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Top of Mind Thursday Memo Archive
Top of Mind Thursday, March 18, 2021: Having a Bad Day
Last night, eight people at three different massage spas were murdered in the Atlanta, GA. Six of the eight victims were Asian; the suspect in custody is White.
Supposedly, the killer told police he was trying to fight a sex addiction by targeting places that might “tempt” him. The fact that he specifically went to Asian spas and shot Asian women is suspicious–in the midst of a pandemic that the former US president again this week called “the China virus.”
Asian Americans have been unfairly targeted as somehow causing or spreading COVID-19. Hate crimes against this demographic group spiked 150% in the year since the pandemic began–nearly 3800 events were recorded, and that’s likely only a fraction of what actually occurred. Even in the Bay Area, with a substantial Asian population, there has been violence against Asian Americans in San Francisco, Oakland, and other neighborhoods.
Yet, the police spokesman who addressed the press last night said of the gunman, “He was having a bad day.”
Really?
When you’re having a bad day, you might snap at your spouse or significant other, be intolerant to your kids, act rudely to a grocery clerk, or even cut someone off on the freeway. But someone who deliberately murders innocent people at three different locations (and appears to have been headed south to Florida to wreak even more violence), is not having a bad day. They’re allowing unfounded bias and poor judgment to convince them to commit unspeakable crimes. It’s not their day that’s bad, it’s their character.
Trivializing a crime like this helps no one–except, perhaps, others with the same sick ideas. We all need to stand up and speak out for this group and others that are unfairly targeted because of their race, religion, ethnicity, or country of origin.
March 26, the anniversary of the Naturalization Act of 1790 has been designated as a day of peaceful protest against Asian American hatred and violence. Regardless of your ethnicity, it’s time to stand up and support our friends and neighbors.
It’s time to give bigots a bad day.
Contact me to find out how you can get heard above the noise–even in a crisis situation.
Check out our marketing thought leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
.
Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday, March 11, 2011 : What a Difference a Year Makes
This week, we mark the one year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Exactly a year ago, we were overcoming the shock of learning a deadly disease was about to ravage not just a few countries, but the entire globe. The world as we knew it began to change dramatically.
Since then, over 520,000 Americans alone have died from COVID-19 and nearly 29 million people became infected. We were introduced to the concept of social distancing, learned the meaning of WFH, the pros and cons of remote learning for teaching kids, and how to spell Zoom. As many as 18 million people were put out of work at one point, and 8 million people slipped into poverty at a result of the pandemic. And no one could find any toilet paper!
But there have been bright spots in this gloominess. An unprecedented global collaborative effort resulted in the creation of multiple safe and effective vaccines in an extremely short period of time. We’ve learned how mask-wearing prevents infection. We’ve developed a much better understanding of the importance of those lower-paid workers who keep the economy running. We’ve even given them a much classier name: essential workers.
We’ve seen entrepreneurship and creativity flourish. We’ve seen the incredible dedication of medical personnel and first responders. We’ve seen communities come together to help and support those in need.
As we move to what’s next, what lessons will we learn? What habits are worth keeping, and what behaviors should we not ever tolerate? What innovations should we continue to adopt and where are we better off going back to the way things were done before all this started?
Where will be next March? What difference will a year make?
Contact me to find out how you can get heard above the noise–even in a crisis situation.
Check out our marketing thought leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
.
Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday, March 3, 2021: If I Ran The Zoo, This is What I Would Do
This week, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced they would no longer be publishing six books by the popular children’s author because they contain images that are racially insensitive.
The titles, including And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street, If I Ran The Zoo, and four others, were published in the early 1950s. Times have changed. Images that were considered acceptable 70 years ago are no longer appropriate today. Africans and Asians were portrayed with features that perpetuate negative stereotypes of these groups.
But there’s more to Zoo than just the illustrations. If you haven’t read this recently (or at all), the story is about young Philip McGrew. On a visit to the zoo, Philip decides he’d like to let all of the standard animals go free and replace them with the most unusual, most exotic Seuss-imagined animals instead.
We always saw this as a story of inclusion–even if you were different or unusual, there was a place for you and someone who would love you in spite of your peculiarities. It was perfectly OK to not be a lion or a tiger, but a Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill instead–in fact, maybe it could be even better.
Maybe the right thing to do is to not totally ban the book, but to offer it in context–similar to what HBO MAX did with the film Gone With the Wind. There are lessons to be learned here–how mores evolve, what changes we need to make to be appropriate for today’s society, as well as the fact that there can still be value in something that is flawed. Use this as an example to teach school children of how we as a society learn and grow.
That’s what I’d do, Philip McGrew. If I ran the zoo.
Contact me to find out how you can get heard above the noise–even in a crisis situation.
Check out our marketing thought leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
.
Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com
Top of Mind Thursday, February 25, 2021: Want Fry’s With That?
This week, Silicon Valley-based Fry’s Electronics announced it was closing all its remaining stores and shutting down operations immediately.
This wasn’t a total surprise, because Fry’s had been shuttering stores for the last couple of years. Inventory was limited in those stores that remained open.
What was special about Fry’s? Long before there was Best Buy or Amazon or even ecommerce, Fry’s was the place we visited to get anything and everything related to electronics. Yes, you could buy a complete computer system, but you could also buy all the individual parts to build your own computer from scratch. You could also buy music and movies, appliances, cell phones, the latest gadgets, and even a good array of snack food.
Going to Fry’s was a Silicon Valley experience. The employees were dressed in starched white shirts and ties, but somehow they’d never caught on to the concept of customer satisfaction. They were usually quite knowledgeable, but not very friendly. Sometimes, it was obvious you were bothering them. But there was no better place to get what you needed in one large store.
At one point Fry’s had $2.3 billion in sales, 14,000 employees and 34 stores. Most stores had a theme–like a Western outpost or a Mayan temple or a space ship.
What happened? Quite simply, they missed the cue on ecommerce. Fry’s had an online store, but it was never state-of-the-art. Other more aggressive competitors breezed by them. With Amazon Prime, why would anyone trek to Fry’s and wander the aisles looking for exactly what they needed? The answer is, they wouldn’t.
Fry’s missed the cue that what their customers wanted had changed. By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late. Their business model was fried. RIP.
Contact me to find out how you can get heard above the noise–even in a crisis situation.
Check out our marketing thought leadership podcasts and the video trailer for my book, Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing that Matters.
.
Let us help your business rise to the top.
linda@popky.com
(650) 281-4854
www.leverage2market.com