You are reading way more into that than is there while chastising me for doing the same.
You think Maxim doesn’t have reporters or editors? That they don’t need to be persuaded to review a product or author or whatever?
Like I said, it depends on the audience, the message, and the author being promoted. None of which we know for sure.
Uh huh. Well, I looked but couldn’t find where the OP appointed you spokesperson. Maybe you can cite that.
It is OK to disagree. I offerend him or her, my advice and others theirs. S/he will filter as /she sees fit.
In the meantime, I recall the old maxim (no pun intended) if 20 people all have eh same opinion, 19 of them are unnecessary.
I wouldn’t know how someone who pretends to be in marketing would act. I don’t knwo anyone like that.
Maybe there are people that specialize in presenting this piece of a marketing message or that part. The OP seems to be only a small part of an overall marketing campaign to me. S/he may or may not have much freedom to craft the actual message.
Me, I prefer working on crafting the overall marketing strategy within a business’s overall goals and letting others handle the day to day execution. But I can’t imagine a marketing campaign that was both effective, and silo’d off so that all the various functions were completely independent of each other at every level.
If you know of campaigns like that, I am interested to read your descriptions of them. They could be useful case studies, for better or worse.
Hijack: is your first name really Aloysius, or did you just use it for purposes of illustration? Because - no offense meant - as a Munichian I smile when I see somebody who’s really called Aloysius! (We have a famous one, if you haven’t been told before).
No, it isn’t — my dad went to a school called St. Aloysius in Ohio and I’ve always liked the name. Until this thread came up, my online persona didn’t even have a given name!
Very demeaning to use women’s first names. I can remember when not only were they called by their first names, but their CLOTHING was described, (…President Jean Smith was feted at a luncheon on Tuesday. Jean, who was wearing a gray mini-skirted suit and bright red blouse…) I also remember on the newspaper business page, a column about new movers and shakers in the business world - can’t remember about the status of the ‘career gals’, but married women with families were specifically mentioned (…Mrs. Brown is married to Dr. Phil Brown of Albany, and she is mother to two sons and a daughter…) nary a word about the MEN and if they were taken/had offspring.
Based on experience, I don’t think female reporters would appreciate being differentiated from men in this fashion. I do think I, and they, would lose a lot of respect for a PR person who made the kind of distinctions the OP is talking about because it suggests a lack of respect for women. You seem to be suggesting women might be more likely to respond to being called by their first names, and I think it’s very unlikely that male and female reporters would respond so differently.
Who said anything about differentiating on if the audience is male or female?
I thought the OP was writing one letter to send to a target, and the issue is, how do I refer to the person I am presenting as available for an interview, not the potential interviewer, or the potential interviewer’s screener more likely, whose gender may or may not be known at all.
IOW, the OP asked about the subject of the letter, not the recipient of it.
Flacks usually know the gender of the reporters they are trying to contact. In any case, you’re right that I jumped around a little. But journalistic practice holds that you refer to men and women by the same naming conventions, and that applies to the journalists being addressed, and to the people being offered as sources.
We don’t know if he is s/he is sending mass mailings out or not. they could be going to the program director at every country adult radio station in america for all we know.
Simply this is not journalistic writing we are asked about so none of your claims, be they true or not, apply here. Content promoting speakers is subject to whatever whims the people creating it have that day. It quite clearly would vary at least by agency, who might develop their own style to differentiate. There is no cut and dried form that dear abby or emily post approves of. There just isn’t. Feel free to offer a cite if you have one to support your claim, all 3 parts and the connecting words.
I would not appreciate being referred to by my first name if I knew that the guys got referred to by their last names. I’d find another PR firm, even if it cost me some money and opportunities. I think that the OP should consider this.
People promoting stories to journalists often adopt the style of journalists for reasons that are (I hope) obvious. I’m not aware of any PR industry style guides, but there are journalistic style guides that are used for these kinds of purposes.
Everybody “might” do a lot of things. We were attempting to discuss what people actually do, since that was what the OP asked about. He asked if a particular practice he employs is sexist (it is), and if it is common or wrong.
Who cares what Dear Abby and Emily Post think? What I (and a bunch of other posters) provided was perspective on the sexism issue, and much of that perspective comes from knowledge of professional standards. The OP makes it clear that he has not been using any standard and he does not appear to have received any instruction at work, so comparisons to other practices are relevant. Yes, it’s possible that agencies can make up their own guidelines; the OP’s agency does not appear to have done so. The AP Stylebook, on the other hand, DOES deal with this issue and it says the following:
That may or may not be as credible as Emily Post, but it’s used by a lot of the people the OP is trying to reach.
It’s a lot more authoritative than Emily Post. Ancient etiquette manuals are supremely irrelevant here. One, for being hopelessly obsolete, and, two, this isn’t a matter of “etiquette,” per se. This isn’t a social situation in which class and tradition are important. This is a professional situation in which professionals are treated as professionals regardless of categories like sex.
I was being ironic. Despite what not_alice is saying, the AP stylebook and the Chicago manual of style are the best references to use here. If the OP had a professional manual of his own or a guide from his own employer, that might be different, but in that case this thread would not exist.
Do you want to open a new “Travel to Munich - looking for tips” thread in IMHO or similar, so others can participate? I suspect tschild might be from the area, too. Maybe we could have a Mini-Munich-Meetup?
I was actually wondering about where that would be appropriate to put, so mebbe I will thx.
BTW as regarding the original note and if anyone cares, I ended up basically referring to “Ms. Harris” on second reference. There’s a certain amount of “Yeah, but it’s just gotta FLOW too” in the communications field.
As for pitching Maxim vs., say, BusinessWeek, yeah you’re going to use a different language level even in “formal” communication with the outlet.
It seems few here are involved with making marketing decisions or have even taking a writing course where it is taught to write for the audience.
Or ever seen an advertisement that was masculine or feminine without considering it sexist.
I wonder where this gender-neutral world of marketing is? Aside from (some but not all) b2b advertising, and informational local directory/coupon advertising and that sort of thing, I’d say there is very little of it indeed, especially in consumer goods and entertainment (both of which are close to if not encompassing the OP’s question)
