something's going wrong

Oil of Olay are you listening? Don't you leave me. Why you get funky on me? Tell me why.

See also: Why the Red Delicious No Longer Is for a discussion about the taste of apples. An apple may look red and succulent, but it shouldn't look the same 6 months after it has been harvested.

File under: economics, marketing, whimsy, pantene, Oil of Olay, technology, snake oil, Hard Sell, sales, The New Formula, backlash, soybean, oil, commodities, pricing, Procter & Gamble, strategy, music, Today, New Jack Swing, toli