We Confronted Bobbie's Founder about their Gross Marketing Campaign π
There were excoriations! Frantic texting! Boobs! Boss Babes! Bravery and COWARDICE!
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Do you know Scabby the rat? Heβs one of my favorite talismans of the labor movement. Scabby showed up on the scene in the 1980s as a way to shame construction companies for using non-union labor (aka scabs) during a worker strike. Scabby is huge, ugly, diseased, with an infected belly and glaring red eyes. Heβs the embodiment of venial greed and a moral line in the sand, there is good and there is evil. Scabby asks, what side are you on?
Scabby is very much a creation of the brick and mortar building trades, he requires physical things to work: an air pump, a sidewalk, a streetfront etc. So in this oculus goggle tech dystopia of an economy you may think Scabby couldnβt thrive but youβd be wrong. Especially when you have a bunch of freebirthing, placenta swinging, lactating lunatics who know how hijack a Zoom meeting!
When we learned that Sarah Hardy, a co-founder of Bobbie, would be speaking at public event on Zoom, we brought the spirit of Scabby into CYBERSPACE.
Hereβs a quick video of our exploits:
Now you may say, hey, paid leave is a noble cause, why disrupt a meeting of women who support it? Because weβre the radical moms union:
not the wait for our turn to talk union
because of hundreds of women called directly on this executive to stop exploiting the lack of support new mothers have for the sake of turning a profit
because Bobbie is using the fight for paid leave as brand awareness exercise, a way to burnish their reputation, and to get women to cough up their emails that go into a marketing database
because we believe in the power of Scabby, there is a moral side to this fight and you gotta pick a side
PS. Honorable mention to Louie the Rooster, mascot of Local 5 members