Marketing Roadmaps

Archives for August 2007

A word about breast cancer

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Cross posted to Snapshot Chronicles

Just before BlogHer, I started reading Toddler Planet, the blog of an incredibly courageous woman who had to change her plans to attend the conference because she had been diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, a particularly nasty and often undetected form of breast cancer, and her chemo was scheduled to start the same week.

She has written a post about the disease and asked fellow bloggers to repost as much or as little of it as they wished. Please spread the word, and if you are so inclined, make a donation to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Here is WhyMommy’s post:

We hear a lot about breast cancer these days. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes, and there are millions living with it in the U.S. today alone. But did you know that there is more than one type of breast cancer?
   

I didn’t. I thought that breast cancer was all the same. I figured that if I did my monthly breast self-exams, and found no lump, I’d be fine.

Oops. It turns out that you don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer. Six weeks ago, I went to my OB/GYN because my breast felt funny. It was red, hot, inflamed, and the skin looked…funny. But there was no lump, so I wasn’t worried. I should have been. After a round of antibiotics didn’t clear up the inflammation, my doctor sent me to a breast specialist and did a skin punch biopsy. That test showed that I have inflammatory breast cancer, a very aggressive cancer that can be deadly.
   

Inflammatory breast cancer is often misdiagnosed as mastitis because many doctors have never seen it before and consider it rare. “Rare” or not, there are over 100,000 women in the U.S. with this cancer right now; only half will survive five years. Please call your OB/GYN if you experience several of the following symptoms in your breast, or any unusual changes: redness, rapid increase in size of one breast, persistent itching of breast or nipple, thickening of breast tissue, stabbing pain, soreness, swelling under the arm, dimpling or ridging (for example, when you take your bra off, the bra marks stay – for a while), flattening or retracting of the nipple, or a texture that looks or feels like an orange (called peau d’orange). Ask if your GYN is familiar with inflammatory breast cancer, and tell her that you’re concerned and want to come in to rule it out.

There is more than one kind of breast cancer. Inflammatory breast cancer is the most aggressive form of breast cancer out there, and early detection is critical. It’s not usually detected by mammogram. It does not usually present with a lump. It may be overlooked with all of the changes that our breasts undergo during the years when we’re pregnant and/or nursing our little ones. It’s important not to miss this one.
   

Inflammatory breast cancer is detected by women and their doctors who notice a change in one of their breasts. If you notice a change, call your doctor today. Tell her about it. Tell her that you have a friend with this disease, and it’s trying to kill her. Now you know what I wish I had known before six weeks ago.

You don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer.
   

teamwhymommy

 

P.S. Feel free to steal this post too.  I’d be happy for anyone in the blogosphere to take it and put it on their site, no questions asked.  Dress it up, dress it down, let it run around the place barefoot. I don’t care.  But I want the word to get out.  I don’t want another young mom — or old man — or anyone in between — to have to stare at this thing on their chest and wonder, is it mastitis?  Is it a rash?  Am I overreacting?  This cancer moves FAST, and early detection and treatment is critical for survival.
   

Thank you.

Bad pitches… everybody gets them

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Just to follow up on both my previous post and comments I’ve left on a number of blogs this week:

All bloggers — even PR and marketing bloggers — get crappy email pitches. I thought I would share a couple with you. Names redacted because I’m irritated, not mean.

Dear Sirs:

COMPANY will be releasing a revolutionary new software package that I thought might be of interest to you. It is easily adaptable to any language and to vendor private labeling.

We are notifying certain companies involved in Online Marketing to let them know about our software, prior to its release to the General Public.

Below is a copy of the Press Release that will be going out.

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRODUCT creates quality web content from wasted web pages.

PLACE August 1, 2007 – A new age of e-commerce dawned today with the release of PRODUCT; the software package that makes dynamic web pages visible to the Search Engines.

PRODUCT creates static HTML pages, which Search Engines can easily index and use, from dynamic pages like shopping carts, forums, blogs, databases or ANY link-navigated web pages created from a database.

PRODUCT uses a two-step process; first creating a static page from a dynamic page, then changing the URL address of that page to one the search engines will visit.

Search Engines do not give dynamic web pages much import and they seldom appear in Search Engine top listings, if at all. Until PRODUCT, there has only been a partial solution; using complex server-installed modules beyond the range of 99.9% of web masters, which offer nothing to help the readability of the resulting URL. Unlike these previous so-called "fixes", PRODUCT is simple-to-use, quick-to-setup, easy-to-understand and the program installs on any web master’s personal computer that runs Windows.

COMPANY’S PRODUCT has changed the face of the Internet by turning wasted content into visible pages for the search engines.

About COMPANY

Established in 1997, COMPANY has over 250,000 copies of its ANOTHER PRODUCT, in use in over 30 countries.

NAME, CEO of the company says, "COMPANY is dedicated to helping businesses to become more successful on the web. Ten years ago, we changed the face of the Internet by developing the first linking software and now we are changing it again by making the ability to optimize websites available to the average web master. There are over a billion web sites on the net, and if you are invisible to the search engines you are virtually INVISIBLE. If the search engines cannot see your pages, they cannot visit them and list them. We have just changed the face of the industry, by making it simple to index hundreds or even thousands of pages of previously wasted content."

Yeah, this PR person took some time to get to know me. Susan. Before they sent me a release in which I have absolutely NO interest. YAWN.

And here’s another beauty. No cover note.

Publicity Firm To Represent Former PLACE Prosecutor in News Marketing Campaign
COMPANY will market former PLACE prosecutor NAME OF PERSON in a campaign for news publicity.

DATELINE / August 2, 2007  The news publicity agency, NAME, which has landed clients on Good Morning America and into the pages of top national magazines, today added a former PLACE prosecutor to its list of publicity clients.

NAME is a former PLACE criminal prosecutor. He’s now a criminal defense attorney in ANOTHER PLACE and a professor at A COLLEGE teaching Criminal Law.

“NAME has the qualities that news executives and booking agents look for in a legal expert,” says PUBLICIST, of PUBLICITY FIRM. “He’s smart, knows his stuff and has the experience to debate topical legal issues with the best attorneys around and I look forward to seeing him do it.”

PUBLICIST is a former reporter, investigative reporter and anchor. He left a successful TV news career after 20 years to form his own publicity agency. He represents individuals and businesses seeking news publicity.

“My goal is to make NAME a regular on local and cable news,” says PUBLICIST. “I think he’s got what it takes to do really well.”

NAME is a graduate of A UNIVERSITY. While with the PLACE District Attorney’s office he was assigned to the Narcotics Bureau where he prosecuted drug crimes. He also has extensive experience prosecuting and defending drunk drivers.

About PUBLICITY FIRM: PUBLICITY FIRM is a news publicity agency that specializes in writing and distributing press releases and representing elite clients in their quest for news publicity. PUBLICIST, a former TV news reporter, investigative reporter and anchor, who left a successful career to start his own publicity agency, runs the company.

Lovely. Really. I wish them well in their quest to make NAME a sought-after legal expert. But why in the world would I care? Last time I looked, I was neither local nor cable news…..

Want to read some more bad pitches? Head over to the Bad Pitch Blog.

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Post-BlogHer Recap: In Which I Contemplate the Woodshed

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This summer, BlogHer was a completely different experience for me than in past years. It was the first time I wasn’t speaking, although I did end up volunteering at the Birds of a Feather sign-up, which was a great way to see everyone, if only for a few moments. It was also the first time I went as both a marketer and a mom. In previous years, including this past Spring at BlogHer Business, I went to the conference with pretty much with just my marketing hat on. Don’t get me wrong – I was a mom then too, but I didn’t have a personal blog.

I do now. Snapshot Chronicles is all about taking pictures of and with my seven-year old son. A major reason to attend BlogHer was to talk about SC and a photo contest for kids I am co-sponsoring this summer with a couple of other women bloggers, Tracey Clark and Sheri Reed.

But I also had my marketing hat on.  I’ve developed a project for a client that I truly believe mom bloggers with a specific interest will want to participate in. I knew quite a few of the women on my "possibles" list would be at BlogHer, making the conference an ideal opportunity to quietly sound them out. How did I know they’d be there? Because I read and comment on their blogs. And for a lot longer than a week before BlogHer.

What does this have to do with the woodshed? Patience, grasshopper, I am getting there.

BlogHer itself was great, especially the unconference on Sunday (more on that in my next post), and I felt like I accomplished what I set out to do over the three days. However, I was a little disturbed by the anti-PR sentiment at the state of the momosphere panel on Friday, and my feelings of unease have only intensified over the past few days as the posts, and comments, have been flying fast and furious about taking PR people to the woodshed and how much we (marketing and PR folks) suck.

I’m not taking it personally, mind you. At least not too much. Helping companies do blogger relations right has become a large part of my professional work. I write and talk about it all the time,and work very hard to make sure that my clients’ programs are a win-win for everyone. In fact, I advise clients if they aren’t willing to do it right, don’t do blogger relations at all. Spend your money on advertising or trinkets & trash.

So even though I know it is not personal, it’s hard not to take offense at the blanket statement that "we know you don’t read our blogs."  I do read the blogs. I read about 500 blogs on a regular basis — mom blogs, food blogs, military blogs, tech blogs, travel blogs, health blogs, film blogs, marketing blogs, PR blogs, education blogs, and more. Sure, I enjoy the mom, marketing, photo and PR blogs the most because that is where my personal interests lay, but you cannot do blogger outreach well if you don’t get to know the people behind the blogs. Because it isn’t about inanimate things called blogs. It’s about people.

And getting really personal here, I think the momosphere has forgotten that there are people, real people, on the other side, trying to do this right. And a lot of them are women. An awful lot in fact. PR as a profession is well known to be a female-dominant industry. And by that I mean there are a lot of women in it, most often at the lower and mid levels. No matter what anyone tells you, PR is still male-dominated; men run most of the big agencies. And we sort of kept that meme going at BlogHer, since Jory only had time to call on two people from PR, both men.

Today, I feel like you want me to apologize for my chosen profession. And I just don’t feel like apologizing. Not for what I do for a living. Not for corporate America. Not any more. Women do that way too much for things they didn’t do.

So, my friends, readers and fellow BlogHers, I ain’t going to the woodshed. Not today.

Many of us want to get this right. And for outreach to all bloggers that our companies and clients might want to talk with, not just moms. Because those of us that "get it," get that there are much better ways to reach out to our customers. Not mass, generic, white-bread messages designed to appeal to all, offend none, and end up doing nothing much for our companies or our customers. 

Simple stories that speak directly to people, not at them. Programs that give the bloggers access to people (Gloria Steinem), places (backstage at Sci Fi Network) and things (umm "toys") that in turn provides fodder for posts and podcasts. Not to mention the possible other benefits 😉

Programs that donate both goods and dollars to charity, often chose by the bloggers themselves. Outreach that focuses on the bloggers and their needs/wants, not just the company’s. There are good blogger relations programs, and good PR/marketing folks. Really, we aren’t all assholes. At least not all the time.

So judge me, judge us, on what we do. Not on what others do. Or don’t do. As I said, I try hard to get it right. If I fuck up, tell me. If you have suggestions, tell me.

But don’t assume that every PR outreach will be lame and impersonal. Some will be, but some will be interesting opportunities that you’d want to do. But you won’t get the chance if you completely close your mind to the possibilities.

One last comment, and then I will step off my soapbox. There is a diversity issue, no question. Mainstream media is pretty white bread, white man, and much of that has crept into the blogosphere as well. It’s why BlogHer exists, my friends; remember guys don’t link?.

How do we change it? Talk about it. Educate. Maybe even reach out to companies with products we’d like to evaluate and see if they come through.

I have some other ideas, which I am noodling around as I contemplate, but refuse to enter, the woodshed. And I may just be calling on you for advice.

So please don’t delete my email before you read it.

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