Would anyone like to join in an effort to convince retailers to stop categorizing toys by gender?

[OneHandWavingFree]

Following on from this thread and similar ones, a few of us are interested in discussing ways to send a message to retailers that it is not acceptable to designate 'boys' and 'girls' toy aisles which reinforce the message that science and adventure are "boys stuff", while girls should be primarily occupied with looking 'sexy' or practicing for domestic drudgery.

The first steps might be to draft a letter and identify a few retailers to target for an email campaign. Other ideas of how to get the message across are very welcome too, though.

Would anyone like to join in?

ConsiderCasey good luck for tonight, have fun :)

Items which are commonly selected or purchased by customers using these key words in their searches may be shown when these words are selected."

eh? but the items have to have shown up in a search for the user to have selected them so I don't quite get how this works. Or is it that if you did a search 'girl+science' but didn't find what you wanted and then found your chemistry set using some other search it would then start linking 'girl' to the chemistry set? But how does the search ever find anything first time its used

I just did Boots website. A search on science + girl doesn't work. It returns everything with "girl" and also everything with "science" as well.

It doesn't return stuff with only "girl" and "science".

Nickel someone said further up thread that it's best to folllow less people....she said that the best and most popular Twitter users have far fewer people they follow than follow them....and that it can look unbalanced if you've tonnes of people you follow but not many following you.

I know nothing about Twitter....just thought I'd point it out so we Twitter virgins can be sure which way is the right one for us.

dunno.
I bet it's just based on search history.
so each visit, maybe? if you search "girl chemistry set" then click on that chemistry set, it'll remember that you askd for that.
and if you go "boy crayola" maybe, and choose that crayola, it'll remember that as a boy choice.
I have a feeling that the IT dept probably didn't know either!

It was me! I don't think it'll hurt to start following people now we've got some content. Just cautioning not to go mad on it! If we have 70 followers but we're following 500, some people might think we're not worth following. I don't think it'll hurt to go a little over.

(IIRC, the maximum you can follow is 2000 btw).

In general it's a great idea to follow people, as many will follow you back :) You can give them a while to follow you back, and then if they don't ditch them! - unless of course we genuinely want to follow their tweets.

MrsMushroom - yes, I see, but i think in the early days, it's wise to pick a few people to follow that have the same agenda- like when I first started twitter, I followed a few bookshops, and also a few publishers (and most of them i found through looking at my followees' follows)
that way, you will get people who follow them following you because they've found you through them.
it doesn't have to be unbalanced - I have 50 fewer followees than followers. which I suppose is about right for 300odd.
Ithink it can go badly the other way, though - for example, Anthony Horowitz has loads of followers and follows hardly anyone. That's because he's a popular author and doesn't need to follow lots of people, they'll still follow him because they want to - fandom.
I think ours is a bit more mutual than that - we want to get the word out, we don't want to be an icon. (is, we want to be friends with people, not look like we're asking to be lauded)

@penguinukbooks is a good example - they've got 3,000,000 people they follow and 5,000,000 that follow them.
and only 4,000 tweets!

@Bookmarks_books is another example - they've got 3,000 followers and follow 1,600 .
It's largely mutual.

auf - I found that with some of the other sites (bright minds, I think) - they don't know their logical ands from their logical ors. Still, at least that means they aren't generating just bath bomb kits.

When people are tweeting, it's great to remember to use the company's @handle when you mention them.

It'll get us more publicity.

(Sorry I know I'm repeating myself, but just to make sure)!

that can't be right : @thebookseller has 2100

yes, I find that if people do the @ handle, then other people will click on their profile to find out who they are and follow them.

btw, i follow a lot of bookshops, mainly because I like to steal ideas, but also because it's good networking.
you get to "know" people that way, even if you don't necessarily get customers!

Aufanie -

I did worry that that question wouldn't work for all retailers, because they all design their search a bit differently.

I won't include it in the "scoring" system - but where there are good examples where the question does work we can use as an example.

FB admins - can you add a like to Dr Laura Nelson (who did the Hamleys campaign) on the FB site delilah-mj.blogspot.co.uk/

Twitter admins - can you follow her @DrLauraNelson and maybe send her a tweet to let her know about our campaign - she would be a good person to get to RT about LetToysBeToys

Ta!

Hello. Just checking in, saw this a few days ago but RL has been taking over.

Firstly I think I luffs you all, this is really great stuff if there's any way I can help out, please please let me know.

The best Twitter tip I was ever given was actually chat with people and engage, don't just beg for RTs.

Lots of really good and simple advice here

Edu - you're right - I have good rapport with those who I tweet to and reply to :)

Whoever is womaning the the twitter account today......

If you do a search for 'swedish toy' it comes up with loads of people who have tweeted about that story. You can retweet them, or tweet back to them if they say something interesting ....

there you go, you've had macmillan kids replying - it's now polite to follow them :)

good Himalaya - find toy retailers and manufacturers/suppliers and follow them

I got some fairly good (read: blood-boiling) pictures today, which I'll upload to Facebook when I get home.

Should we encourage our 'likers' again to upload their own photos of retailers that are getting it right (to show it can be done easily!), the ones that are getting it wrong, and also pictures of their kids (or either gender) who are just getting on with playing, and enjoying toys that wouldn't be marketed to them because of their gender.

Once we have a decent number of pictures, I'd like to organise them into albums - kids letting toys be toys, shops letting toys be toys, and then one for pics of the worst offenders.

Also, does another facebook admin know how to make a tab for the twitter address (next to the boxes for photos and where the number of 'likes' is displayed), so that it doesn't have to sit at the top of our timeline? Where it is now, it pushes new posts further down the page so that you have to scroll down to see them.

I glanced at it this morning and mistakenly thought it was the most recent post, and I'm probably not the only one who will make that mistake.

yes, do post again asking for more pictures.
It's a useful way of flagging up on newsfeeds.

you've pinned it to the top, that's all.
click on that little orange flag and unpin it.

yay, thanks nickel, just unpinned it, I didn't know what the pin was either.