What a week! I started in Boston at BAI’s annual Retail Delivery Conference and Expo (for which we’ve created the campaign and graphic theme for four years in a row — more on that in separate blog post), and ended up at the Opportunity Green conference at UCLA over the weekend. To quote from their website, “The world can no longer afford business as usual. Opportunity Green emerged to confront this challenge and bring together the brightest innovators leading the growth of the new green economy.”
A few highlights of the conference — at least for me:
Hearing Adam Lowry, one of the founders of Method cleaning products (whose concept, design, copy and creativity have made me a huge fan) talk about their beginnings, what the company has learned, and where he sees the industry heading. About how a company is more of an organism than it is an organization. And how, despite all the metrics and business models, sometimes companies “just have to do something awesome.” Keep reading →
The original line of Karito Kids, now joined by their little buddies, Travel Charmers (see below).
We are incredibly lucky to have so many clients who do amazing things for the world.
Some raise money for women’s cancers. Others provide education, housing and support for developmentally disabled kids and adults. Still others support young athletes, build homes for working families, or create state of the art programs for seniors with dementia.
It’s a hell of a group, and we’re thrilled to be on their teams.
My theory of the day: Going green is the next World War II.
It looks to me like global warming will be the huge economic push that will get the whole economy moving at full steam again. (Pardon the pun.) As the oceans rise, as the land becomes parched, as cities flood, as the populace migrates, enormous opportunities will also open up for companies with enough awareness to see them.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where we’re all heading — as a company, as a country — and what we can do about it to help make things better.
Michael Bungay Stanier is a business coach in Canada devoted to helping companies and individuals do Great Work (as opposed to just Good Work). He sent out a link to this terrific little video. I thought I’d share it with you.
It addresses some of the things I’ve been pondering, and it makes me happy to know there are lots and lots of people out there who are thinking along the same lines.
Patricia and I just got back from a couple of weeks of traveling, mostly in England. We got to spend a day with two good friends: the artist Terry Cripps and writer and consultant Susannah Finzi at their gorgeously restored and remodeled old home in a tiny village in the Gloucestershire countryside. After years of working as a commercial illustrator and photographer, Terry is now doing what he truly loves. He’s painting abstract images.
We picked the fresh vegetables the couple grows in abundance, which Terry and Susannah cooked brilliantly, along with the spectacular aged lamb they had helped raise on a neighbor’s farm. We ate, drank and talked. And, after two years of having promised ourselves we’d do it, we finally bought a couple of Terry’s pieces to bring home.
Our conversations about Terry’s paintings led me to an interesting question about design. Why do so many people think that the things we create have to be instantly recognizable?
I know, I know. I’m becoming a GTD nerd. (At least I’m in good company!)
As as designer, though, I couldn’t stand looking at the many kludgy charts around to guide you through processing the stuff in your “In” box. So I designed my own to use as a desktop background (“wallpaper” in the Windows world). I’ve posted them in the GTD section of this site. If you want to see them, just click the GTD tab at the top of this blog and download them to your heart’s content.
Meanwhile, if you’re not yet acquainted with David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”, do yourself a favor and check it out.
I had another post all set for today, when Jim Knipper at Media Associates sent me this video.
This puppy is too good to pass up. It combines some of my favorite things — rage, humor, guitars and viral video — to fight back against the corporate impassivity of United Airlines.
Dave Carroll and The Sons of Maxwell produced a great send-up. I’ll bet UA wishes they’d honored his claim.
The power of viral marketing is just amazing. And it looks like Evian managed to harness it big-time.
It started with a funny little video called “Baby Break Dance” that went up in June and now has about 500,000 hits. Not bad. But the new “Roller Babies” video posted July 2 has already received 3 million hits on YouTube as of this writing.
The question is, where the hell is this supposed to be going?
My very smart friend/client Laura who showed it to me was kind of stunned at how off-strategy it seems. As was I. The Evian brand has long been about health + fashion. Now it’s about — what? Cute, slightly nutty CGI babies?
The phrase “Live young” seems good, smart. A nice extension of the brand’s health equity. And you can’t argue with the attention-getting quality of the Roller spot itself. So I guess we should just be patient and see what develops.
Meanwhile, I’m going to go get a drink of good old L.A. tap — one of the top-rated waters in the world!
What do you call a painfully obsolete cellphone? It's a "Brickberry."
The LA Times’s Dan Neil (one my favorite journalists) did an article this morning on the new Cultural Dictionary, just published by the agency Cramer-Krasselt. In an effort to help their clients stay up to speed in our rapidly shifting cultural tidepool, they eavesdrop on subway passengers’ conversations, scope out text messages and jot down gems from pick-up basketball games.
Then they compile their findings into a guide for the less initiated.
Here are a few beauts:
Pinkwashers (n.): Certain companies that specifically use support for breast cancer research to promote products or services.
Freedomlawn (n.): Residential land permitted or designed to contain a variety of plants other than manicured grass, especially when containing plant life that occurs without cultivation, chemicals or cutting.
Precycling (v.): Purchasing products based on how recyclable they are.
Micro-boredom (n.): What we used to call downtime is now increasingly filled by fiddling with mobiles or BlackBerrys. Those who market these devices, or the services they use, see it as an opportunity to sell us something.
Sunday night I went to a fascinating event: a presentation called “Awesome” about the intersection of science, beauty and magic. It’s part of an ongoing series called Categorically Not! put on by L.A. Times science writer K.C. Cole. The speakers were quite a collection:
Curator and historian Daniel Lewis whose award winning exhibit “Beautiful Science” showcases scientific ideas that changed the world.
Art Benjamin, professor at Harvey Mudd College and mathemagician extraordinaire, who blew us away with feats of mental calculation that seemed like sheer magic to us mere mortals. And…
Adam Frank, astrophysicist at the University of Rochester, who talked about the common ground between science and spirit. He explores the subject in his new book, The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate, which Publishers Weekly praises as “light years beyond the stale standoff between uninspired scientific materialism and unscientific intelligent design.” Frank talked about the experience of spiritual awe that’s embodied in the magnificent photos taken by the Hubble telescope, and in discovering the tiny, elegant structures of the simplest creatures in nature. Keep reading →
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Speeding toward a sustainable economy at Opportunity Green: My quick take, with links for details if you want 'em. http://bit.ly/abikc#og0918 hours ago
What a week! I started in Boston at BAI’s annual Retail Delivery Conference and Expo (for which we’ve created the campaign and graphic theme for four years in a row — more on that in separate blog post), and ended up at the Opportunity Green conference at UCLA over the weekend. To quote from their website, “The world can no longer afford business as usual. Opportunity Green emerged to confront this challenge and bring together the brightest innovators leading the growth of the new green economy.”
