In her fabulous book, Leadership and the New Science, Margaret Wheatley, illustrates the ‘and.’ Under a photo of the Aurora Borealis she writes: “When the solar wind enters earth’s atmosphere, its charged particles stream to the magnetic poles. As the particles interact with nitrogen and oxygen, they become visible as colored light. These aurora demonstrate that space is not empty.”

What are the bonds between us? What is the magic ‘and’ that happens when a person and a person (or a person and a product) connect? We change each other. What most marketing fails to recognize is that both parties are changed and continue to change through the duration of the relationship. Dynamic, 21st century marketing must seek to understand the ‘and,’ and find ways to illuminate it so it may be incorporated and accounted for.

Last night, my husband and I attended the 40th Anniversary party of Appalshop here in the city. Appalshop is an Appalachian heritage, arts and education center located in my home state of Kentucky. I have been a fan of Appalshop and their creative product since I was a kid, so being with them on their trip to NYC was a delight. It inspired me to write a bit about my own Appalachian heritage. I hope you enjoy. Take a minute to check them out. I always find something supremely real when I do.

My grandparents on my mother’s side are from Appalachia. Both were born in Eastern Kentucky right before the onset of the Great Depression. But, it didn’t matter much there. Unlike other areas of the country, being poor wasn’t so much a shock to them. It was just the way life was.

My grandfather, Watson Craft, was the youngest of sixteen–from one mother. Not all of those babies lived, but most of them did. Once I asked him how she handled so many children and he told me she set aside a couple hours a day for them. She’d sit in a rocking chair on the porch and any child who felt he or she needed to be held and coddled could climb up in her lap.

In the darkest days of the Depression, he said, his mother put a giant cast iron kettle over a fire in the front yard. Every day she made soup out of whatever they had and it was available to anyone who needed something to eat. This kettle of soup and their ability to provide for others signaled to my grandfather that comparatively they were well to do. This neither pleased him nor shamed him. It was just the way life was.

The kids worked hard. The older boys worked in the coalmines (one brother died there) and the younger ones tended the fields, saw to the livestock and–my grandfather’s job–kept the bees. His mother was in charge of the food–the growing of it and the preparation of it. It was she who told his father what needed to be done each day.

Every evening the family had dinner together at a long wooden table. Great grandfather sat at the head with his wife to his right. The girls lined up down the bench on one side and the boys on the other. Food was precious to all of the children, but my grandfather recalled being especially interested in what they were having and how much. He was a growing boy and as the youngest, the last to be served.

Every year there would come an evening in the fall (he said he knew it was fall because it was around the time they slaughtered the hogs), when the nightly ritual was broken. Generally, as the children finished their meal they were allowed to be excused. But on this evening the first child would ask to be excused and denied. The other children knew what this meant. It was time to take stock of the food supplies for the winter.

After everyone had finished his meal, Great grandfather would address the table saying, “Children, your mother has something she wants to tell you.” She would sit there, rolling the thumbs of her clasped hands around and around each other in her lap, and without notes she’d start down the list: “Beans…we’ve got 5 bushel…there’ll be no shortage there…peaches…6 jars…there’ll be no shortage there…flour…4 sacks…each child gets one biscuit and there’ll be no shortage there…” This went on until she’d covered the entire stock for the winter. It was, according to my grandfather, an exciting event because it allowed each child to mentally prepare himself for the coming months. It increased their sense of security and gave them a plan for getting through the winter. There was no deviating from the plan. While that may sound uninspired to modern ears, it was just fine with my grandfather and his brothers and sisters because they knew they’d be eating.

After he recounted this story I asked a silly question from the perspective of someone who’s never had to ration food in her life. “But, what did you get for a treat? What was something special your mom made that you loved? Was there some kind of cake or dessert?” He laughed, his eyes twinkling and said, “Honey, just eating was a treat!” Then thinking hard about it he said, “I guess biscuits.”

As a child I visited the mountains with my parents and grandparents. We went to the annual family reunion and visited my grandmother’s mother who was alive and well into her 90s. I was 13 when she died and remember her well. I also remember how strange, dark, and soulful the mountains felt compared to my comfortable suburban home in Louisville, which was a metropolis by comparison. I loved going to the mountains, I felt more alive there. I was–even as a child–aware of the poverty and the endurance of the people there and it signaled something meaningful to me. It was verdant, spiritual, cut-off, and hard. It was unique then and is still today.

All of these and so many more stories color my memory and feelings about the Appalachian Mountains as a region, and part of my heritage. My grandparents are still my living link to the culture and remind me in ways both subtle and direct that I have mountain blood and that’s something to honor. As an adult I’ve often wondered what I could do to give back to the place that meant so much to my family. I’ve thought about projects big and small, professional and creative, private and public. I’ve planned trips in my mind, never finding the time in a busy schedule to execute them. I swear I will go back and I will give back.

Until I do, I find consolation in the fact that many people–young and old–feel the same way. For as long as I’ve known about the mountains I’ve known about a place in Whitesburg, near where my grandfather grew up, called Appalshop. Started in 1969 as part of the government’s War on Poverty initiative, the idea was to teach local youth media skills so that they might find jobs outside their impoverished communities. Instead, they stuck around and 40 years later, Appalshop is a highly respected and thriving arts and education center in the heart of the mountains.

This weekend the organization was honored at the Museum of Modern Art where several of their award-winning documentaries (Barbara Koppel’s Academy Award winning documentary, Harlan County USA, 1976, and Elizabeth Barret’s Stranger with a Camera from 2000) were honored and some were screened. At the party afterwards on the Upper West Side, I was able to meet many of the original and current members/employees/artists of Appalshop. Not surprisingly (southern hospitality travels with southerners even when they venture into places as foreign as NYC) it was the warmest and frankly, most thrilling, parties I’ve been to in a while. The weekend was a big deal for the Appalshoppers and they were ready to share their exuberance. We ate biscuits and pulled pork, sang an old mining dirge together, watched a film clip and drank bourbon. I was invited to come visit Whitesburg and offered a place to stay when I do. In a night, I made friends I hope to visit soon in Kentucky. Maybe just being there again will inspire the project I’ve always wanted to do. Or maybe it’s time to just go back and soak it all in, that dark, spiritual, earthy, enduring place…so far from my life now, but always easy to recall.

“When Nations grow Old,

The Arts grow Cold

And Commerce settles on every tree.” ­

–William Blake

I was thinking the other day about how I once saw marketing chops as something to be proud of. Sure, it’s good to be good at what you do and I am content to be a marketer, as I believe it is my path. But, to be proud of being capable of selling things to people…as a concept, in the abstract. Hmmmm.

My imagination had run to China, and the concern I’ve heard voiced by friends and in the media that America is a nation in decline and China’s really where it’s at (or it may turn out to be Brazil). My position is…Who cares? Maybe not being a so-called “Super Power” will turn out to be a blessing for America. Not that’s its a competition…But, I digress.

Anyway. I was thinking about how just a few years ago several smart marketers I worked with picked up and moved to places like China and India looking for opportunities to wield their marketing expertise in places where the demand for sophisticated marketing was growing with the demand for goods. The rising middle class in China deserves better ads! That was the idea. We need to be more like America, where the marketers have figured out the ins and outs of seducing a savvy audience suddenly holding the power of purchase in their hands.

At the time, I thought about my own skills: so honed, so refined. And I considered doing the same thing. Wouldn’t it be fun to teach another culture how to mine for insights and convert those insights into sales pitches?

Looking back I am struck by how naïve I was and how much my opinion on the matter has changed.

America’s position as the most sophisticated marketing environment in the world might be exciting from the inside of the marketing industry, but it is a large, LARGE, part of what’s wrong with this culture and what’s starting to be wrong with those cultures striving to achieve the same.

We’re surrounded by advertising on all 6 sides: up, down, side, side, front, back. We absorb it without trying.

What to do about it? For a few years I have been asking myself this question on a daily basis. I have brought this question into my work, asked it of myself and clients, and finally I think I am coming to some big conclusions. I won’t go into them yet, but I do believe there is hope. I do believe there is hope for commercialism, capitalism, and consumption. I do believe all ads are not created equal and moving forward enlightened corporations are going to start reducing the amount of noise they put out into the world.

In a future post, I will discuss the solution that is coming to light for me. And it’s not to stop advertising altogether (your job is safe for now). It is a solution that will change the way we think and behave in a post-advertising world.

It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants.
The question is, what are we busy about?

Take a look at the busy-ness in your business. If it’s a waste of time, stop doing it. NOW. We have precious little energy in this life and it is wasted justifying the existence of so much that matters so little. Do yourself and those around you a favor: take a look at something that is making you excessively busy and find a way to eliminate half the work.

I’m doing that now. This post is done.

I wasn’t exactly sure of the location, but I set out in the general direction hoping my subconscious memory would be strong enough to guide me there. The closer I got to the approximate location, the stronger my desire to see him. My walk had turned into a pilgrimage.

Without a single wrong turn, I found my way to the statue and spent a few minutes studying it. The statue is just slightly larger than life, which seems appropriate. His familiar bronze frame is close enough to life-size to be relatable and just over-size enough to feel grand. It had the impact I’d come looking for–I was moved.

Just as I was about to leave the statue I noticed an inscription at its base. In simple letters without dates, explanation, or attribution (not necessary), it said, “My life is my message.” Indeed.

The answers are not always in the finished work; though it may look authoritative. The struggle is most tangible in the draft. Once the contradictions are ironed out and the confusions corrected, the energy is changed. There is elation (and danger) in that release of tension that accompanies the act of completion. From that point on, the words are changed from what they were when they were still malleable clay in the hands of the creator. In the best scenario, the words maintain the essence of the struggle, which imbues them with a depth they can’t muster on their own. More often, the creative demons are cleaned out, shown the door, exorcised, leaving behind shells of words without a clue who made them, how they ended up here, and what for.

Post script: Unknown to me, in yesterday’s NY Times there was an exhibition review for a collection of handwritten letters, manuscripts, stories, and lectures from the likes of Emily Dickinson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, George Washington, Einstein, Eisenhower and others, at Sotheby’s. What a perfect way to feel the humanity in history. Go check it out if you’re in NYC.

But we do. Have enough. Most of us.

Maybe not the woman profiled in the New York Times this morning who is currently raising her two daughters on nothing but food stamps; and maybe not the women in the DR Congo who have lost husbands and children to war and famine; and maybe not the man I saw on the subway yesterday who stood in a crowded car and started his tale of woe only to peter out in despair when he could see that no one was listening.

These people are exempt.

So, if we have enough already, why do so many of us feel so unsettled? The Taoists call the majority of our day-to-day whims “artificial desires.” They do not grow out of a need in the body or the soul, but from the ego. Artificial desires are the desires–big and small–that have the power to manipulate even the most rational people into raving lunatics. These are the desires that are confounding because they are not actually tied to any real need and when they are fed, they just get stronger. They’re like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors: at first they appear exotic and compelling, attention grabbing and seemingly unique (“This is MY desire!”). But as we feed them they grow into something bigger than our will, bigger than ourselves. As we go on feeding them, they threaten to consume us.

The reality of our consumerist culture today is that we are all swimming in a sea of messaging supporting a psychology of lack, artificial desires, and what Lao Tzu considered one of the worst of all sins: “incitement to envy.” My industry – advertising and marketing – has preyed on it for years and would continue to do so if it weren’t starting to wear thin.

No sin can exceed

Incitement to envy;

No calamity’s worse

Than to be discontented. –Lao Tzu

Discontented. It seems so mild a state to be considered the worst of all “calamities.” A starving person is not discontented. A dying person is not discontented. These people have bigger issues to contend with than contentment.

And yet, to someone who truly believes in abundance in the overarching, all-encompassing sense of the word, it IS the worst state a human can inhabit. It is the man or woman who has received the bounty of the universe and chosen not to recognize it, who is discontented. This person’s real needs have been met and yet he cannot feel it. He is either distracted or misguided.

Which is not meant to be a criticism, but a fact, and one that must be changed on a person-by-person basis if we’re going to make progress in this world.

One of the acknowledged blessings of the current economic downturn is that it has opened eyes. We’re finally receiving a new kind of mass media message: about people doing more with less, prizing experiences over material objects, and spending more time with friends and family. What is behind the current buzz around the concept of ‘sustainability’ if not the acknowledgement of abundance and an active appreciation of all we’ve been given, the raw materials that exist for making a system work and work and work. The key to abundance is sustainable action and the key to sustainable action is the belief in abundance.

Maybe it is the emergence of this new attitude towards our natural resources and human resources that is making the old game played by so many advertisers ring false. Advertisers who insist on using manufactured ‘need states’ as a crutch are setting themselves up for a backlash as people wake up to the fact that what they have already is plenty. What was once clever marketing is now – or will soon be – revealed for what it is: manipulation.

In the hey day of innovation, before the Great Recession took hold, before most of us even knew it was around the corner, there was a popular term used to describe the common formula employed by marketers with an imperative to grow: white space. White space indicated the area on the competitive matrix as-of-yet unfilled by a competitive product. We – and I say ‘we’ because I was in this movie, too – identified white space by talking to consumers, watching them, following them, probing them for unmet needs and “pain points.” Companies raced to get to the most compelling white spaces in their industry first. What we were doing was manufacturing a need and then manufacturing the product to fill it.

This formula worked in the recent past and will continue to work for some brands and some consumers well into the future. But, change is on the horizon and the old formula is already being replaced by a new set of rules.

Advertisers hold on to your hats! This is the moment we all love to harp on and hate on: the paradigm shift.

My conviction is growing that this old style of marketing – manufacturing a need only to fill it with a product – is not only damaging and destructive, but strongly tied to a period pre-Recession, in which abundance was defined not by intangibles and natural resources, but by commercial options.

So, what will replace the old way of advertising in a culture of true abundance? Why a “new and improved!” way, of course.

The old way served the artificial needs of the ego. The new way will fill the real needs of the body and soul.

The old way required a clear statement of the problem because it was largely a manufactured problem. In the new way, the problem doesn’t need restating because the need arises within the body and soul of the customer. They are clear on the need because it comes from their gut, and they know exactly what they want to fill it.

The old way assumed scarcity and played on anxieties. The new way assumes abundance and fosters generosity.

The Old Way:

Advertiser: Psst…hey, you. Aren’t you tired of those other sodas with their same old flavor?

Customer: Well, I never thought about it, but yeah. I guess I am tired of that old flavor.

Advertiser: Try the drink that has all the cool kids talking.

Customer: I’m a cool kid. I should be talking about this.

Advertiser: It’s different. Just like you.

Customer: Thanks for noticing. I always thought I had a little something special to offer. Now other people will know that, too, when they see me drinking your new soda.

The New Way:

Customer: I’m thirsty.

Advertiser: We sell a beverage.

Customer: I don’t like artificial ingredients and I am trying to cut out plastics.

Advertiser: This beverage is natural and comes in a glass bottle.

Customer: I need something convenient and low impact – on my wallet and the planet.

Advertiser: Here’s where you can find us, and once you’re done we can be recycled.

Customer: This seems like exactly the product to serve my need. I think I’ll tell my like-minded friends about you.

Advertiser: Likewise, you seem like just the type of customer we’re in business to serve. Glad we could help.

Perhaps the old way was better at swaying mass audiences; you didn’t need to know all that much about your actual customer because you dominated the “conversation” from the start. You told them what their need was and then you filled it. In the new way, you can see that the brand has already worked out who they are talking to and what that person wants. They have aligned themselves with the body and soul desires of a particular type of customer. When that customer’s need arises, they are clearly positioned to fill it, without too much hype or effort.

The scariest part – for marketers anyway – about the New Way is that it requires a deep understanding of what one has to offer, what the customer wants, and the natural intersections that exist. And while it seems more passive, it doesn’t have to be. It’s just more targeted.

The shift from a psychology of lack to a psychology of abundance won’t happen overnight, but it is happening. It hasn’t been talked about much, but the multi-tasking abilities and wide-open world the youngest generation of employees and entrepreneurs was born into is a precursor. They’re set up to believe that there’s plenty – of information, of ideas, of food, of money, of love and kindness, of toothpaste…whatever – to go around, and come around again, and again. Maybe it will be their ascension into the product developer’s seat, the marketing executive’s seat, and the CEO’s seat, that triggers the final push into a place where there’s room for everyone at the potluck as long as they bring something of value, something that feeds the gut, to the table.

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Breach the movie

The Final Inquiry dvdrip , and it’s addictive.

Brand Tags is profound in its simplicity. There is a refreshing lack of scientific rigor. You don’t have to log in, identify yourself, or offer any information that a marketer might use to qualify responses (gender, age, education, etc.). You aren’t given any instruction for how to generate your response other than the most basic: What is the first thing that pops into your head? (A word or phrase please… there are no wrong answers). Deliver Us from Eva ipod

What you get is unadulterated word association–which some believe is a key to unlocking (or at least unearthing) subconscious associations. Marketers love subconscious associations. If you agree with Carl Jung that people connect ideas, feelings, experiences and information by way of associations, then the exploration of the collected responses of many, many people is in a way a glimpse of the collective unconscious with regards to a particular brand.

Insightful? Yes, but maybe not in the ways you might think.

“People (Marketers) always want to know what unusual or radical insights have been unearthed with Brand Tags,” Noah explained, “But, the reality is Brand Tags is best at bringing to light that ‘thing’ everyone knows about a brand but no one wants to admit.”

Click psp

Inferno buy

City by the Sea film

I love this. And don’t we need more of it.

Almost always over the course of my research projects, what I am looking for and listening for are insights. INSIGHTS. The client is waiting for me to “wow” them with knowledge of their brand or circumstance previously unknown to them. They are looking for new news. Insights have become so important to research that whole projects live and die by the researchers ability to produce them and sell them in to the client. In the process, ignoring or skimming over the information consumers offer that is both true and relevant to the brand’s fortunes…though it might not be news.

After Noah left, I played on the site for a while and marveled at some of the “things everyone knows but no one wants to admit” about these brands:

Gothika the movie

AAA–brings to mind “alcohol” (AA), “old” people, and “towing”

Absolut–“Cool advertising” dominated the tag cloud where few adjectives about the actual product were in evidence–haunted by the ghost of campaigns past?

Blockbuster–a “bankrupt,” “dead,” “dinosaur” to most of the presumably young and savvy people contributing to the site

Gap–still has a strong association with “khakis” though no one wears them any more

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Wal–Mart–while the retailer gets recognition for being “cheap” and “huge,” it also conjures images of “red necks,” “white trash,” and “the devil”

Of course, there are also plenty of positive associations a brand would be smart to recognize and nurture. Too often, these assets–built over time–are abandoned in the pursuit of something more “current,” or disruptive:

Bounce psp The Good Thief

Prague Duet film

Starbucks–“ubiquitous” and “green” give the brand a platform for talking about having the potential to enact social and environmental change on a massive scale

download Soldier dvd

Tropicana–instead of trying to go gourmet, the brand ought to dial up the simple attributes customers already give it credit for: “juicy,” “fresh” and from “Florida”

M&Ms–people still think of the old line, “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands”

Of course, I’m not saying these results are actionable (neither would Noah), but they do force you to acknowledge obvious associations. Something marketers, in their quest for Insights (intentional initial cap), often overlook.

Red Heat hd

The Red Book is a large, red, leather-bound journal Jung laboriously assembled over the course of his adult life. The journaling and sketches happened primarily between the years 1914–1916, but the transcription of his active imaginations into an ornate calligraphic script and illustrations of eastern-inspired mandalas, took a lifetime for him to complete. Jung poured everything he had–consciously and unconsciously–into the Red Book. It is a masterpiece: one man’s attempt to understand Transformation (Enlightenment? Transcendence?) from a psychological, not merely spiritual, point of view. And yet, when he was done, he ended the work with this postscript; “I did this as well as I could,” a neat piece of humility in the face of the enormity of the effort.

Away from Her ipod

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Waz ipod

Deliver Us from Eva movie Jung’s family kept the book private for nearly 100 years, though during his lifetime, Jung left it open in his office and often referred patients to its passages and paintings. Now, for the first time, it is being published in its entirety. The night I saw it the atmosphere was charged with anticipation. Many Jungians have been waiting their lives for this. Among that crowd the buzz was that this book may be the most important piece of scholarly work (Esoterica? Religious text? Psychological manifesto?) released in generations. It could change our understanding of man’s place in the world. It will definitely underscore and give further definition to Jung’s major contribution to modern psychology–the idea of the collective unconscious.

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In my opinion, it is no accident that this book has surfaced now. It’s up to us to figure out how to use the information contained within. I have some ideas; a few of which are personal, but a few I plan to explore openly with friends and clients:

The collective unconscious versus the individual’s experience–In research I run across this all the time: there are trends, words, memes that surface from interview to interview. The patterns are like a tapestry weaving the lives, hopes, and fears of the subjects together even when they are geographically and psychographically dispersed. These patterns are important because they bring efficiency to the act of communication.

What’s conscious and what’s…not Rush Hour full

–I’ve been bothered for a while by the shortcomings of the typical ethnographic interview. I am good at formulating questions and fashioning scenarios that take the subject beyond the surface of their perception, but even so you can’t ask a person to tell you what they don’t know about themselves. Not sure how to solve this one…yet.

The limitations of language in our ability to truly communicate–Jung struggled with finding a language to describe his experiences beyond the realm of the recognizable. The expert I heard discuss the Red Book said many passages read like nonsense, contain sentence fragments, and intentional misuse of words. Jung was literally at a loss for words, and he was a man quite used to helping patients articulate such esoteric experiences as dreams and fantasies. Words dominate our cultural landscape and social interactions. We talk to each other constantly, but do we really know what the other is saying? The more attention I pay to this the more I see how critical it is, in my position as a translator–a bridge between the commercial entity and the client or customer–to be sure both parties are saying what they mean to say and hearing what they’re meant to be heard. So that we may at least say at the end of our conversation, as Jung did, “I did this as well as I could.”

If you find yourself in NYC before January 25, 2010, go see The Red Book at the Rubin Museum Sams Lake buy .

Secret Diary of a Call Girl the movie Twelve Monkeys

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I just saw this headline on cnn.com, “Internet addiction linked to ADHD, depression in teens.” Upon reading further, I realized a connection had been made, but not in the way I’d anticipated. In this study of 2,000 Taiwanese kids, scientists found that teens diagnosed with ADHD and depression are more likely to become addicted to the Internet. This may be true, but I had this chicken and egg scenario turned around the other way in my mind: I see Internet addiction as leading to

conditions like depression and ADHD. The media barrage comes first and the neurological disease comes second. At any rate, it calls attention to the ill effects of too much Internet and that is a good thing. Information overload! Houseboat buy

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