Reaching diverse audiences: CPR connects non profits with ethnic media

Did you know– According to New American Media, ethnic media is the “fastest growing sector of American journalism”? With more than 51 million adult followers, and 3,000 ethic media outlets, are you maximizing your organization’s voice with these audiences? This week at Planned Parenthood’s national conference, Elizabeth Toledo, president of Camino Public Relations and a leader in strategic ethnic media communications, will train community organizers, communications specialists, activists and advocates from across the country on how to connect and reach diverse audiences as part of their social justice campaigns. To learn more about this and other forms of the media, visit CPR at http://caminopr.com.

The condom melee

Ah, the Pope and condoms.  I first publicly criticized the Pope’s views when I was a teenage columnist for a Gannett newspaper, but my editor censored the piece.  The Pope was on a U.S. tour and the paper was worried about reader backlash.  Not much has changed since, except now my daughter is the teenager.  The Pope has ratched up his attack on condoms (claiming they aren’t effective at preventing HIV), and lots of parents and the media are still treating condoms like a four-alarm scandal.

Last week about a dozen students at my daughter’s middle school were inadvertently given condoms during a celebration of “National Women and Girls HIV Awareness Day”.   A 48-hour morality melee ensued.  Some parents of the condom kids were shaken and angry, multiple apologies from school and public health officials were rushed out over two days, news media descended on the school, and teachers gave their students impromptu lessons in how to say “no comment” to aggressive reporters.

Exactly one year ago the CDC released startling findings: one in four adolescent girls has a sexually transmitted infection.  Another study found that by 9th grade, 32% of teens were sexually active.  This year school officials teamed up with public health advocates to conduct an HIV awareness poster contest and a health fair to help prevent these middle school kids from becoming part of this statistical nightmare.

The school didn’t intend to distribute the condoms – some health fair bags from a high school event got mixed up with the middle school bags – but the incident raises the uncomfortable question about what messages and information ought to be shared with this age group.  Statistically, a third of these eighth graders will be sexually active within a year.  When and how should they get access to condoms?

On the afternoon that ABC camped out at the middle school for at least four hours, the principal asked those of us who worked or lived nearby to help shield the students from the cameras as they left school.   Many of the parents and security staff  were furious that ABC news was filming kids.  The sensationalist media had turned the  lesson about disease prevention into a real life display of the taboo nature of dealing with emerging sexuality.   Any middle schooler who thought  they could safely engage the subject of sex with adults at Thursday’s health fair learned by Friday that the subject was wildly explosive.

When the cameraman began filming the students exiting school, a number of adults were on hand to help the kids move down the sidewalk without being filmed. I began taking pictures of the ABC crew.  The ABC reporter screamed at me from across the street, punching his finger in the air, “this borders on harassment!”.  That’s when I got mad.  I couldn’t film him while he filmed my kid?

I calmed down and respectfully called the ABC producer in charge of the story, who apologized for the reporter’s behavior.   I explained that I had been positioned across the street with my palm sized digital camera and he said it wouldn’t have mattered if I were inches away, anyone has the right to film the activities of his crew.

Then the producer and I had a good discussion about the impact of sensationalizing condoms. What lesson, if you were thirteen, would you walk away with as you watched the media treat the mistaken condom handout as a major scandal?  Through the eyes of a middle schooler it’s not so different from the Pope’s rigid position: condoms are risqué and most definitely off limits.  His focus had been on whether ABC was adhering to journalistic standards; he hadn’t been focused on the impact of the coverage on area teens.

I didn’t expect the editor to kill the story – four hours of a stakeout by ABC, complete with dozens of interviews in half a dozen locations, was too much of an investment to throw away.  But the end result was a very, very brief story and modest footage.  I’m convinced that the editor paid attention to the community impact of ABC’s news decisions, as well as to the anger of the community that had been targeted.

Making your voice heard in the media can help soften the sensationalist treatment of adolescent sexual health.  But you don’t have to wait for a media moment to be influential.  If  you’ve got kids in your life and you’d like to be proactive in promoting sexual health, here are some resources you might offer them:
Sexetc.org (for teens)
Teenwire.org (for teens)
A reference book titled “It’s Perfectly Normal” (for kids and young teens)
A reference book titled “It’s So Amazing” (for kids and young teens)

Protesting Corporate Excess

On Thursday people who are fed up with the corporate climate are attending protests in cities nationwide.  There’s a lot I’m supposed to do on Thursday but nothing seems more urgent than sending a loud message to those who continue to contribute to a broken economy and corrupt corporate culture.  I’ll be heading to Wall Street to protest.  Please make your voice heard on Thursday — you can get more information about actions in your city at http://takebacktheeconomy.org/

Check out their video below:

Equal Treatment

Yesterday’s AOL headline about celebrity chef Cat Cora and wife Jennifer Cora expecting babies is yet another display of the media mainstreaming of gay relationships. AOL news treated their relationship in the exact same way it treats heterosexual couples, reporting “Iron Chef and her wife are pregnant”.  Fox used the term “lesbian partner” in its headline and used a sensational tone in its coverage, but they did lead the article with “The Iron Chef and her wife….”

Homophobia still has a firm grip in our culture but I like these small pebbles of progress.  Editing out bias in media coverage is a good barometer that change, at whatever pace, is underway.  Over the years I’ve tended to seek out deliberately gay-friendly refuges, like an Olivia cruise or a week in Provincetown.  Several years ago I was looking for a place to take Winnie to dinner, and on a whim typed “best lesbian chef” into Google.  It’s not the best way to figure out if the food is good, but I was looking for a friendly environment.  To my surprise I found a list of “best lesbian chefs”.   I chose the only chef on the list located in Manhattan, and that’s how we came to fall in love with Anita Lo’s restaurant, Annisa.  Anita Lo has my vote as the best chef in New York and Annisa has become our celebration restaurant.

Winnie and I stopped by Annisa for a drink and appetizer a few weeks ago.  We are never organized enough to get reservations, but sitting at the bar meant that we could chat with Anita when she emerged occasionally from the kitchen.  She was glad to hear we had come from a fundraiser for the Audre Lorde project, and when we told her that Gloria Steinem had hosted the event at her apartment she immediately asked, “what did she serve?”  Winnie told her we’d eaten quiche and Anita started laughing.  “That’s really funny!” she said, shaking her head as she retreated to the kitchen.    Winnie laughed with Anita but I know, deep down, neither of us really knows why that’s funny.

Here’s the AOL headline:

Congratulations go out to Jennifer and Cat Cora on their baby announcement!

Marketing Values (not!)

“The urge for good design is the same as the urge to go on living”
- window display for Design Within Reach

A high end furniture design store in Manhattan’s Flatiron district stenciled this quote from a famous designer on their display window (see pic below).  I passed by it late on a Saturday evening.  A homeless person was huddled below the sign, creating a mini encampment in the freezing midnight air.  Visible from the sidewalk were bed frames on sale for just over $2,000.

Next to this design store is Fish’s Eddy, a housewares store that was displaying a stenciled plate of a floorplan, complete with “servants quarters”.  The store was papered over to look like it was the victim of the recession, when in fact the faux bankruptcy look was being used to simply promote a sale (see pic below).  This is an establishment that looks at recession and oppression and sees marketing opportunities.  Earlier that same day my daughter and I stumbled upon a favorite restaurant with a tax seizure sign posted on its windows.  The restaurant looked as if it had been abandoned just as the waiters were setting the tables for dinner.  “It’s like everyone was vaporized, like in the movies”, she said, sounding incredulous like the rest of her uneasy recession generation.

The novelist John Galsworthy wrote, “Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.”  I wonder if the marketing folks at Design Within Reach thought at all about the homeless and the millions of panicked households worried about “survival” when they stenciled the windows.  It must not have occurred to Fish’s Eddy that using the trauma of foreclosure and bankruptcy as a marketing gimmick might be, well, mean.  And the nostalgia plates with the floorplans that include “servants quarters”, especially in our Obama era of “hope and change”, must be targeted at those whose lives and legacies are not marred by class oppression.

Even before Bono’s (Red) campaign, everyone in the field of “buzz” was buzzing about the importance of values marketing.  The problem is, you’ve got to have a handle on some values worth celebrating if you are going to try and use values for your own marketing gain.  Bono’s got his eyes squarely on the elimination of AIDS in Africa.  The Design Within Reach exec’s must be looking inward at their own profit margin.  CEO Ray Brunner brings in about $1.2 million each year in compensation.  Among his directors is branding consultant Hilary Billings, co-founder of Red Envelope. The magazine Fast Company described Billings as someone who “mastered the art of creating “lifestyle brands” – products and services that forge an emotional connection with customers.”  Billings points to three factors that define a “lifestyle brand”: it makes life easier, it makes your world more stylish, and it is an orchestrated strategy that is fully formed at a brand’s launch.

The problem may be that marketing the luxury lifestyle needs to be redefined.  Or perhaps, thinking more radically, does the luxury lifestyle itself need to be reconsidered?  The idea of a $2,000 bed frame being “within reach” may be more symbolic of pre-recession excess than a reflection of smart brand management.

DWR’s stock price has plummeted from $4.50 last May to about $0.66 today.  The company is considering options like merger or sale.   So it may be that the company is thinking of its own death when it compares survival to furniture design.

CPR’s new arts project!

Camino PR has a new pro bono client!  We are thrilled to be helping Washington DC-based Schubert, Schubert & Schubert, a non-profit effort to make classical music more accessible.   Concerts are held later this month (March 20, 21, 22) at Georgetown University.

CPR is an active fan of the arts and arts education.  We hosted our first office concert last week when middle school student Tomas and his teacher Sean performed a guitar recital.  We commit the end of the workday every Tuesday to creative endeavors.  In the audience at the recital was CPR’s digital artist Mary Guidera, who many in New York have seen as one of the Caulfield Sisters, a popular independent band.  Mary hasn’t yet agreed to perform at Camino PR, but we still hold out hope.

Schubert, Schubert & Schubert has a long tradition of providing an opportunity for students to perform with the “stars” of chamber music.  An education connected to artistic endeavor is core to developing critical thinking and the kind of imagination that can improve our society.  Camino PR has been fortunate to gain insight from some of the nation’s leading thinkers on arts education, including Cyrus Driver from the Ford Foundation who was quoted last year in EducationNews.org:

“Learning in the arts infuses communities with a unique richness. The arts, music, dance, photography and the like, help bridge the divides of language and culture and promote community understanding.  They can expand our capacity for empathy by drawing people into the experiences of other people and cultures - vastly different from their own. There is a wonderful opportunity to create social bonds and social capital when communities share in both the creation and appreciation of works of art.  I guess you’ve gathered that this old economist, who once in middle school feared the arts, and who, like many in education saw the arts as marginal to a quality education, is now an acolyte of their transformative power in schools.”

If you have friends in Washington DC please spread the word about the Schubert concert series!

Be A Man

“Manhood” is back in.

Yesterday on the McLaughlin Group, journalist Monica Crowley summed up the Republican opposition to Obama’s stimulus package this way: “The Republicans rediscovered their manhood”.  This follows weeks of Illinoic Gov Blagojevich-induced rage about taking his lumps like a man, as expressed by Illinois State Senator Dan Cronin,

“It’s somewhat cowardly that he won’t take questions.  If he had something to say, he should have come down here like a man and faced the music.” The “manhood” sentiment is littered across the media world.  Today columnist Susan Antilla of Bloomberg gives advice to fallen financial giants, “So suck it up, be a man…”

This branding of “man” only begs the question, in opposition to what?  Be a man, not a squirrel?  Of course the opposite of acting like a man (a good thing - brave) would be acting like a woman (the wrong thing - cowardly).  And that can’t be good news for feminism.  California Governor Schwarzenegger doesn’t mask his insult to women – he has repeatedly used the term “girlie men” as a way to define the right kind of male behavior, as in “…if they don’t have the guts, I call them girlie men”.

The glut of “manhood” references have started resurging with new vigor.  But the backdoor insult to women remains largely unchallenged. Crowley’s generation hands the language down to younger generations of hopeful pundits.  A psychology student at UC Santa Barbara writes today in the school newspaper, “Steve Pappas, could you please grow a pair, be a man and accept that you lost the election?”

If women get gender branding advice, it’s usually about being a “lady”.  Entertainer Steve Harvey has jumped into the “lady” versus “man” advice with his new book, “Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man”.  Harvey postulates that men are most comfortable being recognized in the role of provider and protector.

I have a favorite picture of my son at the beach (see below) standing at the water’s edge.  I wonder what he is imagining for himself.  It would be helpful if, when I turn on CNN in our living room, he wasn’t hearing sexist stereotypes about what it means for him to be a  man.