Gender

The Mommy Card

May 23, 2011 by Susan Getgood

Last week while listening to Pandora, I heard a commercial for VistaPrint promoting “mommy cards” (along with networking cards and dating cards.)

What exactly is a “mommy card,” I wondered (and tweeted.)

Now before, you jump in and think, “how stupid are you, Susan, to not know what a “mommy card” is,” rest assured, I had a pretty good idea of what was intended. I just thought it was a bit silly and more than a bit sexist.

Unless you also have a separate line of “daddy cards,” promoting the “mommy card” associates the act of parenting entirely with one gender. And that is sexist. Undoubtedly inadvertent but still….

The term “calling card” seems perfectly suitable if you don’t want to call it a business card due to the more personal nature of the information. Or if you need to be more descriptive, call it a Family Card or a Parent Card, since it lists important family information that a parent might want to share with a babysitter or the parents of their children’s friends.

But this isn’t a post about sexism or gender bias. If I was going to stop at my rant about “the mommy card,” this post would be over on my personal blog Snapshot Chronicles.

Here, I write about marketing and social media. And I’d like you to take away two marketing lessons from my Twitter exchange about “mommy cards.”

First, if your brand is criticized online, you need to figure out if the critic is a rational individual or a wing-nut. Ignore the wing-nuts and engage with the rational ones. VistaPrint figured out I was a rational human being, and reached out to me on Friday.

The company Twitter persona told me why they promoted them as “mommy cards” and promised to share my feedback with the product team.

As I said in my tweets, I like the company. I’m a customer. I just didn’t like the concept of the “mommy card.” Full props to them for monitoring the Twitter stream and actively engaging with a customer. Makes it that much more likely that they’ll get my Christmas calendar order again this year.

Lesson number 2: VistaPrint told me that they used the term “mommy card” because the research indicated they should. My reply was that research didn’t make the term any less sexist.I firmly believe you can market calling cards to mothers without calling them “mommy cards.”

Now, you may disagree with me on the “mommy card” point (and I fully expect someone to do so), so don ‘t get too hung up on whether you agree with me that it is sexist. What I really want you to remember is that sometimes the research is wrong. Or more accurately, it is right, but you still shouldn’t do it.

This is particularly true when marketing to moms. Just calling a product “for moms” doesn’t make it so.

Be very careful about playing the mommy card.

Friday’s Today Show

April 12, 2010 by Susan Getgood

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I was on the Today show last Friday in a segment about negativity in the parenting blogosphere. My thoughts on the show are over at Snapshot Chronicles.

Coming attractions…

March 26, 2010 by Susan Getgood

I’m in the final days of the first draft of Professional Blogging for Dummies so no time to post until next week. Here’s what you can look forward to on Marketing Roadmaps when I come back:

Douches, snakes and Brand Ambassadors — my take on some topics that have been swirling around Twitter this week. Preview: These bad pitches are proof positive that the blogger outreach webinar we are doing on April 6th is very much needed.

Why (most) PR and ad agencies (still) don’t get social media — Inspired by a post from good friend Todd Defren. I agree with Todd that most ad agencies don’t get it, but, see previous item, don’t believe many PR agencies are any better. I’ll explain why.

And over on my personal blog Snapshot Chronicles, I’ll be posting Mainstream Media versus Woman, my take on the issues underlying stories like the March 14th New York Times feature on mom blogs.

Women are more than mommies: More Women

September 1, 2009 by Susan Getgood

crossposted to Snapshot Chronicles

I’m sure it will be a surprise to the mainstream media, but women are more than mommies.

Many women aren’t mommies at all, for a variety of reasons that are their business, not ours. Those of us that are parents don’t define ourselves solely by that role, even if we write a mom blog. And definitely when we do not write a blog about our parenting experiences. When our blogs are about other things important to us — our jobs, our hobbies, our causes, our politics, our opinions, our rants and our raves.

Our lives. Ourselves.

We find our identity beyond our motherhood. It may encompass it, but women are not simply wombs who walk.

But in the minds of the media and many marketers, women bloggers are mom bloggers. The consumer products companies reach out to moms. The media companies create opportunities for moms. Moms moms moms.

It’s a perennial frustration for women’s blogging community BlogHer, which works overtime to focus attention on the full spectrum of women’s blogging, but regularly sees the media hone in on the one segment. Mom.

Some — myself included — see this repeated reduction of women to our reproductive status as a form of sexism. Moms are about kids. Men are about the world. Moms aren’t serious.

It’s part of a cultural mentality in which a company can argue that lactation is not a condition of pregnancy, and dismiss an employee for taking unauthorized breaks to pump while allowing smoke and pee breaks. Isotoner/Totes, if you are wondering. That Danielle has a nice summary with links to other posts.

Bullshit.

But, you know, we are more than our reproductive organs. Media, marketers should pay attention. We’ve got disposable income. Even if we are moms, we do not spend every cent on floor wax, juice boxes and school supplies. If we aren’t supporting the Disney and LEGO franchises, we’ve got even more money to spend on stuff.

So, why aren’t companies reaching out to us in greater numbers? Why isn’t the media telling the stories about women entrepreneurs, women bloggers, women philanthropists? Grandmas and grad students. Women doing all sorts of things to make a difference in the world beyond just the genetic material we created or might create.

It’s been a refrain for years at the BlogHer conference. This year, the indomitable Grace Davis decided to do something about it. Something to call attention to More Women (than just moms.)

She’s created an online community called More Women.

Why is this important?

If you are a woman blogger, with or without offspring, check it out. We need to make our voices heard as women, not just as mothers.

If you are a marketer, pay attention. We will be heard, and you might want to be among the first to catch our ear.

Laugh if you will. I know the song is a bit hokey and outdated. But for many of us in Generation Jones, it was large part of our development as women and feminists. More than 30 years later, I Am Woman still says we won’t give up.

I am woman, hear me roar. In numbers too big to ignore…

I am woman, hear me speak

February 8, 2008 by Susan Getgood

“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?” – Rabbi Hillel

Diversity at business, and especially social media, conferences. Still a concept more than a reality, and quite frankly, it feels like we’ve been pushing this rock uphill forever. This week, Lena West started the ball rolling again over at Lipsticking, and Jeremiah Owyang and Elisa Camahort both joined the fray. And now me.

As we all have before. More times than any of us wishes.

Read their posts. Read the comments. There are so many people speaking eloquently on this subject… again … that I don’t have much to add.

Except the following: VOTE WITH YOUR FEET.

Stop going to conferences that do not embrace diversity. And not just gender. A conference full of white faces, whether they are male or female, does not embrace our population. Online or off.

Tell the organizers why you won’t attend … sponsor … exhibit.

It will not change if we do not stop talking about it and start doing something.

For all these reasons, and many more, I embraced BlogHer from the beginning and am so proud to be part of that community. Man or woman, I urge you to attend BlogHer Business this April in NYC and BlogHer in San Francisco in July.

One of the sessions I’m part of at BlogHer Business is a panel on "Improve this Pitch." We will be focusing on pitches to bloggers that are ok but could stand some improvement. No worries though, we promise to share some really bad pitches for your enjoyment as well. Including the crappiest pitch ever. Really.

I’m also doing a case study with Victoria Naffier from HP and Liz Gumbinner, Mom-101, about the blogger outreach programs for HP Photo Books last fall.

Another conference I urge you to check out is New Comm Forum in Santa Rosa, California at the end of April. I’ll be moderating the luncheon keynote on the first day, a panel of alumni from the conference coming back to share how they used the knowledge gained at the conference in their organizations. Planning to come to New Comm? Next year, it could be you.

Tags: BlogHer, BlogHer Business, New Comm Forum, HP, HP Photo Books, gender

Lame web celebrity lists and gender equality

December 19, 2007 by Susan Getgood

Yesterday, Forbes published its annual web celebrity list and last night, we had a bit of chatter on Twitter about it. I promised a post to further explain my thoughts on the list. Here goes.

There’s more than one problem here, so let’s start with the most obvious. Do we really need yet another web celebrity list?

If we truly believe what we say, that social media is about more than celebrity or rank, that it is about the democratization of media, that the long tail is just as important as the mass market, then we need to put our money where our mouths are.

We need to look deeper than the A-list. And not be fooled by lists like this one that merely scratch the surface of the richness of the blogosphere.

Now, I am not at all surprised that Forbes takes the easy way out by pandering to our culture of celebrity by creating a list that seems more appropriate to PEOPLE or the STAR. It’s a chance to show that they are more than just a stodgy mainstream business publication. Oooh Perez Hilton in Forbes… who would have thought….

Unfortunately, this perpetuates a misconception about what social media is, and what it can become. What we can become as a result.

Not only is that a real shame, but also it goes a long way to explaining why so many companies get it wrong when they engage. If we treat social media just like everything else, why should we expect that they’d "get it?" That they’d understand the fundamental differences between mass markets and the long tail, between bloggers and journalists. And so on.

The other problem is the gender imbalance. The Forbes list, like so many others, suffers from an over-representation of white middle class men. Only four women out of the 25. That’s 16%, for the math jocks out there. That doesn’t match the demographics of either the US population or Internet users.

The Forbes list is merely one among many that suffers from this problem. In the tweet-around last night, Chris Baskind forwarded me yet another recent list that purported to summarize the definitive blog posts of 2007. Just as bad. I counted 38 different authors (many of the same ones as in the Forbes list by the way) and 5 women. That’s about 13%.

Quite often, these lists mention the same women. Not to take away from their work and significant contributions, but there truly are more than a handful of women engaged in social media. And don’t get me started on the fact that the "definitive posts" post attributes CommonCraft’s great "RSS explained" video to Lee Lefever alone. No mention of business and life partner Sachi LeFever.

Now, we could say that these are stupid, lame lists, and why would women and minorities want to be on them anyway?

Unfortunately, that would miss the point of true equality.

True equality means that women and minorities should be adequately represented everywhere.

Certainly anything that claims to be a definitive summary of web influence.

And even lame web celebrity lists.

Tags: Forbes, gender, web celebrity list, a-list

One more for the road and one for the Roadmap

October 15, 2007 by Susan Getgood

I promise, I do have some actual marketing content in this post, but before I get back to the Roadmap, I’ve got one more comment "for the road" about the absurdity that is our national presidential elections.

You may recall my comments in earlier posts about how the media always seems to pay inordinate attention to the appearance and demeanor of female candidates — hair, make-up, nature of their laugh. You know, the really important stuff that tells voters whether a candidate is qualified for elected office. You know, more important than the issues facing our country like the war, health care and the economy.

Well, I must extend kudos to USA Today and reporter Maria Puente for an interesting story on the front of the LIFE section this morning about how style is "an issue for ’08". The story presented a pretty balanced view of the media’s obsession with the candidates’ (and especially Hillary’s) looks.

But the best was the sidebar on page 2 of the section that dissected what all the presidential candidates are wearing. Absolutely priceless. Absolutely perfect. Here are just some of the gems:

John Edwards

[…] Earlier this year, Edwards was captured on camera fussing over his hair. Then there were jeers when it came out that he spent $400, twice, on haircuts. But Edwards laughed off the criticism, spoofing the kerfuffle with his own video (featuring Hair from the Broadway musical).

Rudy Giuliani

The former New York mayor gets applause for finally giving up on the comb-over and accepting the realities of male-pattern balding. Now if only he could spiff up those oversized, un-stylish suits he sometimes wears.[…]

John McCain

[…] Then it was reported on Radar Online.com that he was miffed at his staff for dressing him like a metrosexual in a "gay" V-neck sweater over a T-shirt. McCain’s campaign did not return calls seeking comment, then or now.

Mitt Romney

[…] Romney criticized Edwards on the haircuts, but then it came out that he had spent $300 on a makeup job before a debate. […]

Go read it.

Now back to the roadmap. You remember, the Marketing Roadmap 🙂

The media landscape is shifting. Right in front of our very eyes. Customers are increasingly taking control of their own brand experiences. Generating the content, deciding what is important. Targeting by behavior is more effective than demographics. It’s not just about viral, it’s about spreading the right message for the right result.

Now, if you’ve been active in social media marketing for the past few years, none of the above is news to you. At all. You already know that the traditional lines between PR and marketing are blurring. We aren’t talking in isolation to influencers (the media) and customers. Intermediation is no longer the name of the game. We can, and must, talk directly with our customer, who is simultaneously both influencer and buyer. Forget about messages. We have to connect with people. Honestly. Authentically. No bullshit.

If you’ve been doing this for a while, you understand how important this new communication is to our brands, our companies, our survival. You’ve sucked that social media kool-aid right down. You get it.

But it can be hard for people to put their heads and arms around when faced with it for the first time. And there’s no real way to cut the learning curve down. You just have to jump in.

Now, I am always suspicious of business experts who don’t actually do what they write about, so I viewed Larry Weber’s new book, Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business, with a bit of a jaundiced eye. Sure, he has the PR background but I’m not sure he even has a blog… How much could he really know about marketing to the social web without doing it? Without being in it?

Well, I can’t answer that question, but I just read an excerpt from his new book in BrandWeek, and while I’m not sure I’d get much new information from the book, I was pleased with the 12 steps he outlined for companies to follow toward an interactive future.

Which makes me think his book might be a good intro for brand marketers and PR execs. Budget is tight right now, so I don’t plan to buy the book, but I’d love to hear from my readers if it is any good. And of course, Larry Weber, John Wiley & Sons, if you send me a review copy, I will read it.

Books are pretty much the only things I do review here.

Tags: Larry Weber, John Wiley & Sons, national election, gender, sexual politics, politics, social media, Web 2.0