News from Texas!

Hello Dear Blog Readers. I am back with more stories from my world. Things are good. I passed my one year anniversary of my last chemo treatment. My sixth and last treatment was a year ago on Februrary 22. Thanks to the birth of George Washington, I will always remember the month and day of this important personal milestone.

What a difference a year makes. My hair is now big, curly and out-of-control. I call it "chemo hair," standard issue for cancer patients. I don't know how to deal with this hair. I deal by not dealing. So, my hair looks big, frizzy and out-of-control. (Nope, no pictures now-not until I can start managing this hair.) People know that chemo makes your hair fall out. But many people don't realize that chemo makes your hair grow back VERY, VERY CURLY.

So, I am back at work, having a blast living again. I am teaching, doing freelance research and thinking. Finally thinking about my dissertation research which still has so much potential.

Here is a story from my advertising research class (account planning). The objective of this week's lesson was to illustrate the value of research in the prevention of stereotypical, negative, offensive advertising images of women, men, minorities, the elderly, plus many more...(I like to think of advertising as an "equal opportunity offender.") I start by asking students to work in groups and use brainstorming techniques to generate a list of criticisms of advertising. After a few minutes, I ask students to call out the criticisms. I write each one on the blackboard. (Yes, chalk and a blackboard.I am very old school.)

Then I slowly I weave in the value of research (account planning) as a way to prevent these offensive media images. Meaning, if the people that create the advertising (art directors/copywriters) receive good research from account planners (researchers), then these ugly stereotypes wouldn't see the light of day in the form of TV spots or print ads, etc. Even though I am in a School of Mass Communication, I make the students focus on the ugly advertising images, not the ugly images in entertainment or on the news.

To get the point across, I use the example of TEXANS. Yes, poor little ol' Texans. Boy do we get stereotyped. ( I just realized that I wrote "we.") All of us in the classroom could relate to the number of times non-Texans ( in Texas, there are only two options: Texan or a non-Texan) assume we are uneducated racists, cowguys/cowgals with big hats, cattle ranches, and a horse (or now a big truck).

By asking students questions, I got the following two points across:

1. Research (account planning) is needed in agencies to prevent negative stereoptypes. For example, those New York City account planners need to come down here to Texas to realize that Texans do not all walk out of some Western cowboy movie. Images of Texans in advertising (and the media in general) should be reflective of reality. We are a diverse group of people down here. Texas is BIG; extraordinarily big; fabulously big.

2. If we had more Texans working in New York City advertising agencies, we wouldn't see all of these degrading images of ourselves. These expat Texans would be on the inside, speaking up and changing assumptions within the system.

Here is an example of a television spot to illustrate my point. Remember that classic 1990's Pace Picante spot? This commercial illustrates how New Yorkers (and the rest of the word) see us Texans. This ad made, "get a rope," a part of our popular language (again).