May 9th, 2012 by Rebecca under Classwork, EMBA experience, Uncategorized. No Comments.
One of our recent marketing cases was on Dove’s “Real Beauty” marketing campaign. It was fascinating–stunning, moving messaging around a difficult social issue. I was left admiring their advertising firm but also wondering if cause marketing was kind of evil.
In class we saw several direct-to-YouTube videos produced by Dove’s marketers. Here is Onslaught, one of Dove’s videos, and here’s a parody that intercuts Dove’s serious message about how the beauty industry exacerbates women’s body issues with images from Axe commercials showing comically underdressed women overcome at the scent of Axe body spray. Dove and Axe, of course, are both owned by giant multinational Unilever. That parody begs the question “How can Unilever’s Dove brand champion ending the sexual objectification of women, while at the same time its Axe brand does nothing but sexually objectify women?”
It’s interesting. The beauty industry makes boatloads of money because it successfully convinces women that we’re not beautiful by comparing the majority of us to a genetically blessed minority. The images and tactics used to convey that message are certainly damaging to a lot of women (and it’s gotten worse since I was a kid. It’s no longer enough to have a pretty face and bangin’ bod; these days even your armpits have to be attractive. Thanks a lot, beauty industry.) So I applaud public discourse on this subject. Good for Unilever and Dove for putting a huge chunk of change into bringing public attention to an important problem with the way their industry markets its products.
On the other hand, there’s no question that Dove saw “Real Beauty” as a way to garner warm fuzzy feelings from customers with the ultimate goal of selling more Dove products. Isn’t that cynical and self-serving? Aren’t those commercials and videos awfully manipulative? And is it right that Dove should co-opt an important social issue in order to sell more moisturizing lotion and firming cream?
It’s a hard question for me. When I worked for the Los Angeles Mission, my boss was an elderly minister with a knack for raising money from L.A.’s rich and famous, who liked his down-home charm and folksy way of speaking. Every once in a while we’d get a complaint from some nice church lady that we were taking money from so-and-so, and didn’t we know how so-and-so made that money? That always made my boss smile. “The only problem with tainted money,” he’d say in his Oklahoma drawl, “is there t’aint enough of it.”
Maybe that’s the right way to think about it. Social causes need money to get their message across. If a giant multinational is willing to do the spending on their behalf, the cause benefits regardless of the intentions of the company that promotes it. The cause wins, and if the company sells more stuff then they win too. Win-win. What’s wrong with that?
But, as we also discussed in class, cause marketing that isn’t truly integrated across the whole company may be harder and harder to pull off. These days anyone with an internet connection can find out virtually anything about your company. Knowing that Dove and Axe belong to the same family makes it very hard to take Dove seriously.
Eh, I can’t decide what I think. What do you think?
April 30th, 2012 by Rebecca under Classmates, Classwork, Coursework, EMBA experience, Homework, Uncategorized. No Comments.
Well, Weekend 33 was a killer. Over the past 2 weeks I spent at least three hours on homework every night. Deliverables for Weekend 33 included a 10-page group paper and accompanying in-class presentation for economics; a group case report for marketing; an 8-page team charter document for an upcoming session on managing team conflict; an online personality assessment that took about an hour and a half to get through; three data modeling problems that were to be handed by my data modeling homework group; and 4 additional case readings.
By the time class actually rolled around I was already tired and nervy. The Dreaded Data Modeling class reduced me to weepy panic halfway through; I had to take myself to the restroom, practice deep breathing and remind myself that I didn’t have to understand everything the professor said the instant the professor said it. Our economics presentation went as well as could be expected, but that was nerve-wracking too. And when my group got our first group marketing case report back, we discovered that we hadn’t fully understood what our professor wanted as far as analysis. That would have been okay had we not already turned in the second marketing case report, which had even less of what the professor wanted. Argh! So frustrating! I would have approached the paper differently had I realized. That actually kept me up last night, worrying about the (undoubtedly low) grade I will get on that paper. Fret fret fret. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. I’ll just have to do really well on the final. Sigh. Fret fret fret.
Eh, Weekend 32 is coming. I need to put the things I did wrong in Weekend 33 behind me and concentrate on the next round of homework. (A group paper and class presentation for marketing; some reading for the next data modeling unit FRET FRET FRET; review for the in-class final exam for marketing; and some readings for the session on managing team conflict. I assume there will be more data modeling problems, but that assignment hasn’t been posted yet). No rest for the wicked.
The good news is that my groups have been great. No slackers, no freeloaders, no one who’s just generally irritating…as I get to know more of my classmates, I continue to be surprised (and charmed and delighted) at how jerk-free our cohort has turned out to be.
April 19th, 2012 by Rebecca under Uncategorized. No Comments.
April is the cruelest month, observed T.S. Eliot, what with breeding lilacs out of the dead land and stirring the dull roots with spring rain and whatnot; but it’s also a drag if you work in higher ed. I swear, there is some sort of calendar black hole that drags events toward the last two weeks of April, and the beginning of May isn’t much better. I think we are double- and triple-booked for most evenings between now and commencement. The weeks seem both very long–as in, “how am I going to make it through this week?” long–and very short–as in “how am I going to get all my stuff done this week?” short.
(Faculty aren’t any better off—they will be grading non-stop for the next six weeks, and most faculty I know would rather go out into the woods and remove their own spleens with a sharp stick than grade papers).
So forgive us our distraction, our dazed looks, our under-eye bags and insufficiently styled hair and me, personally, for walking out of the house with two different shoes on this morning. We’re zombies now, but we’ll be human again come June.
Alas, despite the mad schedule I’ve still got to get through my Weekend 34 homework. And how was Weekend 34, you ask? I survived the first Dreaded Data Modeling Class, but it’s clear I’m going to have to work pretty hard to get these concepts. (Goes back to that whole “can’t think in straight lines” problem). I’ve never had a statistics class and I’m not familiar with probability. So I’m anxious. But I’m trying not to borrow trouble from the future and just concentrate on learning one concept at a time. And I’m trying to think in positive terms. ”Data modeling class will be a good challenge for me!”
Also challenging last weekend: we had another session about how to productively manage team conflict, and during one exercise we had to meet with our team mates and tell them what we found helpful about their behavior, and what we thought might be a distraction to team success. Urgh. It’s easy to find positive things to say, but thinking in terms of criticizing my team mates was really difficult.
We were then instructed to read our comments to one another. Double urgh! If it was hard to write these things about other people, the prospect of having the comments about me read aloud was excruciating. (Please, please, can I go out into the woods and remove my own spleen with a sharp stick? It would be less painful). I got through it because my fantastic Markstrat group was very generous to me. Thank you, Craig, Bob and Jamal! You make me want to be brave.
So what with one thing and another, Weekend 34 was an exercise in dread. But in that good-for-you way!
PS: Tonight’s event is a celebration of former dean Rudy Lamone’s many years of service and leadership to the Smith School and the university. If you know him, visit his bio page and leave a greeting. He’d love to hear from you!
