The Down Low on the High Tech Women Workforce: Numbers Could Be Better

Download this: for all the achievements high technology has accomplished in recent years at bringing different people together, when it comes to the high-tech workplace, women are still being left out.

That’s the troubling conclusion reached by the Level Playing Field, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that researches educational and workforce inequality. Their data, released last week, reveals that women working at high tech IT and startup companies continue to feel isolated compared to their male peers – and even feel belittled and bullied in the work place, resulting in high job dissatisfaction. And, despite encouraging signs that women make up 46% of the workforce and half of all college graduates, a paltry 22% include the high-tech marketplace – an area critical for 21^st century advancement.

So why don’t women feel more empowered to successfully tackle tech? There are many theories – here’s a snapshot of two:

#1 – With all that has changed in the American workforce in recent decades, it’s hard to remember that only a short while ago, women, were relegated to secondary positions in male-dominant corporate hierarchies. Is there a residue of (outdated) beliefs still filtering through the last bastions of male-only (or mostly male) domains?

#2 – The age-old throwaway: “Women and technology don’t mix.” I always find that one amusing considering the first waves of modern office and domestic inventions were consistently in the stereotyped sphere of women’s use.

The bottom line? Technology and women do mix. Women-led startups generate higher revenue per dollars of invested capital and have lower failure rates, according to Cindy Padnos, founder of Illuminate Ventures, a venture capital firm catering toward woman business leaders. Women-run high tech companies, her research found, had annual revenues that were 12% higher, using a third less capital.

It’s fitting, perhaps, that October is National Bullying Prevention month. While the initiative –a collective work by a variety of nonprofits –is geared largely toward children and teens, it’s nevertheless a good time to remember that bullies, like other bad apples in a high school or college class, graduate too. Upon receiving their diploma where do they go? The office.

As Public Relations professionals –an industry that has enjoyed an unprecedented male-female flip-flop with 85 percent of the field’s employees being women – we can work with our male and female clients alike, helping them craft a more balanced message about who they’re looking to recruit internally and who their products or messages are directed toward externally. Nobody likes a bully and everyone can afford to be a little more inclusive. Now that this boss (who happens to be a woman) is about to get her own cup of coffee, (don’t need an assistant of either sex for that) let me post this high tech blog –before I magically forget how.

You know…. ‘cause I’m a woman. Please.

Message Not Sent: Public Eager to Adopt Mobile Buying; Businesses Not So Much

For a three-word sentence, “Message not sent,” does a pretty good job at frustrating text messagers from completing and sending their digital thoughts. And when it comes to m-commerce, ‘M’ for mobile, businesses it seems, haven’t gotten the message either.

A new survey compiled by Empirix reveals a mixed message: 91 percent of American shoppers believed mobile buying for anything from airline tickets, to department store purchases, to all items in between by text message, email or smart phone app, will generally benefit their shopping experience, while nearly two-thirds of respondents expected an improvement in customer service via their mobile outlet.

But like a garbled message trapped in the Internet ether, fewer than half of businesses surveyed in several countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, said they’d be investing money toward establishing m-commerce networks. The US, which often plays second fiddle (or third, or fourth) to tech-savvy Europe, was a relative “winner,” with 41 percent of businesses saying they would. Better still; more than half of US businesses said they at least had a mobile strategy in place. By contrast only 14 percent of UK businesses were game for upgrading from ‘E’ to m-commerce.

Dealing with the digital disconnect

That’s where PR companies come into play. Playing the watchdog role for our clients means it’s our job to inform them when it’s time to enhance their business and marketing models, offering concrete mobile marketing suggestions and strategy. In short, just having a web page is so last decade. As seen on airlines, mobile onboard buying campaigns have really taken off. (Pardon the pun)

If airlines can be persuaded to the see the benefits of turning a jumbo jet’s cabin into a touch and click sky mall, then why not other businesses?

To be sure, an m-commerce-embracing public and a plugged in communications industry are only the first steps toward success. But they’re not bad starts. In Empirix’s press release on the study, Tim Moynihan, VP of Marketing cautioned companies against quantity of mobile initiative versus quality of effort.

“As more businesses deliver m-commerce applications to an increasing number of consumers, the risk of poor service increases dramatically,” he said. “Investing in an end-to-end service assurance program at the start of this journey will separate the winners from the losers.”

An “end to end service assurance program,” huh.

Sounds like the perfect job for us.

Why almost everything that Apple’s PR machine does turns to gold

The following article originally appeared on Mobile Marketer on October 3rd, 2011.

I started writing this article the morning after the media vultures started picking over Steve Jobs' resignation carcass. Why add more fuel to the Apple fire, I thought.

It has been “Apple this” and “Apple that” for longer than I care to remember. So I put down my notes.

Now, more than five weeks later, the world has not ended with Steve Job no longer at Apple’s helm. Its shares have not plummeted. The iPhone 5 will likely dominate 2011 holiday sales. And, in the process, Apple became the most valuable company on the stock market.

Life continues, and so I write.

Give an apple to the teacher, as the cliché goes, and you stand a better chance of getting in their good books.

But in a very real sense, for the better part of its existence, Apple has been the company that has given us the apple and kept the public relations spinmeisters and media industry singing the company’s praises – right down to its very core.

So how has Apple kept us plugged in?
Consider this: Twenty-five years ago tech was geek. Majorly geek.

Tech was for nerds who were shunned by the masses. They were the ones who rode bikes or skateboards when we bought our first shiny BMW. They discovered iPods while we were still ooohing at clunky MP3 players. We got hammered at parties while they wrote code wired on Mountain Dew.

Who’s laughing now?

They are, all the way to their tech-stock engorged portfolios. Today, tech is très, très chic, and much of that chic transformation goes to Apple.

It is not every day that a balding, lanky, somewhat geeky man can command the stage, holding a twinkling device that promises the universe but is only a phone/music player/tablet attain rock star status.

Yet, Steve Jobs and Apple have done just that, launching hit, after hit. As Kool and The Gang sang back in the ’80s, “He’s got the Midas Touch.”

In the PR trade, it is usually us who are the ones drawing the lines and making the rules – or we like to think so anyway.

In the case of Apple, however, we have been entranced – or is it enchanted? – right along with consumers. I cannot image doing our work without an iSomething to hand and it is hard to imagine a world without Apple.

The Apple R&D folks create what often kicks off long and gushing reviews of the company’s line of firsts, but it is the marketing department which really goes to town on the behind-the-scenes work – even though it goes out of its way to appear not to.

Not all about what’s under the tech hood
While we sell our well-honed communications skills – skills that are supposed to help our clients develop strategies that communicate their messages with pinpoint accuracy – Apple’s PR strategy has been the opposite. Obfuscate, block, and say nothing.

Mix that in with lots of hype, cult-like adoration and oodles of staging, and you have the only brand that is globally tolerated for its “magic of misdirection.” Any other brand would be excommunicated from the journalism world, but not Apple.

Take the iPhone 5 prototype “accident” from a few weeks ago. Left at a bar, the only prototype available. Just like that.

A similar watering hole mishap occurred last year with the iPhone 4.

Although Apple says nothing, the publicity rumor mill speeds away at over four megabits a second. Did Apple deliberately lose a new phone to generate buzz? Was it to lap Android in a sort of subtle way, “We’ve done it again, you suckers?”

Even if the iPhone 5’s loss was a five-alarm fire of genuine concern does not much matter. Nineteenth-century showman P.T. Barnum is often credited with the expression, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

Mr. Jobs and Apple have polished that phrase to an all new sheen.

Apple, truly, has broken all conventions when it comes to media and PR strategy, from allegedly misleading the press – Electronic Games, 2007; the delayed Korea launch – to letting its fanatics have a free-for-all without saying much to deflate some, at times, far-fetched theories.

As someone with a vested professional interest in damage control, I have to admit that Apple is a PR treat to devour.

Instead of taming the media beast with a crisis strategy or even strategically controlled messaging, it has let the media beast feed on itself by strategically saying nothing at all.

Think about for that a couple of minutes.

For all the talk of CEOs and corporate communications teams stepping up and commenting the second a negative tweet or blog post appears, Apple has done the opposite. Its lack of response when it comes to conjecture only makes any actual responses all the more poignant.

Company that talks little but says much
Since Apple is regularly seen as observers in the melee, when it does speak, we listen.

Notable instances include the company’s denial of tracking iPhone and iPad users – which we know is a lie; we are tracked and yet we still do not much care – or when Steve Jobs' illness was finally clarified (way more serious than we thought).

Both instances could have been far more damaging for any other brand.

But Apple's product launch rumors and news kept us magically distracted.

In late April, we were talking about the tracking rumors. By mid-May, we were discussing a new product launch – a 180-degree turnaround in just 15 business days.

When we were talking about Mr. Jobs' health issues – for the third time – in January 2011, we were also knee-deep in iPad 2 news. His health, it seemed, played second fiddled to the life-changing promise of the iPad 2.

Humility: Great for philosophers, the religious, and repentant politicians during an election cycle; bad for Mr. Jobs and Apple.

Perhaps I am being too harsh: the media industry is human, after all, and we are suckers for strong personalities, bravado or otherwise.

In 1983, Apple, still a seedling of its present self, launched the ambitious Lisa computer.

With a staggering near-$10,000 price tag – $21,589 in today’s dollars – Mr. Jobs and Apple aggressively marketed their product.

Confidence may not have helped sell Lisa to a price-conscious consumer – Lisa was pretty much dead on arrival – but similar stances on a myriad of Apple products since have ultimately turned it from a computer company to an icon.

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