Strollerderby
Blogging’s Dirty Little Secret
Bloggers are a goldmine to advertisers. Think about it: if you, as an advertiser, could get someone to advertise your product for you, and for practically FREE, wouldn’t you? All you’d have to do is maybe send out a sample. That’s it! And then you’re golden, because you’ve got all these influential people talking up your product to their buds on the blogosphere! Perfect!
Of course, the PR people for the advertisers are smart. Hey, they have to be! So they try to target bloggers that 1. have readership and therefore influence, and 2. blog about things that sort of relate to the product (or not; I’ve had some wacky pitches).
Oh, and I should mention #3: that AREN’T people of color.
What??!
Yes. True. Our own CityMama Stefania wrote a revealing and scathing piece about this very practice. Frankly, after reading it I felt sick. Stefania receives pitches from PR people daily for her personal blog CityMama, but her group blog Kimchi Mamas, a Korean identity and culture parenting blog, receives nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero.
Why? “Because we don’t pitch to people of color,” says the PR guy Stefania questioned.
It’s because Asian people are invisible in the media. Discrimination by invisibility. Which is the worst kind of bigotry because everybody pretends it isn’t happening. But think about it: other than as a stereotype, when was the last time you saw Asian people on TV, say, just doing what people do? I was struck during my recent visit to Vancouver, a very multi-cultural city, because it was clear that people of all sorts weren’t regarded as being part of one group or another. They were just … people.
Why isn’t it like that in the media? And what can we do about it?
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14 Comments
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amAn interesting topic and I agree with what the others have already said whether this is truly important why am I not seeing diversity with the bloggers you
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amPingback from The parenting blogosphere’s lack of diversity at Anti-Racist Parent – for parents committed to raising children with an anti-racist outlook
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amAlso, while the new baby avatar is awfully cute for those that don’t have a pic, it’s pretty much the epitome of cute WHITE baby, dontcha think?
lionandmagicboy commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amMocha, thanks for checking back! I’m glad to hear that you are seeing one-on-one enlightenment with the marketers you’re talking to. Do you think it will really make a difference in the end? I can only hope it will. Perhaps the blogging world can lead the way for the rest of the media and eventually create significant changes in social perception. Maybe that’s my idealism talking, but I think the world is ready for change.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI am glad I came back to see if Karen replied. Thanks, Karen!
However, I feel that I must respond to “Reader” who seems to offer yet another excuse to marketers. The point is this: we all spend money. We all click on links. How do they know only “white consumers” do this? In fact, the marketers I’ve spoken to (and after all this, it’s a lot) have all humbly apologized because they *have* failed to think about their consumers of color and are realizing their error.
Thanks again for writing about this, Karen.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amIs it possible that “people of color” have been found to be less likely to follow side-bar links on blogs? Or that the company has not found an effective way to draw these people to their sites via blog advertising…?
I don’t really know, but it is possible this guy’s company has some sort of reseach behind it?
I don’t know whether I would believe it or not, but I thought I’d throw it out there as a possible “reason” they had for saying that.
lionandmagicboy commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amYou did stir the pot, Mocha, and here’s the post you wrote about it, because I think people should know what happened. The more we know, the more we think.
http://www.blogher.org/marginalization-marketing
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amCute baby on my pic. Needs a tad more color, though.
Make what you will of that.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI’ve said as much on my own personal blog because I was the one who stirred the pot in the first place. I’ll gladly tell the PR people what to do with me and they’ve even openly admitted that both Stefania and I have highly trafficked blogs with greater numbers than some of the white blogs they pitch.
Honest? Yes.
Crappy? You bet.
lionandmagicboy commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amWell, I don’t make hiring decisions here at Babble but I’ve passed along your comments to the people who do.
If you read Stefania’s piece, the PR guy she spoke to went on to say, after he said they don’t pitch to bloggers of color, that “We don’t know what to do with them.” Surely that individual wasn’t personally responsible for the problem but was reflecting target demographics passed down from above in his organization.
But in order for that to change, our wider view socially has to change first. And what better place to begin than in the media, which drives our perceptions anyway (or reflects them, depending on who you talk to, but it’s rather a chicken-or-the-egg argument to me)?
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amexcellent comments above me here. This is not about marketers as being the root of all evil–they are more likely a symptom of larger trends (see right sidebar and general Lack of Diversity). What is going on, culturally, when bloggers of color are not getting the same traffic or same pitches? What can we do about it? How culpable are we, individually?
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amYeah, well, since somebody else said it first… I love me some CityMama and MetroDad, and you both know that, but it’s a bit incongruous to read this post and then look over to the right at the blogger bios, both for Strollerderby and the marquee solo blogs. When these marketers look at sites like this as representative of the market they covet, well, what are they gonna think? Or rather, will their preconceptions be challenged by who they see here?
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI think the most highly-trafficked blogs (or those with high technorati ratings) are getting pitched. Without getting too sociological and academic and fancy – maybe the question is, why don’t people of color have higher trafficked blogs?
Besides Stefania of course, who has like 90 million readers an hour or something.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amWell, isn’t the pot calling the kettle black?? Babble could help by actually hiring more people of color on their blogs.
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