Welcome to the finale in an arc inspired by something KBar sent me, Burger's name stirs a beef. Part 1 of this arc dealt with the differences in Burgers. Part 2 offered that no one is going to be upset by a "Yankee CheeseBurger" and questioned the reason for the lack of concern.
Part 3 asked "If I don't like the words you're using, do I have to right to stop you from using them?" and gave an example of "It's not what is said, it's what is heard." I offered another example of language use in part 4 and explained that responses to information have more to do with how people are wired and how they think than the information itself.
I often wonder if there's any gain in making people bow to some particular sensitivity. If you don't like WopBurgers, don't eat at that restaurant.
What does this have to do with June Li being Italian-American and me being Asian-Canadian?
As I demonstrated at Emetrics, both June and I have similar cognitive, behavioral/effective and motivational drivers. The heck with our differences in backgrounds and everything else. If you stereotype me as a "wop", at least make sure you get it right.
Get it right?
Yes. Marketers use stereotypes all the time. They call them Personae and here's a joke to demonstrate what I'm writing about:
The marketing guy is talking to a national fastfood chain. They've come up with a new product they believe will do extremely well in a specific demographic and have created a persona to use in advertising, marketing, tv and print, so on and so forth. He starts with, "We've created this Persona, Vinny, and he's a mid to late twenty something, not yet married, very much involved in fraternal organizations --"
"Wait a second," interrupts the fastfood company exec. "What kind of fraternal organizations?"
"Oh, you know...Sons of Italy, the Church, you know..."
"Yeah, okay. Go ahead."
" -- still hangs out with his old friends from school, visits his old, widowed mother at least once a week, loves local sports teams, knows there's no cooking like what he can find in the old neighborhood -- "
"The 'old neighborhood'?"
"Oh, you know. The North End of Boston. New York's Little Italy."
"Yeah, okay. Got it. Go ahead."
" -- makes jokes about his brother, the priest -- "
"This sounds like the John Travolta character from Saturday Night Fever."
"Bingo! That's it! See? This Vinny character is someone everybody knows."
"And what's the product's name again?"
"We're going to call it 'The WopBurger'!"
Budda-Bing.
I've studied with ethnic and cultural groups from all over the globe, most of them adopting me as one of their own, so that now I often think of myself as a Jewish Afro-Celt Italo-Scott Russo-Jivaren Tling-Lakotah Paiute-Chinaman with Sami-Nigerian-Abbrondaic grandparents on all five sides. Oh, and did I forget to mention my Quiche-Mayan-Inuit ancestry?
The use of language and communications in general is coming at me in a lot of ways this week. One way is from KBar's Finding of the article that started this arc off, another was from WindKiller and his comment about the Drunken Pirate (with a follow up email that I'll be sharing shortly). The third item was reading and hearing about the military forbidding the use of different internet services. Finally, some friends were going to see Imus live but the show was cancelled because of Imus' on air faux-pas.
And more of all this in future posts...
» Canadian Based Business Differences -- Responding to June Li, Christopher Berry and Jaques Warren from BizMediaScience
Ah...those Canadians...Their Pioneering Spirit...Whre's Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald when you really need them? [Read More]
Tracked on: June 23, 2008 8:59 AM | Permalink to Trackback