Momartfully

Can you hear me knitting? Advertising gone wrong.

There are some things that just make you pause for a moment and wonder - what were they thinking?

This is one of them.

Advertising in a new territory or paradigm - like advertising in a social media space like Twitter or Facebook - can be very difficult to figure out and to do well. It takes a lot of trial and error to get the "mix" right, and it requires careful planning so your client (or you) don't look like an idiot.

All it takes is one unanticipated issue to give you a completely unintended result. A very public unintended result.

Like this gem, which is funny - but is really an advertising failure.

 

"Download this audio book free, with a free 14 day trial subscription..."

Only the audio book in question is a knitting book.

There really isn't a lot about a knitting audio book that makes sense. There isn't a story in a typical knitting book that needs to be narrated, there are no sound effects, no environmental sounds and there's no real need for mood music.

Most knitting books are very visual - with photographs to inspire knitters with colour choices and finishing details - and most likely a stitch-by-stitch pattern or two.

For many books an audio book would work - although maybe not a book reviewing art techniques, braille or drafting...

I keep trying to imagine how boring a stitch-by-stitch audio book about knitting would be to listen to. Maybe there's a whole "knit along" movement I'm unaware of?

I'm picturing a "knit along" audio gathering with a community centre room filled with knitters sitting at folding tables, illuminated by uncertain florescent lighting and surrounded by "lucky" troll dolls. There they sit, waiting, clutching their sticks and yarn as someone on the stage leans into a microphone and solemnly states;

"Page three. Knit one."

Pause.

"Pearl two." 

Pause. Paper rustling. "Page four. Knit one."

Pause.

"Pearl three."

Scintillating stuff.

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On the other hand, there are social media ads that I find distinctly funny - even if they don't intend to be.

A prime example of a social media ad that had an unintended funny result is this image from Facebook from a few years ago.

Prince Charming - limited availability.

What Kind of Mom Doesn't Read?

My house walls are wallpapered in bookshelves filled to capacity. There are frequent evenings in my house where the whole family climbs into mommy’s bed with a stack of books and some plans for snuggling.

We are readers.

Having been a professional communicator for a very long time - and also a plain ol’ logical person - I know from both experience and observation that there’s almost no way to succeed in life without feeding your brain. It’s as simple as good input=good output. If you feed your brain good “food” then you’re a much more informed, capable, valuable employee, parent and person – and if you feed your brain poor quality “food” then you can’t push out good quality effort for your work, your children or your world.

I had thought that most of the world had the same general view – it was certainly what I saw around me. Almost every single mom I knew pushed their kids to read as they regarded reading as one of the key components of a sucessful future. Moms were all about reading, I thought. We volunteered for the Scholastic program, spent years chanting "Goodnight Moon" by heart, we paraded the kids to the library and sounded out words with them. We also read ourselves - we fed our careers, hearts, souls and minds and we kept perenial stacks of books on our nightstands.

So a tepid discussion of reading from a group of moms was a bit of a shock.

Months ago Momversation presented a video from their panel of supposedly "typical moms" who almost universally stated that they just don’t read “anymore” (they were supposed to talk about 5 books that changed their lives).

Thankfully, there were a couple moms who were quite confident in stating that they still read - but the overall tone and premise was mommies don't read.

Motherhood has just been so ultimately demanding and all-consuming for the Momversation panel of  supposedly "typical moms" that reading has just fallen by the wayside as a result.

That video has bothered me ever since. Aside from the dismissive tone toward reading there were also disturbing competitive mommy undertones in that video; from the one-upmanship in the choice of trendy, new, highly marketed books that some of the participants called their “all time favourite” books to the underlying implication that busy, good mommies are so utterly consumed with being a busy, good mommy that they just don’t have a single speck of time for something so self-indulgent and worthless as reading a book.

But. But. But - there’s certainly time to write in their blogs. And make video entries and responses. And travel for numerous guest appearances on TV. And travel to write richly compensated blog advertorials. And write their own books.

The logic fallacy in that last paragraph was pretty mind-boggling. Time to write – but no time to read.

I look around me and I see reading moms everywhere - yet a panel of supposedly "typical moms" says otherwise. I look around me and I see a society of readers and life-long learners, yet the celebrity bloggers say otherwise.

Why wasn't there a single working mom who rolled her eyes and said tiredly "I have to read for work every night" - which is a much more common conversation among the moms I know than a lament about being "too busy to read". What ever happened to all the moms who valued their post-secondary educations so highly? Where are the moms who are teaching themselves new skills? What about all the moms I know who are filling in the holes in their education with some Ayn Rand, Dante and Aeschylus? Where are the legions of moms I know who are feverishly keeping up with their industry so they have a career to return to?

I find it unbelievable (but sadly more and more common every day) that women are expected to suspend our own intelligence, experience and sense of logic so we can believe that Moms as an entire group (we are all the same, after all) are universally giving up on reading once we give birth - because the mommy celebrities say we're much too busy.

We're expected to believe that being a mom means you don't read - or if we do manage to force ourselves to read we're not tackling anything more challenging than teen vampire fiction and People Magazine.

I don't know that kind of mom.

What Will Your Kids Be (this week, anyway) & 3 Scarves

Based on your kid's interests lately, what would you say they would grow up to be?

My darling, dainty, Tinkerbell loving, pink-and-glitter-on-everything little girl wants to drive a big rig.

This week, anyway.

Our day home caregiver's husband is a long-haul truck driver. A couple weeks ago the caregiver's husband and grown son took the bigger kids to go visit his BIG truck.

She was HOOKED. Smitten. Clutching the steering wheel, chattering on the radio and waving out the window.

However that dashboard may be a wee bit of a problem - she probably should be able to see the road.

She even asked - I'm so not kidding - if I had any "tattoos" in the house. She wanted a tattoo - the wet transfer kind. I explained to her that real tattoos are made with needles and hurt. She didn't seem deterred.

Thankfully Miami Ink isn't on Treehouse TV.

My son normally states he wants to be an author. A children's author, a graphic novelist or "something like Percy Jackson" - as long as he's writing, he's happy.

But lately he's been all about trees.

He scaled every tree in my parent's commercial orchard this summer - and that's a LOT of trees.

He's building a treehouse in our back yard - by himself.

He spends almost all his time in the back yard hanging out in the trees, thinking, talking to friends and figuring out how to fasten the tree house to the tree without nails, "The nails hurt the tree, mom."

He's also perfecting his climbing skills by clinging to the door trim and climbing up the walls - or climbing up opposing walls in the hallway.

Peter Parker (Spiderman) was a writer, wasn't he?

Three Scarves

On the knitting front - I've been cranking out a lot of scarves this week. I knit when I'm stressed, and since I've resigned my current job and accepted another job offer - I'm just a wee bit stressed. It's change - and I'm not good with change - it's a good change, but still. Stress.

So, I'm knitting.

I'm going to be giving out a lot of scarves for Christmas. 

Finished this a "slubby" hand-dyed merino wool scarf in orange

...and this a gorgeous pure viscose moss stitch scarf in teal

...and this dollar store find! Grey mix slubby acrylic yarn

Now I'm working on another dollar store find scarf - a pink 2 strand (eyelash and chenille) yarn that will be combined with a pink organic cotton yarn (how's for a combination LOL). I'm also working on a purple kettle dyed merino wool scarf (it's sooo soft), some cotton dishcloths (always!) and thinking about tackling the goat yarn (that I first mentioned here).

I hope it'll be a cold winter.