Marketing in general is a very hectic job, sales looks to you for leads, your peers look to you for creatives ideas, and the rest of the department just look at you as a cost center - more than a revenue generating department. Its hard to prove your marketing efforts, because a lot of times no matter how many hours, sweat, and hard work you may put in sometimes you just don't get the credit you deserve. Because the only thing people think marketing does is make things "look pretty," (including themselves). And being a marketer, I want to prove this wrong!Along with all the other things going on in marketing, I have noticed how marketing usually dresses. Throughout my career, at the 4 different companies I have worked for, I have noticed a trend with marketing professionals. I have worked for a variety of companies - corporate, family-owned, to start-ups and they all have different HR dress codes, but none (except for the corporate one) enforced the dress code. There is usually a certain image people have in mind when it comes to marketing professionals and how they dress. And I could tell you this is usually very true. Marketers (most) are hip, trendy, and fashion forward (just as sales are).
A business usually creates a dress code that is appropriate to the image it would like to convey to its customers. Yet, sometimes the individuals who present the company just don't seem to follow the HR rules and this is where violations flood in. But this is where HR or managers need to step in and enforce this or else the company will suffer from one person's image.
A girl who is dressed in a tight black skirt, with a tight black low cut top is bound to get looked at (I mean its human nature to look at something that's out for the world to peek- whether its attractive or not). A woman could take that the wrong way and possibly think the man is making a pass at her and there you go, wallah! - a lawsuit. With so many lawsuits for the silliest things, businesses and individuals need to be very careful.
I recently saw (believe it was 20/20) that a woman got fired because she believes she was "too pretty" for work and that the men would harass her (if harassing was true or not, we don't know but she said it was) and that everyone at work would constantly make comments about her looks (again I think she was just looking for easy money). When she was let go from the company, she sued them for wrongful termination (pretty sure she had the looks just not the brains). I was baffled when I found out she actually received a settlement on this! Her whole case was about "her being too pretty for work" and that's the reason she was terminated. The employer never documented any of the performance reviews (maybe because he/she was too busy paying attention to her "beauty" rather than her "work") so I guess she had a valid case. And guess what department she was in? Yup, you got it - MARKETING! So, if I was running an HR department or a business I would lay out very strict guidelines as to what is appropriate to wear and what is not. Companies have to be real careful nowadays when it comes to employees because there are plenty of woman out there who are just in it for fast-cash and these are the type of woman that give the rest of us a bad name.
