And well—the longer I have this blog, the longer I dislike that advice. I have my list of blog subscriptions, as do we all. They range from "pretty popular" to "small fry" to everything in between; they're about all kinds of subjects, because I'm interested in all kinds of things. The ones I enjoy the most cover a broad range of topics, but they all have one thing in common: they are personal. They are personal and they are authentic.
They also break those aforementioned rules. Sure, not all of them, and not all of the time, but they do. They stray from their stated purpose, they use some four-letter words, or they convey any emotion that isn't unflappable Pollyanna optimism.
So I've been at crossroads lately: do I want this blog to sell jewelry, or do I want this blog to share my writing? I love writing. I love words. I have another (private) blog that I've updated faithfully for almost ten years now. I don't want to feel stifled by some sense that if I were a good blogger I would/wouldn't do X. I just want to answer to one standard only: am I writing something that I would want to read?
You won't notice it much, probably, but I will. So, to inaugurate this minor decision of mine, a rant that normally I may not have shared otherwise.
I hate sports. I have come to grudgingly admit baseball into the cockles of my heart, but that's about it. Anything else could disappear tomorrow and I would not be able to muster the energy to give a single fuck. This goes doubly for football, a sport that often seems more like a religion than, well, religion. It doesn't come as a shock, then, that I didn't watch the Super Bowl. (And watching the Super Bowl "for the ads"? Are you bonkers? "Yes, I love these intrusions into my life, shrilly trying to sell me crap I don't need! Now that's entertainment!")
Except, of course, it was on the family TV during dinner, so I tuned out for a while and let the flickering squawk box wash over me.
And then the ad for GoDaddy came on.
I mean, I shouldn't be surprised, right? GoDaddy ads have been awful forever (so the Internet tells me), after all. But this was the first one I'd ever seen, since I avoid television, the Super Bowl, and advertising like the plague. It's a good thing, too, because if I didn't I'm sure my stress levels would be through the roof and I'd need to be on some hardcore hypertension medicine.
The ad, for those of you who missed it, was about how GoDaddy is somehow both smart and sexy: "smart" and "sexy" being represented by the most stereotypical of male computer nerds and Bar Refaeli, respectively. The punchline to this being that Refaeli and Jesse Heiman share a long, sloppy kiss that's clearly going for the gross-out factor, with sound effects and everything.
It blows my mind that enough people in GoDaddy's PR department seem to think their "let's keep offending people and objectifying women!" scheme is worth repeating year after year. I don't know the numbers; maybe it garners them sales. It won't from me (which is too bad because I'd like to get a real domain name registered for this blog). One short ad managed to:
- reinforce the long-running media notion of men as competent "doers" and women as passive window dressing;
- reinforce the long-running media image that only unbelievably attractive young women like Bar Refaeli exist in the media world;
- perpetuate the myth that women don't know anything about computers;
- perpetuate the myth that men who DO know a lot about computers are sloppy and unattractive;
- reinforce the cultural notion that people are gross and unattractive and don't deserve physical affection, or at least don't deserve it from people objectively hotter than themselves.
And God knows what else. I can't believe people still think this shit is a good idea. I can't believe that shit like this may actually be a good idea (in terms of generating revenue).
This was a terrible ad. GoDaddy either doesn't care about all the women who may want to register their own domain names or fervently believes that they simply don't exist. Either way, GoDaddy won't be getting my money. The #NotBuyingIt campaign tells me Name.com is pretty good; I'll look into them, and it'd be great if you did, too.
Hell, you don’t even need to not give money to GoDaddy because of their sexism; their average uptime (or their case, downtime) is bad enough that as a professional, I refuse to use them. (Not even 48 hours ago, they had one of my firm’s clients’ sites inaccessible for at least an hour.)
ReplyDeleteThis is some pretty serious icing on the cake, and has been since they started using Danika Patrick to hawk them quite a few years ago, though.
On the subject of blogging and "the rules," I think it relies heavily on the decision of whether you are blogging your brand or blogging to build your brand. If you are an established brand that decides to start a company blog, I expect very little personal stuff—in fact, it bothers me—beyond some sort of personality by the blogger(s) (as opposed to bland SEO content).
If you are blogging in hopes of one day building a personal brand, I would much rather learn more about the person and what they do, not just straight brand-related content.
Then again, I think I have six different blogs (only two of which have been updated in the past year) on which to write to spread out my rants vs. crafting vs. whatever else, so my advice is about as useful as a bucket of water in the middle of a lake.
Well it's good to know that GoDaddy falls back on sexism to sell their services because their service is crap! Or something.
DeleteIt's interesting to note that I don't follow any blogs that would be, like, corporate blogs. I feel like that kind of reading would be dull as dishwater. But on the other hand, any personality from them would come off as ingratiating shilling, so I guess they can't win either way (and that's why I don't follow them!)
There are some decent corporate blogs in various markets that do publish good content, and their writer(s) has personality so that it isn’t total shilling, but the key thing is that they focus on providing information that relates to and *could* use their products or services, but that don’t *have* to use their products or services. It’s pretty hard to balance on the non-annoying side of that, though. I follow a couple of sewing blogs that manage, but believe me, it took a long time to find those amongst the more obnoxious type.
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