Due to some technical issues and glitches beyond my control at that site, such as the inability to send newsletters more than once a week, I post here not only as a backup but as a more timely publication method with a more conversational format.
Don't let the title fool you, I don't limit myself to adult webmasters only. Marketing is for everyone. The only difference between selling adult materials and Victorian widgets is the target market. All the same skills, knowledge and work are required.
While it's true that adult webmasters follow in the footsteps of those in the adult entertainment industry and are the first to capitalize on technology (allowing for great ideas to be plucked by mainstream marketers), those in marketing to a mature audience often overlook the basics. So blending both sides, as it were, seems like a perfectly natural conversation.
While this blog will not post adult images per se, it will on occasion link to adult sites which may have such images ~ I will clearly warn you if the link is 'Adult' or Not Work Safe (NWS).
As a conversation, this blog is participatory. I expect to hear your thoughts, suggestions, and even your comments which contradict what I have said ~ not everyone's experience is the same and debate is healthy.
Feel free to contact me with questions, comments, suggestions, networking lead etc. at TheWhore (at) marketingwhore (dot) net.
Due to the increasing number of emails with 'just a quick question...' I'm implementing phone consulting via Keen.
There are so few safe public spaces for people to explore, challenge, and share their thinking about sexuality that whenever I hear about a new conference giving people a chance to come together and talk about sex my heart lightens a little bit. Sex 2.0 is a one day event in Atlanta in April, focusing on the “intersection of social media, feminism, and sexuality.” I virtually sat down with organizer Amber Rhea to find out more about Sex 2.0 and what attendees can expect.
There's still time to get to Sex 2.0, so if you can, do.
Amber's promised a post event wrap-up ~ which I am looking forward to nearly as much as if I could attend.
"Porn, that most graphic of genres, is nevertheless responsible for the wholesale obfuscation of several terms, especially what it means to be a MILF in this country. Let's say one is an expectant father and wants to know what sex will be like after the post-partum depression wears off. He buys a MILF movie from online porn merchant Gamelink only to discover that the "MILF" is not a mom at all -- she's merely 29."
The Marketing Whore on Dominance Humping, Tact and Grace(ie)
One of the things I'm known for is being nice. Well, I'm also known for being opinionated and a former escort too. But most folks who know me, have worked with me, will tell you I'm nice ~ in that patient and tolerant way (which has led me into giving away lots of help and advice for free in many arenas). But sometimes...
Oh, sometimes, I just don't understand how people can be so rude. I can understand and accept ignorance. Ditto for a difference of opinion. But rudeness?
The example I'm about to share will not name names ~ not out of respect but because I don't want to give them any attention. They do not deserve it.
And while I'm on the subject of 'outing' people, or addressing the concerns of people's feelings, let me say that I'm not worried that they will visit here and notice themselves in the example ~ because people like this never see themselves in the bad examples or as the ones needing the corrections. In all my years of working with people this is the case. Meanwhile, those who would be mortified to make such errors ~ those who never do such things because they are people filled with common sense and decency ~ these kind-hearted people always fear these things are about them. Please don't flood my inbox with apologies or concerns; if you were the person who did what I'm about to describe, you'd already know of my displeasure. So no worries for those of you reading here.
Now, on to today's lesson.
As most of you know, my site Sex-Kitten.Net (NWS) has the Sex-Kitten Feed (NWS), which is a way to promote our friends and associates by helping to broadcast their blog's RSS feed (NWS). (The feed is featured on the home page of the site, on other blogs in the feed & with it's own page.) When persons submit their site and feed for such promotion, I always check to see that A) the feed is working properly and 2) that they have linked back (to either the feed itself or the main site). If they have errors or have not reciprocated with a link, I contact them.
Recently I had to contact several folks to tell them that I would activate their feed once they linked back and then contacted me to let me know they had done so. Usually one of two things happen: they apologize for the oversight and correct it, or they ignore the emails (and I delete the submission). But this week I had one of the rare fellows who reacts rudely.
His first response was to tell me to go ahead and drop his submission because he "never got a single referral from us". I calmly wrote back that of course he hadn't ~ due to no recip, he had never been activated. I'd be happy to remove his submission if he wished, but thought he should know why he'd never received any traffic.
At this point I expected an 'ah-ha' moment, followed by him placing the link and emailing to telling me so. Maybe even with an apology for not understanding... But no.
Instead I receive an email asking demanding me for my site stats. "How many unique visitors do you get per day?"
Now folks, there are several problems with this response.
First of all, asking a webmaster for their blog stats is rather like asking a person how much they make a year. Sure, some might not be offended; some might even give you the answer. But many people, in either situation, will be greatly offended. Generally, these matters are considered none of your business. So why risk offending anyone?
If you think that I owe this person my stats because we're doing business together, remember this: the SK feed is free. He's not paying ~ no one's paying ~ for this service; it's not advertising. I, the person offering the service, isn't asking him (or anyone) about their site traffic (or pagerank or anything). For him to go there is rather like your brother-in-law asking you what your salary is or how much your home cost. It's inappropriate.
Secondly, if this man feels he is owed this info in order to evaluate the opportunity, or if he thinks this sort of questioning shows that he is Mr Serious Internet Businessman, then he needs to get a clue ~ and some tact.
He, you, I ~ anyone, can do some simple research to get an idea of traffic on any website. It's not rocket science.
If he doesn't know how to do this, or is too lazy to do it and expects me to tell him, or if he has done his homework and is trying to 'test me' for my honesty and credibility, well, I'm completely unimpressed. And I'm not playing.
His inability to employ good old fashioned tact and common sense leaves me cold.
The lesson here is that when you approach someone, including to take advantage of their opportunity, mind your manners. Don't ask questions which are none of your business. And if you should think it is your business, proceed politely. Don't pose questions as demands.
In fact, after some research of my own on this man, his sites and business practices, I'm of the impression that this man was dominance humping. He read my polite, and perhaps somewhat girly closing (typically I sign-off all my emails, business and personal, "with much affection, Gracie"), and concluded that I don't know what I'm doing. He assumed that he could intimidate me with a hard-boiled-business-numbers response to make me sit back (with my pretty head spinning from all that thinky math!) and take notice of his manly knowledge so that he could negotiate some other situation for himself. (As in I'd really really want his link to 'me' and be willing to give him additional promotions &/or advertising to get it.) But all I noticed was his bad manners and lack of respect.
I had the offer, the opportunity; I make the rules. In this case, I was offering to promote his site for free and all I asked for in return was a link. Not only is this a nominal 'price' it's a normal one. If he didn't like the rules, then he can take a pass on the opportunity. No one is forcing him to do this. For him to mistake kindness and the patience to continue to explain how the opportunity works for a chance to negotiate terms, or worse, some weakness on part, is a huge mistake.
I'm not paranoid about the dominance humping; I run into this quite often. And I'm betting you other ladies do too.
Gender, as in femaleness, combined with tolerance and understanding is seen as weak and unintelligent. Ask any mommy blogger if advertisers try to undermine their credibility and the value of their blog ~ to get cheaper advertising. (If you and your blog were so crappy, why would they want to advertise there?) But in the adult industry it's even worse. We're just dumb girls who whore ourselves and our sites on dumb luck and boobs. (I guess they think we are what we sell.)
Since I don't expect yet another blog post on gender issues to affect any real changes by the men who practice dominance humping, the lesson here is really for the women.
Don't let dominance humping (from men or women) undermine your actions. Know your business and make your rules. Don't let them negotiate the non-negotiable.
if you're a woman in any service-industry job looking to maximize your tips, Miller suggests scheduling more shifts for the phase right before ovulation: "It might help to know about this so that you can exploit these effects."
Which means that female wages have to be higher in order to attract the steady stream of new actresses to the business. The downside for a female performer is that the odds are not high she will have a long career, as consumers no longer find her 300th appearance entertaining. The male performer, on the other hand, being the "anonymous meat puppet", can work so long as he can get it up and come when told to. Also, since the male actor isn't concerned about overexposure, he can work in a greater number of videos per year and end up making the same amount overall as the female performers.
I'm inclined to agree ~ with one caveat: That we remember the growing areas of gay porn and porn for hetero women. In these cases, men are the stars. And in the case of porn for (hetero) couples, men are co-stars. So as these markets increase, the pay for men should increase.
I love the Evolve campaign by Trojan. Love, love, LOVE it.
In the commerical, male pigs hit on women, striking out until one decides to be prepared for safe sex, getting a Trojan, and then becomes human.
I love it because it's relateable. I love it because, as a woman, it's grand to see the message that women aren't assumed to be the party responsible for safe sex &/or birth control. (It's so annoying to live in a world where men are allowed to be sexually aggressive but leave the consequences to the women.) The Evolve ad depicts men who aren't prepared for safe sex to as pigs and juxtaposes that image with condoms, the responsible behavior.
All this means I love it as a marketer.
Interestingly, Trojan, isn't spoken and even the logo appears only briefly on the bathroom's vending machine and at the end. Jim Daniels, vp of marketing, said the company was focusing less on growing market share than growing the market. I think the commerical serves the intent and the brand well, very well, indeed.
However, both CBS and FOX rejected Evolve ads by Trojan. In its rejection CBS wrote, "while we understand and appreciate the humor of this creative, we do not find it appropriate for our network even with late-night-only restrictions."
"It's so hypocritical for any network in this culture to go all puritanical on the subject of condom use when their programming is so salacious," said Mark Crispin Miller, a media critic who teaches at New York University. "I mean, let's get real here. Fox and CBS and all of them are in the business of nonstop soft porn, but God forbid we should use a condom in the pursuit of sexual pleasure."
Amen.
This points to the current problem those of us in adult marketing face every day.
"We always find it funny that you can use sex to sell jewelry and cars, but you can't use sex to sell condoms," said Carol Carrozza, vice president of marketing for Ansell Healthcare, which makes LifeStyles condoms. "When you're marketing condoms, something even remotely suggestive gets an overly analytical eye when it's going before networks' review boards."
Why is it unacceptable to be so damn honest? Honest about your product; honest about human needs. It's stupefying. Why doesn't business evolve and get their heads out of their behinds?
It's like we're the women and the folks who make decisions like CBS and FOX are the pigs.
The good news is that the commercial will run on ABC, NBC and nine cable networks, and print ads will appear in 11 magazines as well as on on seven Web sites. (Feel free to write emails and letters of support to these folks, letting them know you approve!) All will highlight a Web site, trojanevolve.com.
Daniels also said that the company was spending more on the Evolve campaign than any previous campaign, though declined to say how much.
(Hey Daniels, I'll run your ads! And I can get you a free list of more who will do the same. *wink*)
"No one has done a full-blown market research of any kind into either the brick-and-mortar or the online adult consumer market place," said Tom Hymes, publisher of XBiz, a trade magazine about the industry.
"My own personal feeling of this is most (consumers) are still men, but I have seen more women coming into the industry to make content for other women, to build Web sites for women. The issue of women being creative and significant in the industry is not going away."
Mostly this is just a plug *wink* but if you're interested in knowing more about women as a target market for your adult business read it.
Those who are in the biz, will love how the piece starts:
"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." The crux of Virginia Woolf's polemic on female creativity -- first declared in 1928 and walloped around the theoretical arena ever since -- resounds today more than ever for the post-Sex and the City generation. Sure, the envisaged room is a "post-war Upper-East side walk-up" and the finances are limited by a substance abuse problem (expensive footwear), but the ethos remains the same: for women to create, they need agency.
(In case you're wondering, all these links are NWS!)
One of my favorite quotes from that discussion is from Jack Hafferkamp, of Libido films:
I think that part of the problem is that most porn is really kind of stupid, sexist, and demeaning. I mean, we know that. So is the solution to shut it down or do better stuff? I think clearly the answer is to do better stuff. Where do American males get their sex education? It's there, so why not make it material that actually provides useful information? It seems to me to be the way to go rather than say don't do it at all.
Easy to see why I'm such a fan, huh? *wink*
One of the most surprising things from this discussion was when one of the male participants spoke:
I'm a heterosexual man and what I want is definitely what you're doing. I saw "Trial Run" and it was the first time I'd actually seen a man in a pornographic movie that didn't scare the shit out of me. (laughs) The guy-his name escapes me-he's having sex, and it's sexy, and he looks normal and human shaped and he's...pudgy. Wow, it's so comforting and the sex was hot. I'm also a librarian and the most frequently stolen book at the library where I worked was "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" by Jenna Jameson, which was really strange. How do you as filmmakers educate a younger generation about sex without giving them strange ideas?
I'm rather surprised men at this gathering spoke at all, really; let alone be so honest. (What man could both be brave enough to speak at a female centric event ~ and keep his wits about himself, at least enough to speak? lol)
What's wrong is treating bloggers like traditional media outlets. New media content creators do not have any obligation to "report" or field inquiries. They don't have to write up a kind review of your product (even if you comp them something), and a great majority distrust traditional public relations tactics.
(This post is a follow-up to this post, Thinking Bloggers and Pitching Blogs, which I think he intended to be his first link in that post... In any case, I also recommend reading it.)
I have witnessed and participated firsthand in sustained and determined efforts to increase the number of women recruited into investment banks, and it is true that the number entering each year in first-year analyst and associate classes has increased markedly from my youth. However, what is also true is that very few of these women stay. The ones I know who do genuinely seem to enjoy their work, and they can cut the balls off a charging rhinocerous (or CEO) with an indenture with the best of them, all the while making their doltish male colleagues think impure thoughts about their pantyhose. In other words, I am of the opinion that smart, aggressive women have a distinct advantage over men in investment banking. Why, therefore, aren't there more of them?
Phil for Humanity writes about The Size of Money. Those who cannot see and those who are new to the US have to deal with our funny money and it's time we started making more cents sense with our money.
InsureBlog ponders health care in Margarita's & Medicine. As a self-employed person who knows many others in this same boat, I know we wonder what's worth paying for. Here's a perspective I recommend you read.
You can cough up the $40,000 or so to have your joint replaced (if you do not have insurance).
Or, you can jet to an exotic isle where the procedure is more like $6000.
The two most trust-destroying words you can say are, "trust me." Never say you're someone's trusted advisor, much less say you want to be, much less build an ad campaign around it. It is inherently non-credible and insincere. (I try on my own website-- which of course uses the term -- to say "helping people become trusted advisors" -- and not to claim that I are one).
In business, I think we often know the things we should do, but instead we try to do the things we want to do. We like the random fun things. We want to plan, brainstorm, hold meetings, all the stuff that doesn't require any discipline or focus.
"The trouble is the BBC now is run by women and it shows soap operas, cooking, quizzes, kitchen-sink plays. You wouldn't have had that in the golden days."
I used to watch Doctor Who and Star Trek, but they went PC - making women commanders, that kind of thing. I stopped watching
"I would like to see two independent wavelengths - one controlled by women, and one for us, controlled by men."
The ass-tronomer said female newsreaders (talking heads) are "jokey" and called for ~ get this ~ separate channels for the sexes.
Spike and Lifetime may agree, but then they exist in a marketplace as options and I don't think anyone believes that menfolk sit in their parlors with brandy snifters and cigars watching Spike while the womenfolk wash dishes in the kitchen and cry into their dishtowels as they watch Lifetime ~ and then they turn off their television sets to each crawl into their individual twin bed, occasionally pushing them together to procreate (but always with one foot on the floor at all times). Sheesh.
I think this guy's insane. Not just British, but insane. "Sir" Patrick Moore was the giant head on GamesMaster, which either way serves to A) discredit him as a man of media taste or 2) proves that he has a rather large head ~ in which case I still feel vindicated.
Maybe I should just give Max Headroom a call and see what his thoughts are...
Rob, who should be blogging himself because he makes me think hard, posted more comments:
OK, onto my point. I think my original comment about women studying war philosophy may have been a bit much. And you make a worthy claim that there are psychological, cultural and biological factors at work here.
All I'm saying is that when we're discussing power, whether it's wielded by men or women, there are forces that need to be considered and steps that need to be taken for individuals to obtain it. I made the war reference, because competition for power in the real world is like a war. The works of Sun Tzu, Machiavelli and Clausewitz address this human element.
I think women who are advancing to power positions - once held only by men - are adapting to this in competition. This explains why we see people like Margret Thatcher or Condoleeza Rice - and possibly Hilary - who have the stoic resolve that male predecessors displayed. These women are not representative of the female psyche, at least in a traditional and conventional sense.
Normative conformity explains conventional human behavior. What we've been witnessing is revolutionary, in terms of gender roles.
I don't believe that "competition for power is like a real war." Maybe I'm too Utopianistic (new word, I guess) but I not only believe it is possible for a person to have power without warring for it, but I welcome these people.
It is entirely possible, and even happens thus, that a person has power simply by excelling at something. In fact, there are many persons who have had power thrust upon them, even if they didn't ask for it or particularly want it. These folks we consider heroes, leaders and icons even ~ legendary but not legends for they are real. In the pursuit of power there are games, strategy and things akin to (if not outright) war; and those who achieve power can just as easily enter into the same games. But I see that as human weakness, not inherently part of power itself. That said, I'll move onto your more specific points.
Some of the female leaders you refer to, power brokers or those who want to have positions of power, they have fallen into the games of pursuit. Politics as we currently know it, is a pursuit of power. (Once upon a time the service of citizens was a job often thrust upon people ~ people who just thought they were doing their jobs or 'the right thing.; but now it's a 'run for office' more than a call to serve. Even those who view political office as a duty to serve are pulled into the games and strategy because of this 'race' mentality.) In this pursuit, one must play by the rules of the race.
If you think that these women have advanced by less-than-feminine behaviors, well reconsider my points about women having had to learn the game. If we women had to learn the rules for survival, we sure have to do so to excel. Currently the rules are male rules and those who adopt (or at least reflect) male attributes, it is thought, will succeed. In this sense they most certainly are "representative of the female psyche." Though as we've seen, when women do adopt male views, behaviors and stances they are not often respected for playing by the rules but rather impugned for not being feminine. It's a lose-lose scenario most often.
I see no data to support any claims that we are witnessing any revolution in terms of gender and leadership roles. That a few female leaders exist is quite sad when we are half (or more) of the population.
Rob continues:
What does this mean for future generations of young, bright and motivated women? I don't know, but the external pressures from all directions tell ME that our world is changing. And gender roles are changing with it. Women are not better communicators simply by nature. They're better communicators, because their previous role and survival required it. This isn't the case anymore.
Well you (and others) may see change, but it's small and certainly not hitting revolutionary status yet.
Are gender roles changing? It depends upon where you make your comparisons. Do women have more options or roles than they did in the 1950's? Somewhat. At least there are more of us willing to take the crap for being non-traditional. Do women have more choices than they have had at any point in history? I'd say no. For example, in the 40's women had more freedoms than in other years; but then again, once the men returned from war they had to be forced back ~ barefoot & pregnant into those 1950's kitchens. In pre-Victorian times there are quite a few examples to point to regarding women being valued more than we are now. (The Victorian period really did quite a bit of damage, with lasting effects ~ it's a fascinating subject, but I don't wish to digress more than I already have.)
The fact that "gender roles" is even a discussion points to the fact that there is inequity; so how much significant change has their been?
As for the matter of women being better communicators... this too is a very meaty subject. (At least my previous posts have not done enough to clear things up in this regard lol)
"Women are not better communicators simply by nature. They're better communicators, because their previous role and survival required it." Well, that implies that you got part of what I was saying ~ but you're reducing this to a 'nature vs. nurture' discussion and dismissing 'nature' as no longer relevant when it is a large part of our biology.
Survival, selection, has served the communicating female human well. She and her offspring survived where the poor communicator or non-discriminating sort did not. This gives us a genetic legacy, a biology which ~ even if you argue isn't needed or 'the case anymore' ~ we have not yet even begun to drop from our genetic selves. Looking at our species as a whole, our history since becoming an agricultural animal is but a blip in time. Our bodies have not yet caught up with these changes yet, so I doubt the female-communication connection has changed yet.
In fact, communication is gender issue inherent in our development. Every human brain begins as a female brain ~ if at eight weeks after conception it becomes male, excess testosterone shrinks the communications center (among other actions). This connection between gender and communication has been noticed by Louann Brizendine, M.D and written about in her book, The Female Brain.
Also recent findings regarding tentative connections between testosterone and autism and testosterone and empathy indicate that testosterone affects communication as well. (This could also indicate, as I suspect, that women are indeed far better suited not only to communicate ~ create marketing messages ~ but to evaluate a marketing campaign's success as she can better 'read' the reactions of receivers.)
As Brizendine says, "Gender education and biology collaborate to make us who we are." So as long as our brains are wired for communication (which it seems clear we are) and our culture still has unique gender roles (which there are, and they require us to learn male rules), we remain women who rely on and excel at communication.
Not only do females make up the majority of Internet users, but more of the female population goes online. This year, an estimated 66.2% of US females ages 3 and older will use the Internet at least once a month, compared with 64.2% of males, according to eMarketer. By 2011, 72.1% of females are expected to go online, vs. 69.3% of males.
Amid all the excitement online video is causing, marketers must keep one fact in mind: Of the estimated 97 million females online in the US, only 66% of them actually watch videos online, compared with 78% of males who do.
One thing they are quick to note is that women are not less savvy than men when it comes to Internet technology. And they believe that Web 2.0 (aka social networking) will only increase female use.
Why this continual surprise that women are using the Internet? Women outnumber men, so we should outnumber men on the Internet, yes?
But then in more in-depth news coverage of the eMarketer report, both in Reuters and in Sydney Morning Herald, eMarketer's senior analyst, Debra Aho Williamson, makes broader gender claims which seem to make this report more 'surprising.'
I was reminded the early days of the Internet, when many feared that women would never adopt it ~ or at least not in the way males had. This was easily a decade ago, and we're still talking about it? Sheesh. We've gone from ugly Geocities pages to ugly MySpace pages, from FrontPage to blogging, and from static html to all sorts of scripts and toys, so maybe we're still slow to understand what's important here.
They were partly right; women do use the Internet differently.
During those days, ecommerce was a large 'threat' to the way of WWW life ~ it was a perversion of what they held sacred. Sort of like the good old boys business club where they greedily yell "mine, Mine, MINE", only instead of old white men, the Internet had really young boys (most of whom were white too) and these kids and twenty-somethings thought it was all theirs and they didn't want to change.
But ecommerce came along and women were strong adopters of online shopping. No mere coincidence in my mind.
While men surfed for consumer reports, reviews and price comparisons, they still purchased locally in person. Women on the other hand, loved the time savings of shopping and purchasing online. They could sit at home in their jammies, after the kids were asleep, and complete so many shopping errands... This of course led to mommies and others to making the Internet a tool for simplification of their lives. Email, ecards, maps and other tools proved the pc was more than just a toy. But of course, more time online meant they would find other joys of the Internet.
While Williamson doesn't say anything which completely contradicts gender roles, there is still this aura of surprise.
Women are huge consumers, including of technology. Women are humans first, so we will be drawn to many of the same activities and uses of the Internet and technology. But our roles are different, so we may be drawn more to somethings more than others.
Women tend to be more social in terms of talking not just 'hanging out' so we likely will participate more in chats, forums, discussions and blogging than men who will just forward a video or a link to a website. Women and men may be interested in many of the same things, but women will want to talk about why they are interested in something whereas men typically think forwarding a clip or link is self-explanatory ~ it's all that needs to be said.
So why this continual surprise over the differences in gender usage? It's not like women stop being human when confronted with new things. Nor do our 'real world' gender differences cease to exist online.
(Those who think women are so different would likely buy this bridge I have for sale... It's in Brooklyn and if you charged a toll you could really rake it in! I also can also put you in touch with a man in Africa who has millions of dollars to deposit in your bank account ~ just email me your bank account and routing information. Since women are so different from men these offers from a woman must be true!)
But then again, the gaming industry long underestimated the number of women ~ including older women (30s-40s) ~ who were active gamers spending lots of cash & entire weekends playing games. Fundamentally, both the teenage boys and the more mature women played games for the same reason: to escape & to compete, but marketers still seem to be struggling to use this knowledge in both the creation of games and the presentation of games.
So why would should I expect pundits to recognize that women are a strong segment of this market, powerful users of this technology?
I guess maybe it will take more 'surprising' numbers in 'surprising' studies to convince them all.
...Meanwhile, if anyone is interested in that bridge, contact me.
The USA produces the most porn pages (with 244,661,900 ~ second place, Germany, isn't even close with 10,030,200), yet it isn't the highest per capita in spending on porn nor in revenues. Yet the US leads in video porn production. And US porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC.
The pornography industry is larger than the revenues of the top technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink.
When it comes to women, 1/3 of visitors to adult websites are women. Twice as many women favor chat rooms as men. Also noted, women are far more likely to act out their behaviors in real life (such as having multiple partners, casual sex, or affairs).
For US users, the higher your income, the higher your porn spending ~ which likely is linked to disposable income, but also suggests that the average porn purchase is made by a college grad with a decent job (i.e. respectable persons). The bulk of users are aged 35-44 ~ and those older pay for porn more than younger folks do.
Every second 28,258 Internet users are viewing pornography.
While you can (and should) read more from this statistical report, I'd like to point out that in the list of top 20 search terms, neither "erotica" nor "erotic stories" shows up. More proof that erotica is a tough marketing gig (and I know there are lots of you here with that task).
In this book, Harris explains deeply held cultural beliefs which seem to confuse.
For example, while Westerners think that Indians would rather starve than eat their cows, Harris points out that what Westerners don't understand is that Indians will starve if they do eat their cows. This Cow Love is based on very pragmatic reasons, for which religion, a cultural construct, was created to support. And so, from Pig Love to Pig Hate, from War & Savage Men, from Messiahs and Witches, Harris looks at each cultural riddle and gives equally pragmatic theories.
Why is this important in marketing?
Well, for one, we must deal with Sacred Cows ~ both in terms of the companies we work for (and with) as well as those held dear by the markets we wish to reach. This could open quite a few eyes which want to see & sell in a global marketplace (as well as offer ways of seeing and surviving corporate cultures).
But it's not just these concepts which are illuminating. Nor is it the ability of the business savvy reader to extrapolate the ideas of the re-distribution of goods (and demands and expectations thereof). Or even for the lessons in Cultural Materialism (Harris' work in which ideas, values, and religious beliefs are the means or products of adaptation to environmental conditions and/or ecological and evolutionary systems). All fascinating, yet Harris offers something more.
Harris takes what we think we know, what we have been taught ~ and still teach years after his work ~ and re-examines it all. No longer must we accept anything we've been told, but are asked to search deeper, to scrutinize and study, and to come up with evidence for what we believe or state. We must also be prepared to change our beliefs and thoughts.
That alone is a lesson worthy of learning.
But there is more ~ and this is why I highly recommend this 'unusual' book to marketers (or anyone who feels they must specialize). In discussing overspecialization Harris wrote this in the Preface:
I respect the work of individual scholars who patiently expand and perfect their knowledge of a single century, tribe, or personality, but I think that such efforts must be made more responsive to issues of general and comparative scope. The manifest inability of our overspecialized scientific establishment to say anything coherent about the causes of lifestyles does not arise from any intrinsic lawlessness of lifestyle phenomena. Rather, I think it is the result of bestowing premium rewards on specialists who never threaten a fact with theory. A proportionate relationship such as has existed fro some time now between the volume of social research and the depth of social confusion can only mean one thing: the aggregate social function of all that research is to prevent people from understanding the causes of their social life.
The pundits of the knowledge establishment insist that this state of confusion is due to a shortage of studies. Soon there will be a seminar in the sky based on ten thousand new field trips. But we shall know less, not more, if these scholars have their way. Without a strategy aimed at bridging the gap between specialties and at organizing existing knowledge along theoretically coherent lines, additional research will not lead to a better understanding of the causes of lifestyles.
Here's an invitation, a challenge, to concentrate more on building bridges between specialties and to create meaningful bodies of work, rather than to compartmentalize and specialize to the degree that we explain & learn nothing.
Marketing is one one of those areas which already touches on, draws from, so many areas that we should be among the first (or more ardent) adopters of this practice of integration for a purpose.
The 'average' marketing person looking for a step-by-step outline of actions to follow, or guiding principals clearly listed, will be disappointed with this book. But for those who enjoy a meaty meal of ideas to slowly digest over time, adding this set of nutrients (views & ideas) to their steady diet of 'how to' books, this is a rich feast. For those above-average marketing pros who are serious about understanding society and culture, this is required reading.
The Whore's Rating: Buy It. And I mean that in general ~ per this review (NWS).
