skyelab

Transparency Pledge

schuyler brown — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:23:52 +0000

There are many people in marketing I admire for their creativity, work ethic, or intelligence. But, there are few I admire for their ethics and long-term view. Recently, I’ve learned about Morten Albaek, CMO of Denmark-based Vestas Wind Systems. The more I read about his ideas and projects, the more I want to pay attention. He’s a philosopher and a prodigy in business, but also a man with a clear sense for what needs to be done in the world and his role in doing it. I love this Transparency Pledge he recently promoted at a speaking engagement in NY. It’s a smart way to motivate more CMOs to take specific action towards improving the values around which the organization revolves.

I will as a CMO:

Acknowledge that I have a moral obligation and professional duty to create a more honest global marketing environment
Never over-sell products nor declare them to be something they are not to gain business advantage
Encourage my gifted employees to at all times be true about the product and corporation they are marketing
Evaluate marketing not just strictly on ROI, but with metrics that measure the credibility and fact-based content of my marketing
Always stand firm on the principles of the CMO Transparency Pledge in any dialogue, discussion or decision making process with my superiors.

Something no computer would think…

schuyler brown — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:52:05 +0000

I’ll be interested in the singularity when they figure out how to give inanimate, technological objects a soul. As I see it, any virtual, augmented, animated experience is one-sided. You bring the soul and the computer brings a brain, a purely intellectual offering. In a human-to-human interaction this would be wholly unsatisfying. Why is it so exciting then to so many people? These toys are fancy baubles. And they may have some limited application to solve this or that problem, but machines will never equal humans for soulfulness, depth, and potential. A machine can never become a God. A man can.

Narcissus

schuyler brown — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:31:31 +0000

According to the ADAM Medical Encyclopedia: “Narcissistic personality disorder is a condition in which people have an inflated sense of self-importance and an extreme preoccupation with themselves.”

This will be the next big issue in our collective existential crisis. It will replace ADHD and OCD and ADD as the dominant diagnosis of our young people, it will be discussed, debated and otherwise hyped…It is a natural result of two intersecting trends:

1. Social Media and it’s obsession with attention and appreciation

2. The Consciousness Movement which requires one to focus on oneself and to understand one’s self completely in the context of the culture…a necessary step on the road to enlightenment (or heaven), but one that can waylay even the most dedicated traveller…

Watch for it.

Do something new

schuyler brown — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:35:33 +0000

There is a great piece of advice floating around the internet. It’s been attributed to a 2008 speech by a pastor from a church in Australia (now that’s the power of the Internet to spread words), but I recently ran across it on the MTV Voices Facebook page. The artist, Santigold, offered it as the best advice she ever got: If you want something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done. I love it. How empowering.

What do you want that you’ve never had? Recognition? Success? Love? Understanding? A new job? A puppy? What are you going to do differently to make it happen? What are you going to have to change?

In the interest of practicing what I preach, I am going to do one thing differently…some big things and some small…every day for the rest of the month in order to get what I really want, which is a massive platform for sharing my ideas about Conscious Communication. Let’s see what unfolds.

For most mass brands, beauty is still skin deep

schuyler brown — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:31:13 +0000

We recently finished a semiotics study of the use of celebrities in beauty advertising in the US. The results were staggering: nothing (significant) has changed in 40 years.

Now, I love the beauty business. I do. I worked as a make-up artist through college and my first job out of college was behind the Lancome counter at Neiman-Marcus in San Francisco. I know this business and I have been both a consumer and a consultant to some of the biggest brands out there. But…guys (and it IS mainly guys), it’s time to deliver a little more depth in your message.

The biggest evolution in beauty advertising in the past couple of decades was the shift from using models to using female celebrities to sell product. For a while, this sufficed to shake up the category. It was novel and exciting to see the faces of some of our most talented actresses and singers in such fine detail. I still prefer the hair color ads featuring Beyonce to those featuring nameless women…Beyonce triggers all kinds of positive responses in me while the nameless women (and I am sure they are really nice girls) trigger…nothing, maybe a vague curiosity or periodically…jealousy. Certainly not inspiration.

But, the category is stuck once again. As we have habituated to seeing famous faces in cosmetics and skincare advertising, we’ve come to regard even the famous faces as just…faces. Meanwhile, beyond the pages of the magazines we’re getting to know our celebrities in such cool and intimate ways. Women – famous women – are showcasing much more dimension than ever before and the ad just aren’t capturing that.

Outside the cosmetics industry, I found an emergent storyline in the use of celebrities not simply as slightly-more-interesting mannequins for the product, but as ambassadors of certain VALUES. Because we know what our celebrities stand for, it’s a smart brand that teams up with one who shares the brand’s values…not just their look. Louis Vuitton’s Core Values campaign featuring Sophia Coppola and Angelina Jolie (among others) is a good example. There are others.

There is so much richness to be mined in the values of great women. St. John’s gorgeous campaign with Kate Winslet is a step in the right direction. A lot of the press surrounding the ads has been brassy and bold statements made by cool Kate about women and body image. She’s confident and self-assured, which adorns the brand with a nice halo. Though, at the end of the day the ads still utilize the same unchanging formula of codes and cues. A cosmetics company could really drive home some important points about beauty being much more than skin deep by showcasing beautiful women who have something beautiful to share beyond the physical. How about a “Beauty is…” campaign?

I’d like the cosmetics brands to wake up to the fact that Seduction looks different today…especially when the target of the seduction is other women. I am seduced not by appearances, but by content. Give me something to engage with.

Excavating Shakespeare

schuyler brown — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:52:54 +0000

Click image to watch video

I learned more about Shakespeare watching this ten minute video than I did in a whole semester as a university student.

At the Globe theater, scholars and actors are working to deliver Shakespeare’s lines in their original accent. What they’ve learned about the works as a result is fascinating. They’ve found jokes and puns that are generally missed. They’ve found that the works flow more smoothly and even “faster.” And as the young actor says late in the clip: the original accent takes him deeper into his body. Instead of registering around the throat and head (intellect), he goes to the belly, the gut and feels more as a result.

This subtle observation reminds me of the moment that haunts me from the Pina Bausch movie I saw recently. The inspired choreographer is describing to an interviewer her experience of dancing Cafe Muller with her eyes closed. She says she noticed after one performance that she couldn’t feel the magic she usually felt until she realized it made a difference where she “looked” behind her closed eyelids. When she looked down, she felt nothing. When she looked straight ahead she felt…magic.

This is a video about Shakespeare, but the real beauty is in the passion these men bring to their work.

Diet for the Mind

schuyler brown — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:05:16 +0000

I am about to start beta testing my new program for detoxing the body/mind complex from the effects of over-information. My audience is primarily busy business people, especially those for whom creativity, innovation, and imagination are important to productivity and success. I am playing with a 21-day program (3 steps of 1 week each: awareness/fasting/integration) or a 10-day program (1 3-day awareness exercise and 1 week-long fast).

Watch this space for a lot more information in the coming weeks. Ultimately, I’m going to turn this experiment into a book, but for now I just want to see if the idea has legs. I’ve been so inspired by my entrepreneurial friends who have taught me you have to test the waters with your ideas early and often.

If you are interested in having a healthier, happier mind in just 10 days…or 21…stay tuned.

For whom do you walk? Or work?

schuyler brown — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:19:06 +0000

I’ve been re-exploring the practice of walking meditation recently. One of the instructions from the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn, that stuck with me this time was to walk for someone else, on behalf of someone else. This has deepened the practice for me. I walk now not for my own benefit, but for those who cannot walk. I imagine someone I know or have heard about who for reasons related to physical condition, old age, or some other restriction, cannot walk along a park path. It’s February, but I do not feel cold. I can only appreciate the sensations that are unique to the experience of being free to walk in nature without a destination, without a goal, simply in a state of appreciation. Walking for someone else is a service I can provide easily. It makes my walk matter even more than it did when I was doing it to feel good, to calm down, to ground myself for my own purposes.

In walking, in life, in work, having a worthy recipient in mind takes the action to the next level. As a researcher, I spend a lot of time helping brands envision their audience–the people they do what they do for. When the intent of that bringing-to-life exercise is to better know the person so they may be better served, the results are overwhelmingly positive. When the intent is to better understand the recipient in order to manipulate them, the results are disastrous for everyone. Just something to consider as you walk your walk.

A Product of Our Environment

schuyler brown — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:10:04 +0000

“Beauty is essential to the natural unfoldment of the human soul. The Mysteries held that man, in part at least, was the product of his environment. Therefore they considered it imperative that every person be surrounded by objects that would evoke the highest and noblest sentiments. They proved that it was possible to produce beauty in life by surrounding life with beauty. They discovered that symmetrical bodies were built by souls continuously in the presence of symmetrical bodies; that noble thoughts were produced by minds surrounded by examples of mental nobility. Conversely, if a man were forced to look upon an ignoble or asymmetrical structure it would arouse within him a sense of ignobility which would provoke him to commit ignoble deeds. If an ill-proportioned building were erected in the midst of a city there would be ill-proportioned children born in that community; and men and women, gazing upon that asymmetrical structure, would live inharmonious lives. Thoughtful men of antiquity realized that their great philosophers were the natural products of the aesthetic ideals of architecture, music, and art established as the standards of the cultural systems of the time.

The substitution of the discord of the fantastic for the harmony of the beautiful constitutes one of the great tragedies of every civilization.”

–– Manly P. Hall, “The Secret Teachings of All Ages”

Southerners Know Service

schuyler brown — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 01:37:53 +0000

I’m in Louisville visiting family. My father likes to tease his Brooklyn-based daughter about how progressive Louisville is by calling it “Manhattan-on-the-Ohio.” I’ve come around to thinking he’s right. There’s something going on here that very much resembles the farm-to-table movement so hot in places like Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Portland…but this is Kentucky.

Tonight we dined at a restaurant called Harvest in a revitalized area downtown dubbed NuLu. I’ve eaten here before on a previous visit and was dying to come back. It rivals anything in New York City for its heart and authentic attitude towards good, fresh food and there’s something more…ah, space. I think the people here simply have more space to think and create. They’ve taken the time. They’ve worked it out. They’re not sweating. They can focus when they talk to you. And for me, a new(ish) mom…they won me over immediately when the waitress approached the table and said to me, before giving the specials or pouring water, “We have organic, local baby food. Tonight we have carrots and butternut squash. Would you like some?” I didn’t hesitate. A few minutes later a bowl of delicious squash puree arrived from the kitchen…WITH a baby spoon. That sent me-and E-over the moon.

Talk about hospitality. Southerners do it right.