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msmarvelouswinchester · 3 years

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Irresistibly Yours

Chapter 1 - The Elevator

Summary - Y/N Y/L/N moves to NYC in hopes for a fresh start after a nasty breakup. There she meets her neighbor, the cynical lawyer, Dean Winchester. A love-hate relationship starts evolving between them ever since they met in the elevator one morning but a desperate situation and a string of lies forces the two friendly rivals to go on a date or rather a fake date. Will sparks fly between them when Dean gets to know Y/N real and up close? Will Y/N finally find her Prince Charming in the grumpy, workaholic, divorce lawyer?

Pairing - Lawyer!Dean Winchester x Y/N

Warning - None for this chapter

Word Count - 1981

Square Filled - Moodboard ( @girl-next-door-writes )

A/N - *Cracks knuckles* Ta-daaaa! The series is finally here it's already Sunday where I live and I was dying to share this! It's going to be a wild ride ahead. So buckle up your seatbelts and enjoy the ride!

This is also my submission to @flamencodiva's Writing Challenge and @deanwanddamons' 2K Blogiversary challenge (congratulations on your milestone, Sian). Prompts are in bold.

Beta'd by @miss-nerd95 (Thanks again, hon❤️)

Dividers by @firefly-graphics

Series Masterlist Masterlist

Throwing her bag over the table, Y/N slumped down on the couch, letting out a sigh. The pressure from the higher-ups, consistent criticism of your work and impending deadlines were weighing heavily on her shoulders and she was in a desperate need of a break.

She looked over to the stack of papers on the table that now lay abandoned. The rejection from the publishing company was the fucking cherry on top. Y/N buried her face in her hands in frustration as she was almost on the verge of a mental breakdown, a few angry tears rolling down her cheeks. Letting her head fall back, she swiped away those angry tears, letting out a long sigh of defeat.

“Why can't I ever do anything right?” She mumbled, her breathing heavy as she bit down on her trembling lips.

In her late twenties, after a nasty break up, Y/N had a marvellous thought that she needed a fresh start. So she had left her corporate job back in Atlanta and moved to New York to pursue her dreams of becoming a writer. She had secured a good position in one of the leading magazine companies and started to write the novel that she had been planning since she was seventeen, but lately nothing seemed to work out the way she wanted. Sure, she was getting paid well but it wasn't enough compared to how much she had to deal with her shitty coworkers and bosses. She had now lost every motivation to continue her novel after the first draft got rejected by the publishing companies enough times to make her feel insecure about her writing.

“Why can't my life just be a goddamn Hallmark movie?” Y/N muttered under her breath as she picked up a cushion and covered your face, letting out a muffled scream.

Her wallowing time was interrupted by the blaring noise of her phone in the awfully quiet apartment, making her nearly jump out of her skin. Another frustrated groan left her lips as she saw the person calling her.

“I told you to stop calling me, for god's sake!” Y/N yelled into her phone.

“Come on, Y/N. One dinner.” The man on the other end pestered. “You know, at work people talk about how uptight you are. Let yourself go, once in a while.”

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. Michael- I'm not interested. I told you a hundred times before and I'll say it again. Leave. Me. Alone!” She said. The line on the other side went quiet.

“Bitch.” She heard him say before the call disconnected.

“Fuck off!” She yelled again, knowing fully well he couldn't have heard her now. Y/N finally decided to put him in her blocklist because Michael didn't seem like he was gonna stop otherwise.

It wasn't that she had a stick up her ass for not wanting to go on a dinner date with her coworker. Honestly, she missed the whole first date experience, but Michael was definitely not the guy for her, or for any other girls out there in her opinion. He threw around sexist comments around the office like it was some cool shit and chivalry was definitely dead for him.

Y/N finally got up from her seat, shoulders still tense from the day's events. Opening the refrigerator, she stood there gawking at the leftovers in it.

“Cold pizza….spaghetti….chocolate brownies….” She looked at your dinner options, weighing each one's pros and cons before settling on - “Brownies it is.”

Taking out the chocolate confection , she returned to the couch. She put on Netflix as she browsed through it's movie section.

“Stupid Prince Charming-” she scoffed, biting into the delicious the chocolate chip brownie in hand. Grumbling at the unrealistic standards of Netflix rom coms, she still pressed the play on the film The Proposal.

Finishing her 'dinner', Y/N picked up the comforter, nestling deep into her couch as she watched the coldhearted Margaret fall head over heels for her assistant, the exhaustion kicked in.

“Fuck!”

And that's how the next morning started as Y/N woke up one hour later than usual. She had fallen into a deep sleep on her couch before Andrew even got to propose to Margaret, which was not exactly the wisest decision as the next morning, her neck and back screaming in pain.

The girl knew she was going to be late to work today by the time she had left the house. Hair up in a messy bun, a bag hanging from her shoulder, she tried to smoothen down the creases on her skirt before rushing towards the elevator in high heels.

“Hold the door!” She yelled at the man inside as soon as the door started to close. She sprinted towards the elevator as the man kept looking at her, an annoyed look evident on his face when he slammed the button, taking a step forward to keep the door from closing.

“Thank you!” Y/N huffed, as she got in the elevator. The man chose to remain silent and he pressed the ground button on the elevator. “I am so screwed today! I have never been this late to work!” She babbled on but the man still maintained the stoic look on his face. Y/N slightly turned to face the man of stone. He was probably in his thirties, his dirty blonde hair, sparkling green eyes and light stubble on his cheeks went very well with the crisp grey suit he was wearing. One hand in his pocket, he just stood there, jaw clenched together, eyes focused on the shut doors.

“You know, I should have set the alarm! Stupid-”

“Do you ever shut up?” The man finally spoke, a look of disinterest passing his face.

“Wow. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I guess.” Y/N rolled her eyes.

“Excuse me?” His voice was hard.

“I said, someone woke up-”

“I heard what you said. I am just not interested in listening to your morning fuck-up story.” He scoffed.

“Woah, okay.” She widened her eyes at his disrespectful comment, “I just-” The elevator reached the ground floor of their apartment building and the doors opened with a ‘ding’.

“I think you don't want to waste anymore time talking since you're already running late.” Y/N gasped slightly at the audacity of the man. “Have a good day, Miss L/N.” The man wished before moving out of the confined space as Y/N narrowed her eyes at him and wondered how he knew her name.

“Have a good day as well, Mr….” She trailed off as she got out of the vator as well.

“Dean Winchester.” He said as he walked away, never once looking back as Y/N stood there, bewildered at what just happened.

Hands balled up into fists in apprehension, Y/N inhaled audibly, as she stood on the other side of the door. She was late to the meeting by half an hour, twenty-four minutes to be precise and nothing annoyed her boss more than tardiness.

“Y/N, it's a pleasure that you finally graced this meeting with your presence on this fine morning.” Abaddon’s words laced with acute sarcasm made it quite clear that Y/N was doomed when she entered the room. The remaining four pairs of eyes in the room were zeroed in on her, as she abashedly took a seat at the far-end of the table. She couldn't risk her job because of her smartass mouth and she was already on thin ice, so she kept quiet and let Abaddon carry on with the meeting cause even Cruella De Vil would be hiding her face in shame if she ever met Abaddon. She was an Umbridge before her coffee and a Regina George after drinking her coffee. There was no way she was going to spare the poor girl today.

“As I was pointing out, our sales have gone down in recent months quite drastically. Readers are saying the contents are not relatable or entertaining enough….”

A yawn threatened to leave Y/N as she listened to Abaddon go on about the poor performance of the company, her mind preoccupied by a certain green-eyed man. She had never seen Dean in the building before this morning. He was annoyingly good looking and rude and Y/N couldn't seem to get rid of the image of him looking dapper in that grey suit. She was barely able to focus on what Abaddon was saying.

With Dean Winchester still running through her mind, Y/N trudged back to her small cubicle after the painfully hour long meeting.

Plopping down on the chair, covering her face with her hands, she exclaimed, “I need coffee!”

“Thank me later.” She turned her head to Meg as she pushed a hot cup of coffee towards her before going back to her own cubicle.

“Black, just like my heart.” She said before inhaling the strong smell of the drink. Taking a little sip, she let out a sigh of content. “Jesus, I needed this badly.”

“Yeah, you look like shit,” Meg chuckled, earning a glare from her friend. “Did you even take a look at the mirror today? Honestly, I am not even exaggerating, I-”

“Meg, I’ll forever be grateful to you for this cup of coffee, but please stop talking.” Y/N groaned loudly.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Michael walking towards her and put on headphones and turning the volume up, trying to look busy. “Heads up, incoming douchebag.” The brunette said. After the hubbub of the morning and the shitshow of a meeting, Michael was the last person Y/N wanted to see.

“Morning, Y/N.” The smug smile on his face made her cringe. This had been going on for a month now. She thought after last night, Michael would finally back down, but apparently she was very wrong. “My messages don't seem to get through anymore.”

“She blocked you. God, take a hint.” Meg muttered.

“She's right. It's ‘cause you can’t seem to take no for an answer.” Y/N huffed.

“One dinner. Just one.”

“No.”

“She said no. Isn't that enough?” Meg jumped to her friend’s rescue when she saw her fumbling and getting uncomfortable. Michael inched towards Y/N anyway, completely ignoring his colleague’s comment, a smirk evident on his face.

“Y/N, don't be so uptight. What harm does a single dinner gonna do?” He asked.

“It’ll be cheating. I have a boyfriend.” Y/N blurted out, making Meg’s eyes go wide, but it actually seemed to work as Michael moved away from her.

“A boyfriend?”

“Yeah. We have been going out for a while now.” The said man frowned as he thought the words over before leaving her space with a little nod of his head. Maybe it worked on him without any hassle, but she knew this lie would come back to bite her in the ass if the whole office got to know about it. Oh, and they would know since turning around, Y/N saw Ruby staring at her, a grin appearing on her face as she took in all the juicy gossip. The lie was now gonna spread like wildfire.

“Spill.” Y/N turned to look at her friend who stood there, hands folded, eyes wide, brows raised in utter disbelief. She puckered her lips as she waited on Y/N to explain who just frowned in reply. “Well? What happened? I want all the details, Y/N!”

“Oh come on, L/N. Share the deets.” Ruby snickered. “Who's the man that actually managed to capture your heart?”

“Dean Winchester.” The name tumbled out of her lips so easily and that was how she knew she was screwed.

Chapter 2

Feedback is highly appreciated!

Let me know if you want to be tagged in this series!

#deanwanddamons2kcelebration #girl next door's make me feel bingo #dean x reader #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester fic #au dean x reader #dean winchester #irresistibly yours #au dean winchester x reader #dean x y/n #dean winchester x y/n

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charissekenion · 4 years

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What systemic racism in the British beauty industry looks like

Remember when Black Lives Matter content filled up the feeds of your preferred social platform? While the message still burdens many within the black community — as well as some allies — on a daily basis, for many it is business as usual; even one of my regular online beauty go-to’s has that in their homepage banner. I’m sure it’s more about things being back to ‘some kind’ of normal post-Covid, but who knows? To me, it seems like everyone is tired and weary of the triggering message of BLM and I believe that’s a sign that, if systems are not changed, things are likely to return to what they used to be, the word diversitybecoming one of those words people say out loud while using air quotes. I’ve already written about my own personal experience as a mixed/black woman in the beauty world, but I wanted to try and tackle the systems within the beauty industry. If I’ve missed anything, let me know!

Brands/Agencies Throughout the early days of BLM, brands and agencies around the globe paid close attention to where their ads were appearing. It wasn’t a moral stance however; brands had learned that ads placed near George Floyd or protest-related content, monetized at 57%* lower than other news content. The investment simply wasn’t worth it and words/phrases such as Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, Minneapolis and Black people were put on industry blocklists. While blocklists surely began as a way for the industry to ensure it wasn’t placing insensitive ads, in 2020 brands are using them purely because of the bottom line; revenue.

For me, the brands that have stood out during BLM are the ones that are more thoughtful in how they can help, long-term. Praise was given to Emily Weiss of Glossier for starting a grant for black-owned beauty businesses. Another stand-out show of support came from Caroline Hirons, a brand in her own right.

Hirons is known as the queen of skincare amongst the UK press — and she knows that is a very white press. She took a few days to get her ‘ducks in a row’, early on when BLM was being heavily supported, ensuring her donations were able to have Gift Aid applied (more of the cash actually going to the organisation), before announcing that she would be giving 100 percent of the 2020 proceeds from her best-selling Double Cleanse with Pixi to Black Lives Matter. Pixi duly matched her donation.

But for every positive there were several embarrassing examples of how notto do it. I don’t have the time or energy to give a comprehensive list of just how many brands got it so wrong during the days that followed #blackouttuesday for instance.

I’m not about forcing anyone to do anything, because if you don’t care, why would I want your help? For me the blame lays with brands who have the means to send out the right messages on the daily via social and in the media. It wasn’t just about calling out RMS Beauty on their Instagram for hiring such an insensitive social media manager. It was more about checking out the feeds of Maybelline, Chanel Beauty, etc, etc, and seeing if they had ever shown diversity in their campaigns. The results were lacklustre to say the least, but, if there was one truly classic example of what not to do, the medal would go to Marcia Kilgore (founder of Beauty Pie, Fit Flop, Bliss). I’ve been a diehard fan of Kilgore and her work ethic for years and I’ve lost count of how many interviews I’ve listened to of Kilgore sharing her business journey.

But throughout BLM I’ve seen some shockers coming from (seemingly) Kilgore’s own hand. I’ve been sent screenshots of comments on Instagram (later deleted) including one that shows Kilgore using the shrugs emoji. One of Beauty Pie’s diehard (white) fans just didn’t get why Beauty Pie was receiving negative feedback after not standing up soon enough or strongly enough for BLM. Kilgore replied to her fan with the shrug — she might as well have said: ‘gee, we just can’t seem to please these people.’

The Influencer Whether you love influencer culture or not, it’s clear that, for now, it’s here to stay. Mostly dominated by (white) women, with some being worth over £4million here in the UK, whatever their chosen area of specialisation, there seems to be a very cookie-cutter approach as to what and who’s adored and accepted. Look at wellness, look at fashion, and of course, beauty, and you’ll find that the popular accounts are usually owned by very blonde, very slim women. Life is just one long Instagram Story compiled of working out in Lululemon, wearing makeup from an expensive brand that’s never looked past 10 shades, sipping an iced green tea and getting your wedding paid for by your clever agency rep who’s reached out to countless companies that are guaranteed to find you so palatable and on-brand.

Now, I am not coming for these women; these women can exist alongside the women that I choose to follow — the women that can and do in fact influence me and how I purchase, whether they get paid or not. And there’s the rub. Brands have been making tons of excess profits from women of colour who just love that brand — essentially unpaid micro influencers.

As a self-confessed beauty addict, I know the allure of the ‘next big thing’. I know how it is when you feel, or felt, that that brand actually understood you. When that new shiny purchase arrives from the likes of Glossier, you’re like, ‘hey friend’, and off you go, sharing your unboxing for your fellow beauty enthusiasts to swoon over in the comments.

Like I said, many true beauty influencers are micro influencers, doing their thing purely for the love, and not a pay check, but that’s in sharp contrast to those who are actually paid to do so. These paid influencers put in the work, styling their stories to appeal to their audience and also the audience of the brand that’s paying them.

One such influencer, someone I’ve been following a while as I enjoyed her fresh aesthetic, is also a PR. To be fair to her, I’d become so used to seeing her bounce across fields of tulips and daisies, that I wasn’t expecting anything from her when it came to ‘real life’. However, I did happen to see her Instagram Stories late one night, where she ‘appeared’ to be crying about BLM. I say appeared because honestly, I’ve seen better performances at my nephew’s nativity play. I even recorded the crying just to check I wasn’t being too dismissive.

The next day I saw that she’d finally posted an image she’d found elsewhere (i.e. not spent time creating) and given information on how to donate and research. It all seemed very rushed and frankly, I imagine that zero attention was given to the words. I wondered if she’d been pressured to post, and apparently she had been, after being tagged in a post that prompted people to call out influencers and brands who weren’t stepping up.

She dutifully posted a black square when it was ‘expected’ of her on #blackouttuesday — which she has since deleted.

On top of that, behind the scenes she was contacting various bloggers — I can’t confirm race ratios. She sent DMs that did not address the individual, did not ask the person how they were doing at this truly tiring and stressful time. Instead she asked if they were supporting black-owned brands (she asked this of a mixed-race woman who identified as black and had been posting tons of information on her Stories…) Clueless, lazy — or worse?

She mentions in the DM that one of her clients is a black-owned business and asks if the blogger might be interested in talking about it. The following day I kept wondering, ‘okay, if you’re so supportive, why not post about this black-owned brand on your own feed?’ Or, how about you offer your services to black-owned businesses at a reduced rate? Not because you should, but because, after all, you are performing as if you care.

**Dominique, a black, London-based PR shared her thoughts on how her frequent social media support of a beauty brand (self-created and not paid for, purely because she wanted to), soon started to feel as if she was being treated as a token when she was shown as the only black face in the company’s newsletter. She also tells me of a black influencer in the UK who had been promised payment for several pieces of promo work and yet had gone unpaid and ignored. It wasn’t until her loyal followers bombarded the brand’s social media platforms that the brand paid her, in full, with no argument, or apology.

“It’s so intrinsic, and so embedded,” says Dominique. “Whether it’s content creation or Instagram — which is the first port of call for every business — it’s also the tech, it’s the algorithms used. It’s the influencers, it’s the appropriation, it’s the fact that black influencers aren’t on PR lists, and aren’t being paid the same rates.”

Dominique also talks of the pressure of ‘black guilt’ that black influencers and creators can feel: “You kind of hope and root for the brands that you spend your money on, that you will see a change. And then also, you kind of assimilate in your feed to try and see if that’s gonna help you build a following. I’ve done it. Black people have learned to compartmentalise to survive and it comes down to assimilating and trying not to broadcast your blackness.”

The PR I think, in some ways, the power of the beauty industry PRs often goes unnoticed. These are people who are in the business of carving out a niche for a brand, making it the ‘next big thing’; they advise clients on everything, from tone of voice to the right faces to use in an ad campaign to which influencers to send product to, and which influencers to offer lucrative ambassadorships to.

As most UK PR firms are owned by white men and women, it’s easy to see why inclusivity might not even enter their heads. Why would it? Let’s not forget, for decades the ideal beauty has been that of a very Eurocentric look. PR firms, alongside the rest of the industry, play their part in affirming this beauty standard — it isn’t their job to actually change it. But with more and more voices calling for change, and in the era of cancel culture, PRs are likely to be forced into taking a more active role.

For example, the labeling of BLM being a political rather than human issue by the head of CrossFit was clearly a PR nightmare of huge proportions, and no-one in the multi-billion dollar beauty industry wants that to happen to them. As a recent article on the Business of Fashion stated; too often public relations execs go along with what their client wants, and if ever they do try to steer the client in another direction they are often left unsupported or removed from the account completely.

The Magazines As someone who’s been a hair and beauty editor and writer for 15 years, I’ve seen a lot of trends come and go. But one trend that remains the same is that of the ‘spot the black journo in the room’. While things may be slightly more progressive in the US, here in the UK I can say that I have never seen more than three black or non-white journalists at a press event at the same time. And don’t get me started on the staff within the publications themselves.

I remember when former British Vogue editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman shared an image of her team in celebration of her last issue in 2017 — with not one black or brown face. I had long stopped my subscription to British Vogue, but when her replacement, Edward Enninful arrived, the man who had inspired me for years during his time at i-D magazine, I bought each issue with renewed excitement; oh how things would change!

But Enninful is one black man. And when Enninful himself is racially profiled while entering the doors of Conde Nast, you know that the problem goes way deeper. Add to that the fact that Vogue is still going to have to bow to its advertisers — the brands that keep it in print. It’s not us with our £2 ‘special price’ purchases that are keeping Vogue and others like it alive.

Elsewhere on Instagram, former Glamour editor Jo Elvin was bemoaning the fact that it wasn’t always the editor’s fault that there were no black models on the cover. Elvin said that black models often declined being on the cover (am guessing maybe it was because it was a pretty crap magazine back then?) because they ‘thought it would hurt their chances of getting covers with the high-end mags’.

And what is wrong with that? It’s far tougher for a black woman to get a Vogue cover, so if that’s that model’s goal, what’s it to Elvin and her crew? Perhaps they could seek out an unknown, rather than relying on the top three black faces over and over? Thankfully, Elvin was prompted to elaborate on her flippant comments, by none other than the aforementioned Caroline Hirons. Hirons ended by telling Elvin that the numbers don’t add up, and that bias is ‘systemic in Conde.’

I remember once going for a meeting with an online brand I avidly read. Naturally I was excited and flattered to be told: ‘you look so [insert brand name here]!’ as if I had just earned a special badge. Aside from the flattery, it really meant a lot to me and I was genuinely excited at the opportunity to write and shoot for them. I left the building buzzing, but over the coming weeks, my numerous pitches seemed to fall on deaf ears. ‘Hmm, she’s probably really, really, busy,’ I told myself.

Weeks later I noticed a new name on their writer roster and wondered if the fact that she was also mixed race was something to do with it; perhaps two was one too many? I think this is something we see and fear in many industries, but especially within fashion and beauty. While a non-black editor might enjoy being seen as the progressive one, he or she might also be nervous of ‘opening the gates’ and only employing non-white people! I’ve heard this from several black and brown people in the industry also. Once you get that role, you want to keep it both for career and financial reasons.

It’s clear that, across the board, work needs to be done, and we also need the work that is supposedly being done, to continue. It makes me nervous to see brands jumping on the Diversity Officer job role, while only offering six-month contracts. Does this mean that they hope BLM will just go away and people will just stop expecting their voices to be heard and their rights acknowledged? Are we all just so nostalgic over what normal used to be that we’d rather enter another year with blinders on?

It’s okay to admit that you’re completely unprepared for this fight. If you’ve never had to care about this fight, I get that. But whether you chose to use #blackouttuesday to gain some new fans, or you actually wanted to begin making lasting change, it’s clear, it’s going to take a lot more than a black square followed by vague epithets. Show the work; talk to your audience. Literally no-one can claim to be perfect right now, but if you want to build an anti-racist brand, take the steps, because we are all watching.

*Statistic taken from this NPR article: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/27/884213471/why-advertisers-wont-run-ads-on-black-lives-matter-content?t=1597134345822

** Name has been changed

Image: Photo by Hazel Olayres on Unsplash

This article also appears on Medium

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jobsearchtips02 · 4 years

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Target, MTV blocked ads from news mentioning ‘George Floyd’ and ‘protests’

Gianno Caldwell: Defunding the police is a horrible idea

Fox News political analyst Gianno Caldwell provides insight into President Trump asking the Treasury Department to re-examine schools’ tax-exempt status over claims of ‘indoctrination.’ Caldwell later says people are becoming afraid about the possibility of not having the police in their communities.

Last month Target Corp. told a leading online news publisher not to run its ads in stories related to the Black Lives Matter movement. Articles mentioning police-brutality victims such as “Breonna Taylor” and “George Floyd” were off limits, as were those with the word “protests.”

Target and other advertisers that compiled similar “blocklists” say they were respecting the sensitivity of the issue and wanted to avoid the appearance of exploiting tragedies. News publishers say such moves effectively punish media companies for covering important issues, since they earn less money from content where ad-blocking is prevalent.

FACEBOOK CONSIDERING A BAN ON POLITICAL ADS

Blocklists aren’t new: Before this year, many brands already were sidestepping articles with words like “shooting,” “bomb,” “immigration” or even “Trump,” hoping to avoid associations with controversial topics. The ad blocking went to a new level in 2020 — first, as the terms “Covid-19” and “coronavirus” made it onto many blocklists, and more recently with the addition of terms related to the Black Lives Matter movement.

“It’s defunding our journalism at a time when it’s imperative for us to be the front lines doing this kind of work,” said Paul Wallace, Vice Media’s vice president for global revenue products and services. Black Lives Matter coverage was Vice’s most popular news in June, yet commanded ad prices 57% lower than news about other topics because so many brands are actively avoiding placing ads in those articles, he said.

People inspired by a speaker raise their hands during a Caribbean-led Black Lives Matter rally at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza, Sunday, June 14, 2020, in New York. Protests have grown and continued since the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black man w

“The most frustrating part of all of this is that the brands that are sending this stuff are standing on a pedestal saying that they support BLM,” he said.

A Target spokesman said the retailer’s ad blocking “does not discount the importance of reporting on topics like Black Lives Matter or the murder of George Floyd. It’s intended to acknowledge that the person consuming that content may not be receptive to a marketing message from a mass retailer like Target at that time.” The spokesman added, “Target stands with our Black team members, guests and families.”

FACEBOOK FRUSTRATES ADVERTISING BOYCOTT LEADERS WITH LACK OF CONCESSIONS

Based in Minneapolis, where a white police officer’s killing of Mr. Floyd set off nationwide protests, Target was among the companies most outspoken about the unrest. It promised aid to the community and signed a letter promising to tackle institutional racism. Target Chief Executive Brian Cornell said in May that the company would remember victims of police brutality. “We say their names,” he said.

Target is among many brands that have temporarily paused ad spending on Facebook Inc. after a public campaign by civil-rights groups that say the tech giant isn’t doing enough to rein in hate speech on its platform.

MTV, the youth-oriented cable channel owned by ViacomCBS Inc., also avoided ad placements near articles about the protests and unrest. It asked the same leading publisher to avoid placing its ads in stories that mention words including “Breonna Taylor,” “Ahmaud Aubery” [sic], “George Floyd,” “Black Lives Matter,” “protests,” “racism,” “hate” and “policing.”

An MTV spokeswoman said the cable network believes the keyword blocklist in question was for ads for the show “Revenge Prank.”

“Due to the comedic nature of the show…we didn’t want to be insensitive by placing ads for it next to important and serious topics, such as Black Lives Matter,” she said. “This is standard practice we use with our media agency to ensure that our ads don’t come across as tone-deaf or disrespectful.”

A Target employee returns shopping carts from the parking lot, in Omaha, Neb., Tuesday, June 16, 2020. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Brands maintain keyword blocklists because they don’t always buy ads aimed at specific websites. Instead, in automated ad buying, they often target certain kinds of audiences or types of content, and middlemen direct their ads to sites that fit those characteristics. The blocklists help middlemen and publishers weed out certain ad placements.

When Covid-19 took over the news cycle in March, news publishers’ page views soared as readers flocked to those stories. But ad prices plummeted as much as 50% compared with the year-ago period, partly because of the keyword blocking by advertisers. The pandemic led to a broader downturn in ad spending, which also affected ad prices across the board.

Ad prices began climbing in May as brands grew more comfortable, but then took a hit again in late May when Mr. Floyd’s death and the protests became the top news story. In the two weeks after Mr. Floyd’s May 25 death, ad prices on news content were on average 41% lower than the same date a year earlier, according to Staq Inc., which aggregates data from more than 40 digital publications. Prices slowly began to rebound as protests commanded less coverage. Ad prices now are about 20% below where they were a year ago.

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Some brands forgo the blocklist approach, instead using technology that scores an article’s overall sentiment, rather than just detecting the presence of certain words. Avoiding certain keywords can be too blunt, said Guy Tytunovich, chief executive of Cheq AI Technologies Ltd., which helps brands avoid objectionable content by scoring an article’s sensitivity.

“It’s bad enough being an elephant in a china store. It’s much worse when you’re a huge elephant in a tiny, tiny china store, which is the case in 2020, when so much of the news is negative,” Mr. Tytunovich said.

He has advised clients to tolerate more risk than usual in 2020, so their ads wind up on some news stories. But Cheq’s technology scores most Black Lives Matter-related content as too sensitive even for advertisers with high risk thresholds, he said.

Research suggests brands needn’t fear association with hard-news topics. Consumers don’t think negatively of brands when their ads run adjacent to troubling news, according to a recent study by Integral Ad Science, a firm that helps brands avoid unfavorable ad placements.

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“It’s not like people are reading about Trump and they see a Home Depot ad. And then they think, ‘oh, I hate Trump, so now I hate Home Depot,'” said one media executive.

Some companies paused ad campaigns because they weren’t sure how to contribute meaningfully to the national conversation about race, ad industry executives said.

“A lot of advertisers tend to just pause during these moments because they can’t come up with the right message,” said Staq Chief Executive Andy Ellenthal.

from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/target-mtv-blocked-ads-from-news-mentioning-george-floyd-and-protests/

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sheminecrafts · 5 years

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Should we rethink the politics of ‘blocking’?

Jillian C. York Contributor

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Jillian C. York is the director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Years ago, I wrote a piece criticizing a cover story by a well-known writer and political commentator that I’d met a few times, with whom I’d occasionally sparred on Twitter. The piece wasn’t merely a representation of my own views, but pulled in snarky tweets from other journalists disparaging her work too. It was a pile-on, and not my proudest moment.

The writer wasn’t exactly thin-skinned; in fact, quite the contrary: She was a brash, sometimes obnoxious feminist with strong opinions, unafraid to speak her mind. I often agreed with her, even when I found her delivery abrasive. Still, after a couple of years with me as a thorn in her side, she decided she’d had enough — and so she did something that many readers will find familiar: She blocked me on Twitter.

The block button is an important tool that allows women and other vulnerable people to have some semblance of the same Twitter experience that the average white man might, free from constant harassment. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve used it over the years to drown out nasty ad hominems, sea lions and, of course, sexual harassment — and worse.

Twitter wasn’t always the “hell site” we know it as today. Many early users like me found professional advancement and lasting friendship in 140-character missives. But as the site grew, so did its potential for misuse. By 2014 — two years shy of its tenth anniversary — Twitter had become central to the GamerGate controversy, ostensibly a dispute about issues of sexism and progressivism in gaming but on Twitter, a free-for-all of harassment and doxing of any woman even tangentially involved in the discussion. The harassment was so severe that it drove some women off the site permanently.

Out of GamerGate emerged better tools for blocking, tools like BlockTogether that allow individual users to share a list of people they’ve blocked. The idea behind these tools is that harassers are likely to have multiple targets, so why not make it easier for potential targets of harassment to block numerous would-be harassers all at once?

But BlockTogether and similar tools are not without flaws. Once you’re on a blocklist, it can be hard to get your name removed, and if you end up, for whatever reason, on one created by a prominent or well-respected user, you may find yourself blocked by people you don’t know and would’ve enjoyed following. Some might call this reasonable collateral damage.

Numerous journalists and others have complained of finding themselves on a blocklist after a disagreement with an individual who uses them. I’m unfortunately on one used by a number of journalists. Why, you might ask, was I blocked in the first place? I remember quite clearly: It was for disagreeing with someone about the life sentence handed to Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road website. For my opinion, I’ve lost the ability to follow or interact with dozens of journalists whose work I read.

Despite that, I don’t blame women or other minorities who’ve experienced harassment for using the block button liberally. Blocking someone isn’t a matter of free speech (unless of course the blocker in question is an elected official), as some of my harassers have claimed — rather, it’s often a matter of preserving one’s sanity. The block button, along with blocklists, are useful tools for curating space — not a safe space per se, but one free from random harassers, spammers and the like. Think of it more as a large invite-only event, as opposed to a New York City street.

And yet, I can’t help but wonder if our liberal use of the block button prevents us from experiencing the kind of reconciliation that can happen in our offline communities. We often remove someone from our life, only for them to apologize their way back in later on. Even the Amish, who practice shunning as a matter of faith, allow for the repented to return.

Twitter’s architecture has changed over time, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Presently, its algorithm sometimes surfaces replies — from people you do follow, to tweets from individuals you don’t — based on some assumption that you might find them interesting. Occasionally, it will surface a reply from a friend to someone with a locked account or, in rare cases, to someone who blocks you, as it did for me the other day. Someone I follow had replied with an interesting comment to a tweet from The Writer — a tweet that, of course, I couldn’t see without logging out and going directly to her profile. And so I did.

What I found was someone who, with that same fierce energy, seemed a lot more thoughtful, with views more similar to mine than I remembered. I felt a momentary pang of sadness for the camaraderie that might have been. I realized the obvious: That we’ve both grown, alongside the backdrop of the horrific political environment that’s accompanied us through the past half-decade. “Have you thought about reaching out to her?” a friend asked.

Therein lies the rub: In the case of The Writer, I could reach out to her; we’ve met in person a few times, and we retain mutual friends. She might respond favorably, or with a “thanks but no thanks,” but either way, it’s unlikely she would deem my approach to be harassment. But there’s this other journalist I’ve never interacted with, who no doubt signed up to a blocklist that I happened to be on. I discovered that she blocked me when I went to read a tweet someone had DM’d me, and was disappointed — but reaching out to her through some other channel would seem weird, invasive. It isn’t worth it.

I recently reviewed my own list of blocked accounts (you can do so through your settings), a list that numbers well into the hundreds. Most aren’t worth revisiting — there ares sexual harassers and transphobes, Bahraini bots and Roseanne Barr, some Trumpites and a few high-profile right-wing accounts. But among them, close to the bottom of the list (coinciding with the early days of the block button), I spotted a few outliers, and decided to give them a second chance.

Technology is constantly changing and progressing and yet, the block button — and blocklists — remain in rudimentary form. They’re simply not priorities for companies whose focus is on profit. But were we to redesign them, perhaps we could find a way to make blocks time-limited, or at least provide users with more nuanced options. One such existing feature is Facebook’s “snooze” button, which allows users to “mute” another person for 30 days, with a reminder when that time period is up; I found that one particularly handy last summer while a friend was going heavy on self-promotion. I use Twitter’s “mute” function to rid my feed of people with whom I have to interact professionally and thus can’t block.

And then there’s the “soft block” — a feature or bug, it isn’t clear — wherein one can block and unblock someone quickly on Twitter so that the user no longer follows them…at least until they wise up (this feature/bug is made easier by the fact that Twitter seems to be perpetually plagued by an “unfollow bug”). These tools are helpful, but with all the riches these companies have, they could design something — with input from those most affected by harassment — that is less blunt, more elegant, more thoughtful.

Ultimately, the block button is an imperfect solution to a pervasive problem, and therefore remains as necessary as ever. I know that I’ll continue to use it as long as I’m on social media. But don’t we deserve something better?

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technicalsolutions88 · 5 years

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Jillian C. York Contributor

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Jillian C. York is the director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

#Technical Solutions #SEO #Online Earning #Youtube Marketing #Android Developer

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