The Difference

Me:

Despite feeling dizzy and a level of fatigue I can only describe as “crushing” after I work, I pick up the kid from school. I take her to a park, despite it being about 100 degrees because she needed to feel how hot it was herself. Bring her home, feed the dog, get dinner started. While some of it cooks, play with the kid. Serve dinner to have it refused by the kid, refused by the husband when he gets home and pack up leftovers. Play with the kid, get her ready for bed, read stories and tuck her in.

Husband:

Come home from work just as dinner is ready and say “I have a headache, I’m going to lay down.” Get up just as it’s time to put the kid in bed, rile her up and then play Angry Birds on the phone while the wife attempts to get her to settle down to sleep.

And that… is the difference between being the mom and being the dad.

Marketing Rant

Rant ahead:
I’m sick of marketing plans that are geared toward the “mindset of 17- and 18-year-old students”. Honestly… how do we know the mindset of every teenager in that age bracket? We don’t! Because they’re all unique individuals.

And we’re a bunch of 30’s – 50’s age bracket people making these assumptions… because we know just how youngsters in this day and age think?

No…. they’re ASSUMPTIONS.

And there’s some saying about what happens when you assume and it indicates that somebody in the equation is an ass… And that’s what I start to feel like when I’m in meetings where people keep saying these things over and over and over.

  • “Kids now want flashy things.”
  • “They need movement!”
  • “They need bells and whistles!”

Bells and whistles? Man… that just screams that we’re too old to be making these assumptions.

But you know what I assume they want? Straightforward information that is easy to use on a range of devices, whether they’re on a desktop, laptop, tablet or phone. But I get looked at like I have grown a second head when I suggest something of that nature.

I can’t imagine lumping myself into a group like that. “We gotta get into the mindset of the mid-to-late-30’s people.” I can’t even come to a consensus with the other person in that age-bracket who lives in my house (my husband) on what is the best way to speak to us through advertisements, web pages, television (except The Walking Dead… that is awesome no matter what), music… any form of media. Some things we see eye-to-eye on and others we  don’t. That’s the nature of human beings… we can think for ourselves and form our own opinions.

So making a decision based on what you guess a whole group of people would want, especially when you’re doing it from a perspective that they must all be morons and not even giving them the benefit of the assumption that they have a brain… well, that’s just driving me bonkers lately.

That’s why we need focus groups. Let’s just ask a small sampling of people in that age group. It’s still assumptions, but assumptions made with a little more knowledge.

Okay, end highly unpolished rant.