Long story short, the ladette website nzgirl has launched a 'campaign' purporting to 'raise awareness' for breast cancer, paying $1000 dollars per 50 photos of readers' breasts uploaded to their site.
Over the years we've had astroturfing, greenwashing, pinkwashing - and now we have boobwashing. The site claims it's all in a good cause. The site fails to say exactly which breast cancer charity they will be paying the money to. They also trumpet the fact, via Twitter and elsewhere, they have 'removed' advertising around the publication page. Yeah right. Big deal. It is still a cynical and distorted means to drive traffic to the site - the only 'awareness' raising being done here is for nzgirl, its website and the long-term ad rate it will be able to charge on the strength of distorted visitor numbers.
I've lost several nearest-and-dearest to breast cancer and currently count among my closest friends two survivors and one mid-fight. I asked them - and those around them - what they thought of this slapstick and juvenile enterprise, thinking maybe it was just me, maybe I'd got a bit set in my ways. Their unanimous verdict was the same as mine - it is unethical, undignified and unacceptable.
nzgirl has accused detractors and critics of being 'PC' - well yes, I am - Perfectly Cynical in my view of the means, motives and outcomes for this pathetically purile publicity promotion.
To me, it is sadly proof that the young and the bright among us can still manage to stoop to the nasty, tawdry 20th (even 19th) century Phineas T Barnum stunt school of cheap publicity.
nzgirl has succeeded in creating a circus today with the media as ringmaster and the unwitting - and probably well-meaning - supporters the dancing bares.
In many ways, it's a sad indictment of our society. Long after the circus has left town, the oglers (probably the same ones who line the streets for the Boobs on Bikes debacle every year) will still be pushing up the visitor numbers at NZ Girl, which has effectively bought itself a peepshow for a few grand. New Zealand girls and women deserve better than this, as do all those who have and continue to battle this disease.
PS: I've come back to this post this evening, having read two other blog posts on the same subject. First from Lance Wiggs and second, via @CateOwen's tweet, some great observations from Boganette. Both well worth a read.
Cri-du-coeur for real communication as Cloud outage crashes confidence
Last week - and this weekend - saw major outages at Amazon and Sony. Gamers hoping to get down to some serious wins over Easter were struck by the fail - highlighted here on the Playstation blog, while Amazon's super fail affected sites far and wide, most notably, Quora, Hootsuite and Reddit.
Amazon's latest health reports show that things have improved since the problem occurred and, realisitically, this kind of thing is bound to happen as increasing numbers take to the Cloud as a means to manage server demand. Mistakes happen, sites get attacked, someone unplugs the wrong connection. What counts is the ability to keep customers, users and other stakeholders informed, up-to-date and confident that you can fix the problem as quickly as possible.
If your web presence is your main communication channel and you are rendered invisible by someone else's crash, what can you do? Hidden among the acres of copy written in the last few days, probably the most useful is over at ZDNet, where Phil Wainewright has some salutary lessons for the user.
But what of the providers themselves? What lessons should they learn? The greatest cri-du-coeur has been that Amazon failed to communicate clearly and effectively with its customers during the crisis. Personally, I'm not surprised. Without exception, today's web giants are, I believe, appallingly bad at communicating with their users. For many years they were able to shield themselves behind remote access walls, responding only to emails (eventually), with very little human contact (if at all) and, in latter years, using minimal statements on blogs and webwalls to update users in a crisis. But believe me boys, (as mostly boys you are) a blog post does not mean you have 'communicated', created trust, understanding or cemented the necessary forgiveness to maintain your licence to operate.
Anyone who has ever tried to communicate directly with Facebook, Google, Amazon or other large web corporates will know exactly the level of frustration I am talking about. In a world where instant two-way communication is the lifeblood of a system that champions trust, engagement, transparency and the user as the vital ingredients of the service mix, our web giants are lacking in their ability to generate and maintain the kind of real relationships they tout so readily on the global stage but which they spectacularly fail to deliver at a user level.
Their technology may be great but the business model - as far as their public relations and communications is concerned - is more akin to the impenetrable walls of corporate non-communication circa 1950. And we all know how that turned out.
Some day soon, the big guys are going to have to wake up to the fact that they can no longer hide behind nerdy geekdom when it comes to good communications practice. If they don't, then some day soon, they'll suddenly find their licence to operate withdrawn by the users, customers and stakeholders they fail.
Fabulous - if fixable - code is not enough. You have to talk, respond and act and engage - just like the rest of us.
Posted at 02:58 PM in Action required, Comment, Communication, crisis communications, Culture, digital life, Internet, public relations, real life, relationships, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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