Not a Running Post

Ladies and Gentlemen, we interrupt our regularly scheduled posts about running to bring you this special message about product development.

Women are advancing on all sorts of new frontiers. Next year, we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the women's marathon event in the Olympics. There is no doubt today that women can excel at endurance sports. Moreover, women are advancing in the professional world. In Canada, we even have a female Chief Justice on the Supreme Court. Now that is progress considering that less than 100 years ago there was a very real legal debate about women were "persons".

Yet a glass ceiling still exists. Sometimes the ceiling is not even glass. Sometimes it is concrete and plaster.

If you have any doubt that women are not advancing in certain fields, I present to you the case of the Nicorette Inhalor. This Inhalor is meant to give people who are quitting smoking a proxy for a cigarette. The Inhalor is something you can put in your mouth just like a cigarette so that you can enjoy that feeling of having a cigarette dangling from your mouth without having to use an actual cigarette. Smart idea.

Alas, I suspect that there are NO women on the product development team of Nicorette. Neither are there women in key executive positions at Nicorette -- the sorts of positions that carry with them the authority to say, "Uh, no. We are not going to sell that product."

How do I know? I present to you Exhibit A, an advertisement for the Inhalor.




I present to you Exhibit B, another advertisement for the Inhalor.



Notice anything about those Inhalors, ladies?

That's right. We know that there cannot be women involved in product development at Nicorette because no woman would try to sell a fake cigarette that looks like a tampon.

Tough Cowboy? He was until he put a tampon in his mouth in lieu of a cigarette.

Romantic scene? Oh yes. Except for the fact that the lady and her gent are smoking tampons.

Hey Nicorette, for the sake of the dignity of smokers who are using your products to quit smoking, please hire a woman who is willing to say, "We are not taking cigarette tampons to market!"