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David Griner and The Social Path

If you totally trust the advice of Advergirl, no need to read on. Just click through this subscribe link and get a feed you're sure to love and thank me for. If you're tougher to convince, keep reading, I'll talk you into it.

It's been over a year and a half now since I hung up my blogging hat. No fanfare, no goodbye. I just wandered off after a decidedly questionable post on bug advertising.

Until, May of 07, when David Griner, a snarky AdFreak blogger, called me out on the disappearance. His "Where is Advergirl" post ended up flooding my inbox with "yeah, what the heck happened" notes and trackbacks from other bloggers echoing the sentiment. I was compelled to return to posting. Since then, David has been something of a big brother of blogging - peer pressuring me to try new social media (damn twitter) and calling bullshit when I head out too far into the land of ranting.

So, I'm very excited to tell you about his new blog: The Social Path.

TSP is a social media blog that tears down the jargon of our cliquey chat and replaces it with great examples, advice and ideas. More about it in David's own words:

Advergirl: Your latest brainchild - The Social Path - launched this week. What's the big idea behind it?

David: I love social media. I love talking about social media. But I've never really liked reading about social media. For every good blog on the topic, there are hundreds packed with vague rhetoric and self-promotion. We wanted to start an agency blog that was conversational, practical and digestible for the masses.

But to be honest, I just wanted a place to rant on the company's dime.

Advergirl: You write for advertising's leading publisher, plus have a growing family, a full-time ad job and a blog of your own, what made you decide to take on this new venture?

David: I seriously felt like my life was missing something. I love writing about cool and strange stuff for AdFreak, but I also wanted a place to talk at length about trends and technology. Yeah, it spreads me  little thinner, but I've gotten a lot of support from all three bosses: my creative director, the AdFreak editor and my wife. I forgot to check with the dog.

Advergirl: (Karen: If you want to contest the boss order there, we welcome your comment!) Anyway, David, who are you writing for this time around?

David: I'm trying to keep the luddites in mind. I want to demystify social media, make it seem less scary for businesses and ordinary people. But I still want it to be interesting for the people who already read tons of sites about networking, conversation, etc. I figure clients and potential clients probably fall somewhere between those two extremes.

Advergirl: The Social Path is pretty prominently sponsored by your home agency, Luckie & Co. Last I checked, your gig was copywriting there, not chief blogger. Is this launch the start of a new role for you?

David: Time will tell, I guess. For now, still contently plugging away as a copywriter.

Advergirl: I know we have a lot of readers who are interested in introducing their bosses, co-workers and clients to social media. What advice to you have for promoting and teaching social media?

David: You can talk all you want, but the easiest way is to actually help them set up a few accounts on sites like Facebook, Blogger or Twitter. Then walk them through the process of getting started. That's the toughest hurdle to get over. For that reason, I prefer one-on-one training instead of trying to convert the masses all at once.

Advergirl: Do you think every brand should embrace social media?

David: Embrace it? Probably not. But every brand should be experimenting with the possibilities and keeping an eye on trends. Last I checked, half of the Top 10 Web sites in the U.S. were social. That's a hell of a boat to miss.

Advergirl: Is social media marketing, customer service, product development, or something new entirely?   

David: Social media is just a way to communicate. But when companies use it, I think it should be seen as a mix of PR and customer service — except good.

Advergirl: What tool do you hope comes next?

David: I love the idea behind FriendFeed, but I hate the interface and I never end up using it. It would be great to have a site that easily combines all these other things I use: Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, etc. Lots of folks trying to do it, no one succeeding (yet).

Advergirl: What's the most un-social thing going on in social media today?

David: I still think about that MySpace suicide from time to time. It's becoming so easy for bullies to torment other kids online. Makes it more important than ever for parents and teachers to understand how all this technology works.

Advergirl: Now that you've spent some time with Lance, how would you weigh in on the Big Debate: Should he embrace the moniker Adverboyfriend? Or continue to seek his own identity?

David: I think he just needs to make Adverboyfriend his own, really feel out the potential. It worked for Dr. Girlfriend.

 

Ok, ready now? Visit the site. Or subscribe to the feed.

Breaking through: The power of direct mail

If you were out and about last night, you probably noticed one sure way to break through: burrito giveaways. Chipotle's free burrito event netted crowds stretched around multiple city blocks at the downtown locations here.

But, if you don't have a burrito bar built into your core business strategy, here's another suggestion:

Direct mail.

Sure, it sounds old school, but I'd argue that some of the most engaging DR work going on right now can be found among the newsprint and val-packs right in our mailboxes. It represents opportunity seized from the jaws of faux highlighters and foil starbursts. So attention will be paid!

My favorite is the new catalog work coming out of Neiman Marcus. This seen@nm series targets a younger audience with a more editorial style and breaks out of the usual catalog form factor with a tabloid shape and a great matte stock that just makes the sexy color pop. The quality and content feels exclusive. It not only breaks through -- I'm guessing it's a temporary keeper in a stack of recent issues of Vogue and The New Yorker in bedrooms around America.

My second favorite is totally local, although the concepts are paralleled nationally.

Local example. Take a look at this item:

Couple of buy local stickers and a business card from the Director of Dangerous Ideas at AreYouBrilliant.com. It came in a plain envelope, handwritten with my address and stamped with the brilliant logo.

I was curious and logged on to check it out. (Incidentally: logged on? Total adopter word. Who logs on anymore? Oh, wait, sorry Mack.)

Seems like community action, right? Nope. It's an insurance agent who specializes in local businesses. And, what's more - I wasn't even disappointed to find that out. The Web site features local businesses, tells their stories and positions Ryan Morgan (said director) as a really authentic partner to them.

Fantastic execution.

National example: HBO's True Blood.

This effort was definitely buzz marketing instead of social outreach, but it's still an interesting approach. A slew of other bloggers beat me to posing about it; so, I won't go too deep, but essentially I got a padded envelope in the mail that  contained a "free sample" of a new synthetic blood:

And a decidedly creepy overview of just what an innovation in SNACKING this new choice in blood would be.

The only URL in sight? This creepy destination.

Ok, you win, I'll Google. Turns out it's publicity for True Blood, a new show about vampires premiering the Fall. A name I'll definitely remember. And, an experience that created something between dumbfoundedness and curiosity.

Check out Yes but No but Yes for more.

Breaking through: "Crack the code" advertising

That was a term coined by fellow strategist Carey S in a last minute could-have-been-manic-were-we-not-so-intentionally-mellow brainstorm this winter. We were talking about what it is that makes sports ads like Jordan's Clock Tower break through? What takes them from being watched in prime time to being chatted about around the water cooler?

Our theory: It's the respect they pay their audience. They way they bring us in and make us feel clever. The way they reward us for the silly trivia we collect, the seasons of television we watch, the unique perspective we each have on the world

CTC advertising generally falls into two categories:

#1 You're like us.
These campaigns connect with us on a passionate level. They unpack the big things we believe in and serve them up in dramatic ways. They are the corollary to an inside joke - the secret handshake that only people like us would know.

• Example: The Become Legendary Campaign that W + K created for Nike/Jordan. The fourth in the series was this Clock Tower spot ("No Cinderallas") that played in the runup to the tournament and left big proud fans welling up on couches around the country:
  
  

• Example: The Economist. Although BBDO's long-standing well-written in red campaign is probably the clearest example, even the newer campaigns target the pride in target readers. The idea that their sense of savvy and their curiosity make them part of an elite group of global citizens. The sense that they are truly banded together by difference.
  
  

#2 You remember.
It's rewarding to be the first one to figure out the puzzle. To trump your sister by guessing the identity of the murderer halfway through the new episode of Law & Order. To run the board at the annual holiday Trivial Pursuit match.

These "you remember" ads engender similar competition. They tease and hide just enough to make us want to guess it first.

• Example: HP's delightful Personal campaign developed by Goodby, Silverstein and Partners that features a celebrity's hands revealing their online life. Only at the very end - after glimpses and clues - do we find out who's online life it really is.
  

• Example: Discovery Channel's I Love the World brand ad created by 72andSunny. Yeah, it's wildly addictive music, but behind that is the montage to rule all montages. Places, shows, animals. Any number of things to competitively guess at from across the living room. Hey, wasn't that the whale from season 4....?

How it's social: A fellow traveler at Bridge Worldwide has been writing a lot about "marketing with meaning" these past weeks. A concept that may sound philanthropic, but is really just social. It's about creating engagement and content & experiences that people actually want, rather than forcing our messages into aggravated ears.

If you should go looking around online for people's comments about the Jordan spot, you'll find mentions of shivers, of welling up, of wanting to get out and practice. For the Discovery Channel spot, texted sing-alongs. For HP, personal takeoffs. The list goes on. The engagement in these "crack the code" campaigns is truly emotional. Pride, joy, curiosity. Uniquely human. Perfectly translated.

Challenge to Columbus: Feed the Mid-Ohio Foodbank

Mid-Ohio FoodBank keeps the food shelves stocked for a network of more than 530 emergency food pantries, soup kitchens, emergency shelters, senior dining centers, day care and after-school enrichment programs.

In this challenging economic year, people who gave last year are receiving this year. Which makes the annual Operation Feed more important than ever.

For 27 years Operation Feed has provided food for needy families in central Ohio.  Every year, local businesses, government agencies, school children, and civic groups team up to donate critically needed food items and dollars during this community-wide food drive.

Ologie, the Columbus Dispatch, Resource Interactive and others are already collecting cans and checks (Ologie's Givologie campaign poster is above).

So this is my challenge to the rest of Creative Columbus - get involved. Start a food drive at your agency and collect what you can to take care of our community.

And, because I have this handy soapbox, I specifically challenge these Creative Columbus leaders to start Operation Feed drives at their own agencies:

John Randle at Mlicki
Gary Moneysmith at Paul Werth (ACCEPTED THE CHALLENGE! THANK YOU!)
Lara Kretler at Fahlgren (ACCEPTED THE CHALLENGE! THANK YOU!)
Becky Ziegler at SBC Advertising
Billy Fischer at B&A (ACCEPTED THE CHALLENGE! THANK YOU!)
Patti Cullen at engauge

Breaking through: Asheville supports the 5-day weekend

We are - in a word - overwhelmed by choice. So much to read and do and participate in. A lot of it clever and intriguing and really kind of delightful.  To get your message heard, to get past our savvy consumer filters, you need a special kind of engagement - the kind that breaks through.

In this series, I'll share examples of brands that have broken through and show how they used the principles of social to do it.

Kicking off with: Luckie & Company's Five Day Weekend campaign for the Asheville (NC) Convention and Tourism Bureau:

What they were up against: Like most cities that never have red carpet events or celebrity homes to happen by, Asheville has an awareness challenge. How do they make sure vacation planners everywhere know how much great stuff they have to offer?

For years, Asheville went about tourism advertising in the usual way - visit Asheville for X, Y and Z. Calls trickled in. Weekend vacations were had. But, Asheville wanted something more - longer vacations, more interest, higher engagement.

So they challenged a number of agencies - including Luckie - to come up with the idea that would help them break through.

What they did: Luckie knew that it was going to take more than bucolic photography of green mountains and the promise of a ride on the rapids to put Asheville on the map. So they looked for an angle that would get people talking about something people are naturally passionate about: getting a break from their demanding worklife.

The pitch & the eventual campaign was called Friends of the Five Day Weekend. And it was a call to stop working longer and harder. It was time to take leisure back.

Through newspaper ads, posters, sandwich boards, TV spots, and radio ads, Luckie drove the curious and overworked to learn more on a Web site, sign petitions of support and even attend rallies in key cities.

What happened next: 7000 people signed an online petition that was sent on to Congress and the presidential primary contenders. Hundreds joined homegrown Five Day Weekend groups on Facebook. Average people bought and wore the brand. They not only attended the planned rallies, but some even set up their own rally. Hundreds of bloggers - including the feisty Donald - blogged. And - even with no concentrated media outreach effort - Michael Medved invited the campaign spokesman on for a lengthy debate about the economics of the issue. Fox News did a national piece on it, focusing on overwork but also interviewing the head of Asheville tourism. And, the AP ran with it.

Importantly, the story of Asheville came through. Not only as the transparent sponsor of the "movement," but also as a place where people do care about the very real issue of work-life balance.

Oh, and there's this: long after the campaign ran, this little gem popped up.

How it's social: This campaign has literal social elements - like the Facebook groups, blogging, etc. But its success is arguably built on the solid social principles of what makes WOM happen. To borrow from Steve Knox, CEO of Tremor, it was a story that was true to the core of the brand and disruptive to the conversation. The kind of social marketing that creates results, not just impressions. It was something that people could care about and it was easy for them to pass on.

Break through? Absolutely.

 

Dogears: Good stuff I pre-read for my favorite readers

• In my continuing search for a responsive brand illustration that does not include Jeff Jarvis, I give you Francois Gossieaux and Lenovo. Ok, not quite the same ring as Jarvis and Dell, but I think it's worth working with...


• Why you shouldn't be afraid of customer reviews. Joshua Porter tackles all the C-suite objections head on.


• Dangers and opportunities of the crowdsourced company. Making me remember how much I miss F*ucked company, Jeremiah Owyang digs deep on humans talking about unmentionables ... salary, process, internal memos, etc.


• New-to-me blog I dig. Alcone's Consumer Lab. Basically the flash card version of blog posting. Nice, digestible little blurbs of ideas and inspiration.


• All that's new is Google. Google merges online analytics with TV measurement (how effective are your broadcast campaigns)? And provides totally free 411 service. And free Wikis. And, gloriously, Streetview is now live in Columbus. Not too much word on the new Google phone yet, but might be worth holding off on the iPhone for...


• If you're up for a little spec marketing, Innocentive has a few video and messaging challenges in their Business and Enterprise section.


• And because we all have jobs and lives away from them - dig this great piece in Sunday's New York Times: When Mom and Dad Share It All. How do you truly split domestic duties? Spouses who are determined to adhere to “equally shared parenting” do it minute by minute.

Get Interactive: On measurement

Ok, let's wrap this series up with a playful jaunt into metrics and measurement.

Getting this tricky strategic quandary right requires two things:

1. Context
2. Creative Thinking

First, on context. What you want to know is how similar projects have performed in the past. Preferably how a bunch of them performed so that you can create a bell curve of expectation and identify specific tactics that will help you out perform the pack.

There are easy ways and hard ways to get this information. Unfortunately, the newer you are (and less investment money you have), the harder even the easy ways are.

As soon as you can afford it, invest in great competitive measurement tools. Comscore and Nielson have industry leading ones. Essentially they give you a short cut into the reports all your client's competitors are looking at ... from the amount of traffic, to the kind of engagement, to the time of day, to where people went before and after visiting that site. It's a glorious geek out.

Until then. Boot strap. First up - Quantcast offers a great free search tool for metrics of major sites. And,  a number of the big providers (like Compete) have blogs that offer a lot of proprietary data you can snag, search and archive.

Still don't have what you want? The next tier of research is case studies. On Marketing Sherpa. On agency sites. In Business Week. Get crafty. And think big. If your direct competitors aren't on the list, find companies that are either in similar categories or that tried similar tactics with an audience like yours.

Now onto creative thinking.

The easiest metric in the world is hits. Easiest because virtually any tool can track it and easiest because advertising people can quickly understand and compare it (it's the closest Web equivalent to the print gold standard: impressions). But, is it the right standard?

Imagine you're selling your house. Do you want to know how many people saw the for sale sign? Or how many people were interested in what's inside?

Your job at the agency is to recommend a metric that is directly linked to the sites goals and offers a unique insight into the audience or the tools you created for them.

A few sexier metrics:

1. Bounce rate. That's the percent of initial visitors who leave the site after seeing only one page. And a high rate tends to suggest that the marketing doesn't match up with the product. Whatever they expected to see, they didn't find it. And, weren't compelled to look further.
   What to use: Google Analytics


2. Conversion. How many people did what we wanted them to do? Buy or signup or play a game?
   What to use: Internal databases + Google Analytics


3. Sharing. How many people saw enough value in the content to pass it on? How many posted reviews, blogged, emailed, etc.
   What to use: Nielsen Buzz Metrics


4. Engagement. How long did people stay on the site? How many pages did they look at? Do they spend time with content meant for passionate customers?
   What to use: Google Analytics


5. Reputation. How is this campaign effecting how we're known? Is the overall coverage and conversation positive or negative - in what categories, against what parts of our story?
   What to use: Perception Metrics


6. Comparative trends. How does our indexed traffic (or other metric) look against our key competitors? Are we closing the gap?
   What to use: Comscore + Google Analytics

Ok, get out there and measure.

Get Interactive: 10 things you'll be glad you thought of

Sometimes interactive projects dramatically dissolve into mayhem. More often, they get tripped up on little goofs that are quickly blown way out of proportion. From my years of experience fielding late night / early morning irate phone calls (from clients and colleagues alike), I share with you 10 things you'll be glad you thought of:

1. Understand your client's technology environment. Not the servers. The desktops. Find out what browser? What version? What plug ins? What internet connection? And test the heck out of the site in that environment. In most cases, if the site doesn't work at HQ, your clients will assume it doesn't work anywhere.


2. If the site is complex, consider creating a content strategy. Start with the site map that you probably already have handy. Then sketch out all the raw content you'll need by page. (For example, newsletter signup page -  sample newsletter, privacy policy, etc.)
   
   Then, importantly, assign a name to each bucket of content. Not a writer. A content source. Who is in charge of tracking down all the white papers? The policies? The product lists? The prices?
   
   Tip: Think about what questions people will have on each page and use the content list to answer them.
   


3. Change of address plan: If the new site will be on a new server or in a new hosting environment, put a plan in place early for transferring the DNS and make sure you set expectations on the move. Let me explain the relevant terms:
   
   
   • A domain name is an easy way for people to get to a site - it's the "www." handle. Think: www.advergirl.com
   • The DNS (or domain name system) is basically the yellow pages of the Internet. It translates that friendly domain name into an IP address
   • An IP address is - simply put - a number-based computer address. Think: 172.31.255.255
   
   If you do move to a new server, you need to update that record in the yellow pages (i.e. update the DNS). This process can be a bear because you have to find the original records for the domain name ... where it was purchased, who has the rights to change it, etc. AND it takes up to 72 hours (usually 24) to "propagate" across the Internet. That means it takes that long to update all the local yellow pages. So, some people will see the new site right away (if their local yellow pages are updated first) and other people may not see it until days later. Oh, and, love this - there's no way to control that.


4. Think about search terms early. Make lists of how you want people to find you. Think of other ways they might express those same ideas. If you're working with Google on advertising, ask them for similar search terms. Go long. Then cull down.
   
   Get to 15-25 words that are important to the identity of the Web site. Lay them out like a tag cloud so that you can see which are most important.
   
   Once you get the client's buyin, arm your writer, your programmer, your Flash guru and your designers with the list. The writer will prioritize those terms in headlines and top-of-the-fold content, the programmer in code and tags, the designers in image names, etc.
   
   Trust me: It's a royal pain to retrofit later


5. Look for hardcoded links. One of the trickiest things to find when testing in a staging environment is hardcoded links. The ones that point to a specific server in the development environment rather than just agnostically referring to whatever computer they might be on.
   
   Two ways to catch them. Ideally: test the entire site in the live environment before you do #3 above. Or: Ask the programmers to run a painstaking search for the URL of the server they're working on. It should never appear in the code.


6. Understand your client's compliance obligations. Retail has to be ADA compliant. Most university's are W3C. Regardless of the protocol, it impacts everything from the timeline to the budget. Better to know upfront than hack it in later.


7. Set aside hours and budget for production graphics. Just because the main site design is approved doesn't mean there isn't tons of design work ahead. Headers, extensions, icons, you name it. Rolling that design out to every page and every application will create a library of JPGs. Make sure there's time to create them.


8. Ask your programmers to document their logic in the code. This one's about a pesky little thing called turnover. Either within your own staff or of the files to the client.
   
   Remember me mentioning how programmers are some of the most creative people you'll ever meet? Well, that's because they're writers and innovators in complex foreign languages. And, if you think art directors are a little confrontation about the 'right' way to do something, just put a couple of these tigers in a room together.
   
   The purpose of adding notes to the code is so that another person - at a completely separate time - can go back and understand the storyline. Can pick up where the first writer left off.


9. Test the goal, not just the path. A very cool user experience chic I know tells a great story about how everyone was sure this consumer financial app worked perfectly. Lots of people used it. Completed transactions. Didn't complain.
   
   Well, a few people thought it was confusing and went so far as to head out into the field with video cameras and the street addresses of a few willing customers.
   
   Once inside, these ad hoc ethnographers gave the customers a list of transactions to complete online. Each completed them and thought they were correct. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM DID IT WRONG. Screwed up their own accounts.
   
   Use in-person (even make-it-work testing with others in your agency) to make sure that users can not only blissful nav around working pages, but also successfully complete the available tasks.


10. Last one. Make a cheat sheet for you and your client. The logins to admin tools, reporting, etc. PLUS a tree of emergency contacts and the protocol and response time you've agreed to. Nothing - nothing - will escalate error to emergency faster than a desperate client unable to get in contact with the people who can solve her problem.

Get Interactive: Starting off a project right

Documentation can be a powerful tool or a project killer. Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in writing it all down that we whittle away the precious hours we have for creation. So, if you have high demands and little time to meet them, here are the six critical strategic drivers and four crucial technical requirements to define and document at the start of every project...

Critical Strategic Drivers:

You Audience:

1. Who are they?
2. What do they do online now?
3. What will engage them to interact with us?

Your Client:

4. What is the overall business or marketing goal the Web site will support?
5. How will success be measured?
6. How will we drive traffic to the new site?

Crucial Technical Questions

1. Where will it be hosted?
2. What development (platform, database, language) preferences do you have?
3. What information (behavior, opinion, contact info) do we want to collect?
4. What will we the site or its content need to integrate with?

Diagnosing the Boys Club

More on the Get Interactive series later this week, but - true to my distracted nature - I'm going to wander off on another tangent right in the middle of it. And a fiery tangent at that. Let's kickoff this week by talking about gender.

Listening to Hillary Clinton's concession speech this weekend, I was glad to hear her finally speak frankly about the barriers that her candidacy had the opportunity break down. In perhaps her most memorable remark she talked about blazing a path for the women who will follow her:

Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it. And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.

It's interesting in a time when gender inequality is still such a prevalent experience, how little it's actually spoken about. Particularly in our industry. We are at once liberal and progressive. Yet, still, on average, paying women less than men for the same jobs. Giving them less access to true leadership. Packing new business teams with guys in suits. Shorting maternity leave. Etc. But, to talk about it ... no, it's unmentionable.

I have a theory on why.

Discrimination - and, I'm sorry, it's a tough word that lots of people have warned me against using, but it is what we're talking about - has become increasingly benign. So subconscious and blandly everyday that it's nearly impossible to work up the fervor to rally against.

The intent is simply not there. It's so built into our cultures that it goes un-talked about. Passed from one supervisor to the next. Insidious harm affably wrapped.

So what do you say we strip it down?

My girlfriends and I have worked at all kinds of agencies and companies. And for all kinds of bosses. Personally, I worked on the smoking floor of a converted factory for a 600-pound man deep in the Midwest AND in a gorgeous custom-designed loft space for one of the second city's leading lady power brokers. Our careers have taken us across the country and back. And, in them, we've found four key ways that men create "boys clubs."

Boys Club defined: Group of men whose routine and systematic actions - intended or circumstantial - limit the daily success and career potential of their female peers. These 'clubs' are not always culture-wide. They can exist in smaller teams or departments.

Four Ways to Diagnose a Possible Boys Club:

1. Access: Agencies tend to be social places. Ones where long lunches are had, golf is played, after-work drinks are enjoyed, etc. The challenge comes when those social outings are both open to men only AND are occasions when business is done.
   
   When everything from department structures to project plans are routinely being discussed in forums women don't have access to, it creates discrimination.
   
   Many women would go farther and say that just the fact of the social outings - business or no - is access-based discrimination because men have the opportunity to build personal relationships and different kinds of respect with agency leaders than women do. It's a fair argument in a business that is based so much on gut instinct and the belief that who you know = who you can trust.
   
   The key concepts here are routinely and systematically. It's not one guy taking two other guys out to lunch. It's a leader routinely socializing exclusively with the men on his team and systematically excluding women in the same / similar positions.


2. Stacking: One of my least favorite things to see is an "About our leaders" section of an agency Web site populated with 15 guys all wearing the same suit.
   
   It's common when talking about gender in an agency to mention what percentage of women work there - as in, women make up 45% of our staff. The trick is in asking - which 45%? Discrimination by stacking happens when the women on the team (routinely and systematically) hold only the lowest-ranking, lowest-paying spots. They're interns, assistants, entry levels. And the men (routinely and systematically) are the managers, supervisors and leaders. That's not equal hiring. At best, it's tokenism. At worst, it's evidence of a belief that women are less capable and have less value.


3. Communication: A woman we recently interviewed for our strategy group had previously worked at a very well-known regional school for girls. We asked her to make the elevator argument for single-gender education and one of the points she made was that women answer questions differently in class. Men tend to put their hands up right away and shoot from the hip. Women tend to think about it for ~12 seconds. They think conceptually, consider lots of different angles. Come to a conclusion.
   
   I loved that illustration because I've always thought that cultures that communicate by yelling, fighting and jocking for position are discriminatory, but I couldn't quite explain why. It's a more masculine way of communicating. One that rewards one gender-specific style over another one.
   
   This is a discrimination that is worse for the doer. You miss out on a lot of great ideas and insights by steamrolling over your peers. And on a lot of good partnerships by screaming at them.


4. Entertainment. Apparently it still has to be said. Emailing pornography. Making lists of the hottest women in the office. Talking about your peer's breasts or ass or propensity for, well, you know. Yeah, that's all wrong. It creates attitudes of disrespect and otherness in cultures that by-and-large already have enough problems.

I mention these things for a couple of reasons.

First, because - in general - I really don't believe the men who are part of these boys club cultures mean any harm. Meaning: If made aware of their behaviors, they may be predisposed to stop.

And, second, because while I've self-selected out of cultures like these, not everyone has or can - so, it's important to talk about. To keep challenging what's right and fair. Better than it used to be isn't enough.