Use the Words: Rape and Sexual Assault

I have a problem with how media talks about sexual assault and rape. They tip toe around it as though it’s uncomfortable – including the words that describe the crimes. The words are nasty and dirty; not fit for civilized society. By not using the words that call this crime by name, we miss the opportunity to make us all uncomfortable and outraged by the fact that these crimes occur. We make a survivor feel as though they cannot even utter the words… much less report the crime.

In a break during my evening I did a quick scroll through Twitter and found a Tweet from a news outlet:

Make rape less "unspeakable.

 Police looking for burglar who assaulted woman bit.ly/IdMDEg

But the story behind the tweet and story’s headline was about a woman who woke in her home, to an intruder raping her. Not merely assaulting her, but sexually violating her – otherwise known as rape.

To make matters worse, the second paragraph says: “The woman was not injured, said Austin Police Sgt. Katrina Pruitt at a briefing at police headquarters.”. Um… what? When did forcing sex upon an unwilling participant not injure the victim?

Media needs to start reporting sexual assault and rape as the heinous acts they are rather than using language that allow people to not feel the brunt of how horrible these crimes are. Police spokespeople need to stop treating sexual assault like it is a minor crime. Sexual assault is a 2^nd degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Rape is ugly – the word and the act. Bonus: for a Tweet, it’s four characters fewer than “assaulted”. #DoubleWin!

Why Trader Joe’s Coming to Austin Matters

Well, I guess it would be more fair to say: Why Trader Joe’s Coming to Austin Matters to Me.

It is nostalgia. Trader Joe’s brings forth memories of time spent with my dad… weekends… the introduction to great beer options… the first place where I could get really good food and try new things… Trader Joe’s was the candy store of grocery stores. And it’s the only place people should be allowed to wear Hawaiian shirts without irony.

I grew up going to Trader Joe’s in Southern California. My dad and I would play tennis on Saturday mornings and then wander their beer section before going to the hardware store. At that time, in 19(cough!), Trader Joe’s was one of the few stores that had a truly eclectic selection of beers. If this had not been a part of our routine, I may have entered adulthood thinking Coors Light and Miller High Life were actually beer.

When I moved to Washington, DC Trader Joe’s came to Alexandria, VA. It was in the bottom level of the building where my dad worked – I sometimes wonder if he chose the building specifically because they were there. I would drive out to Alexandria to have happy hour with him. We would wander to the store, pick out a beer we’d never had, and sit on the patio.

When I visited California to drive a car back to DC, one of my best friends, her young daughter, and I went to Trader Joe’s to stock my car for the trip. Brooke’s daughter was very young and the two of them played a game of spotting the lemurs throughout the store. It was a genius game Brooke had started. While her daughter was happily engaged in searching out the many lemurs that resided in the store’s “decor” she and I talked about… um… I don’t remember, but it was fun. Trader Joe’s played a role in another one of my favorite memories – time with my friend and her daughter.

When I first decided to move to Austin, I joked that I couldn’t move here as there was no Trader Joe’s. So, Trader Joe’s coming to Austin matters to me… I have an irrational affection for the store – it represents family to me. And I am home, so I like that Trader Joe’s finally arrived.

Truthfully, I will probably not shop a lot there, I suspect by the time it arrives, I will try to avoid downtown. There are too many infrastructure problems, but that’s a post for another time.

New Google+ Adds to My GoogleVille

Have you seen the new layout on Google+?

Google+ Profile

Google+  is clean and simple, your Home page is a serious of statements from those you ”follow”. It has plenty of white space with easy primary navigation on the left. Your Profile page now has a… cover photo. Hmm… . But it’s also got lots of white space and easy navigation.

In fact, the overriding design element of Google+ is a clean simplicity uncluttered by ads, sponsored notices or pages, recommendations based upon my friends’ “likes”, the cluttering of my UX with groups and lists and apps and… all kinds of other crap. Primarily because it has access to that information and provides it all to me via the applications I use in GoogleVille.

Facebook Profile

The ads are in my email and searches; the recommendations are my “personal results” at the top of my Google search results. The other applications are already part of the rest of my GoogleVille life.

But Google+’s uncomplicated UI is beautiful in its simplicity. I’m sure it will change as soon as I shut down my Facebook account.

Communications Jobs – Austin

Recently a few communications jobs have come to my attention – I thought I would pass them along.

The Austin Chamber 
VP of Communications
Director of  Publications/Communications

The Long Center
Public Relations and Social Media Manager

Austin Travis County Integral Care
Communications Manager

Texas Land Conservancy 
Development & Communications Director

Austin’s Restaurant Week: #CauseyEating at Asti

We are in the midst of Austin’s Restaurant Week - and today I dove in with gusto! Earlier this year, Jodi Bart with Tasty Touring posted her Best Italian Restaurants picks, and Asti was on the list. She included a photo and rave about the Spaghetti Carbonara that made me drool. So when Restaurant Week started, I jumped!

For Restaurant Week, there is a three-course offering for dinner for $36. I got a meal that seduced and delighted me. I went with a new friend – someone I wanted to get to know better. I felt it was fitting given I also wanted to know the restaurant better.

My meal:

Asti's PEI Mussels

PEI Mussels- tomato / garlic / chili flake / white wine / grilled bread.
When they say “garlic” they mean thick shavings of heaven.

Market Vegetable Risotto – pecorino / roasted shallot / thyme
I wanted to eat it all, but could not; I suspected I would need to hide it when I got home. If you have not had a roasted shallot, I suggest you have one or five. I am going to try to make this at home; it was delectable.

Tiramisu – almond brittle / chocolate sauce
Honestly I could have done without the chocolate sauce, but it made the plate pretty and anchored the fluffy Tiramisu. I will say the almond brittle made the dessert though. The texture of the brittle and the gentle sweetness of the Tiramisu were perfect. Though, I could eat a bowlful of the brittle and not be remorseful about missing the Tiramisu at all.

#CauseyEating means that Austin’s Restaurant Week has a GivingCity bend to it as well.

However, I wish the manner in which the beneficiary was supported had been better highlighted on the webpage. The 2012 Austin Restaurant Week was for the benefit of Meal on Wheels and More – but in order to benefit them, I needed to make my reservation a specific way. I assumed that a percentage of the receipts for the prix-fixe menu sales would go to the NPO. However, this evening, as I write this, I discovered text buried in a paragraph that says: “Each reservation through our site or the ARW app will result in a donation to our non-profit beneficiary, Meals on Wheels and More!”

Navigation leads me through too many pages to keep me on board in terms of making a reservation through their site – and it’s unclear whether or not if I bypass them and go straight to Open Table if Meals on Wheels still benefits. Either way, I love that Meals on Wheels and More gets to be a part of the week!

Looking forward to the next great meal I have – which will likely be the poached eggs I put on top of the leftover risotto tomorrow morning!

How a Generous Donor is a Smart Donor

One of the things on my Yay! List was to be a part of the American Lung Association’s Austin Fight for Air Climb.  This year I am part of Team Stairanoia and on May 19 I will join others in wheezing my way to the top of the Frost Tower here in Austin. The event is a fundraiser; I have already passed the goal I set for myself. But this afternoon I learned about a donation match for today only. And the first thing I thought was: Yay! The second thought was: Damn! That’s a smart donor.

A generous donor decided to give $300,000 to the Austin Fight for Air Climb. But she (I assume) made it a generous and smart gift. Not only is the donor making the gift, but is using it as motivation to other fundraisers with two simple limitations:

1. Set a donation cap. By matching dollar for dollar up to $300,000, it is “first come, first matched”! Let’s all admit it, team fundraisers are competitions. I will admit that I set my fundraising goal to be “to raise more than” a friend who did the climb last year raised. (Blowing ‘em outta the water right now, btw.) So as a fundraiser, I want to watch the donations made in my name to double – so I better get donors in there before anyone else, not when the $300,000 runs out.

2. Make it time bound. I need to get those donations in today because this matching is only available today. How awful would it be to not have people raise $300,000 and the donor not make the gift? For the record, I doubt the donor won’t make the gift. But she is presenting the chance to bring in $600,000 versus “only” $300,000 – so climbers and fundraisers better get moving!

When you have the opportunity to make a larger gift, think about how great it would be to make one that isn’t just generous but also smart. Your resources can motivate and impact the non-profit in ways greater than we can individually. We all know that working together we can have a greater impact – this is just one example!

It’s also a great motivator for people who haven’t yet started fundraising… and I will be honest, I’m a little concerned my goal may have to nudge up if my friend starts rolling in the donations today!

Apple’s Role in Limiting Choice

We need to limit choice. Apple has the system down – it is the reason they do so well*. I want to buy a new laptop. I currently use a MacBook but decided it makes sense for me to explore PCs as part of my due diligence.  Apple is successful in turning people who understand Macs run the same as PCs from the UX point of view into converts because they make choosing their products easier than other companies.

People may argue that PCs are a better product, but “better” is subjective and not really relevant. The product that will be successful will be the one that makes it easier for their customer to choose them. Remember when VHS and Beta videotapes came out? No? Well, the better product didn’t last with consumers. VHS was easier for people to choose, not the better product. Apple makes it easier to choose their product.

In general we believe more options are better. We want basic ice cream shops to have a minimum of 31 flavors. When we buy Levis we have nine styles with five rises and eight rinses to choose from. I’m a simple girl; I just want a pair of jeans. Making decisions about which item to purchase are actually harder when there are endless options.

I am not against personalizing or tweaking the product – but I need a base starting point. The Dell website offers seven different series of laptops… not seven different laptops, but seven series; each series has 2-4 versions from which to start building my laptop needs. In contract, Apple has two laptop options. And then I can begin to personalize from there – clean and simple.

I am not sure I will purchase another Mac, but my head started spinning when I started comparing PC laptops. If only Apple would let me personalize the price… .

* This is not the only reason Apple does well, but I wanted to limit the options you had about WHY.  [insert smiley face w a wink]

Open Letter to Ken Ehrlich, Executive Producer of the Grammy’s.

Dear Ken,
It wasn’t until this morning that I learned of your horrible decision-making skills. It seems Chris Brown was asked to perform at the Grammy’s last night.

I understand you are running a business. I undertand that there are plenty of other high-profile people who have used drugs, abused partners, committed manslaughter, stolen things, abused animals that go on to be given “second chances” by those that will be able to make money from allowing them to continue along their career path. I understand it is part of the business. I don’t condone it, I don’t believe it is right, I still think that it is an awful part of a business. It is, however, a business that makes no apologies for serving the lowest common denominator. I watch movies and TV shows and I listen to music; I selectively engage in this material.

Here is what your horrible decision-making skills allowed you to do: sink below the lowest common denominator.

Rihanna's face after being beaten by Chris Brown. But Ehlich thinks the Grammy's were the victim.

“Explaining the decision to allow Brown back on the show, Ehrlich told ABC News Radio, “I think people deserve a second chance, you know. If you’ll note, he has not been on the Grammys for the past few years and it may have taken us a while to kind of get over the fact that we were the victim of what happened.” – ABC News

Who the hell do you think you are? You and the Grammy’s were the victims of his beating Rihanna? You were the victime when Brown used violence to demonstrate his power and control over another person? Brown beat someone he supposedly loved and someone who felt they could trust him – but you and the Grammy’s were the victim? That is the most ridiculous, offensive, self-involved thing I have heard in a long time.

We can, for a nano-second ignore that you have basically told abusers that they will be given the equivalent of a “time-out” when they beat their partners. We can also forget for a nano-second that you have held yourself up as yet another example of society’s willingness to say that women who are abused should accept their partner will always have that power.

To say that you were the victim of a crime in which a woman was beaten by her boyfriend to the point that she had to go to the hosiptal demonstrates such an enormous lack of connection to reality. The reality that:

• One in every four women will be abused in their lifetime.
• Every 9 seconds, a woman is battered in the U.S.
• When women leave an abusive relationship, it is the most dangerous time for them. Of all the women murdered in the U.S., about one-third were killed by an intimate partner.

I would think that perhaps this would have been seen as an opportunity to take a stand for what is right. The actual victim of the crime is also in the music industry and Chris Brown is cetainly not someone with enough talent to be missed if he were left out of programming. (Psst! I know you know this, act like it: No one is indespensible… especially not an abusive man who beats his girlfriend.)

Sadly, once again, I am left dissapointed by those in a positoin to take a stand for what is right, instead you chose to stand on the side of sensationalization and money. Frankly, if I were in a decision-making role with the Grammy’s, I’d let it be known that you failed. Allowing him to perform suggests the Grammy’s endorses Chris Brown as a representative of the best in the business.

But your comment that the Grammy’s were the victim in all this is appalling. Ken, you owe all women who have been abused an apology. At a minimum you owe Chris Brown’s actual victim (you know, the one who was actually punched in the face?) an apology.

With diminished respect,
Narissa

Lone Stars and Sundays

What Susan G. Komen Did Right

The last two days have been filled with articles, tweets, Google+ and FB posts about what the Susan G. Komen Foundation did wrong. People were angry to learn they had chosen politics over what we believe their mission is: to help ensure access to early detection for women, help those struck by breast cancer, and to fund research to eradicate breast cancer. Many people voiced their opinions and in the end Komen reversed their decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood. But in the meantime, I started thinking about what Komen really does: marketing.

A quick review of the Komen website and last annual report yields no mission statement, but they frame their annual report with a focus on: Ensuring Quality Care for All, Empowering People, and Energizing Science. And a quick review of their annual report also tells us how they spent their budget:

12% – Administration
8% – Fundraising
7% – Treatment (Ensuring Quality Care for All?)
15% – Screening (Empowering People?)
24% – Research (Energizing Science?)
34% – Education

Now, this isn’t a bad breakdown… pretty impressive if you consider they spend only 20% on what is traditionally considered “overhead” (via administration and fundraising line items). But note that most of what they do is not treatment, screening, or research. Most of the money they spend goes to “education”. I may be jaded, but to me “education” is a fuzzy word. “Education” can be “outreach programs” which can also be marketing.

Susan G. Komen is the Pink Behemoth. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But in October, everywhere I go, I see pink. Komen raised the visibility of the issue, engaged those who have been affected by breast cancer, and built a $460 million empire on those pink ribbons, bags, hats, and tees. Komen is a marketing machine.

If any non-profit out there needs an example of what your marketing and communications teams can do, if given the resources, it’s Komen. Through marketing they raised the profile of the issue, which helped to raise the number of advocates, which helped to raise the money, which helped to put them in the position to fund organizations that can be the “boots on the ground” to fight the war against cancer through screenings, treatment, and research. That is pretty amazing.

Do I believe Komen is altruistic or as infallible as we would all like to believe non-profits are? No. I think the last few days have highlighted some primary key problems with non-profits:

1. Trying to be more than they should be or are set up to be.

2. Not creating enough diversity at the Board and Senior staff level to offset any personal and political agendas.

3. Believing that people will support an organization because of the “issue” and that the non-profit is on the “right” side of the issue.

The Pink Behemoth isn’t perfect, but no organization is. But if we understand that what Komen does right is marketing, then we can all learn some lessons here and appreciate the value of how far investing in good communications teams can go. And yes, it can go pretty far.