What came first the stereotype or the people to fill the stereotype?

I’m in the marketing game and I love it and hate it all at the same time. Done right it can make a business. And I've seen it done well (and I’ve also seen it done badly). But I find that marketing doesn’t tend to receive the credit that it truly deserves and, from my own and colleagues’ experiences, I’ve found that marketing gets blamed for a whole world of things.

Sales aren’t being met. “It’s the marketing”, so the sales team yells from their speeding, finger pointing, bandwagon.

No-one wants the product. “Marketing didn’t tell the right story.” At least that’s what the product managers will tell us. We daren’t mention that what some product managers consider ‘bleeding innovation’, marketers consider ‘bleeding obvious’.

Advertising is one of the four, six or seven Ps, dependent on which marketing genius/speaker/talker of shite you listen to. So as part of our roles we’ll work with advertising agencies to create something amazing. It’s an interesting experience with mountains of research, plenty of buzzwords about consumer needs states, lifestyle paradigms, attitudinal ratios etc, being tossed around the room along with a good dash of stereotyping.

Recently, I sat, swiveling in a purple chair in an otherwiise all white advertising agency “think” room where a presentation was blast at me, full of research about women.

According to this research, women filled eight categories. We are either: Bold, Confident, Composed, Gentle, Grounded, Carefree, Controlling or Liberated. Each had, alongside the word, an image of a famous woman as well as some text advising us what the bold woman’s fears, goals, aspirations and inspirations were. 

I nearly threw up.

Real life women are supposed to fill each of these categories. I made mention, with my eyebrows raised,  that woman, and people, are actually quite complicated and simplifying to such an archaic degree might just alienate the market we’re trying to reach.

But of course, my outrage and contempt for this type of research, fell on deaf ears.

I thought about all the advertising I’d seen on TV. Insipid women smiling from ear to ear because their homes are clean, toilets are clean, kitchens are clean, husbands are clean and children are clean. Because all women care about is cleanliness?

It’s well known that advertisers try to make women feel guilty for doing something or not doing something. The only time when woman are not feeling guilty is when they are in their 20’s drinking coke, in a bikini on a beach with a boy. Every other time, little lady, you should be thinking about donning your floral frock, dancing around kitchen on point shoes, making a gourmet feast for your husband and children. After dinner, you should read stories to your children, help them with homework and ensure your husband’s scotch glass remains full. That’s it babe, that’s all we got. Unless you want to drink diet coke in your 30s when you work for an advertising agency or a magazine, then you can have some fun again too So long as you buy all the right clothes, wear the right make-up, spend a fortune on wrinkle-eradicator and don’t mind objectifying the young, buff window cleaner.  

Not to say I don’t do any of these things. I occasionally cook for my husband, I clean from time to time, I use wrinkle eradicator and I have worked in publishing. But still, I am fairly sure I don’t fit any of those stereotypes and neither do any of my friends or other women I have met, who are more than one-dimensional, more than just bold, confident or composed. Most of the women I know are mainly funny and kind but sometimes they’re argumentative, opinionated and moody, but mostly just fantastic and interesting.

Why can’t advertising agencies get this? Why does all the research they do, even in 2010, still put women into little boxes? Are the women answering these surveys living in another dimension?  Even Myers Briggs has worked out that people are multi-dimensional with different behavioural characteristics that become dominant at different times.

So which came first - the stereotype or people to fill the stereotype? The chicken or the egg.  I have yet to find a woman who fits the stereotype. But then, I am quite lucky and only know wonderful women.

And I recognise it’s advertising and we only have 30 seconds to send a message to reach the right people who will buy the product and tell their like-minded friends. I get that, but can’t we do something else? Can’t we not be predictable for 30 seconds and start breaking down these silly, ridiculous stereotypes? Can’t we find real women to answer the questions and find intelligent people to interpret the data, instead of relying on boring, tried and tested criteria that gives the same results year in year out?

I’m going to answer my own question and say that until we aren’t commercial beings and are willing to take risks and test to see if images of a woman who is multi-dimensional and real, can resonate with the public and encourage them to buy the product, we might never know. Dove ads portraying real woman worked. Now advertising agencies have turned the 'real woman' advertising strategy into a stereotype too! Of course, the real woman was always the grounded woman! 

Maybe if we’re prepared to take a financial loss for a while, until advertising starts to shift these attitudes, if we change the research groups to not deliver the responses we want, but ones that inspire us, and if we change the criteria we’re marking against, we might be able to make a shift from these trite advertising stereotypes. But that’s a maybe, assuming that the stereotype came second.

Tickets to the Oprah house

It’s my life- long ambition to be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. Not just meet her, have her interview me. I’m not entirely sure why. It’s not like I don’t recognise that she can be a little annoying, that most of the topics on her shows are aimed at people who seem to have no idea and sometimes they seem a little exploitative. Still, that doesn’t stop me wanting to meet the woman who I think has most of America, and some other parts of the world, eating out of the palm of her hand. 

Recent advice of this, her 24th season, being her last will clearly have a serious negative impact on my actually realising this goal. Other factors, clearly come into play, but I’ve neglected to consider those.

In my dream state, I’ve achieved some enormous amazing feat, like developed a methodology to eradicate poverty, drought and famine (all at once) that’s been adopted by multiple international governments, or in another one of my many dreams, I’ve written an award winning emotionally charged novel that leaves thousands, if not millions, of people in tears and changes the way we all live our lives. As a result of these fabulousness, Oprah has no choice but to interview me.

In this particular dream, on the day of the show, Oprah introduces me and the audience rises from their seats and I walk onto the stage, humble despite my overwhelming achievements, clutching my clasped hands to my chest smiling and blowing air  kisses into the crowd.

Oprah and I will hug, she’ll kiss my cheek in response to the great contribution I have made to the world, hold my hand and raise it to the air in a joint fist pump. I’ll smile, shrug coquettishly and say “Oh it was nothing, really. Anyone would have done the same thing in my situation. ”

I’ll sit, arrange my incredibly expensive skirt on her yellow couch, flash the red bottoms of my Laboutins that are similar to Oprah’s and pretend the incredibly manicured hair, makeup and nails that I’m sporting is how I get about every day. Since, even as a humanitarian I appreciate good style and design.

Our chat will bring her to tears, members of the audience will dab at their tear ducts, wet or otherwise, in a bid to show empathy and that they too are charged with emotion, at least to get their faces on TV.

We’ll talk about how special we are. Oprah may make mention of how much money she has, I’ll try not to feel uncomfortable, but nod knowingly, while the audience whoops.

We’ll both engage the audience, asking them if they know what we’re saying is right, right?
We laugh at each other’s jokes and pat each other’s arms to exaggerate a point or when we’re excited about a point.

Basically, I’m a roaring success. And Oprah clearly thinks I’m the shiz.

After the show, Oprah and I chat, exchange mobile numbers and promise to stay in touch. I know we will, as we’ve so much in common.

So, in reality, I’m a bit excited by Oprah coming to Australia. I’m jumping on board and joining the ticket lottery!

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."*

He walked as if a eunuch. His knees knocking together as he lumbered his large, Homer Simpson size frame from one end of the office to the other.

He reminded me of H.J Simpson in so many ways – down to his slightly jaundiced, disturbingly yellow, skin. While Homer’s only offence is stupidity, this man’s was a malice that ran deep, like the Executioner on crack.

Lulling people into a Venus Fly Trap of workplace hell, with his vacant eyes that seemed to have trouble focusing solid objects, we foolishly believed he was just a harmless fool, who worked earnestly for the greater good of the business. In reality, he was like a Tiger sniffing out his next victim to outwit, out manoeuvre and completely f&ck over.

His manipulative ways and underhanded manner were signs of his lack of intelligence. It was a sign that blared red neon above his head, but senior management ignored it. The senior management team did what we thought was impossible. They promoted him.

Now armed with more power than he deserved or knew what to do with, his evil inner-self was able to run, unfettered. He’d complain at every opportunity about everyone to anyone, like an artful illusionist moving attention away from himself.

He would deliver instruction to his team and then, when a senior manager disagreed with his instruction, he would back track, protesting that his team were making unilateral decisions while leaving his team member exposed and alone – like a sitting duck waiting for the firing squad. I was regularly astounded at how quickly and easily he would take the first shot.

Frequently he gave misinformation but would most often withhold information or exclude relevant parties from meetings only to then complain that the work he wanted done hadn’t been provided within deadline…work that no-one knew about, but himself. 

He banned people within his team from talking to each other and those outside their pods – a rule they thankfully broke.

His cover to management was that everyone who worked for him was either too slow or too stupid, rallying them to believe his stories. And they bought it, willing to blame those that worked late into the night, those that were trying to hold the place together and those that repeatedly complained about their manager’s ineptitude and his bullish, unstable, behaviour.

Not surprisingly, no-one liked him. He’d jump up and down when he wasn’t invited to events and wondered why team lunches didn’t include him, all the while oblivious to the fact that we couldn’t abide his company and thought he was both an arse and a bore.

He spent his days slowly eroding his team’s sense of self and achievement with words
– potentially the most powerful weapons available - until one by one they left the business, tired and exhausted.

Today, he continues to stomp on people’s self-esteem and professionalism, he continues to waddle, ever expanding in both ego and weight and he continues to demand respect with his fe-fi-fo-fum management style. The saddest thing, aside from the damage this one man has done to the business and those that work for and near him, is that not one person has been strong enough to make him stop. I no longer wonder how it is possible for lunatics to achieve power.

*Edmund Burke