5 ms·

This article is taking two points and conflating them together in a way that makes no sense at all: Good Point: Marketers, who in this case are predominantly m

This article is taking two points and conflating them together in a way that makes no sense at all: Good Point: Marketers, who in this case are predominantly male, are using hyper-sexuality to promote their image and their ad and are being insensitive to women, thus abandoning 50% of the possible customer base. This is a stupid, of course. Bad Point: Engineers are predominantly male because the marketers (an industry teaming with women) of this particular company are pigs. The author of this article is saying that women are chased away from programming because some CEO and CMO, both presumably male, sat in the office and beat their brains out trying to conjure up a good image and brand strategy for the company. Is she saying that some lowly engineer, with no MBA + Marketing should have the power to stop this, and even if she (he even?) speaks up, there is anything that will stop it? What proof does the author have that all the engineers working at this place are males and that maybe a girl or two worked on the website and thought it was a good idea? While I understand this article from an emotional stand-point, I am failing to understand it from a logical perspective. Here are a few reasons that girls aren't attracted to engineering: Boys receive Lego block and Lincoln Blocks. Girls receive prefab Barbie Doll houses and cars. Boys are told to play video games, which are all male-centric. Girls... Shoots and Latters? Girls are told that they shouldn't be good at math or science. Boys are told they should be good at math or science. This is all a much deeper cultural issue that sexuality is a veneer we use to hide the real issues. Marketing in general is lambasted for objectifying the female body, but that didn't stop droves of women going into marketing. Yeah, if sexuality was really the issue, then marketing would be 99% male also.

jerrya 14y ago
Good Point: Marketers, who in this case are predominantly male, are using hyper-sexuality to promote their image and their ad and are being insensitive to women, thus abandoning 50% of the possible customer base. This is a stupid, of course. No, this is a bad point. It is a point that at the least, needs a citation, re: the gender split of marketing professionals. Let me tell you, in my MBA program, the majority of marketing MBAs were women. It is also a bad point because in this case, the person that came up with this ad is a WOMAN. Ya, a female not a male marketer.
- dizzystar 14y ago
  Sorry, I missed the footnote. Well, then that is somewhat a bad point, but... it is ultimately up to the company to figure out who they are and what image they want to represent, and saying that a female marketer came up with the idea (Is Annie Dirk an iron-fist controller of all ideas from her company?) is still no excuse for the company's executive team to be mindless in their company's image. We could also point fingers at the fashion industry as well. There is no other industry that I can think of that perpetually exploits women yet is full of women workers. Fashion schools aren't exactly male-dominant.
  - jerrya 14y ago
    On the other hand, and I certainly don't know how this works, I don't think the CEO or President of many firms personally okay each ad in a campaign. They give the marketing department a budget and say, there, go, spend that money. So the interaction here is between a bunch of marketing people, we don't know the genders of many of them, we don't know what their relationship to tech is, we don't know what their relationship to the execs is.
    - dizzystar 14y ago
      >>They give the marketing department a budget and say, there, go, spend that money. I don't know how this company works. I used to be a marketing director and I know it didn't work the way you describe at all. No manager is an island and everyone has to answer to everyone somewhere along the line. I will argue that a CEO should be well-aware of what their company is and what it represents. I don't fault the company in the article for okaying the image portrayed in the ad, though. It is truly their own decision.
      - jerrya 14y ago
        Okay, well thank you, then for the information.

jerrya 14y ago

Good Point: Marketers, who in this case are predominantly male, are using hyper-sexuality to promote their image and their ad and are being insensitive to women, thus abandoning 50% of the possible customer base. This is a stupid, of course. No, this is a bad point. It is a point that at the least, needs a citation, re: the gender split of marketing professionals. Let me tell you, in my MBA program, the majority of marketing MBAs were women. It is also a bad point because in this case, the person that came up with this ad is a WOMAN. Ya, a female not a male marketer.

dizzystar 14y ago
Sorry, I missed the footnote. Well, then that is somewhat a bad point, but... it is ultimately up to the company to figure out who they are and what image they want to represent, and saying that a female marketer came up with the idea (Is Annie Dirk an iron-fist controller of all ideas from her company?) is still no excuse for the company's executive team to be mindless in their company's image. We could also point fingers at the fashion industry as well. There is no other industry that I can think of that perpetually exploits women yet is full of women workers. Fashion schools aren't exactly male-dominant.
- jerrya 14y ago
  On the other hand, and I certainly don't know how this works, I don't think the CEO or President of many firms personally okay each ad in a campaign. They give the marketing department a budget and say, there, go, spend that money. So the interaction here is between a bunch of marketing people, we don't know the genders of many of them, we don't know what their relationship to tech is, we don't know what their relationship to the execs is.
  - dizzystar 14y ago
    >>They give the marketing department a budget and say, there, go, spend that money. I don't know how this company works. I used to be a marketing director and I know it didn't work the way you describe at all. No manager is an island and everyone has to answer to everyone somewhere along the line. I will argue that a CEO should be well-aware of what their company is and what it represents. I don't fault the company in the article for okaying the image portrayed in the ad, though. It is truly their own decision.
    - jerrya 14y ago
      Okay, well thank you, then for the information.