What does this American Airlines’ ad have in common with the movie Monsters, Inc? Both envision a workplace with no women in it. Oh, wait, there was the young ‘un wanting to get married and the tough old broad in Monsters, Inc.—the same two archetypes in “The Absent Minded Professor” and probably most other movies…
DetailsYour 7 year old child who is white hesitates to shake someone’s hand who is African-American. Your first grader tells another student she’s “a lesbian with her sister.” You were there. You weren’t there. You are the most open, anti-racist, multicultural person you know. Where did your child get this from? I’ve seen stories about…
DetailsMy 8 year old son made his own dinner the other night. We were at the grocery store, he saw a bagged frozen entree of sauteed shrimp, pasta and vegetables, asked if we could buy it, went home, read the directions and cooked it all by himself. Yes, I stayed nearby to make sure he…
DetailsCan you be a chicken and still be a good intercultural communicator?* The short answer is “no.” I was having an amazing conversation today (or as I said, let’s talk about something really interesting, let’s talk about me!”) with Marti Barletta of Trendsight today. Marti is the premier provider of ‘marketing to women’ insights and ideas,…
DetailsI remember taking an improv class years ago, and we used to play a pantomime game called “What Are You Doing?”. It involved acting something out so the class could guess, and whoever guessed would then go up and start a new action for the class to ask, “what are you doing.” At one point,…
DetailsUS business culture norms today are all about action and the bottom line. “Show me the money!” Think about it. If Socrates were working at a corporation in the US today, with all of his thinking and pontificating, his boss might say “he’s full of baloney…what has he actually DONE?” (or more likely, “Socrates, stop…
DetailsDillon’s pick this week is the ad above for “Confederate Family Insurance. It was so offensive, that we realized it couldn’t possibly be true. Indeed, it is from Spike Lee’s faux documentary “Confederate States of America,” that looks at the US as thought the South had won the Civil War. It’s extreme representations, however, provide perfect…
DetailsThe “olden days” of diversity training started with “the other.” It assumed a majority culture norm, and defined everyone else in contrast to the norm. “This group behaves this way. This group behaves that way.” The anthropological approach gives each group ‘hegemony,’ the power to exist in its own right. It recognizes the inherent value…
DetailsThere’s so much fodder just looking at stereotypes and unconscious bias in US advertising, that there’s not much time to take a look at ads in other countries, but this ad (thanks to Larry Kolb in Rgober Ebert’s Journal) is a fun peek into advertising appearances by Hollywood stars in Japan. Having been asked at a park in…
DetailsDavid Giantasio questioned on Adfreak, why, after becoming an ex-smoker, the “hero” of the ad (from Amercian Legacy, the NATC, the Ad Council and GSD&M Idea City) didn’t shoot higher than bowling (above) or operating a fork-lift. As an ex-smoker (June 24, 1986, but who’s keeping track?) the week you quit smoking really is not the time to take on…
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