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Top of Mind Thursday Memo Archive
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