Amy's Robot: The New Generation of Avon Ladies

highlights from:
Robot Linky

A bunch of the songs for Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox are by Jarvis Cocker. Songs should be just warped enough to tip the movie toward the adults in the audience. (0) 7/18/08

RED ALERT: Salma Hayek might be single. She canceled engagement with the French dude that she had a baby with. And did you see that guy? Not what you would call handsome. (0) 7/18/08

Slate examines the world of covers by artists of different genres than the original. The more ironic, the worse they are. Best are radical departures like Sonic Youth doing Madonna, or bluegrass AC/DC. (0) 7/18/08

Holy Christ, Rush was on Colbert last night! Video of interview and Tom Sawyer! Neil Peart is pretty funny. (0) 7/17/08

Big day for lesbians in the Times: profile on MSNBC analyst Rachel Maddow, who with any luck with replace Chris Matthews next year. Also our new poet laureate is Kay Ryan: http://tinyurl.com/634c6j (0) 7/17/08

Doctors are now removing donated kidneys through the donor's belly button. Yikes, that is freaky. If Dario Argento makes a medical horror movie, this is definitely going to be involved. (0) 7/17/08

30 Rock and Mad Men lead Emmy nominations in comedy and drama. Cool! (Not that last year's Emmys got any more people to watch 30 Rock) (0) 7/17/08

Here's a weird one: Doctor put a temporary rose tattoo on an unconscious patient, near her crotch. He's says he did it to make her feel better. Yeah, I don't know. She's suing. (0) 7/17/08

Shock, bitterness, despair: St. Louis locals react to Anheuser-Busch buyout. Opal Henderson, 78-year-old auto salvage yard owner: "Why can’t those foreigners just stay at home and leave us what we have?" (0) 7/16/08

Video of Guantanamo interrogations has been released under a Canadian court order. Detainee is a Canadian, captured in Afghanistan when he was only 15. Jesus. Says he's been abused by interrogators. (0) 7/16/08

"We’re hoping he picks an idiot as vice president." Late-night TV hasn't figured out how to do Obama jokes yet. Jimmy Kimmel suggests going for the ears. [via esskay] (0) 7/16/08

Karl Rove describes himself as Grendel in Beowulf. I think he was trying to say that he is aware that the public hates him, but also suggests that he's a murdering cannibal. [via The Lede] (0) 7/16/08

Now a Harvard B-School professor has looked into the Long Tail theory and decided it's wrong. Sure, there's a whole universe of niches out there, but people are going for the blockbusters more than ever. Idiocracy, here we come. (0) 7/14/08

You might have woken up poor on Sunday. Bloomberg just recalculated poverty line to include 400,000 more New Yorkers. (0) 7/14/08

The Fly: The Musical is coming to LA this fall. Actually, it's an opera. But David Cronenberg is directing it and it involves nudity, so it can't be all bad. (0) 7/14/08

Extreme sports, Czech-style: jumping across huge rock chasms, with our without a rope. Great video with Czech tough guys: "Always is broken leg or broken head." [via 1dxmo92lvdbdm] (0) 7/11/08

Rep. Charlie Rangel, Gov. Patterson, and his father all have rent-stabilized apartments in the same luxury building. Actually, Rangel has 4, and uses one as an office! Way to support low-income housing, Congressman. (0) 7/11/08

This is nuts, but the off-duty cop who shot and killed a driver who pretended to have a gun isn't being charged for anything. Lawyer says, "Fingers, cellphones--the police have an endless list of reasons why they shoot unarmed people." (0) 7/11/08

Chosen people are sexy: Brett Ratner was the guest editor of Heeb magazine and, of course, made a swimsuit issue. (0) 7/11/08

Highlight from Madonna's brother's book: Sean Penn decided they should be blood brothers, and cut both of their thumbs. Later SP asked him, "You don't have AIDS, do you?" (0) 7/11/08

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May 24, 2004

The New Generation of Avon Ladies

In a new effort to win committed customers from an early age (like at puberty,) Avon has launched a new brand, the trendily non-capitalized "mark", and a fleet of new Avon Ladies who will sell you makeup from the comfort of your own home. Ads for mark in teen magazines have catch-phrases like "Mark helped me pay for college, and thickened my lashes!" As part of their market positioning among young teenagers, mark marketing staff is spending a lot of time with 15 year-old girls, taking them out for pizza, and even accompanying them to the prom.

Sales "ladies" for mark are as young as 16, suggesting that Avon is fully aware of the profitability of peer pressure as a marketing tool. The online application to be a mark salesgirl offers "flip burgers" and "babysitting" as other, less lucrative options for employment, and the drop-down menu in which applicants indicate their age includes the 13-15 range. Avon ladies, or in this case Avon underage girls, have always targeted their friends as customers, and how obvious a strategy to use trend-setters in high schools to put the hard sell on less cool followers? Other grown-up Avon ladies who sell mark have day jobs, including internal investigators for the Department of Homeland Security. But no matter how important they may be in their professional lives, Avon ladies know that what women like to talk about in their personal lives is makeup: "We knew that women had always connected through beauty products and beauty rituals." Great, girls! Pass the blackberry plum tea Electro-Lites lip gloss! We're never too young to develop feelings of inadequacy about our bodies, and bond over mark's Butt Fixing Cream!

categories: Business, Culture, Gender
posted by amy at 12:05 PM | #