Brains, Beauty and … Meet the Top 20 PowerWomen of PR & Marketing
By Roberta Rosenberg on Aug 6, 2007 in Occasional Rantings, Promoting Your Biz
And I’m one of the them!
With my busy teaching schedule (who knew teaching 4 hours a week would take me 8 to prepare!), I’ve been tad remiss in actually writing one of those super-smart, cogent posts I’m known for 
But today, with a little time to breathe, I wanted to first say thanks to Kami Huys, the woman behind the blog who first identified some really spectacular women bloggers representing the PR and marketing fields in her post PowerWomen and the Power150: Women Make Up Only 13 percent of Top Bloggers. They are:
- What’s Next Blog B L Ochman
- Diva Marketing Blog Toby Bloomberg
- BlogWrite for CEOs Debbie Weil
- Communication Overtones Kami Huyse
- Forrester’s Marketing Blog Shar, Charlene, Chloe, Christine, Elana, Laura & Lisa
- The Origin of Brands Laura Ries
- Branding & Marketing Chris Brown
- Customers Rock! Becky Carroll
- Conversation Agent Valeria Maltoni
- Corporate PR Elizabeth Albrycht
- CK’s Blog (CK)
- Spare Change Nedra Kline Weinreich
- Marketing Roadmaps Susan Getgood
- advergirl Leigh Householder
- Brand Sizzle Anne Simons
- Kinetic Ideas Wendy Maynard
- Flooring The Consumer C.B. Whittemore
- Presto Vivace Blog Alice Marshall
- Email Marketing Best Practices Tamara Gielen
and me, The Copywriting Maven Roberta Rosenberg.
But, to paraphrase that famous line delivered by Ronald Reagan in the movie, Kings Row, “Where’s the rest of us?”
Not just in the Power150 (now part of AdAge!), where Copywriting Maven’s ranking holds steady between #95 and #110 depending, but in the general business blogging community. Most of the marketing people I know are women. Most of the PR people I know are women. I know many of them write blogs, either for themselves or as part of their job tasks.
So where are all the “marketing grrrl” blogs? Why are women marketers so underrepresented? (Sometimes I feel like Sally Rogers, the “girl comedy writer” on the old Dick Van Dyke Show.) Probably for many of the same reasons why smart, talented and brilliant women still are woefully underrepresented in the C-level jobs.
My take? Too many women are still asking to be invited to the party instead of simply seating themselves at the table.
A few weeks back, I read an article about women in academia and how here, too, women were still getting stymied in their efforts to further their careers. The example was made - and it’s a stunner to me - as follows.
Teaching assignments are a key factor in advancing an academic career. So far so good. But it’s how the teaching assignment are made that makes the critical difference. Men tended to be direct with their advisers with a “I want to teach. How do we make that happen?” attitude. In contrast, the women waited to be asked, “Do you want to teach?”
Amazing. After all these years, too many of us are waiting around, still waiting to be asked to the party.
I have 3 children, 2 daughters and a son. I’m teaching my girls to be proud of their talents and not be afraid to say, “I can do that!” when they think they can. (My son already knows he can do anything.) I’ve said, “I can do that!”, in every step of my marketing career from answering a want-ad for a junior copywriter to opening my own biz to blogging, teaching, what have you.
I’ve said it even when others around me said I couldn’t. Perhaps that’s the deciding factor. A little bit of the Massapequa, LI girl “Oh, yeah?” that I still carry around in the back of my head when challenged.
My guess is that these remarkable PowerWomen have also said, “I can do that!” with similar gusto and enthusiasm. So here’s to us, ladies. Let’s open up the doors wide and invite our best and brightest to sip and sup along with us at the feast of our own design.
All anyone of us have to do is say, YES!
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[tags] Top 20 PowerWomen, Power150, Kami Huys, overtonecomm.blogspot.com [/tags]
Valeria Maltoni | Aug 6, 2007 | Reply
Roberta:
I really like your take on the subject. Speaking for myself, I’ve been accused of taking the initiative more times that I can remember. My mother encouraged the independent spirit I seemed to be born with throughout my life — and that was remarkable in the old country.
As I wrote in the comments on CKs blog, there is a whole new generation of younger women who have joined the party. I’m sure we’ll see them pop upon the list at some point in the near future.
Becky Carroll | Aug 6, 2007 | Reply
Roberta, thanks for highlighting us women bloggers! I am also one of those ladies who tends to seat herself at the table, so to speak, so perhaps that has helped. I have also had great support and encouragement from many, many bloggers, both male and female, who have commented on my blog and linked to me! To all of you, and you know who you are, you rock!
You too, Roberta.
C.B. Whittemore | Aug 6, 2007 | Reply
Roberta, I love your take on all of this! Thanks for amplifying the discussion. We need to encourage more women to join our ranks.
Toby | Aug 6, 2007 | Reply
Roberta - Thanks for continuing to shine the light on this issue. As to where are the marketing/ad/pr women bloggers .. I know many who are doing excellent work but are in niched areas. Perhaps that’s why some are not making it to the Power 150. Also Technorati is frequently inconsistent in link counts and since that’s a major factor in the analysis might contribute to the equation.
Steve Kayser | Aug 6, 2007 | Reply
I think you’re missing a couple of powerfully good women on this list -
Meryl the Pearl http://www.meryl.net (Meryl K. Evans), Content Maven and Nettie Hartsock http://www.nettiehartsock.com
Both great people - good writers - marketers and PR’ers — if that’s a word
Susan Getgood | Aug 7, 2007 | Reply
I think Toby has half the answer — there are a lot of women bloggers in marketing and PR in what we might call niche areas.
The other half? We don’t care about rankings nearly as much as some do. Speaking purely for myself, I try to write interesting, original posts that help me and my readers make sense of marketing and PR in a social media world. Where I rank on lists? Not very important to me at all.
Roberta Rosenberg, The Copywriting Maven | Aug 7, 2007 | Reply
I can’t speak for others, but I didn’t set out to rank for anything. Like you, I set out to write about what I do, know, and love and share it with my copywriting/marcomm compadrecitos and compafrecitas. So again, I wonder why me and these other talented gals and not others?
Purely self-promotion? I lucked out in some respects, in others I sought out opportunity to build my business.
I love to hear from others on this point
Chris Brown | Aug 14, 2007 | Reply
I guess I’m guilty of jumping right in with both feet. “Okay, so what’s the next step” is something that comes out of my mouth too often. This whole blogging thing… and web 2.0 thing is very interesting to me and I try not to get too intimated by the technology or the amount of learning that isn’t directly related to anything else.
I don’t know about you, but I often get asked, “so you like to blog… have you gotten any work/jobs from it?” Many people tend not to do any activity unless it has a direct result in work. I find that posting is more of a learning and community activity — discussions at the water cooler with other PR/Marketing experts — how cool is that??
Anyway, thanks for furthering the conversation!
Chris Brown
Branding & Marketing blog
Ciara | Sep 25, 2007 | Reply
You people are my inspiration!