Build It

Architect Barbie: Poorly designed

I am apparently a little behind on this, but last year, Mattel came out with a new Barbie doll in their series of "I Can Be..." Barbies showcasing different career paths for Barbie.  The specific doll in question here is Architect Barbie. 

Although a bit off topic from my normal posts, this one hits closer to home because of  my chosen field and the fact that I have a daughter who I would likely encourage into a career in the real estate realm.

While I recognize Mattel's need to have glamorous representations of everything for Barbie, this (and probably others in the career line) comes off, at least to me, as particularly unrealistic.  I think there's a fine line here between trying to make a career like Architecture attractive to young girls through exposure to Architect Barbie, and trivializing the experience or position by giving her a hot pink plan tube/yoga mat carrier.  Not to meniton that Barbie is apparently carrying the plans for her ubiquitious "Dream House" along with her, which most Architects could probably never afford.

Architecture, like most jobs, is not all cute pillows, international travel and acclaim.  Like most professions, it can be very hard to get to the top and not spend your days drawing bathroom stalls and stairs.

In fact, an 8-year old girl wrote to Dwell magazine earlier this year, criticizing Architect Barbie for not including any further information about Architecture itself to further young girls' curiosity about the career path:

"If you're going to send a girl an Architect Barbie, then you should send something about architecture with it so that she knows what that doll means.  Otherwise, she might use that Barbie for a different purpose like putting its clothes on a different Barbie doll and forgetting about it."

It's also been noted by some that Barbie's footwear is incredbily unrealistic for walking a jobsite, seeing that she comes equipped with an über-cute hardhat.

"It's as if these naysayers were saying that a rail-thin, perfectly coiffed blonde can't actually roll with the big boys—that she should put those blueprints down, go to a nail salon, relax with a Cosmo, and let the real men do the work."

It really seems to me that this sort of representation of a real career actually serves to put the pursuit of that career farther out of reach of girls like my own daughter.  I would hate to give her this kind of present that trivializes her career aspirations, whatever they may be.

- Jared Willis

 

Blueprinter Redux - Follow Up

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about making the word "blueprint" cool again, I saw this article in the San Francisco Chronicle talking about how the public much prefers the word "hospital" over the marketing-speak term "medical center" which is so in use these days.  Here are some excerpts:

"a national survey of 1,027 American adults...showed that way more consumers prefer the term “hospital” to “medical center.

Considering that swarms of U.S. hospitals have transformed themselves to medical centers over the last few years, that’s pretty funny.

Marketers, business gurus, consultants, and others with big contracts and fancy suits convinced hospital executives that “hospitals” were old fashioned, quaint, and way too 20th century. "Medical centers” were cutting edge, high-tech and truly trendy. 

The survey...found that U.S. consumers think a “hospital” would have a wider range of services, would provide better care, would be more up to date and would have more physicians...who are experts in their fields, according to the survey, often by lopsided margins.

“The conventional wisdom for years has been that the word ‘hospital’ was tired and old-fashioned,” said Steve Rivkin, founder of Rivkin & Associates, a marketing and communications consultancy. “As a result, hundreds of hospitals have dropped the word and renamed themselves medical centers.”

"The conventional wisdom is wrong,” said Sandra Bauman, founder of Bauman Research & Consulting, noting that it shows that consumers favor ‘hospital’ across the board, and that results were consistent across lines of gender, age, income, race, region, household income, household size and educational level."

This is exactly what I was talking about.  The industry is tired of being called a hospital, so it invents a convoluted two-word phrase to replace it, yet the consumers think much more highly of the old-fashioned term than the new fangled one. 

That to me is the biggest take-away from this article.  The end-users themselves attributed more and better services to the name they knew best, not the name that was created by the hospital industry.

Was anyone ever really convinced that "reprographics" was the better term?

Here's a link to the article: http://bit.ly/jtNtGy

Here's a link to the study: http://bit.ly/kA0s6k

 

Jared Willis

 

 

A change

For those of you who are fairly regular viewers of this blog, you'll have noticed that I changed up the overall style of the blog. I updated the style to reflect a more Real Estate Development-centric theme, because that coincides with another change.

Starting in early April, I will leave BarkerBlue to start a position in the Real Estate Development field for a firm in San Francisco. This has been my goal over the past few years, and I came across a great opportunity with a great company.

It is going to be bittersweet to leave BarkerBlue and the friends I have made in the Reprographics industry, but this is going to be a very interesting and exciting step. I will still continue to maintain this blog, and I actually hope that being on the "other side of the fence" will provide great perspective for readers, especially in Reprographics, from a Development point of view.

I can still be reached by clicking "Email Me" link near the top left of the blog under my picture, and I do hope that you will stay in touch and feel free to email.

Thanks very much for sticking with me through the first part of this journey, and I hope you'll continue to stay around for the next part.

Jared Willis

Are you an Architect?

From the blog Coffee with an Architect comes a simple way to find out if you're destined to be an Architect.  Really funny stuff (link below the photo).

http://www.coffeewithanarchitect.com/2011/02/22/are-you-an-architect-the-quiz/

 

Jared

 

Power of Language

A bit of a departure from the normal content of this blog, but I saw this video today and thought it was great.  Additionally, those in Sales should always be cognizant of language and its affect on others.  Please to enjoy:

Hidden Costs

First of all, I apologize to all 5 of my readers for not updating the blog recently.  My wife and I welcomed a baby girl on September 7th and that has taken up a fair amount of my time, as you can imagine.  Now onto the post.

I saw a news story this evening, talking about how MySpace has been caught sharing user's information with their advertisers.  They claim that there is no identifying information in what the advertisers have received, but I think it's fair to assume that the data contained information on how to better market to those affected users.  

This story follows an very similar story from Facebook recently, which did a similar sharing of user ID to outside companies and marketers.  Additionally, Google was recently caught collecting information on wireless networks and even user names and passwords via their Google Earth cars driving around neighborhoods.

There is a justified and large uproar over these revelations that these companies are, in essence, selling your data to companies to help market to you.  I can't say that I'm much surprised as there is truly no such thing as a free lunch in this world.

A while ago, I met with a customer who, when complaining about the costs of our service, told me that he just goes on YouTube and gets videos, for free, of course then asking why we didn't just give it away for free.  This trend continues to this day with our clients expecting something for nothing, just like they get on the internet.

These large internet companies, with thousands of employees, do not and can not operate without profit.  They are making money off you one way or another.  

Clients need to understand that you need money to keep your doors open and continue to serve them.  They need to understand that you're out to make money and you deserve to get paid for your services, just as these so-called "free" services are getting paid for theirs.  I think if you can be open with your clients, most will understand that you can't do things for free and even the price sensitive clients will be able to come to a middle ground with you on how/what you charge.

If they continue to demand something for nothing, go along with it, then sell their name to an ad firm.  

 

Jared

Digital vs Paper

Saw this interesting comparison of hardcopy books versus digital downloads.  It seems as though the power still remains with hardcopy, but for how long.

 

The foundation

Welcome to Build It: The Blog.

This blog exists to cover topics of interest (hopefully) to the Construction, Development, Reprographic and Sales worlds culled from my experience and perspective.

I plan to dedicate part of this blog to discussing "green" or "sustainable" construction, especially as it relates to construction reprographics.

I hope that you enjoy the information posted here and find it, well, informative.