And here I thought it was weight…

“Ageism is our society’s last acceptable area of bigotry.”

The article is old, but a good read, for a reality check on how B2C has got to account for the demographic swell that is the Boomers.

Amplifying Your Effectiveness

(old post, but another link I need to save!)

This past autumn, there was an event held in Phoenix called the Amplifying Your Effectiveness leadership conference. Here’s the overview from the conference planners:

He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My CEO

Thought-provoking article on the connection between image and promotion. I can be a kneejerk liberal (“can be?”) (hush.), so when I realized this was an op-ed on weight discrimination in the workplace, I was prepared to sputter. But, I think the author handled it very well.

Despite the notion from an article at the Wall Street Journal’s career site that

Weight bias is one of the few prejudices that hasn’t yet become politically unpopular, and companies whose handbooks proclaim their discrimination-free hiring processes are often the cleverest at crafting rejection messages for people who “don’t look right” for a job. The best way to handle the weight issue is to avoid companies where it appears to be an issue and co-opt any concerns a recruiter or client might have about your size.

…I think we’re going to see a lot more discussion about this — and in the near future, as weight discrimination in the workplace heats up as an HR issue. But the conversation is going to be slow to spread; it’s very tricky to publicly say things like “attractive people are more successful” without getting kneejerk opposition and a deluge of PC for PC’s sake.

Managing Morale

Brian Sharp is a game developer in San Francisco, for Electronic Arts (home of my beloved Sim City).

And, he had this to say about his company, last spring on his blog.

Of course my first thought is, “Nobody in my company better think they can get away with that kind of public slagging.” (But, that’s easily solved with a detailed external communications policy.)

But my lasting thought is, “I don’t want anyone in my company to be this unhappy.”

When he wrote this, Brian was clearly experiencing a dangerous morale level, the kind that can only come from too much pointless work and not enough support and recognition.

A Bit Woo-Woo For Your Taste

Am feeling professionally blocked, these last few days, as I have let the Internet be a place where I go to receive bad feelings, instead of a tool I use to do better business and make more money and maybe read about sports. Additionally, feeling conflicted and weak because I let it.

So just now, I’m taking a break from Photoshop and pop into the reader, and the only two new feeds are these:

Dear Clyde Smith, You Don’t Know Much About Experiential Marketing, Do You?

The whole reason I started posting here was a compulsion to opine on the new experiential marketing blog at Fast Company, by Clyde Smith.

One post in and I’m underwhelmed. Annnnnd, having been on the receiving end, I can say with pride that it’s the inalienable right of anyone who publishes on the Internet to be critiqued by total strangers. So, here goes:

1. Put the thesaurus down. Your 75-cent-word-itis makes the page blur. All that overblown vocab sounds like a dumb person trying to act intellectual.

Quoted for Truth

“The difference between salad and garbage is timing.”

said Harry Joiner.

There is a profundity here and I just have to figure out how to apply it to my own path.

Why Marketing Should Make the User Manuals

(old post from Nov. 5, 2006, but I need this link!)

Anyone interested in user experience should bookmark Creating Passionate Users, a great UI blog.

Then, read the post, Why Marketing Should Make the User Manuals. (At the very least, look at this oh-so-true graphic illustration.)

Why do so many companies treat potential users so much better than existing users? Think about it. The brochure is a thing of beauty, while the user manual is a thing of boredom. The brochure gets the big budget while the manual gets the big index. What if we stopped making the docs we give away for free SO much nicer than the ones the user paid for?

What if, instead of seducing potential users to buy, we seduced existing users to learn?

Now, you’re dead wrong if you think I’m lobbying for the manual/documentation piece to move into the marketing stack. I’m not a technical writer and have no plans to incorporate that skill set into my existing one.

Botany-tastic!

The whole vine/floral/botanical/thornament design trend is finally now really hitting the mass market — notably, Macy’s is using it, Food Network is using it, it was all over the mall this Christmas. (Myself, I tried to use Jason Gaylor’s Photoshop brushes, but my skillz couldn’t hang, so I had to wait for a WP template.) (Hey, lookee there, speaking of WP templates — no fewer than seven of the 20 or so blog styles that one can choose in the free WordPress.com set-up feature a botanical silhouette.)

Here’s Jessica Helfrich’s fine essay on the botanical thing.

[ed. 1-5-07: Okay, have just looked at the results of the iStockPhoto design contest for their holiday party invitation, and counted notable botanical/thornament elements in at least 10% of all submissions. And, iStock is using it as a major element of their email newsletter header right now. I wonder how long this thing will have legs?]