As a mom and a marketer (in that order) I’m acutely aware that the holiday marketing train left the station a full three weeks before Thanksgiving. This is earlier than usual as reported by CBS in a piece titled “Deep Discounts Arriving Early This Year†which states that popular discount stores are offering promotions much earlier than the typical “Black Friday†sales that crop up after Thanksgiving.
The most ubiquitous bid for my attention comes in the mail, in the form of catalogs and store coupons that tempt, plead and cajole me into opening my wallet. This year, amidst all the mailbox clutter, one catalog in particular stood out. The American Girl doll’s holiday book arrived sometime before Halloween. At fully twice the size of all the other catalogs, its glossy pages are filled with picture-perfect dolls, outfits and accessories my children can’t resist.
My daughter Ana got an American girl doll from her grandmother for her birthday in May. Since she already owns one, I assumed I was off the hook for the holidays. Wrong! The items Ana circled in the catalog added up to about $500. I’m not averse to buying the kid an outfit or an accessory, but the $65 plastic horse and the $175 doll trunk she circled blew me away.
I work hard and I fully intend to buy a couple of big ticket items for my kids this holiday season. Still, I don’t intend to spend my money at American Girl Place this year. While I love the idea of American Girl dolls, I think they set a bad example. Priced out of the comfort zone of many families, I believe (and this is my opinion) that they promote unrealistic ideals of beauty and wealth. I wonder how many little girls are excluded from the “privilege†of owning one of these dolls because of their high cost.
As both a mom and a marketer, I’m unnerved by the aggressive marketing and psychological tactics Mattel (who owns the brand) uses to “hook†children as young as three into the buying cycle. I’m confident that their strategy is deliberate and the appeal of these dolls lies with the brand name, and the need for little girls to fit in with their peers. This seems underhanded since the dolls cost so much.
Add to this that American Girl dolls are manufactured in China, and the whole phenomenon feels phony. Ultimately I’ve decided to spend my hard earned money elsewhere this year. The challenge is getting my six-year-old to understand why.
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Gifts I recommend for little girls (and boys) under 12, but over 3:
As a sole proprietor in New York state I don’t have many options for comprehensive health coverage. I currently get discounted health insurance through a local chamber of commerce, an option available to all businesses including self-employed individuals.
So how much does it cost to insure my family? Even with my Chamber membership, I pay over $12,000 per year. Again, this is a discounted rate. If I were to go directly to the insurance company it would cost me more than twice that.
In addition to my exorbitant monthly premium, I pay the typical doctors’ office co-payments, prescription drug co-payments, any out of network services and dental care for myself and my husband. My insurance plan (like most) doesn’t cover over-the-counter drugs or miscellaneous services (like speech therapy for my 3-year-old).
This is a big deal. I think it’s important to write about this issue, because it is an overwhelming obstacle for self-employed individuals. Between health insurance and taxes, fully 40% of my income is gone before I’ve even paid a single bill.
Besides getting benefits through a Chamber of Commerce, or paying an insurance company directly, I really have no options for health insurance. I’m not eligible for Healthy NY due to my income level. Even if my income was low enough, I’d need to go without insurance for up to 12 months before I could enroll.
My next best option for reducing the high monthly cost of insurance is to switch my plan from an HMO to a high deductible PPO. This cuts my monthly premium in half, but requires me to put money into a health savings account. It would mean I’d need to pay for all medical expenses out of pocket (through the health savings account) until an annual deductible of about $5,000 was met, at which point the insurance company would pay a certain percentage of my medical costs.
Am I missing something?
Politicians like Rudy Giuliani denounce universal healthcare as “socialized medicine†that limits free market competition. In a recent radio ad, Giuliani said, “You and I should be making the decisions about what kind of health care we get with our doctors, not with a government bureaucrat.â€
Can he be serious? Doesn’t he realize that the 43.6 million Americans who don’t have health insurance have absolutely no decision-making power whatsoever? And those of us that are struggling to stay insured are hardly better off. My insurance does not cover out of network providers. That pretty much limits my healthcare “choices†to “stay in network and get reimbursed†or “starve.â€
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This article was first published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, November 3, 2007.
I spent the first five years of my online marketing career focused exclusively on one industry vertical - pharmaceuticals. Working with big name drug manufacturers was very exciting for me at first, but dealing with the strict rules and guidelines of prescription drug ads and focusing campaign strategies on sick, very sick or dying people quickly damped my enthusiasm and curbed my creativity.
When I worked full-time at an agency, I didn’t have the luxury of choosing my projects or clients. That added up to one soul sapping prescription drug campaign after the other. Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical spending reached over 2.4 billion dollars in 2006. This meant there was no shortage of work for me even after I got laid off in 2002. At that point I leveraged my pharmaceutical experience out of necessity, thus some of my earliest clients were in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry.
In 2005 I’d been self-employed for three years and had a variety of non-pharmaceutical projects under my belt. Things looked good, but I needed more money. So I caved and accepted a full-time position at an agency with a large pharmaceutical account. I ended up managing 70 hours per week of pharmaceutical projects covering everything from endometriosis to throat cancer.
For months I told myself I could handle the work, and that it wasn’t really that bad. But the truth was I hated waking up and going to work each morning, even though I worked from home four days a week.
The final straw came when a colleague of mine referred to cancer sufferers as “low-hanging fruit.” At that point I gave my notice to the agency and made the decision to stop working on pharmaceutical projects completely. It still took another year to completely eliminate all pharmaceutical-related work.
I’m happy to say that as of May 2007, I haven’t peddled a single drug. My client roster includes a major publishing house, a small magazine, an e-commerce site selling a diverse assortment of consumer goods, a major daily newspaper, and a smattering of small agency clients that call on me for ad hoc assignments in a variety of industries.
Sometimes living my dream means I can walk away from something I hate and, in doing so, discover something I love. That’s a big part of what self-employment means for me.
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This article was originally published in the Poughkeepsie Journal under the title, “Confession of an ex-drug seller”
