We were thrilled when one of our all-time favorite illustrators, Mark Zingarelli, agreed to “draw” our value proposition for the Launchismo website.  At a glance, Mark’s first draft was awesome…..but. It took us a little while to figure out the nature of that “but.”

It was this:  the blue eyed strawberry blondes in the cartoon didn’t look a bit like our clientele.  Sure, we do business with the occasional prototypical anglo, but the fact is, our clients come from all over the world.  Even stateside, most business meetings we attend are both polyglot and polychrome. We keep those late nights and early mornings open for international calls.

We explained our unease to Mark, and he changed “Bobby” to “Rajiv.” Bobby’s blue eyes and yellow hair turned dark.  Sure, Rajiv still has Superman’s chiseled features, but he reflects the the global nature of business today—better, we hope, than those smiling stock photo tokens intended to bring political correctness to so many ‘90s business websites.

Marketers we are, but we are marketers who believe that our work has to speak to the real world and not some pale or cynical approximation of it.  Today’s  global marketplace transcends yesterday’s conventional taboos. Witness the barrier-breaking sex appeal of the Old Spice Man.

Ladies, would you buy a network monitoring system from this man?

Hell yes.