From my inbox: 

Join Maria Bailey, author of “Marketing to Moms: Getting Your Share of the Trillion Dollar Market” and CEO of BSM Media as she moderates a panel of top mom bloggers and representatives from the most respected blog networks.  Bailey in partnership with the Marketing to Moms Coalition will provide a discussion forum allowing you to hear first-hand how Mom Bloggers want to work with brands, the importance of relationships and how to effectively engage them as your best marketing partner.

Dear BSM Media and Marketing to Moms Coalition:

Thank you for your thoughtful invitation to help me learn about how to engage Mom bloggers as marketing partners.

However, I don’t think that I am your target market for this session. I’m not a marketer.

What I’m trying to do is to help parents raise healthy kids who don’t think that their self-worth is based on what they buy or how they look.

In fact, and this is the funny part, I often write about the tactics used by marketers to reel in and convince parents and kids that should buy products that they really don’t need. Or want. And that aren’t good for the planet.

I think it’s great that you are working to engage bloggers. Perhaps next time you might even invite me to be on your panel.

Or, maybe not.

Sincerely,

Lisa Ray
Mom & Blogger

Trying to compose this letter to the editor (no, the second one) at the StarTribune was a great exercise. I wanted to respond to an article on Piper Jaffray’s survey of teenage shoppers. It took me half a day to get from my first draft to the eight sentences that appeared in the newspaper. Blog rants do not translate easily to the opinion page.

What I didn’t say was that I was completely put off that Piper Jaffray (NYSE: PJC) gets free access to public schools.

Reminds me a bit of our experiences with Junior Achievement, which brings me to this year’s lesson. It topped even last year’s.

The theme of the day (for fourth- and fifth-graders) was “Our Region:” 

. . . students discover the natural, human, and capital resources in their home states and in regions of the United States. JA classroom volunteers show how resources are combined to create goods and services that individuals, businesses, and organizations provide to consumers.

For one activity, the kids had to come up with a business, determine the natural, human, and capital resources they would need to run that business, and then determine the best location for it. If the chosen location does not have all the needed resources, the kids are asked to consider moving it to another state. 

Another activity was a board game, THE BOTTOM LINE. The children run “The Little e-Racer Company” which manufactures small, car-shaped erasers. Moving around the board, they keep track of income and expenses (oil, soap, color) and encounter challengers that a company might face. For example:

– Go to Penny Mart: Christmas sales are booming. (Income: $200)
– Go to Polly & Pete’s Pizza: Polly & Pete put the e-Racer in all of their Smiley Meals. We sell more e-Racers. (Income: $50)
– RISK Seadog’s Shipyard: We decide not to fix the oil tanker. It spills oil in the sea. We must clean up the oil! (Expense: $100)

And here’s the little piece of plastic that the actual ”e-Racer” came in:

If you’re a corporation and you want to feel/look good by engaging the Youth of Today, at least give them relevant — and accurate — lessons. Of course, I’d prefer you’d stop selling your services — and the propaganda of corporate marketing — in our schools.

Any news about Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty fills me with sweet nostalgia.

Unilever To Launch Dove Digital Channel

The channel will feature an editorial board of experts, guest editors and “ambassadors,” all of whom will drive conversation around today’s “burning questions”–provocative, timely and relevant topics that are central to the real beauty debate, Dove says. Women will have the opportunity to join the conversation in a positive, educational and inspiring environment . . . and can learn about products . . . .

(Here’s my burning question: how do you people sleep at night?) 

It brings me back to the very first post I ever wrote, the post that got me started on the road to Parents for Ethical Marketing. Here it is, from October 2006, with updates noted.

Marketing to my daughters 

Zero Boss (update 4/14/08: blog no longer exists) turned me on to the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty’s film, Evolution. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look. No denying that it is pretty cool.

There’s lots of praise out there for Dove and this campaign: “It is a real eye opener and I am happy that Dove has chosen to try and break people’s warped sense of beauty. It may save lives.”

Could these corporate heads actually be concerned about the future and well being of our girls? I’m a tad skeptical of anyone who is trying to sell me something, so I looked further.

The good folks at Dove tell us that their altruistic Campaign for Real Beauty was “fueled” by the results of their 2004 study, The Real Truth About Beauty. Their next step was to commission another study, Beyond Stereotypes: Rebuilding the Foundation of Beauty Beliefs.

Silvia Lagnado, global brand director for Dove:

“With this year’s Dove global study . . . we wanted to go a step further in our efforts with women globally and truly ‘walk the talk’ in helping women embrace real beauty.”

Bravo!

“The ultimate goal of this study, and associated programs launched upon its completion, is to help more women – especially young girls – to overcome and challenge harmful stereotypes and genuinely embrace healthy, authentic and positive ways of being beautiful.”

Kudos to Dove! It’s about time!

“Being a global beauty brand, we believe we have a clear responsibility to not only show different kinds of role models, but also to help the next generation – in particular young girls – to grow up without the pressure and the consequences of having to live up to unrealistic beauty ideals.”

Wonderful! Spectacu–, ah, wait a minute. Global beauty brand?

The study’s white paper explains that the research was “managed by StrategyOne – a specialist applied research firm based in New York.”

“StrategyOne adopted a rigorous, two-phased academic approach to explore and validate many assumptions about stereotypes, beauty, self-esteem and self-actualization in young girls and women.”

An academic “approach?” What exactly is an academic “approach” to research? I’m starting to sense that maybe StrategyOne is not housed at NYU.

From their website (update 4/14/08: site is now password protected):

StrategyOne
We help companies win new business.

Huh.

It gets better. Dove is owned by Unilever (NYSE:UL), makers of fine home and personal care products — for example, SLIM-FAST.

CEO Patrick Cescau, writes in their 2005 annual report:

At the start of 2005 it was clear what we had to do. We had to restore our competitiveness in the market and get the business growing again. . . . Our approach was simple . . . better execution, especially in the areas of marketing and customer management. . . .

Customer management? What about walking the talk?

From a Unilever press release for another product:

Suave(TM) Hosts the Ultimate ‘Hot Moms’ Soiree

“Beauty definitely has a place within motherhood and the truth is, when you look good, you feel better about yourself.”

Looks like Dove/Unilever has learned how to better manage their customers.

Listen, if we really want to help our daughters’ self-esteem, encourage them to use their brains when confronted by anything they see or read, especially corporate advertising. Teach them to ask the simple question: Who benefits?

Dove is supporting uniquely ME!, a self-esteem program developed by the Dove Self-Esteem Fund and the Girl Scouts of the USA. They’ll donate more if you buy Dove. I’m sure it’s a fine program, but I think we should take the money we’d spend on a year’s worth of Dove products and give it to a local nonprofit whose mission is to support girls — not make money for shareholders — like the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota here in Minneapolis.

The number of people who are unfamiliar with blogging always takes me by surprise, as it did at the CCFC Summit. I get so entrenched in the blogosphere that I forget about the whole real world out there. (That’s not good. I’m going to get out more.)

But for my colleagues at the CCFC Summit, and anyone else engaged in activism, allow me to take a step back to answer the question: Why blog?

Today’s post will cover how word of your cause can be spread through the blogosphere.

Blogs reach people. From the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s most recent data:

– 75 percent of American adults use the Internet;
– 91 percent of those use search engines,
– 81 percent look for information on services or products, and
– 39 percent read blogs.

One of the groups that I’m most interested in reaching are parents. According to Technorati (a blog ranking site), there are more than 7,000 blogs identified as being about parenting and more than 45,000 individual posts about parenting.

Bloggers pass information along. My posts reach other blogs and their readers through linking. For example, Mark’s Daily Apple, a health and fitness blog, picked up my post about candy designed to look like illicit drugs. More than thirty of Mark’s readers clicked over to read Corporate Babysitter.

Another good example is an aggregator like BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed takes popular stories and features links to blogs that write about them. BuzzFeed picked up the Abercrombie & Fitch/children’s hospital naming rights story and featured a line from a post I wrote about it. That link brought more than 150 readers — and those 150 people, like the thirty from Mark’s Daily Apple, may never before have been exposed to the concepts behind Parents for Ethical Marketing.

Commenting on blogs is another way to make outside audiences aware of your cause. Every day I run across posts from people discussing the very issues we’re trying to address. If I post a comment on their blog, it links back to Corporate Babysitter and the site becomes a reference for them. I commented on a post about Nancy Nord, former interim head of the CPSC, at the hugely popular blog Crooks and Liars, which brought me handful of readers. I try to comment thoughtfully on at least five blogs a day. 

A blog, over time, becomes an archive of information. Just because a post is a week or a year old doesn’t mean someone isn’t still going to read it. I still get comments on a blog post I wrote on my old blog in February, 2007: Bratz girls are not sexy and you’re sick for thinking so. (Check out the comments if you’d like to see how girls defend their Bratz collections.)

(more…)

Back from the CCFC Summit and am at a loss as to how to begin describing all the wonderful work that is happening out there on behalf of our kids. Reports from me will trickle out over the coming weeks.

I didn’t want to leave Boston. It was probably the only time I’d be able to hang with so many like-minded people and sense no need to explain or, more importantly, justify this work.

I did bring back with me, however, a renewed and true sense that Parents for Ethical Marketing is a right and needed cause. I hope that the Corporate Babysitter blog can continue to educate parents and other concerned people about the damaging effects of marketing and media on our children.

And I finally met inspiring guy Josh Golin.

If you attended the Summit, please say hello in the comments, add Corporate Babysitter to your RSS feed, and be sure to sign up for PEM’s newsletter.

I’m anticipating some new visitors to Corporate Babysitter after I pass around my card at CCFC’s annual summit (Consuming Kids: The Sexualization of Children and Other Commercial Calamities) this week in Boston. For them, here’s a quick introduction to Parents for Ethical Marketing.

Welcome CCFC Summit Attendees! 

Parents for Ethical Marketing is a group of parents (and others) who are concerned about the effects of marketing and consumerism on children.

Our mission statement:  Through parental awareness, public pressure, and legislative initiatives, Parents for Ethical Marketing encourages corporations to adopt responsible marketing standards and practices that sustain the health of children and families.

We define ethical marketing as

– targeting only consumers who can perceive and understand the persuasive tactics in commercials;
– promoting products that are not harmful to children; and
– supporting strong families by respecting parental authority in the parent-child relationship.

To read about why I started PEM, please visit my old blog.

News and events are listed on the left-hand column of this page. You can access our Resource page by clicking on the word “Resources” along the top of this page.

Depending upon your interests, new readers may enjoy one of these blog posts:

What Do Parents Want, Anyway? 
Ad creep in the last available space, or, why do tweens need more pulp?
Your alternative to the Scholastic Book Fair

And if you are new to blog reading, you can find something of interest by either typing in a search term in the box in the upper right corner or by clicking on a topic from the list in the right-hand column (under “Categories”). You can also browse around through everything I’ve posted by clicking on “Previous Entries” at the bottom of each page.

If we’ve met at the CCFC summit, please say hello in the comment section by clicking on the word “Comment” at the end of this post.

And finally, take a moment to sign up for our newsletter and be counted among the members of Parents for Ethical Marketing.

Thanks for visiting!

As I prepare for my trip to Boston and, more importantly, my daughter’s trip to Space Camp.

I call this one “April in Minnesota.”