#99: Deadly propaganda, Roger Stone, product marketing, ugly history, and muted colors.
Happy Saturday. #99 is a doozy.
In this edition of The World's Best Newsletter:
1. What does product marketing do?
2. Love the Ad, Forget the Brand
3. Origins of the Gillette boycott are sketchy AF
4. Lest we forget the ugly parts of women's rights history
5. The deadly power of propaganda and its antidote, compassion
6. Get Me Roger Stone
7. Muted colors - quote of the week
1. What does product marketing do?
LinkedIn reported a 30% year-over-year growth in the number of job postings for “Product Marketing Manager." It's one of the most promising, critical, and yet misunderstood roles in a business.
There are many frameworks dictating what product marketers should do, but my spiritual advisor Hally Pinaud (the best product marketer I know, hands down) breaks down what real companies hire product marketing to do. Read her piece here on Product Marketing Masters.
Look how much variation exists in this role, which can own any of the following:
Go-To-Market Leadership
Market Intelligence
Messaging and Positioning / Storytelling
Launch
Content Creation
Sales Enablement
Influencer and Analyst Relations
Quantitative Insight
Phew. I have a marketing crush on good product marketers for a very good reason.
PS: Product Marketing Masters is a great new organization serving the product marketing community offering community, events, workshops, training, and more. Learn more here.
2. Love the Ad, Forget the Brand
H/T to Melanie Deziel for this find. "The Association Problem" by Tallie Gabriel.
The piece reveals only 14 percent of viewers (in one study) remember the company associated with the last display ad they saw. One touted solution (from a publication that promotes... content... mind you) is great content marketing. Specifically, branded content:
“Branded content educates audiences on topics in which brands have a domain expertise, allowing our brands to truly connect in a consumer-centric way." - Forbes CRO Mark Howard in Adweek
My favorite advice from the piece: Decide what you know better than anyone else, and tell us about it.
3. Origins of the Gillette boycott are sketchy AF
If you read my Gillette piece, or any coverage of their recent ad campaign, you will want to read this Twitter thread. It reveals the questionable "sources" used by the BBC in promoting the "Gillette boycott".
Was the backlash as big as the BBC reported? Or did they make it worse, causing others to jump on the bandwagon?
"The press carries water for a tiny minority of extremists, thereby giving them a much, much bigger platform than they might otherwise have had," says author G. Willow Wilson.
Many online news outlets are incentivized by the need for traffic to share stories that drive clicks, sensational stuff like outrage, boycotts, etc... but readers take their reporting at face value. A dangerous duality.
I highly recommend reading this thread.
4. Lest we forget the ugly parts of women's rights history
From A Mighty Girl:
When we tell our children about the fight for women's suffrage in America, we often tell a sanitized version of the story. We talk about letter-writing campaigns, activist conferences, and stirring speeches — and occasionally, we mention defiant suffragists being hauled to jail. But we often shy away from the darker truths about the sacrifices and suffering many suffragists had to endure in the fight for women's right to vote.
One especially notorious event, the "Night of Terror," when 33 suffragists from the National Women's Party, who had been arrested for protesting outside of the White House, were brutally beaten and tortured at the Occoquan Workhouse, a prison in northern Virginia took place a little over 100 years ago on November 14, 1917...
Personally, I didn't know about the Night of Terror, and I am one who tries to educate myself on this movement's history to provide context for its modern day iteration.
Perhaps you feel removed or disillusioned from politics, sick of the fighting, unsure if "either party is really good enough" or overwhelmed by the noise, the arguments, and the discomfort it brings. 44% of eligible voters did not vote in the last election.
But, ultimately, this is your problem, and this is your history. The road to getting the right to vote was fraught with pain - we owe it to each woman at Occuquan to do better.
5. The deadly power of propaganda and its antidote, compassion
This week, officials in Portland declared an emergency over a measles outbreak. Someone with measles was at Concourse D of the Portland International Airport on Jan. 7. An infected person attended a Portland Trail Blazers home game Jan. 11.
By this past Wednesday, there are 23 cases confirmed. "The vast majority of those who have fallen ill had not been immunized" says WaPo.
The World Health Organization found the anti-vax movement to be one of the top 10 health threats for 2019. 18 states allow for "philosophical-belief" non-medical exemptions.
Let's not forget, research proves that bots and Russian trolls spread misinformation about vaccines on social media to sow division and "distribute malicious content." We are living through the effects of propaganda and astroturfing:
“Did you know there was secret government database of #Vaccine-damaged child? #VaccinateUS,” read one Russian troll tweet. Another said: “#VaccinateUS You can’t fix stupidity. Let them die from measles, and I’m for #vaccination!”
“Whereas bots that spread malware and unsolicited content disseminated anti-vaccine messages, Russian trolls promoted discord,” researchers concluded. “Accounts masquerading as legitimate users create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination.”
But, the approach to fighting vaccination fears is not with more division or mocking. Ultimately it requires our compassion, as demonstrated by Blima Marcus, an oncology nurse in NY.
"False claims, such as the idea that vaccines cause autism, had become entrenched in the ultra-Orthodox community," of which she is a member.
The key here is that, unlike Russian trolls playing both sides of the field to rile up us/them debates, Blima was able to convince skeptical women in her community to be open to learning about the facts.
“I wasn’t calling them fools. I didn’t insinuate that anyone was unintelligent. I didn’t accuse anyone of being selfish, and, honestly, I don’t think they are. I think they’re victims of a lot of scare tactics.”
Where is our empathy? Where is our compassion in these debates?
As my good friend Kim said relative to this article, "Let’s remember, amid these measles outbreaks, to approach vaccination discussions from a place of compassion."
6. Get Me Roger Stone
If you haven't watched the Netflix documentary about political operative and sh*t-stirrer Roger Stone, please do so here. Marketers and voters alike will appreciate the breakdown of his modus operandi, which he describes as:
"Attack, attack, attack—never defend" and "Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack."
Yesterday Stone was charged in a seven-count indictment: one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering.
7. Muted colors
"Muted colors are for muted people... Give me vermilion, chrome, yellow screaming emerald."
- Carol Channing (January 31, 1921 – January 15, 2019)
Have a colorful weekend.
Best,
Katie
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