Marjorie Clayman’s Writing Portfolio

Professional writing profile of Marjorie Clayman

Archives for April 2010

#8: The secret to good health’s a diet alright…

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I’m going to plagiarize John Lennon ever so briefly and say that about 6 years ago, I went through my “fat Elvis” period. I know, of all of the things to quote from John Lennon, that’s what I choose. But it’s appropriate.

You see, around that time, I had gone through pursuing my Masters in Library and Information Science. Not a lot of calisthenics involved, but 3- hour classes where you kind of just…sat there. To stay. uh, alert, I would wander over to the student center and get various types of mochas. With whipped cream. Then I’d go home and make something like Ramen or Kraft Mac & Cheese, because my fat Elvis period was also my “Holy crap I’m poor” period. Guess I could have saved some money by not buying those mochas, but I digress.

One day, I looked in a mirror and thought, “Man, my pants are really poofy…like MC Hammer poofy.” Then I realized it was actually me that was poofy. I instantaneously felt worried, ashamed, embarrassed, and otherwise just plain bad.

Since that time, I’ve been working hard to lose all of those mochas. I’ve done a lot of different things, including Yoga, Pilates, biking, and most recently, my Wii EA Sports Active game (awesome!). And of course, I’ve changed my diet drastically to the point where I’m now about 75% vegetarian (I only eat meat on occasion when I go out or visit someone…haven’t purchased meat to cook for about 3 months now).

It occurred to me today though that being healthy, losing weight, and all of that jazz is really all about one thing. Lying to yourself.

Dr. Phil, Jillian Michaels, and Oprah will never say this or condone this, but it’s really true. Here are some examples.

You have to tell yourself on a regular basis that really, with the limited free time that you have, you’d much rather work up a sweat and get sore and stinky. Watching TV with a glass of wine or a cup of tea is just way too sedentary for you.

You have to tell yourself that a veggie patty with low-fat mayo and some baked chips is just as satisfying as a Wendy’s burger, fries, and a Frosty.

You have to tell yourself that if you count that walk to get the mail as your daily exercise you’ll just feel bad about yourself when you go to bed that night (this is a wammy of a lie).

I was thinking of this diet of lies this morning when I went to the grocery store. There was a LOT of ice cream on sale, and I do like to have a tiny bowl of ice cream as the weather starts to get warm. Some of my faves were on sale too. Mint Chocolate Chip. Moose Tracks. I’m drooling here as I type.

I did not buy any ice cream.

No, instead I left the freezer aisle and went to the dairy aisle. I got 2 containers of Yoplait Whips key lime pie, 2 containers of Yoplait Whips Lemon Burst, and 2 containers of Yoplait Whips Chocolate Mousse. And I told myself that these would taste just as cool as ice cream. I told myself they would taste just as good as that Starbucks coffee ice cream with almonds or as good as my Rocky Road.

Is any of this true? I have to type here that it is, or will be, because this is one of the carefully constructed lies that will help me take my health one more notch up the ladder. Cuz while I’ve made an awful lot of progress and while I’m almost to that goal weight, I’m just not quite there, and ice cream won’t push me along.

Everyone knows that lying is really the key to health, because everyone who makes this decision in life ends up becoming an evangelist about it. Don’t be offended. It’s not about making you feel bad for eating that fantastic looking Chik-Filet sandwich. It’s really because that person REALLY REALLY wants one of those, errr, no they don’t because they told themselves that breaded tofu will taste just as crunchy.

Try it out. Tell yourself just one white lie. It’s a real domino effect. And hey, no one will be able to call you a “big fat” liar. Just an obnoxious one.

#7: We are all of us Trumanéd

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I know, William Shakespeare would be so happy that I am taking one of the last lines from Romeo & Juliet (we are all punishéd), bastardizing it so that it relates to the Truman show, then remarking that we may kind of all be punishéd anyway. It’s why he wrote Romeo & Juliet, I’m fairly certain.

Maybe not.

Anyway, on with the show.

So, The Truman Show came out in 1998. Neither Facebook nor Twitter existed yet. How did we live?!? But anyway, some of the most memorable parts of the film, at least to this budding marketer, were when the people around Truman would randomly pop in product endorsements as they were talking to him. Like this, for example:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Inscky6EyQ8&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]

Sure seemed crazy and over-the-top back then, didn’t it?

Funnily enough, we have all become product placement billboards. We may or may not be conscious of it. You’re gonna want some proof, aren’t ya?

Have you ever mentioned in a Facebook post that you made pancakes with that new heart healthy Bisquick and didn’t notice a difference in taste?

Have you ever tweeted that you went to Wal-Mart and really found their customer service outstanding and much improved?

Have you ever really really liked a movie and blogged about it after seeing it?

Guess what, friend! You’re a marketer!

Of course, sometimes it’s even easier to work product placement into your friends’ lives. Have you ever “liked” or “fanned” (or whatever Facebook will call it next) a product page on Facebook? Like, for example, that time I signed into Facebook and saw that some of my friends had become fans of Pepsi…”Why sure, I like Pepsi too. I will fan them,” said I. Didn’t really think about it until it was too late. Same thing happened to me with Lion Brand yarn. Sure, I love Lion Brand yarn! I’ll become a “fan”! Now I get updates about the latest kits and yarn sales going on. What the heck is going on here?

This isn’t to say that our own individual contributions to marketing are all that is left. But it is kind of overwhelming to think about how much we market without realizing it. Don’t think it has escaped my mind that in mentioning those brands above, I was giving them pings and bings and dings on Google alerts and other social media tracking sites. Yes, even talking about how products are marketed can result in product marketing.

I don’t know who the “Truman” is in this new reality. I think maybe we are all switching off. I was a Truman when I clicked on that “fan” button, but then I became a marketer because my fandom was announced to other friends. Kind of insidious. Kind of instinctive. Maybe even kind of unfair.

Welcome to The Truman Show.

Post #6: Foursquare and the Open Graph, Achtung Baby

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Okay, let me start by saying that yes, I am aware of the fact that I am a marketer. I know that nothing should thrill me more than something like Foursquare, where people can holler to the winds that they are at such and such a place doing such and such a thing. I know that as a marketer the news about the Facebook open graph should have me feeling like I’m on some sort of Cloud 9. The marketing future has been paved with gold. The internet is forever young. All of the goals of the great explorers, from Coronado to my personal fave, Ponce de Leon, have been fulfilled. I get it.

However, and I just add this as a bit of an aside, marketing is only a portion of my life. I mean, don’t get me wrong, marketing is great. Love it. But I do have other facets to my personality, and those facets are all curled up into the fetal position right now.

Let’s start with Foursquare. The first time I saw a friend posting Foursquare updates, I left a comment along the lines of, “If I am going to stalk you, I want to have to work for it.” As I saw more and more updates, I began shaking in my boots, not necessarily for the folks I saw, but rather for possible ramifications.

I tend to jump mentally to the worst case scenario. It’s a gift.

But to me, what jumped to my mind is that now, if someone (heaven forbid) wants to hurt a child, they don’t have to go to a chat room anymore. They don’t have to plot and plan. They just have to watch Twitter and see where kids are going. How can this be monitored? Another good point that even my paranoid mind hadn’t thought of: if you are letting the world know where you are, you’re also telling the world where you are NOT. Other folks have thought of this and created a site called Please Rob Me. You can read more about that at Tech Crunch.

I understand that there are a lot of other things out there that, like Foursquare, help broadcast your location to the world. It just seems like this one is spreading a little bit more like wildfire. Are we being careful?

Now for the Open Graph thing. I’ve had a bone to pick with Facebook for the last year or so, full disclosure. I don’t like the fact that the site’s interface changes every five seconds. But what I especially don’t like right now is that if my friends decide to play Mafia Wars, they are not only sacrificing their time, which is fine, but they are also sacrificing some of my privacy. No matter how locked down you think your account is, applications can still access some info like your profile picture. And this new Open Graph thing? It’s built on that same kind of application platform.

I’m not really worried about myself in this scenario. I always was kind of creeped out by Facebook. “If you enter your email address we’ll find all of your friends” stood out as an “achtung” sign for me from the start. But there are people who are using their credit card on Facebook. There are people who are probably posting things that they really shouldn’t be posting. There are kids posting things that probably shouldn’t be posted. Are they aware that their settings have been changed to automatically allow Social Plug-Ins? I was aware of it because I saw the news because that’s part of my job. I went into my settings and dug all the way to manually blocking Microsoft Docs, Yelp, and Pandora as applications. Is everyone that aware? I don’t think so. And they’re not really getting a kosher heads up.

I don’t really have a problem with the idea of the internet becoming a social mechanism. I’ve been frightened enough times by PPC ads related to email content showing up that I’ve just accepted that you have to live with what you post. And as a marketer, the possibilities are exciting. But as a person, and in particular a person who worries about other people who may not be plugged in mentally even if they are plugged in socially, I just worry that maybe we’re not being careful enough.

What do you think?

Post #5: What Jim Henson can teach us about marketing

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I have been a muppet fan for as long as I can remember. One of the most tragic days of my life, however, is when I watched Muppets Take Manhattan for the trillionth time and really dug the scenes where Kermit (aka Phil Phillip Phil) is working for an amphibian-owned and run advertising agency.

Youth, where art thou?

Still, I’ve been thinking a lot about those scenes and then other general Jim Henson knowledge, and I’ve decided that marketers and people in general can learn a lot from the muppets.

You don’t believe me, huh? Or you just can’t believe I’m doing this to your muppets. I sympathize. But take a look.

Remember yesterday when I was pondering whether we can really talk human? Jim Henson was already covering that topic close to 30 years ago. “you mean just say what the product does? Nobody has tried that!”:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwDUzSWoCjo&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0]

Yep, he definitely said what he meant.

Of course, one could also argue that Rainbow Connection could be equated to a modern day Facebook page (join the lovers, the dreamers, and me). But we won’t go that far, will we?

Post #4: Is it really possible to talk human?

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Yesterday, I watched Harry Gottlieb’s webinar on talking human (It’s called Corporate Blahblahdiblah) and how corporations generally don’t do it. His point was well taken. Corporations seem to use words that have been proven to be good sellers, kind of like the word “ambitious” or “dedicated” when it comes to applying for jobs. It has gotten to the point where it’s hard to tell what a company actually does or what they are actually trying to say. Fair enough.

However, coming at this issue from the marketing side, I have to say that there are a lot of obstacles in the way of “talking human.” For example, there’s Search Engine Optimization. Everybody wants to be on the first page of search results on Google or Bing, right? Well, you need the right keywords, among other things, to accomplish that goal. Unfortunately, keywords do not always jive with how people talk. If you are a medical company, you might want to talk human and talk about headaches, but SEO demands that you talk about “pain in the occipital region.” Who talks like that? Not many people. But maybe a lot of people search like that.

Facebook, Twitter, and texting have me worried too. Have you ever tried to carry on a conversation using 140 CHARACTER statements? I haven’t. As you probably are learning from my blog posts, 140 characters for me is like the calm before the storm. However, this kind of limited communication is what corporations are facing on increasingly regular occasions. They are having to update fan pages (or is it “like” pages now?), they are having to update Twitter accounts, or they are sending out text messages. Is this how they would normally entice customers? Probably not. Is that talking human? Probably not. But it’s the new reality.

That has me wondering. Are we in danger of having more human contact but being less human about it? A fan page can have hundreds of fans, but if you can’t *really* talk to people the way you’d like to and the way Gottlieb recommends, how effective is your marketing going to be in the end?

I guess, being a human, this all just gives me something to ponder.

Post #3: The fine line between Shock & Awe

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I saw an ad the other day while I was watching the Cleveland Indians game…it was for one of those trivia companies that you can text to get random answers to dumb debates in which you are engaged. You’ll note I can’t remember the company’s name. I”ll get to that later.

The main visual of the ad was two guys with their heads stuffed up into their…well, butts. I found the image rather uncomfortable and gratuitous, and that’s saying something because I’m a fan of shows like South Park. The visual was shocking in that you don’t usually see those kinds of things, and it was gross, and clearly it stuck with me. But again, I can’t remember the name of the company who did the ad.

I’ve noticed lately that a lot of ads are like this. They try to gross you out or weird you out. Have you seen that Viagra ad where the guy’s reflection is begging him to talk about his “E.D?” Creepy. In that case, I do remember the name, but that’s only because the ad seems run during every show that I watch. Clearly I’m a surprise demographic.

Is there really a point to these ads? They might get people talking, but if people are just talking about “that gross ad” it’s not going to do you any good. Does anyone still remember what that Betty White commercial was for during the Super Bowl? It was great for her brand, that’s for sure. But did it do the advertiser a lot of good?

Sometimes there are ads that stay with you and you know why. The ads for animal rescue charities are good examples of this. Seeing abused animals isn’t easy. It’s shocking and uncomfortable, but there’s a reason for showing it. I can’t really think of any good reason to show a person, literally, with their head up where the sun don’t shine. I’d tell the advertiser that if I could remember who they were.