Category: Media & Advertising

Posted on in Culture & Entertainment, Media & Advertising, Society & Media

This isn't just any children's sticker book…this is a sexist M&S sticker book

My daughter, aged 15 months, likes stickers. She likes to unpeel them from a sheet with tiny curious fingers, then lift them off and find a new place for them – on a sheet of paper, her tummy, my face, wherever – patting them into place with a purposeful “stick-stick!” (actually, she mostly says “dick-dick!” at the moment. A bit awkward in public. But I digress.)

We discovered that she liked stickers when changing her nappy one day in her bedroom. She caught sight of a tiny lifted edge of a wall sticker, next to the change mat, and proceeded to methodically remove it, with a triumphant beam on her face.

She then progressed to price labels or special offer stickers in the supermarket, before eventually we decided to overrule the “3 years plus” advice on the front of most sticker books and packets and got her a sheet of smiley faces, with which she has played (under supervision) quite happily for a couple of months.

When she went into hospital a couple of months ago for an operation, we got a copy of Cbeebies magazine because it came with a sheet of stickers from her favourite cartoon, Sarah & Duck, and she enjoyed peeling them off the sheet and sticking them methodically onto her spica cast, the doctors, her observation chart and so on.

So yesterday, while in good old Marks and Spencers, I noticed they had a special offer on children’s activity books and thought I’d see if there were any stickers to be had.

Disappointingly, M&S have decided that something as innocent and simple as stickers need to be rammed into gender-stereotyped pigeonholes.

The “stickers for girls” selection included:

  • Princesses
  • Fairies
  • Disney princesses
  • Rainbows
  • Kittens
  • Butterflies
  • Clothing

You can see one of the books (and peek inside its contents) here. NB, I’m only referring here to activity books specifically with the words “for girls” on them.

Meanwhile, in the 2000 stickers for boys book, here is a selection of sticky images depicting things which my daughter is apparently not supposed to like or play with:

Oh M&S - you can do better than this

  • Stars, explorers, musicians, robbers and astronauts
  • Spiders, snails, slugs, beetles, bees (no butterflies to be seen, of course)
  • Funny facial parts including eyes, noses, mouths
  • Lions, tigers, birds
  • Circus tents, trees, people
  • People swimming, sailing, kayaking, diving, camp fires, tents
  • Pirate imagery including cats, desert islands, treasure, skulls, crossbones
  • Dinosaurs, rocks, shrubbery
  • Robots, flying cars, spaceships, stars, planets
  • Fish, flying saucers, pumpkins
  • Trees, umbrellas, water

    • Heaven forbid.

    Well, bugger that. I bought it anyway.

    And if it’s still in the house when Erin learns to read, and she asks why all those brilliant, imaginative, exciting stickers are for boys, I shall tell her that Marks and Spencers were short-sighted, small-minded and silly because they thought girls should only like fashion and princesses and flowers while boys were allowed to create worlds and play with dinosaurs, astronauts and lions. How very silly of them!

    [Related: Let Toys Be Toys is asking retailers to stop limiting children’s interests by promoting some toys as only suitable for girls, and others only for boys. Join their campaign and sign the petition if you think that girls should be allowed encouraged to play with robots, too.]

Posted on in fmp, Media & Advertising, Television

While the world watches…and waits

The world – and the media – is transfixed today by the ongoing rescue of the 33 miners who have been trapped underground for two months in a collapsed mine in northern Chile. As they emerge blinking behind sunglasses, into the desert daylight, we heave another sigh of relief. The unfolding story of their survival and planned rescue has brought hope to a world weary of bad news, and its successful executionn throughout last night and today is a testament to the power of planning, engineering, organisation, politics, money, hope, character, luck, faith…in fact, whatever people want to hang on this moment, they are doing so.

Throughout the morning, as news of the emerging miners breaks, I’ve had an earworm playing at the back of my head, which I’ve been trying not to give focus to, but here we go:

The song is the Ballad of Springhill, originally by Peggy Seeger (the version I know is by Martin Carthy) which was written about a mining disaster in Springhill, Nova Scotia, in October 1958. An underground seismic “bump” caused the coal faces deep underground to collapse, killing many men instantly and trapping others. Over the days which followed, survivors slowly made their way to the surface and contact was made with a group:

“After five and a half days (placing it around the morning of Wednesday, October 29, 1958) contact was established with a group of 12 survivors on the other side of a 160 foot rockfall. A rescue tunnel was dug and broke through to the trapped miners at 2:25am AST on Thursday, October 30, 1958…. Of the 174 miners in No. 2 colliery at the time of the bump, 74 were killed and 100 trapped but eventually rescued.” [source]

Thankfully, it looks like all the miners in the Chilean situation will be rescued safely throughout the course of the next couple of days.

Tangent: I think going by their onscreen graphic Sky News will refer to this as “Miners rescued: 33/33 – Achievement Unlocked!” Though people seem to find the count variously tacky and/or helpful, I think there are many who echo the sentiment of this twitter user:

“Anyone else reminded of lemmings whilst watching sky news’s coverage of the miner rescue? They have a counter, so far 0/33 rescued”

Anyone doubting this similarity is urged to study any Lemmings screenshot, and compare that with Sky’s on-screen graphic.

The 1958 “Springhill bump” was notable for another reason, too: it was the first major international story in Canada to be covered by live television broadcasts — a new service being developed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) [more info]. Then, as now, the media circus camped at the minehead, watching and waiting.

While you watch the rolling news today, and follow the liveblogs and twitter updates, take a moment to watch this archive footage from CBC with interviews and coverage from the pithead. The events change, but the live media coverage is eerily similar, together with questions from the studio to our man at the pithead: “What’s going on right now? What can you see?”

Some things change, some stay the same. Meanwhile, in a Chilean desert, the miners rise one by one, blinking from what could have easily been a tomb. The world welcomes them back.

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Posted on in fmp, Media & Advertising, Photography

An open letter to Grey London

22 January: Please see the update at the end of this post for what happened next.

Dear Grey London,

I’ve just been made aware of the ad you were involved with creating for Horlicks.

In the middle of the advert at 1’15”, amid the collection of shots of coffee/tea/beverage making and drinking, there’s a brief shot which is slightly different.

It’s a woman sitting on a tube train going along an above-ground track. She’s holding a book in front of her face. The book’s cover depicts a woman’s face. I’ve screengrabbed it below:

picture-117

I find it very difficult to believe that this shot wasn’t styled on this image I took and posted in August 2006, which has since become well-circulated on the internet.

Geisha

Your treatment is startlingly similar to my original photo, right down to the woman; the hand position; the ring; the tube above ground; the styling of the cover; the sweep of the hair; the man with his head down, reading next to her.

I’ve written before about advertising agencies using internet-popular ideas and artwork as source material for campaigns, but there’s a fine line between homage and rip-off.

Should I submit an invoice for the portion of the creative work that I unknowingly did on your behalf? Or would acknowledgement of your inspiration be out of the question?

Best regards,

Meg Pickard

PS If anyone else reading this has any ideas about what I might be able to do about this, please let me know in the comments below or via email or Twitter. Thanks.

Update, 22 January

I spoke to Hugo Feiler, MD of Grey London today, after the creative director of the ad forwarded on the email I’d sent him about the issue. Mr Feiler was very pleasant, and said (transcribed from notes taken on phone):

“On reflection, I would agree that we had been influenced by your photo … we shouldn’t have gone on to use such a similar image without speaking to you first, so I’m very sorry about that”

He offered to have the film re-edited to remove the chunk in question. I declined this, but asked him to ask the production company involved to remove the still from their site as proof of their creativity. He has done this since our call.

In addition, as a gesture of goodwill, Mr Feiler offered to make a generous donation in my name to a charity of my choice. I accepted this and am pleased that Oxfam’s Haiti emergency appeal has been able to benefit from this experience.

He went on to say that he would have said and offered exactly the same thing if I’d spoken to him privately before “going public” on my blog, but he understands why I did because of what I do for a living. (I’d actually sent email via the Grey website, to the production company and to the CD’s personal site).

I don’t think that my work was copied maliciously or through an attempt to decieve or claim credit: I’ve worked with enough creative agencies to know how easy it is for something to slip from early-stage random found object moodboard into a concept storyboard and then through to the produced object, all the while getting further and further from the original credited influence. As with most things like this, Hanlon’s razor applies (and especially the Sir Bernard Ingham variant).

In summary, I am reassured that this has been handled in a timely and considerate way by Hugo at Grey London: I’m glad that they’ve apologised and acknowledged the influence of my work, and feel sure that they will have learnt a lesson from this experience about how random internet influences are handled within their creative processes.

Posted on in fmp, London, Media & Advertising, Transport, Weather

Snow. My. God.

The icy drifts of SW London

Not to underplay the serious inconvenience caused by inclement meteorological conditions to some parts of the UK, but I’d just like to take a moment to reflect on this typically calm and understated headline from yesterday’s London Evening Standard:

DON'T PANIC

A few points.

If you’re still measuring the snow in inches rather than feet or yards, it’s not an “extreme” weather event, it’s a “bothersome” one. The words “extreme weather” should apply to total snowmageddon, not tobogganing & a bit of a whinge about slippery pavements.

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Posted on in fmp, Media & Advertising

Talking point

At a (media) event in the Netherlands a couple of weeks ago, the organisers were giving out these badges:

Never a truer word spoken

Tell me: is this wry self-mocking? Or cold statement of fact?

I genuinely can’t figure out which it should be.

And the temptation to sharpie in the word “only” somewhere is almost overwhelming.

Posted on in Events, fmp, Media & Advertising, Music, Social Media, Society & Media, Web, Work

How to communicate with the online community: a report from both sides of the wall

As part of Quadriga’s Online Communication 2009 conference, I was invited by the organisers to present some reflections about how to communicate with people online, drawn from both personal and professional experiences, in the form of an after-dinner speech. This was a new experience for me: I’ve never done an after-dinner speech before. Lots of presentations, lectures, debates and panels, but nothing in quite this format before, with no visual aid, nestled in between main course and dessert.

Rather than just post my notes, here’s a fully-written up version of what I said, including links to sources, resources, inspirations and further reading. Forgive the slightly odd formatting, with so many paragraphs – it’s structured this way to reflect the emphasis and pauses and topic sections as I spoke.

If anyone wants it, I was thinking about making an audio version available to download, because this is fairly long (about 25 minutes) – let me know if this would be interesting to you. And if you’re interested in me giving this presentation (or one similar) at an event you’re organising, do get in touch.

When I first told my friends I was coming to Amsterdam to speak to a room full of online communication executives, they asked me why I had to fly to Amsterdam to do that. Why do we all need to get together in one room? Couldn’t I just do it by email, maybe in a newsletter or a series of tweets?

Well, maybe – but if that had been the case, I wouldn’t have got to enjoy such a delicious meal and wouldn’t have met so many of you face to face. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that.

Actually, yesterday I asked my Twitter contacts whether there’s anything they’d recommend to a room full of the best and brightest communication professionals in Europe. I got a lot of interesting answers, many of which I’ll draw on later, but I particularly liked this suggestion from a contact who said:

“Just tell them they should promote the juniors for two months and let them run wild over the internet.”

Well, it’s an idea. Not sure it’s the first thing you could do, but still…

When Quadriga were putting together the conference programme, I was asked to present my perspective on online communication from “both sides of the wall” – as a keen online user both personally and professionally.

I’s just like to note that that implies the wall is somehow this insurmountable, divisive thing which is rarely scaled. In fact, the walls are coming down. I think it’s remarkably easy – and getting easier – to hop from one side to the other, and in fact the boundaries are blurring for many of us every day. I count myself as incredibly lucky that my professional life draws on my personal experiences and passions.

As part of that, I have a confession to make.
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