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...

Shorter George Will : everyone who is uptight about the first should really be uptight about the second instead. Oh, and people didn't have sex outside of marriage in the fifties. I get paid to read this shit! Oh, and also, I know it's a few weeks late, but PETA can kiss my vegetable-loving ass for this . For those looking for non-sexist food porn, I suggest Nigella Lawson . This post may or may not signal a return to regular blogging.

My objective, with this site, with my career, is to help advocacy organizations use communications as a strategy to leverage change.

It will come as no surprise that my first post here in forever is about food. I ran across this at the Ethicurian . The Accidental Hedonist outlines her food beliefs , which match up pretty closely with my own: 1. Food is Life - This is pretty straightforward. You need to eat to live. 2. Food is Cultural - What you eat represents who you are as well as the environment in which you inhabit. 3. Food is Class - What you eat is defined by the allotment of resources available to you. 4. Food is Politics - The food choices you make within your resources give credibility to the producers and suppliers of said food. I'd probably add "Food is Medicine" based on my own personal experiences recently, but this list pretty much saves me from having to think of my own. That and Michael Pollan's " Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants " make up my elevator speech on the topic.

"Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless." -Salman Rushdie

Okay, kids, we're going to talk about breast feeding versus bottle feeding again in framing class today, so no giggling (you know who you are). I was looking over someone's shoulder on the Metro today and reading an article titled " HHS Toned Down Breast-Feeding Ads ", which reads like a continuation of the administration's meddling in public health : In an attempt to raise the nation's historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples. -snip- The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems and obesity. According to the article, the formula industry didn't block the ads ...

With Elyzabethe over at YellowIsTheColor writing all about The Political Brain so much lately, I thought it might be a good time to blog about the Rockridge Institute , which I've recently re-discovered. Anyone who talks to me for more than two minutes about communications or policy knows my affection for George Lakoff. Rockridge is a think thank founded on his work on cognitive linguistics and progressive policy. It's goal is the same as Drew Westen's: reframe the public debate. The Rockridge Fellows put out some great essays on all sorts of topics, but what really got me drooling was their interactive Rockridge Nation . Framing examples galore! What I especially liked, because it's an issue near and dear to my heart, is the ongoing dicussion about the fallacy of a left/right linear political spectrum, and why moving towards the "center" isn't a good political strategy: In reality, there are basic progressive and conservative worldviews, and many peopl...

How many global warming videos start with "In 1975, two boxes of wine were consumed, one condom broke, and nine months later, a legend was born..." It's a short film (in five YouTube sized acts) calling for increased fuel efficiency standards. Unfortunately, it kind of falls flat on the call to action part-- I don't see why it needed to be a half hour. I think it works better as an inspirational video for environmentalists trying to get out their message across, since it basically just follows one guy trying to make what, in the end, is your typical celebrity-faces-the-camera-and-tells-us-to-call-congress PSA. I needed to get people's attention, so I...made a PSA? It started out so promising in Episode 1, with Ben Affleck running around in a corn suit and Joshua Jackson threatening to break a baby's arm if Congress doesn't listen... I agree with this guy that all the celebrities are unnecessary. It would have been funny anyway, and it doesn't help c...

Today I joined not one, but two social networking sites-- Pownce and Ravelry . I'm geeking out, even though I'm on dial-up, and am probably going to end up spending the entire weekend adding my knitting projects to Ravelry. Oh, I didn't mention is was a knitting network? Yeah, I meant it when I said I was geeking out. But not before I finish Harry Potter...

Hillary Clinton's Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory Okay, it was appropriately filed under "fashion" but is was on the front of the WaPo website. I cringed. Then I clicked on it: There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton. She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education. She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn't an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable. The article goes on to talk about how sartorially conservative and masculine the Hill is, and Hilary's uncomfortable relationship with fashion as the First Lady, and her adoption of the black pantsuit as her uniform. Until now, apparently. There was the requisite "really, this isn't just about women, we swea...