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Here chicky, chicky, a short vocabulary quiz

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One of the pictures below is of a chick and the other is a woman. Can you guess which one?

Flickr image by Awesome Pets

Flickr image by ACME-Nollmeyer of
Acme Photography, Phoenix, AZ

A+ if your choice for chick was yellow and fuzzy.

One of the things that irked me about the item last week on why so many women choose PR as a career was that during her interview with Sam Whitmore, Sharon Barclay, the author of the paper,  told Sam that she wanted to find out why so many "chicks" were in PR.

Now I suppose it is hip and cool to use derogatory slang about oneself or one’s group, whether it be race, class or gender, but it always sounds so false. Almost like the group is trying to show the dominant group how really cool they are by adopting, or co-opting, the negative term.  As though somehow that might make it a positive.

Doesn’t work. At least not for me.

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Filed Under: PR

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

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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Dell’s New Hell and other ruminations

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Poor Dell. Damned if they don’t and Damned when they do. I’m joining the voices who want to give Dell a break, and let them get their feet under them in the blogosphere. They deserved to be damned when they ignored bloggers’ comments and complaints. They do not deserve it now, when they are trying to engage.

Those of us that believe in corporate blogging should be glad that they are giving it a go, and not be so quick to jump on them for not doing it the "right way." Just exactly what is the "right way" and who said there was only one right way to do this blogging thing anyway? Hey, if Dell screws up, and doesn’t treat the blogosphere with respect on its blog, there will be grounds for criticism. But every newbie deserves the benefit of the doubt, even a major corporation with a history of customer service problems 🙂      Far better commentary in this vein from the following folks: Kevin Dugan. Shel Holtz. Andy Lark. Tom Murphy. Jeremy Pepper. John Wagner.        

Contrast Dell’s efforts with some of the other corporate behaviors we’ve seen this month alone. Comcast: its response to the YouTube video of the sleeping repairman was to fire the repairman. That’s it? They are way underestimating the scope of people’s dis-satisfaction. But then again, quasi-monopolies often do. More from Rick Short  and Mary Schmidt       

And then there’s Jupiter Research. Where to begin this tale? Short version: Jupiter issues press release about some research. Bloggers ask questions about research methodology. Jupiter blows them off, says you aren’t reporters. Bloggers try again. Jupiter gets offensive. Bloggers quizzical, wonder just what exactly is Jupiter hiding? Certainly not the fact the the press release about the "research" was a thinly disguised advertisement for new clients. That’s pretty obvious. Could it be that the "research" isn’t robust??? Toby Bloomberg started it all with some honest questions, Fard Johnmar did the research and you can find some good commentary on Neville Hobson’s blog. Methinks Jupiter needs to get on board the cluetrain… And rethink its marketing approach. Crappy press releases that are really thinly disguised advertisements are part of how we got into the "press release must die" meme (remember that?) in the first place.

UPDATE 7/13: Toby reports that Jupiter is making some changes !

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New Workshop: Getting the Message Out – Be Heard, Understood and Remembered 

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Two months ago, I gave a short talk on communications to one of the dog clubs to which I belong. This group does a fair amount of lobbying on the state level, and the club officers wanted to give the members some guidance on how to speak effectively with legislators and other influencers. I’ve turned the material into an one-hour workshop:

Getting the Message Out – Be Heard, Understood and Remembered 
Whether you are talking to a reporter, lobbying a legislator, or speaking to your employees, you need to be heard, understood and remembered. Our one-hour workshop “Getting the Message Out” offers three tips that will help you tell your important message effectively and memorably.


While this is a for-profit endeavor when it comes to for-profit organizations, I’m happy to do the workshop pro bono for charities and civic groups. All I ask is that the group cover my expenses to get to their location. Drop me an email at sgetgood@getgood.com if you’d like more information.

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