The entry I posted yesterday will not lead you to the original post made by Mr. Becker, but instead it will lead you to an apology by him. And of course a lot of back tracking and whys in regards to his original post. Well, a little to late...a little to little a little to late actually.
The comment he makes is that he was trying to get the point across that social media should not be the means for bullying companies into doing things. I ask why not? Social media is ran by individuals. It is run by you and me. It's content is controlled by what we decide to blog, post, comment, or link to. So in essence why shouldn't companies be bullied by the consumers? Is it better to say a lobbyist is fighting for their company's best interests? Wouldn't that too be considered bullying? heck our government lives on bullying. They want a bill to pass, they package it with a bunch of other little bills that have nothing to do with the original intent to get people to vote for their interests. And we call that politics? So why does Mr. Becker and the ACS want to talk about social media and link the word bullying to it. These mothers did no such thing. They started a campaign, a petition, if you will. They didn't ask Mattel to mass market a bald Barbie, they asked for it to be an option for purchase for those who may want it and to give proceeds to a worthwhile cause such as childhood cancer research. And even if they did "pressure" Mattel, big deal. Mattel is a big girl and Barbie wears big girl panties...sometimes. Let them deal with their own image, brand, and press. The only vested interest I can think of that the ACS had in this involvement was that they would not be the ones receiving the funds from it.
And one more thing, social media is here to stay. And more and more smart companies recognize this and are using it to their advantage to advertise to young consumers, even us older consumers ;) So to say this would not work is ridiculous. Actually, what it has done is brought WAY more attention to the issue than it would have gotten prior to the ACS's blog post. And for Mattel's official statement to be something like "we don't take ideas from people for our products" is also insane. What? do you not know how capitalism works? That wasn't their official statement, but pretty close. And you know Barbie already has its issues with being disproportional to real life. That bald barbie would fall right over cuz her boobs are too big! So, maybe they need to rethink their marketing. Anyhow, I've gone off track, like always.
The apology is way worse than the blog post. I hope he got his ass chewed off when he went into the office today. And I sincerely hope this brought more awareness to childhood cancer. It is not rare, sad to say. We had three new families in central Illinois come to clinic two weeks ago. So while Lucy didn't even want a bald barbie, or any barbie for that matter, I still found his apology to be distasteful. If you have an opinion, and you want to shout it out and have a huge company behind you to give you the means to do so, then do it, just make sure its exactly what you want to say, and how you want to say it. oh....and do your research a little bit better too. Then stand behind your position. Right or wrong. I have a lot of opinions that I know people don't agree with, but if I feel strongly about it and can't be swayed any other way, I say it, and I stick with it. That is all the time I will give this...I promise. Good afternoon.
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