Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

if you look closely, the label says (I’m not making this up) “Collectible Anniversary Edition’

..how cool is this Wakefield Doctrine?  I was just in the kitchen to get coffee, and, as is my habit, I went through the cupboard to get a piece of bread and…  (Wait! It occurs to me that this story won’t make any sense without a little context. Before I got to the kitchen this morning, I was thinking about writing a Post. Actually I was concerned that I didn’t have anything interesting to write about this morning, worse, I was worried that I had ‘lost’ whatever it was, that I thought that I used to believe that I had, when I wrote Doctrine blog Posts. OK! That’s the proper set up to appreciate what happened next… in the kitchen….. this morning…like 10 minutes ago.)

….anyway, I’m looking for bread and I  notice a fresh, un-opened bag of hot dog rolls, way in the back and thought, ‘better get these up to the front, or else I’ll forget they’re there‘. As I re-positioned the bag I saw, printed on the bottom:  Stop n Shop Official Supermarket of the Patriots and so naturally I said to Phyllis who was also in our small kitchen, preparing her morning coffee, ‘who the fuck cares that this is…. why??!…. what the hell?!’

‘Why’, I thought out loud, ‘should/would/could anyone get something out of knowing that their supermarket is the official supermarket  of a football team? Do these benefits apply to the Players and their families? Are they required to shop only at Stop n Shop? Or maybe, they have special privileges when shopping, like the gladiators were supposed to have earned when victorious in the Coliseum?’
I calmed down and thought, ‘well, clark, you have a Wakefield Doctrine, what does it tell you about why people should care about hot dog rolls being associated with a professional sports team?‘

If we were having this discussion a couple of years ago, I would have gone immediately to the rogerian worldview and then the scottian worldview. (As a matter of fact, Phyllis said this morning, ‘you should ask glenn, he’s all into the sports and has clothing with team names in shirts and jackets and hats.’  glenn is a scott and a sports fan. I used to kid him. “holy shit! glenn! You never told me that you were a player for the Red Socks!! If it weren’t for that team jacket I never would have guessed!! damn!”  and he would laugh and say, ‘fuck you’)

But today is the 3rd of December 2014, not July 27th 2007, so I didn’t follow that path to understand how the Wakefield Doctrine could add to my understanding of  foodstore chains and affiliation marketing. Instead, I invoked ‘the everything Rule’   and asked myself:  how would a scott experience seeing the label (photo above) and how would a roger and a clark. Because, as we all know, each of the three worldviews are, in fact, separate (personal) realities.
(That) our ‘personality types’ are simply our coping strategies for dealing with the kind of world we wake up in…. being it waking up:

• as a clark (Outsider motto: ‘ok the world is out there waiting…try not to mess up‘) or
• opening our eyes as a scott  (Predator motto: ‘I’m hungry!!!!/I’m horny!!!!!/I’m thirsty!!!!!/I’m bored!!!!!/I’m tired!!!!!… oh, Good Morning dear!”) or
• even if we wake up in bed as a roger (Herd Member motto: “perfect…if only I… as long as they, life is good!“)

Out of time, guys!  I’ll leave to all of you to solve the, ‘Mystery of Why the Hell Anyone Would Base Their Foodstore Selection on the Basis of Affiliation with a Professional Sports Team’ on your own, tell us in the Comments below what you have concluded!

* Cyndi is doing something critical as a final step in earning her Master’s Degree today…. I believe she said it was defending her ‘Portfolio’  and, naturally, I offered to help.**

**(one of my favorite jokes! one that originated back in the 1990s when I was playing Death Orb at the campus of the University of Rhode Island on a hot July day. I was playing and a young man came out of the building to smoke a cigarette and I thought it was a good time to take a break myself. We got to talking and he explained that he was scheduled to do his ‘oral defense’  of his dissertation in a week. So, I said, ‘hey! I’ll give you $5.00 if you’ll promise that if you find you’re doing a bad job (of defense) and they (the Dissertation Committee) have you on the ropes, you answer your final question by saying, “oh yeah?!?!!  well fuck you!!”  and walk out’.  The guy laughed, of course, but I never saw him again, so I suspect that he didn’t take me up on my dare.

so go to Cyndi’s blog   Pictimilitude and contribute whatever positive energy you can!