Executive Reading: The Average American

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By Kevin O'Keefe
PublicAffairs Press, October 2005, ISBN 158648270X

Reviewed by Margaret Teichert and Oleg Kaganovich

What would lead someone to search for the most archetypical, quantifiably average person in the United States? In the case of author Kevin O’Keefe, it was the accusation by Marlon Brando (to whom he was pitching a marketing campaign for a charity) that O’Keefe was “out of touch with the average American.” O’Keefe was, understandably, baffled. Apart from the fact that the accuser was hardly Everyman himself, O’Keefe was the son of a schoolteacher and a secretary, raised in a middle-class family in a quiet New England town. How much more average can you get?
     Plenty, as it turns out. O’Keefe takes the statement to heart, and what follows in this book is a kind of personal and professional quest to find the Average American. O’Keefe, after all, is a highly paid marketing consultant whose bread and butter depend upon his ability to reliably predict how John (or Jane) Q. Public will react in any given situation. More tellingly, however, O’Keefe is a self-described Type-A personality: highly competitive, highly accomplished and historically unwilling to accept average performance from himself in any field.
     Perhaps, he considers, Brando was right. Perhaps in finding the true Average American, he will find something that’s been missing in his own life. He quotes Norman Rockwell: “Commonplace never became tiresome; it is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative. It is not a new scene that is needed, but a new viewpoint.” And so, it begins. 
     The author states (somewhat tantalizingly) that “if you ever lived in the 50 states or Washington, D.C., you were a candidate for the nation’s most ordinary person.” His journey begins at the U.S. Census Bureau to establish some criteria — a process that evolves throughout the book and is formed as much by his conversations with regular people as by his research.
     To be sure, much of O’Keefe’s sifting process applies population criteria that are external to individual choice. For example, he doesn’t specify whether the candidate needs to be Republican or Democrat (though there are more Democrats registered than Republicans), but he does require that he or she live in a state with at least one Democratic senator, as the majority of Americans do. Further, O’Keefe applies several geographical filters that knock much of the country out of consideration. He requires that his candidate live in the eastern or central time zones, thus sparing Californians (for better or worse) from this dubious honor.
     Through carefully documented method-ologies, O’Keefe decides on some 140 criteria that his Average American candidate must ultimately meet to be considered. Among other things, he (or she) should own an electric coffeemaker and at least one pet; think abortion is morally wrong but support the right to choose; eat three pounds of peanut butter annually; and rather spend a week in jail than become president.
Continued...

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