BREAKING NEWS: P&G win gold on the mumsnet family awards (which they sponsor)

[iloveberries]

Anyone else a bit cynical about this and think that P&G have basically 'bought' the award. My best friend and husband used to work there (how i met him) and I can guarantee they are anything BUT family friendly to work for!!!

fascinating thread to go from MNHQ in their first post saying "the awards were not sponsored in any way" to then a few pages later admitting "yes, everyone who won had paid an entrance fee which included some element of advertising"..... and to think MNHQ called one of my posts "bollocks"!

I find it such a shame that this is the case and think it really discredits mumsnet licensing their brand. Don't suppose anyone from mumsnet cares though as they'll all be making a lot more cash out of the brand now!

I totally get your point Josephine - it does seem you have to ask the direct (and correct) question to get the exact truth. Credit where credit's due Mumsnet is doing a great job as a commercial enterprise. Not sure about the transparency and integrity of the business which is increasingly important to all consumers these days though!

Yes, I must admit that the paid-for advertising built into the entrance fee does sound the same as sponsorship. It kind of seals the deal for me in terms of making this seem like a for-profit business activity (with subsidiary social goals too, like Pamper's "free baby vaccine with every pack bought") rather than a piece of activism.

Which is fine, so long as a spade is called a spade. And not a lobbying organisation.

(All credit to the miscarriage campaign, though, which seems an excellent way for a business to promote itself in the course of genuine good work.)

I does kind of worry me that the Family Friendly programme has a political dimension to it also -- it has stuff on its MN pages about govt's claimed aspiration to family friendly policies and I think at one point it asked MNers to contact MN with their thoughts about govt's successes or failures in family friendliness.

That truly does seem to me to risk other aspects of MN campaigning (e.g. the attempts by MN to find support on the board for campaigning on a political issue like tuition fees or child benefit several months ago) operating as an arm for entirely commercial activity. It is fine for MN as a business to blend commercial and non-commercial objectives (I guess all ethically conscious businesses do that). But NOT fine to enlist posters in something so mixed. That is a horrible commodification of conversation, and a horrible commodification of politics.

i love the idea about their being standards for each level award - it would be great to have a standard setting system and would make the whole thing more meaningful and transparent in my opinion. you could then have gold, silver, bronze still and a clear description of what it took to get that level award and those who didn't meet any could have a, 'working towards bronze' status and clear objectives they needed to meet the next year to get the award.

i think that would be far more meaningful and wouldn't need to attract such cynicism. we'd know exactly what an award meant and could take part in deciding what needed to be included maybe?

the idea and motive of what's being done actually sounds grand it's just that it's not been properly reflected in the award system and because of that feels as if it has been misrepresented in terms of how the person looking at the award perceives it. i think the awards would actually have more status if they were earned against a set of fixed and known objectives rather than just relative to the other comnpanies who entered. itms.

commodification of conversation really is what mn business arm is about CS - tbf what else could it be given this is a discussion board. i do think transparency helps and being willing to answer q's as they arise - and they have been answered here.

the ethics of running MN are fascinating actually - it's unique in that whilst of course mn is owned by mnhq a lot of their 'capital' is us. it brings up some interesting ethical considerations.

so did we ever find out minthegapp's connection to P&G or is that answer fudged with so many other questions going on?

I for one really don't mind whether MTG is a P&G employee or a teacher who some how knows an awful lot about P&G, but what I do mind is MTG's evasive answers to her/his actual status. Yes they said they were a teacher, but we are all gobsmacked at her/his indepth knowledge about P&G and their products.

maybe its something we'll never find out, but the next time a P&G product gets a mention in some award thingy here and one poster comes along who is suddenly an expert in all things P&G, it won't take the brain of Britain to work out its MTG will a namechange

You might want to know, ssd, but believe me, you don't need to know.

As for Mumsnet working for P&G and the other companies in this initiative - that is blatantly not true. If they are representing anyone, it is the parents who work for these organisation, or parents who aspire to work for a family friendly organisation.

People need to get over their hatred of big business.

I think they did have standards...

I think that it's the idea that the standards are decided each year before entry they are talking about.

If it were up to me all those without children would get to nominate their own birthday and a couple of other days as holidays at the beginnig of the year as well as those getting the children's birthday off! But perhaps I'm a bit too generous with holidays :)

I am confused about these birthday-holidays?

Are they part of the holiday allocation (5 - 6 weeks worth plus public holidays), or an addition?

What if you don't want to take a birthday off?

My DH gets 6 weeks annual leave and he struggles to take it all. He ends up taking half-terms and other school holidays off, which rather cramps my style. If he wanted an odd day (to preen himself about reaching some age target and be grateful that he was still alive), he'd take it out of his allocation.

Yes, MtG, but (for example) does that mean that the Manor Arms were never going to be able to win more than a bronze award because their internal staff policies were no better than statutory minimum, no matter if they took customers' children off and platinum-plated them on entry to the pub (well, obviously that wouldn't be terribly family friendly, but some other amazingly OTT family-friendliness towards customers).

And if so (a) what was the point of their making (presumably) some effort to be family-friendly to customers when they come out of the process with the exact same bronze "award" they would have got had they stuck all children in a rat-infested darkened cellar and tossed them crusts of bread occasionally, and (b) was it actually explained to them in advance that if they didn't have above-statutory-minimum internal policies it would be completely impossible to get more than (effectively) an acknowledgement that they'd entered.

A family friendly workplace is not the same as a family friendly place for consumers.

I don't think that the "commodification of conversation" has to be what Mumsnet Limited is about, wallows. I do think that's increasingly what it has been about for the last 18 months or so though. It depends how the business draws on the content of conversation. They didn't use to trade on it so relentlessly as they do now.

A family friendly workplace is not the same as a family friendly place for consumers.

Yes, but companies were assessed on both (e.g. mystery shoppers were sent out to the pubs). Now it emerges that if they aren't sufficiently family friendly workplaces it makes absolutely no difference how family friendly for consumers they are -- they could be the most family friendly to consumers place in the universe or actively hostile to familes, and either would get a "bronze award". So a pub having a "bronze award" tells me virtually nothing, as a consumer wondering if it's a good place to take my children, other than that it probably doesn't offer enhanced maternity pay to its employees. And it does seem like a bit of a waste of the mystery shoppers' time, if there was no way the pub was ever going to get anything other than a bronze award.

MTG, thanks for your direct answer to my question asking if you work for P&G

"You might want to know, ssd, but believe me, you don't need to know."

@josephinebonaparte

So if I want to win a mumsnet best award for my product, what would I need to do?

Apologies if you think we're avoiding answering your questions, josephinebonaparte. That is not - and would never be - our intention. We always try to be as transparent as possible about what we're doing. Anything that seems to be otherwise is usually down to us being inefficient/slow to anticipate rather deliberately attempting to conceal.

Anyway, if you're still interested in how to win a Mumsnet Best Award, you can find the answer here

Hi on holiday - a lot of the 'policies' and things for which the companies have won for are statutory requirements.... It's all a 'paid for' thing.... companies gave mumsnet some money and after some 'auditing' every company who had paid to enter won an award... so we'll see mumsnet logos popping up on ads no doubt..... and 'family friendly' claims all over the shop.....

Hi, Sorry I haven't been on for a while - I'm still here! The breastfeeding thing isn't a statutory requirement. You might be surprised (or not :) ) but most workplaces don't offer that. For us, statutory requirement is of course a bare minimum and what we're looking for in the audit process is who is offering what to make those statutory requirements accessible and more to the point who's doing more than they absolutely have to.

hi, op, are you anywhere nice?

i wasn't on holiday! just replying to onholiday!!!

this is another one which takes the biscuit:

www.pgnewsroom.co.uk/news-release/uk-news-releases/pg-gives-90-its-olympic-tickets-back-mums-and-families

i saw the headline of "P&G giving away tickets" and thought, wow! maybe i got it wring but in reality it's a marketing activity! My god that company must think us mums are a right bunch of dozy cows. FFS!!

Why is the Olympic initiative a bad thing?

It was a very successful initiative in the Vancouver games, both for P&G brands and for the families of athletes.

How do you think the Olympic games goes ahead without corporate sponsorship? And isn't it a good thing that families of athletes have a better chance at tickets than the general public, and also lounge facilities at the various venues?

BTW, what do you mean by 'marketing'?