Mediaboss Marketing

A Buffalo Public Schools administrator has been chosen a national leader.

Fatima Morrell, associate superintendent of culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives, has been selected out of hundreds of applications across the U.S. as one of TIME magazine's 10 "Innovative Teachers of the Year."

This inaugural list profiles teachers who, despite all the challenges of the 2021-2022 school year, went above and beyond to change the educational landscape and make a positive impact on their community.

Time said Morrell was chosen for the significant impact she had on Buffalo relating to anti-racism curriculum. She helped redirect the curriculum to include lessons with principles including empathy, diversity and restorative justice. Morrell said it was part of a six-year effort that created a new office of Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Initiatives in the city school district to address racial inequalities in the classroom, the curriculum and the community. And it has become especially significant in light of the racially-motivated mass shooting at the Jefferson Avenue Tops supermarket May 14.

Read and listen to her conversation with WBFO's Marian Hetherly below:

WBFO's Marian Hetherly talks with Fatima Morrell

"We have we literally built an office from the ground up, called the Office of Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Initiatives, to address racial inequalities in our school district community, in our schools, classrooms and our curriculum providing equity spaces for our students and professional development for our teachers, as well as updating our curriculum to include those voices that are historically marginalized in our curriculum, our textbooks and, in many other ways, in our schools and classrooms.

"So we really went on a very ambitious endeavor to train 3,000-plus teachers three times over the last last three or four years in any bias, any racist teaching, and teaching culturally responsive practices and inclusion. And also our administrators and parents having received the same training. And also bringing in our nation's top experts on culturally responsive teaching and pedagogy, such as Ava Max Kennedy on anti-racism. Nikole Hannah-Jones has been here. We actually implemented the 1619 Project at the high school as a mandated requirement for all teachers of social studies and our district. We created the Emancipation curriculum to, again, in the histories and narrations and voices of communities of color that are so often left out of the American story that is told in our schools and in our textbooks. We really wanted to ensure that our our district community had a great office that was a resource for elevating these practices, understandings and ways of knowing in our school district.

"You know, 86% of our scholars are of color. Almost a flip of that, approximately 80% of our teachers are white. And we know that many of them is their first experiences with anyone of color when they come to work in the Buffalo Public Schools. So we always felt that it was really important that we integrate and infuse into our standing curriculum because we knew that it was very Eurocentric-based in nature that we included these other narrations and perspectives and voices and advocacy for social justice into our standing curriculum. And we have been doing that quite effectively for about three years along with the required teacher and administrator and parent training that goes along with it.

Black Lives Matter

"I will have to say to you that, after the incident with George Floyd, you know, we looked at that degradation of human life and dehumanization, another event of dehumanization, but this time it played out in such a horrific way on national media and social media platforms. To actually watch it was just horrific. And it really struck a chord with our teachers in the Buffalo Public Schools. In fact, we had a demonstration that summer of our teachers. Approximately 700 had Black Lives Matter protests right here on the steps of City Hall. And so many of those teachers are curriculum writers in the Buffalo Public Schools.

"They came back to the table and said, 'Hey, we really have to do more, we have to ensure that our young people know their value, we have to ensure that their culture is in this curriculum, we have to ensure we edify their voices even more so now. Because we knew there were many, many young people who are watching this play live out live and, of course, it became a national racial reckoning for our country, as we dealt with the dual pandemics: one being COVID-19 that had us all locked away in our homes glued to the television in a computer for 18 months, and then the other one being systemic racism that just really took a lead in terms of the dialogues and conversations.

"So teachers came back to the table after George Floyd and really began to say, it has to go deeper, it has to be more widespread. It can't be superficial on any level. And, of course, these were our white teachers, as well as our black and Latino teachers that were really saying, we need this in our schools. And we started writing more lessons that really focused in on our commonalities, but also included the narrations and stories and histories of our black, Asian, Latinx and, of course, indigenous student populations. We want to make sure that we honor those contributions and the intellectual brilliance and capacity of all people and especially, Black and brown people whose stories aren't told.

Buffalo Supermarket Shooting

"We also said, we don't want to ever create another Derek Chauvin or George Zimmerman, we don't want to create these folks, right? These people who have learned that they don't have to value Black lives or brown lives. We want all of our children to see the common humanity in all people. And so we said, we never want to raise another person like this person who committed this massacre on the Black community in Buffalo, and who actually touched the lives of 10 innocent people, many of them community giants who worked for excellence in education and equity. Were taken out, were killed that day. And so, in light of that massacre happening at our own doorstep, in our own backyard, we're now also doubling down on our efforts even more to say, this cannot just be about Black children knowing their own history and culture. This has to be about white children also knowing the history and culture of Black children.

"Because we know that they are fed over time with stereotypes about Black and brown people, and specifically black people. I'm talking about racial stereotypes. There's hate that is occurring. Each and every day, they fought on the national stage, like we've never seen it before, on January 6, right there at the Capitol building, which many of our children had a field trip there just the year prior to that. And so our young people have been exposed to this hatred and our white children are being exposed at even exponentially greater levels, because there's no one inserting, 'Hey, here's another perspective, here's another voice on what democracy means to this group of people.' Because we all believe in the democratic ideal of America, but we have many different perspectives about what those democratic principles mean for us as a community.

"So there are white children who don't even know where they come from many times, their history or their background, if they're Irish students or if they're German. They don't even know their own history and background to be able to love themselves. As this young man who came into Tops and stole and traumatized our community, and stole 10 lives of our community, they know how to love themselves. When you can't love yourself, because you don't know about yourself and you haven't been nurtured or you haven't been taught to value life, then you can't value someone else's life. And, therefore, it's easier to dehumanize someone based on their race and based on their social economic status or their gender identity or whatever it is.

"And so that's what we're doing in Buffalo. We're saying this is not only for Black and brown children who definitely need to know their greatness, because we're sending them so many messages of failure, so many negative ideas that help to develop negative self-concept. And we need to develop positive self-concept.

Healing Conversations

"But turning to this recent event, what are we doing with white children to ensure that they are globally competent citizens of America that respect all people? That also becomes a conversation around culturally responsive practices and knowing the greatness of other people in the common humanity. And where there are differences, why those differences are so great. Because that's what makes us America, our differences. And so in light of all of this, absolutely, we're doubling down on, of course, our healing practices in the district, our social emotional learning practices and being able to restore ourselves. It's traumatizing, right? And so, how do we restore ourselves as a community to remember our greatness, right? Our greatness as Buffalonians? But our greatness as Black and brown people? Our greatness as people, period, in this district community, in this city.

"So, yeah, a lot of conversations are occurring and the work continues. And we're now, you know, really, at this time, focused in on those healing conversations and those healing dialogues and how do we move forward as a district community. Who has been harmed and how to repair that harm? We ask for help from everyone, even those who don't look like us, to understand our plight and to understand that racism is real. And so with white supremacy, it's not something someone's talking about in a back room and it's just superficial. It's actually real, okay?

"This young man was a teen. He had guidance on this, he'd had thoughts that were put in his head, in one way or another, because he can't just make it up on his own, because he's still a child. So he was on these websites, he was interfacing with people saying things in the media regarding replacement theory and he ran on those ideas, because there was nothing else inserted to say, 'Wait a minute. Here's another idea. You might be looking at that the wrong way. You might be perceiving something that's actually not.' There's no one to interrupt the white supremacist notions that he had maintained once they were started.

"We are actually interrupting white supremacist notions of superiority. We're interrupting the marginalization of communities of color in our schools and our classrooms and our textbooks. But most certainly, after the incident at Tops on May 14, we are doubling down on how we ensure our kids are safe. But not just physically safe, intellectually safe, all children of all colors. How are we making sure that they are intellectually safe, so they don't get caught up in this web of lies and half truths and misconceptions about people of color and all people."

Go here to read the rest:
Buffalo associate superintendent named to Time's 'Innovative Teachers of the Year' list - WBFO

In the Sothebys salesroom one evening in late February, fluorescent lights beamed down on the assembled crowd. A sea of spectators is not unusual for Sothebys the 278-year-old auction house typically hosts more than 600 sales per year but this sale was different. It was the auction houses first-ever evening sale dedicated solely to NFTs.

Sothebys described the event, titled Punk it!, as a truly historic sale for an undeniably historic NFT project. It consisted of a single lot 104 CryptoPunks sold as an all-or-nothing bundle. Sothebys estimated the bundle would go for $2030 million, on par with sales of paintings by David Hockney or Jean-Michel Basquiat.

To drum up interest, the auction house had thrown a series of events aimed at attracting prospective punk-buyers. There was a pre-auction dinner for VIP Punk holders and an afterparty with DJ Seedphrase, known for the enormous CryptoPunk headpiece he wears while playing sets. The campaign worked: the crowd on the day of the auction included Nicole Muniz, the CEO of Yuga Labs, as well as NFT influencer Andrew Wang and Nifty Gateway co-founders Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster.

Eli Tan, a writer at crypto news outlet CoinDesk, remembers a party atmosphere. The actual sale seemed like kind of a secondary thing, he explains.

Then, things got weird. The indicated start time of the sale, 7PM, came and went. Five minutes passed, then 20. Finally, a voice on the intercom announced that the lot had been withdrawn. Gasps could be heard in the salesroom. After weeks of preparation, the sale was canceled and no one was sure why.

Sothebys says the lot was pulled after discussions with the seller, but theres been little other explanation including whether the decision came from the auction house or the seller. Artnet reported that Sothebys pulled the lot due to lack of interest, while the seller tweeted simply that they had decided to hodl.

Its not uncommon for lots to be pulled ahead of sales, although its typically the result of legal concerns or fear of a flop, as The New York Times noted after the failed auction. But for anyone dealing with auction houses or NFTs, it was hard not to speculate on the mysterious no-show. Kenny Schachter, art world provocateur and NFT collector who attended the sale, believes the seller pulled the lot after being informed by the auction house that it was unlikely to sell for the low estimate. Schachter even heard rumors of a legitimate and significant offer that the seller declined in advance of the failed auction one that cleared $10 million but still fell short of the lower end of the estimate.

It should have been a high point for CryptoPunks as a collection. Just a few months earlier, BAYC had sold a bundle of 101 tokens for $24 million, and CryptoPunks fans were primed for a similar victory. Instead, punk-holders left the auction feeling burned and for good reason. They were pretty devastated, Tan says. They were showing me their Punks and they were like, this is the end, probably.

They werent the only ones watching. Less than three weeks after the auction, Yuga Labs would acquire CryptoPunks, effectively ending the projects run as an independent NFT juggernaut. Tan suspects the Yuga Labs team, including CEO Muniz, could have been at the sale to scope out the Punks market.

But despite the risks, theres a real value to putting NFTs up for auction and the anonymous seller seems to have come away from the auction just fine. A few weeks after the sale, it was reported that the seller took out an $8 million loan against the Punks with the help of NFTfi and MetaStreet.

Stephen Young, co-founder of NFTfi, a platform that allows NFT collectors to use their NFTs as collateral on loans, explains that selling at a traditional auction house is a way to give a collection an institutional stamp of approval a precursor to this kind of loan. According to Young, if an NFT from a collection has sold once at Sothebys or Christies, its enough to inflate the price and legitimize the entire collection.

Thats the only reason they do it, Young said of NFT collectors selling at the big houses. You pay the 20% that gives you that [stamp of approval], but its made all of your other CryptoPunks worth 20 percent more, so its more than worth it.

Before Christies $69 million sale of Beeples opus put NFTs on the mainstream art worlds radar in March 2021, Sothebys and Christies were known, at least to those outside the art world, as places to buy expensive rare objects from the collections of the well-off (and often, the recently deceased). Now, the auction houses are selling NFTs of Pepe The Frog with the same pomp and circumstance.

But it didnt happen overnight. Both Sothebys and Christies have been forced to modernize to keep up with an increasingly young and international collector base. Both houses have expanded into selling sneakers and pop culture memorabilia. In the process, theyve elevated Nike SBs and T. rex skeletons into rarified cultural artifacts. It follows that the houses foray into crypto may look like an attempt to elevate NFTs to the status of Monet and Rembrandt, but its actually much simpler: Theres a market.

They would like a chunk of [the NFT] market, of course, says Schachter. They would like a chunk of selling dirty underwear, if there was a market for it. They dont care.

According to Tim Schneider, art business editor at Artnet News who has covered NFTs since before the CryptoKitties days, businesses like Christies and Sothebys have an interest in converting anyone with cash to spend into a power bidder.

Some corners of the crypto world clearly have cash to spend, and NFT sales last year allegedly brought in significant amounts of new bidders (according to Sothebys end-of-year report in 2021, about 80 percent of NFT bidders were new to the auction house). A high-level official at the auction house confirmed that part of their long-term goal is to make it easier for crypto-native collectors to transact, as well as establish NFTs as a new collecting category for the traditional art world.

And in brief flashes, it seems like Sothebys strategy may be working: Crypto billionaire Justin Sun spent more than $100 million on art last fall, including $78 million on a record-breaking Giacometti sculpture at Sothebys but that may be one of the only examples weve seen so far, at least publicly, where a crypto bro has shown a noted interest in fine art.

For all of the lip service being paid to the notion of cross-collecting and people who started off in NFTs getting interested in other traditional artworks, Schneider explains, were not seeing a tremendous amount of organic integration between NFTs and the art establishment. After we spoke, Schneider reported in Artnet that Sothebys has pulled back on the crypto-art-crossover: The auction house notably did not accept cryptocurrency as a payment for any lots during their most recent slate of evening sales, as they had done in 2021.

As embarrassing as the failed auction was in the short term, Schachter still thinks Sothebys and the other houses got back more than they put in. The auction houses are not going to weep, he says. One deal goes down, and then they just move on to the next.

Read more:
Why a $30 million CryptoPunks auction fell apart at the last minute - The Verge

Younger workers in China are questioning the benefits of the daily grind as they face worsening prospects. The rise of "Sang culture" embodies the frustration and soul-crushing weariness. Sarah Gonzales for NPR hide caption

Younger workers in China are questioning the benefits of the daily grind as they face worsening prospects. The rise of "Sang culture" embodies the frustration and soul-crushing weariness.

This story is adapted from the latest episode of Rough Translation. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or NPR One.

About four years ago in Beijing, a colleague dragged me out from behind my computer, where I had been laboring as a cub reporter.

She wanted to show me a trendy new bubble tea shop called Sung Tea, which celebrates the nihilistic attitude of China's post-'80s generation with fatalistically named drinks names such as "Work Overtime with No Hope of a Pay Raise Green Tea" (perhaps too on the nose that day) and "My Ex Is Doing Better Than Me Black Tea."

The brand is a pun on the Chinese character Sang, which literally means "mourning." Sang has taken on a multitude of new meanings in China, which has been ground down by successive lockdowns meant to contain the coronavirus as well as growing regulatory controls that have clamped down on businesses, especially in the internet sector.

Sang's rise is exceptional, because China is a country that loves to work. Grinding out a "996" schedule 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week can be a point of pride. And it has paid off: During China's economic boom years through the 1990s and early 2000s, many Chinese reaped the financial gains of entrepreneurial hard work.

But attitudes toward work are changing.

Just as in the United States, people born after the 1980s in China are facing the prospect of worse outcomes than their parents. Property prices rise beyond their reach; college graduates have to compete over limited jobs; and a gender imbalance favoring males made worse by decades of the one-child policy puts marriage out of reach for poorer men. Hard work no longer seems to be worth it.

The soul-crushing weariness these conditions produce can be embodied in the single Chinese character, Sang. And once I learned about Sang, it became impossible not to see it popping up everywhere in mainstream Chinese culture, and not just in my daily cup of boba.

"Sang culture" is a popular shorthand for both a melancholic listlessness at the futility of one's current state of affairs and a bleak acceptance that life will be no better.

Here are several ways Sang culture is expressed in China:

Sang culture-like threads of frustration have abounded in Chinese pop culture. Online, people share popular memes such as "Ge You Slouch" a screenshot of a famous actor from a well-loved '90s sitcom slouched hopelessly on a couch in chat groups and social media forums to express apathy.

Some of Sang's manifestations are cross-cultural, in unexpected ways: Pepe the Frog, a cartoon that has become a symbol of American far-right groups, has taken on a new life in China, where the green amphibian is toted around by Sang advocates. For whatever reason Sang people in China think Pepe looks Sang haggard and worn down.

Li Xueqin, an irreverent, tough-talking comedian who graduated from one of China's most prestigious universities, has gained a cult following for subverting cultural expectations of women and academic high achievers. She has earned a place in the Sang community with her brand of self-deprecating jokes about the stress of work life, dating, and parental pressures.

And the American television show BoJack Horseman has accrued a surprise cult following in China, where viewers say they relate to the self-destructive, animated equine that is the show's main character.

A host of independent record labels specialize in low-energy, lyrical music that can be the perfect soundtrack to your best Sang life.

One crowd favorite is indie band Trip Fuel, which has built up a devoted following across mainland China of other aimless, disillusioned millennials.

"Our generation has such anxieties: to change our social classes and to struggle to live a better life, but at the same time, we still have this utopian idealism that is difficult to balance," says Xiaozhou, the band's bassist.

At one recent Trip Fuel performance in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen where many millennials work demanding tech startup jobs many of their fans were so exhausted that they napped through parts of the concert.

The lead singer goes by Manager Chen, which is both his stage name and his day job. He works at a bank. At the end of the show, he thanked the crowd of fans and his boss, who gave him the weekend off so Chen would make it to his own concert. It was back to work for the rocker by night, bank employee by day on the following Sunday morning.

Adherents of Sang culture can draw on a cohort of other terms that have entered the parlance of modern Mandarin Chinese. Jumping through the hoops of modern Chinese society is often dubbed neijuan. And there is "involution," meaning a race-to-the-bottom culture of overwork brought on by shrinking resources in a populous country.

In the Exhausted Man video game, players must manipulate a limp, snoozing office worker into completing deceptively simple tasks by slithering his exhausted body across the room. Candleman Games hide caption

In the Exhausted Man video game, players must manipulate a limp, snoozing office worker into completing deceptively simple tasks by slithering his exhausted body across the room.

Burned-out video game players can find an outlet in Exhausted Man, a strangely soothing game in which players must manipulate a limp, snoozing office worker into completing deceptively simple tasks such as turning off the lights or slithering his exhausted body across his room to get a cup of coffee.

"So many players say my game is exactly what their daily lives are like," says Gao Ming, the Beijing-based designer behind the video game, which plays on themes of tangping and Sang. "If that is the case, then why do they keep playing the game? Because by highlighting the absurdist nature of your exhausting lifestyle, the game lets you separate yourself from the day-in, day-out routine."

Actually, playing video games can be kind of productive, says Gao. He hopes players of Exhausted Man might reflect on the connections between the game and their own lifestyles and find the motivation to change their lives if the two are too similar.

You can also tangping, or lie flat in China: a lifestyle of extreme lethargy trumpeted as a form of social protest against overwork and unrealistic expectations.

It is the natural reflex for people exhausted by the extreme competitiveness of China's education system, facing mounting economic pressures, or fed up with the political posturing of an increasingly ideological political system.

Serial thief Zhou Liqi, featured in our Rough Translation episode, becomes an unlikely poster child for this form of hardcore chilling. In 2012, he was arrested for the second time for nabbing e-bikes, and he gave a jailhouse interview that somehow captures the hearts and minds of white and blue collar workers across China: "I can never work in this life," he says with a rueful smile. That's why he has to survive by stealing.

By the time he got out of prison for the last time, in 2020, Zhou had become an internet sensation.

Others are unwilling mascots of Sang culture. Last year, a Russian contestant who was cast on a Chinese reality TV show found himself trapped on the show: Viewers were so enchanted with his lack of motivation, they kept voting to keep him on week after week.

The contestant, who goes by the name Lelush, appears to have warmed up to the idea of stardom and of Sang. On his Instagram, Lelush regularly models loungewear and luxury pajamas: the perfect outfits for a discerning person who just wants to lie flat.

Continue reading here:
Young workers in China are changing their attitude toward work : Goats and Soda - NPR

Former President Donald Trump's efforts to dismiss the Democrats' claims of Russian collusion were dealt a second blow this week after a newly disclosed report revealed that the Justice Department cleared members of the Obama administration over the unmasking of Michael Flynn.

On Wednesday, Buzzfeed News obtained and published the previously classified document from then-U.S. Attorney John Bash's 2020 investigation into the practice of unmasking, one of several probes ordered by Trump's attorney general, William Barr, to undermine investigations into Trump's ties to Russia.

The full report revealed that Bash not only concluded the review without criminal charges, but he had also determined that "no unmasking requests made before Election Day that sought the identity of an apparent associate of the Trump campaign"a conclusion that shattered Trump's allegations.

The release of Bash's findings comes just a day after Michael Sussmann, a lawyer whose firm represented Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, was acquitted of false-statement chargers stemming from Trump's special counsel John Durham's three-year investigation.

Sussmann was accused of lying to federal investigators about his ties to Clinton when he provided a tip about a possible backchannel between Trump's 2016 campaign and Kremlin-backed Alfa Bank.

Throughout his presidency, Trump and other Republicans repeatedly accused senior Obama officials of deliberately targeting his associatesspecifically Flynn, who briefly served as national security adviser to Trumpby using their positions to request their names be revealed on certain intelligence documents.

While Bash's decision not to prosecute anyone was reported back in 2020, the full 52-page report revealed just how resoundingly the details of the investigation rejected Trump's claims.

"I have not found evidence that senior U.S. officials unmasked the identities of U.S. persons contained in intelligence reports for political purposes or other inappropriate reasons during the 2016 election period or the ensuing transition period," Bash wrote in his report.

Examining "whether any senior officials had obtained General Flynn's identity in connection with those communications through an unmasking request made during the transition period," Bash concluded: "The answer is no."

Bash found that while the FBI shared transcripts of Flynn's calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak outside the Bureau without masking Flynn's name, "Nothing about the content suggests that officials were seeking derogatory information about General Flynn or were otherwise inappropriately targeting him."

Although Flynn pleaded guilty to a felony count of "willingly and knowingly" making false statements denying his discussion of sanctions with Kislyak in 2017, Barr's DOJ dismissed the case against him and Flynn was later pardoned by Trump before he left office.

Newsweek reached out to Trump for comment.

See the rest here:
Trump Takes Another Hit After Obama Officials Cleared of Flynn Unmasking

Michelle Obama is a historic First Lady.

As the first Black woman to ever hold the coveted title, the woman born Michelle LaVaughn Robinson in Chicago, IL, was put under a microscope almost from the moment her husband, President Barack Obama, took office.

Fortunately, however, Mrs. Obama handled the newfound pressure with her trademark grace.

Being the first Black anything is gonna be hard, she told Robin Roberts of Good Morning America. I knew, as the first Black first lady, I couldnt presume anything Id have to earn my grace.

Today, Michelle Obama has more than earned her grace. As AfroTech previously reported, shes earned a $70 million net worth, inked a separate deal with Spotify for her own podcast, hosted voter drives to encourage young people to vote, and even got inducted into the National Womens Hall of Fame.

And thats just the beginning.

But where Mrs. Obama really shines is in her ability to influence markets. More than just being a pretty face to look at, and endorse products, Mrs. Obama is a veritable business powerhouse. Vanity Fair revealed an estimate that said in the eight years that she was First Lady, Michelle Obama drove more than $2.7 billion to the retail sector.

In 2010, New York University business professor David Yermack, calculated that Obamas fashion choices alone have driven $2.7 billion to the retail sector, Vanity Fair reported in 2016.

Whats more, the outlet also said that companies saw a 2.3 percent stock gain when she dons their productsfive times that of a typical celebrity endorsement.

Lets take a look at a few other deals that have experienced The Michelle Obama Effect.

Editorial note: The net worth listed in this piece is a speculative estimate drawn from a variety of online sources.

When Barack and Michelle Obamas Spotify deal was announced back in 2020, the NASDAQ reported that the streaming companys stock jumped by five percent on the day of the announcement.

Story continues

Spotifys total monthly active users and premium subscribers both increased by 31% year over year, to 286 million and 130 million, respectively, in the first quarter, the report said.

Throughout the entire time that President Barack Obama was in office, First Lady Michelle Obama had quite the impact on fashion.

Jackie Kennedy may have popularized pillbox hats and capes, but David Yermak of the Harvard Business Review points out that only Michelle Obama was actually able to move markets with her fashion choices.

The stock price gains of the companies whose clothes she wore in public appearances29 brands in allare cumulative abnormal returns. That is, the returns cannot be attributed to normal market variations, he wrote. Some companies that sell clothes that Obama frequently wears, such as Saks, have realized long-term gains.

Further, according to the Harvard Business Review, Michelle Obamas effect on the market is based on a two-fold observation. One, she wasnt paid to wear designers and observers can therefore put more trust into her tacit endorsement than, say, in a fashion spreads tacit endorsement. And two, Mrs. Obama doesnt just wear unaffordable haute couture. Rather, she pairs couture pieces with prt--porter pieces (like, for instance, from J. Crew), which makes it more accessible to the average consumer.

Go here to read the rest:
Inside The Estimate That Says Michelle Obama Drove $2.7B To The Retail ...