See the baby pineapple in the picture, my public relations company is having a "virtual" harvesting of pineapples on facelessbook.com. We will be eating and digesting them in virtual time. Smell them! Taste them? Yummy, yummy. Enjoy...enjoy...isn't life grand in the Virtual. Ya can sit on your chair for hours and hours and pretend ya have food, as your fingers melt into the keyboard and your saliva drips down your chin. Oh brave new world, how great thou art...we don't have to be human, we can merge with our "puter" and live off the wire. Wanna breastfeed? Do we have the program for you!!
Oh yes back to business, the business of breastfeeding. Let's see we had 3 PR campaign messages that went Virtual in the past two weeks, all revolving around donating breastmilk to Haiti. The third amended PR message supposedly got it just right...kinda like the fairy tail of Goldilocks. Hey, if you have a PR company you can call a spade a spoon or spoon a spade. Afterall, this is the Virtual. So how many people bought the third amended version of the need to donate human milk to Haiti? According to the Virtual, most everyone did and now onto better and bigger stories to sell humanmilkfeeding to the public.
In the third amended PR campaign version there is an interesting statement, "...International Milk Bank Project and Quick International Courier coordinated a shipment of milk from the HMBANA member banks to supplement a mother's own milk..." Yes, in the general chaos of 3 versions of PR statements, we seem to have lost focus. Let me see, everyone is OK with the International Milk Bank Project (IMBP) and HMBANA working together on this Haiti Project?? Oh yes for this project, the IMBP and Prolacta are not partnered. Yet, on the Prolacta website, when I went on there to find my closest milkbank to donate to (yes in the Virtual World I am still lactating); I found that my closest Prolacta milkbank is in Miami or the Virtual Milkbank of the IMBP. So Prolacta still believes that they are partnered with the IMBP but the IMBP has somehow forgotten they are partnered. Prolacta is also partnered in a project with Abbott (infant formula and pharmaceutical company). On the Virtual, what do you believe??
I found a gem in the Ethiopian Review...addressed to "lactating" women, asking them to open their shirts and donate. The article discusses that donations will go to the US Navy ship, "Comfort." A Gina Ciagne, CLC, director of breastfeeding and consumer relations at Lansinoh Labs says its important for women willing to pump and donate to identify themselves to the nearest chapter of HMBANA. Women must be willing to donate at least 100 ounces of milk (that will take this old lady awhile). Women's blood will be tested, etc... so what happens when ya donate a 100 ounces (I use to be able to hand express 2 ounces a day while also breastfeeding--2 divided into 100--it will take me 50 days to donate) and your milk is unacceptable. They throw it out, right? Yeah right. Maybe they give it back to ya? Yeah right. Dream on girls this is the Virtual and this is the business of breastfeeding. By the way Lansinoh donated $10,000 cash to UNICEF. The business of breastfeeding is doing well. Lansinoh is endorsed by La Leche League International (something I protested about back in the old days when I was a LLL leader--it was unthinkable to me that a non-profit would endorse any company). The business of breastfeeding: I do get it now that I am living in the Virtual. Gina Ciagne of Lansinoh was a former public affairs specialist in the women's health office (US Department of Health).
See ya on the Virtual..........................
Copyright 2010 Valerie W. McClain
if you recall, Lansinoh is owned by Pigeon, a known CODE violator... Pigeon produces bottles, nipples etc, and purchased Lansinoh as their entry into the North American breastfeeding market.
ReplyDeleteGina worked on the National Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign, and then switched jobs to join Lansinoh about the time they were bought by Pigeon, if I recall correctly.