Advanced Storytelling

FYI, I haven't been happy with how a lot of my posts are turning out, as well as the frequency with which I'm posting. Since most of the time, I just want to share a link that has an interesting take on telling its story, I'm going to dust off my Twitter account to share those and only post here if I'm really inspired. To the twelve people who read this blog, thanks.

The City of Milwaukee launched this ad campaign this week (along with Serve Marketing , my new dream employer). My first reaction was that it was a striking and effective ad, but then I realized it was aimed at co-sleeping, not just putting babies to sleep on their backs. I know next to nothing about co-sleeping, but I have a feeling that there are healthy ways to co-sleep, and un-healthy ways to co-sleep. Putting a child in bed on their stomach would be one of those un-healthy ways, but so is putting them on their stomach in their cribs. I don't know that it's necessarily fair to confuse the two issues. Plus, according to the City of Milwaukee's web page , Between 2006 and 2009 there were 89 infant deaths related to SIDS, SUDI, or accidental suffocation.  Of these 46 (51.7%) infants were sleeping in an adult bed at the time of their death.   Meaning that 48.3 percent (or 43 babies) were not co-sleeping, but presumably in their cribs. Although I loathe to say tha...

First off, this isn't a post about abortion. It's about how the personhood movement is dangerous even if you take abortion out of the debate. According to my friend Liz, More than 55% of voters in Mississippi yesterday   rejected the state’s  ‘personhood’ initiative —a development that certainly bodes well for reproductive rights in this country, and gives me a little more hope about our collective sanity, as well. What interested me about this issue (aside from the fact that I possess a uterus), was the way some of the groups fighting the Mississippi amendment were approaching the issue. The group  Parents against MS 26  pointed out that the personhood movement , "has far-reaching effects on infertility treatment, contraception, and women's physical health." Jessica Valenti cites several examples in her column in the Washington Post , including this one: In 1996, when Laura Pemberton in Florida refused a recommended C-section because she did not want su...

I'll try and expand on this later, but a few links looking at the protest from marketing and demographic standpoints: OWS Demographics  or, "Duh, it's not just unemployed college dropouts" Protest, Music and #OWS Opportunism  or, "Hey, this thing ain't going away. Can we market it?" OWS Billboard?  or, "Really, you think Clear Channel will put this up?" and the Frameworks Institute analyzes the "We are the 99%" meme.

My postings have been a bit light (and yet a bit too heavy) lately, so it's time for some good old advertising sexism. Several blogs have gone over this campaign (highlights: a Facebook page that blocks female users, where guys are free to post shit like, " see its in the woman's cunty nature to btch and whine for no reason"  so I won't go into too much detail about what looks like a truly lazy and cliched campaign (Bullets on the packaging? How manly and phallic!). So, in short: Dear Dr. Pepper: I don't drink soda. No Pepsi, no Coke, no Dr. Pepper. So you probably don't care what I say. But here's the thing- maybe I'll start drinking soda next year, or five years from now, when my sweet tooth and need for caffeine finally gets the best of me. You may not have lost my business now, but you've definitely lost it then. And oh, in case you think you'll get my girly, soda-avoiding patronage with Snapple (yup, I know you own Snapple), think a...

So I'm a little behind on this, but there was an interesting piece in the  New York Times  on bullying. Back when I was being bullied around in elementary school, it wasn't called "drama"- it was "goofing around," "just messing with you," etc. Same idea, different words. None of the kids who bullied me would have ever admitted to bullying--why would anyone admit to being mean? For them, it wasn't A Serious Issue That Must Be Addressed, it was just everyday joking around. I asked the lead Mean Girl a few years later if she remembered teasing me, and her response was, "I did? I don't remember. Sorry about that." She obviously meant it, so I suppressed my first urge to yell, "You what?!?! You don't remember making my life a living hell for an entire year??? You ruined my life!" Instead, I think I responded with something like, "Huh, whatever."

You're a woman in Liberia. You've just been raped. There's only a fifty-percent chance you can read. You don't know what to do. You see a sign for a "Sexual Gender-Based Violence Referral Pathway." Do you go? Yeah. Didn't think so. Found this at Social Media 4 Good , a blog I really need to start reading more often. Appealing to your audience is Marketing 101. Why is it so hard for NGOs to get this? Funders are not their only audience.

Framing Budgets and Taxes: Elizabeth Warren Gets It Right Yup.

Haven shaken my fist at a fair number of right-wing billboards calling public transit and New Urbanism "social engineering" (but freeways and suburbs aren't?!?), I've got to wonder if former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist and current head of the Congress for the New Urbanism knew exactly what he was doing when he used the phrase "leftist architects" to describe architects like Le Corbusier, who championed glass-encased, high-rise apartment buildings set apart from cities, and Oscar Niemeyer, who designed the city of Brasília with its high-rise, above grade roads. Norquist added that the only life and culture you will find in Brasília is outside the city limits in the slums. As much as I like his other designs, I'd add Frank Lloyd Wright to that list, simply for Broadacre City . Ugh. Now, I know from a philosophical and artistic perspective, it's an accurate description of their work (ooh, Stalinists !). But in using it in opposition to New Urbanism,...

So I was part of a pretty spirited conversation at the Co-op the other day about Growing Power 's acceptance of a $1 million grant from Wal-Mart . On one side, the sustainable businessman who referred to Wal-Mart either as the Devil or Satan, I forget, but who absolutely supported Will Allen's decision. I'm blanking on the other guy, who just stopped at Wal-Mart is the Devil, no compromises. In the middle (literally and figuratively), was me. As in, "Thank God I wasn't asked to make that decision." My first thought on seeing that headline was, "Ooo, boy, that's gonna be controversial." Does anyone really think there wasn't some serious soul searching going on over there before they said yes? Which brings me to this post on Civil Eats this morning. For Andy Fisher of the Community Food Security Coalition , it comes down to this: Wal-Mart’s and the “Good Food Revolution’s” interests may dovetail in bringing groceries into food deserts. Howev...