Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

We’ve come a long way, baby?

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"Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys," sings Willie Nelson. [lyric was Googled]

If they do, they better not marry a career woman, says Forbes. Because they’ll be sick, unhappy, cheated on and have a dirty house.  [first seen on Just Shelley, who links to a lot of great commentary]

She’ll be more likely to lie as well. That’s why we’re so good at PR,  says this PR practioner. (a woman, ouch). [hat tip Sherrilynne Starkie]

Yup, that’s what we really need. More images like these of professional women.

I suspect my readers wonder from time to time why I move away from my usual marketing, tech and  PR topics, and go on what I affectionately call a "feminist gender bender."

Crap like this is why.

Sexism is still with us, no matter how much we wish it weren’t, and to say it ain’t so or pretend there is no problem, is to go through life with blinkers on.

Don’t.

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Filed Under: PR

“Whip It”

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There is something really wrong with kids singing the Devo song "Whip It." 

I don’t care if it is Disney and Devo themselves who came up with the idea of Devo 2.0. Every time I hear the commercial, I cringe.

Just my opinion. YMMV. 



The Sci-Fi Fan’s Curse


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I don’t watch much television. For any number of reasons. And those of you that really love the shows you watch should be really really glad. 


Because just about everytime I start watching a long-running show regularly, it gets cancelled.


I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer regularly at the beginning of Season 7. Bye bye Buffy.


I followed my favorite BtVS character Spike to Angel when he shifted over in Angel Season 5. Hasta la vista, Angel.


Just this year, I started watching Stargate SG-1, mostly because it was on after  Dr. Who on the Sci-Fi channel. I discovered I really liked Ben Browder and Claudia Black. Yup, you guessed it… this season (number 10) will be its last season on Sci-Fi. Announced yesterday. 


I had watched all of these shows from time to time before I started watching them regularly but hadn’t really gotten into them, again for a number of reasons not really relevant to this post. And as soon as I did, the party was over. 


BTW, this does not seem to happen when I watch a show from the beginning, so Bones and Dr. Who, the other two shows I enjoy these days, should be fairly safe since I’ve watched Dr. Who off and on since Dr. Number 3 and Bones since the beginning.


So, if there are shows you really really like, and would prefer I NOT watch, please feel free to let me know in the comments. And if there is a series you’d like to see gone, I’ll see what I can do. Unless it is Stargate Atlantis. Can’t get into that show at all, so you are on your own. Sandy,  I’ll do my best to stay away from Battlestar Galactica.


Anyway, I am now TIVO’ing Farscape repeats and watching my Firefly and Remington Steele DVDs.  I figure that’s safe, since those shows are already cancelled. 🙂


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The A-list follies


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Subtitle: "A bunch of white guys linking around" 


Starring: All the usual suspects 


Lots of chatter about the A-list again. This time spawned by a  Nick Carr post  that likened the A-list to feudal barons, with the rest of us, the serfs. Funny post, much of which I agree with, some perhaps not, but that’s not what this post is about. That has been done already this week. In fact,  most (not all) of the current conversation seems like nothing more than a rehash of a similar cycle a few months ago, and a similar cycle a few months before that and so on and so forth. Perhaps a few different players, but also many of the same. How does it go, you ask? Well, someone (in this case Carr) brings up the issue of the A-list and the long tail, in some form or other. And they’re off. 


A bunch of white guys linking around. Lots of posts that say it’s a big problem because "they" won’t link to "us." Or if "they" do, it is at the price of a link to them, thus perpetuating the A-lister’s position at the top of the heap. The opposing view (A-listers and others) includes concepts like  poo, piffle, this isn’t really a problem, anybody can rise to the top, it doesn’t matter, get over yourself. And so on. With varying degrees of civility. 


"A-listers" feel attacked. Z-listers, downtrodden. Lather, rinse, repeat. 


Here’s the thing. There’s an A-list in blogging, as in just about everything. It’s a fact. It’s also a problem. I also believe that in blogging, it doesn’t need to matter. We can make it NOT matter. At least not so much. 


Wishing the A-list and associated mentality would go away just won’t make it so, and I for one have better things to do. Names may come and go on the LIST, but it will exist. There is always a top of the list, and we all can’t be on it.  In any field, blogging included, some of the stars get to the top for the right reasons (fill in the blank on what you think is a right reason here), and others not. And my opinion about who deserves and who doesn’t won’t be the same as yours. That’s just the way it is.


In part because life isn’t fair and no matter what "they" told you, it really isn’t a meritocracy. Everyone does NOT stand an equal chance to become president of the USA, even though it does seem that you don’t have to be particularly bright to climb that mountain. 


So if there’s a "big lie," that’s it — everyone won’t rise to the top simply on merit. There just isn’t enough room. But… that does not mean that those at the top don’t deserve to be there. Many do. Or that if you aren’t at the top of the list, you don’t have merit. There are systemic barriers in blogging just like in real life. And as the media companies dig in, some of the systemic barriers in blogging may get higher, not lower. 


It stinks, and it’s hard to change it. But we can talk about it. That is how we make it not matter. And maybe even drive some change, but that’s a topic for another day. We need to keep talking about the A-list and the associated issues. And we need make sure that we’re also exposing people to the long tail. Not just the popular voices. Or the loudest. Or the crankiest. Sure, some bloggers wish to be "on the list."  Others don’t care. But they all have a voice, whether they are number 1, 10 or 100,000.


Let’s start by forgetting the foolishness that the blogosphere is a pure meritocracy. Sure, merit matters, but so do a lot of other things. Assuming that those at the top are the "smart" ones to the exclusion of the rest is plain and simple stupidity. New bloggers, casual readers, everyone, needs to be reminded of this on a regular basis. If that means we have to have the A-list blog debate every few months, so be it. 


Don’t sweep the problems of gender/ racial bias and marginalization under the rug. Expose them to the light of day on a regular basis, so people are aware. And perhaps take a little more time to investigate, to dig, to find an alternative viewpoint. 


If we stop talking about the issues, they most definitely won’t get solved. We will be stuck with the Technorati 100 (blecch). 


But, let’s try not to take it too personally. Because it really isn’t about you. It’s about the system. Speaking only for myself, when I criticize the underlying biases in the systems we use for blog discovery, I’m not accusing the A-list barons of deliberately setting out to keep the Z-list serfs on the farm or you of sexism. I can’t do anything about you (only you can) and I’m not that interested in trying. 


What I am doing is pointing out a systemic problem that we should all wish to solve. Whether we are on the top of the list or the bottom. 


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Summertime


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"Summertime and the livin’ is easy,
Fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high.
Oh your daddy’s rich, and your ma is good lookin’,
So hush, little baby, don’ yo’ cry.


One of these mornin’s you goin’ to rise up singin’,
Then you’ll spread yo’ wings an’ you’ll take the sky.
But till that mornin’, there’s a-nothin’ can harm you
With Daddy and Mammy standin’ by."
(Summertime, from Porgy and Bess, Gershwin, Heyward and Gershwin)


This past week has been pretty busy, and I really didn’t have all that much to say, so the blog went a bit silent. Lots of client work right now, so this state of affairs may continue until Labor Day, with maybe one post per week. Never fear, though, I will be back come September …


I did want to share one truly amazing thing that happened last weekend. I took my mother and son up to Boothbay Harbor Maine for a long weekend (while my husband enjoyed his two-day golf school at home). Boothbay Harbor  is a lovely place, and I highly recommend it. But that’s not the amazing thing. 


We were eating our lunch outside on the 2d floor deck at this small cafe. Unbeknownst to us, the deck was actually over the water. My son was playing with a couple of plastic cars he had just bought, with his own money, when one rolled off the table, off the deck and into the drink. He was pretty upset and no amount of telling him that we could go buy another one would console him. 


Here’s the amazing part.


A man at an adjoining table who had just finished his lunch asked if the car was still floating, When Douglas replied Yes, the man proceeded to go down on the dock, asked the manager of an adjoining restaurant if he could borrow their little row boat, poled over to the car and retrieved it. 


There is a lot of unpleasantness in the world. And occasionally an unexpected act of kindness like this that restores your faith. Whoever, wherever you are, thanks again. You made our day. 


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Shel Holtz has assembled the thinking from a number of folks this week about blog monitoring on a list at the New PR wiki. Check it out. Add your own thoughts. 


Lots of people commenting on Google’s nastygrams about the use of its trademark "Google" as a generic. I expect Google knows it can’t prevent the use of “Google” as a generic, but they have to make these efforts to defend the trademark to keep it from passing *legally* into the generic. If it does that — becomes a legal generic — the word could be used inside someone else’s product name, and Google’s brand value literally stolen. You cannot trademark a generic term. Robert Scoble gave the best example: Google wouldn’t want to see a new product called "Microsoft Google," would they? 


So they make these “good faith” efforts to defend the trademark against improper use. They have to use the proper legal language and so on to make the case strong that they defended the mark in case they ever need it in a full-blown trademark defense. No wishy washy or nudge nudge wink wink letters. 


I doubt they really want to prevail and stifle the word of mouth branding they get when we talk about "Googling" something. Think about it, the only way to “win” this battle is to lose the dominant market position so that you no longer define the market. I haven’t heard the term ‘Xerox’ in reference to photocopies in a long time. But ‘Kleenex’ for ’tissue’ is still going strong. Did Xerox do a better job than Kimberly-Clark defending the mark and getting us to switch to the actual generic term ‘photocopy’? Doubt it. Reality is: Xerox no longer defines the market for copiers, so the mark no longer works as well as a generic.


It is quite schizophrenic really — you achieve the goal of becoming the definition of the segment, and then you have to spend time and money preventing people from using you as the definition of the segment. Catch-22.


I’m sure Google would rather be Kleenex than Xerox. 


(Some of these Google thoughts were originally posted as comments on Sherrilynne Starkie and Neville Hobson’s blogs.)


Oh, and the lyrics at the beginning of this post? I Googled ’em.


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