Little Vera
Imagine that you work for a large public relations agency. One of your clients is the nation of Sylvania, a small country that has recently been invaded by its neighbor, Fredonia. So naturally you're working around the clock to come up with ways to win American public support for your client. You need to increase the chances that the US will intervene with diplomacy, sanctions and military force if necessary in order to drive the Fredonians back to their own side of the border.
Your client's liaison makes a suggestion that on its surface seems like a great idea. A Sylvanian teenager named Vera Marcal claims to have seen Fredonian soldiers enter the maternity ward of a hospital, remove seriously ill babies from in incubators that were keeping them alive, dash the babies' brains out against the wall and steal all the medical equipment. "Little Vera" is prepared to tell her story to the media and even testify before Congress about what she saw.
The phrase "on its surface" at the beginning of the last paragraph should strongly suggest that there's more to this story. An acquaintance at the Sylvanian embassy tells you that Marcal is actually a member of the nation's royal family. Further, rumor has it that she wasn't even in the country during the invasion, let alone present in a hospital maternity ward.
What do you do? Is it a good idea to draw attention to Marcal's story? What are the potential advantages? What are the potential disadvantages? Is there a difference between having her tell her story to the media and having her testify before a Congressional committee?
The myth of male helplessness
The advertising industry has always had an awkward relationship with women. From its beginning in the 19th century up through the 1950s (and beyond in some cases), advertising tended to portray women exclusively as homemakers, responsible for cooking, cleaning and otherwise attending to the needs of their husbands and children.
As women began to enter the workforce in large numbers, their roles in ads changed. Husbands shared the household duties. But often men were incompetent homemakers, ignorantly trying to use Brand Z rather than the sponsor's fabulously better product.
That's called the "myth of male helplessness." It transforms the man's role from "honey, fix me dinner while I watch football" to I'm obviously too dumb to fix dinner, so do the cooking for me while I watch football." In many ways it's even more insulting than plain, old-fashioned sexism.
Your challenge is to identify and describe an ad you've seen recently that employs the myth of male helplessness. It's less common than it used to be, but unfortunately you should still be able to find an example.
Would the ad have been more or less effective if the gender roles had been reversed? Explain why you think so.