Viva La Revolución

FENG SHUI MARKETING

Scott Goodson Writes:

We all want more fortune and prosperity in our lives. So, come on, think about this for a moment. Rather than standing around and waiting for something positive to happen, make use of the powers of “Feng Shui Marketing”. What is “Feng Shui Marketing”, you ask? It is marketing using the principles of Feng Shui and thinking of marketing environments as one would think about Feng Shui and physical space. Physical or virtual, the same rules apply in my mind.

Feng Shui is a Chinese philosophy that has existed for more than 4000 years. It’s about arranging environments to make better use of them. The underlying principle is to live in harmony with an environment so that the surrounding energy works for you rather than against you.

These days, more and more people think about ads as environments – to not only convey a message to people, but to encourage a dialogue with them that makes both of them and the brand emerge stronger and happier every day this relationship continues.

Feng Shui says you’ll attract fortune and prosperity with beautiful and asthethically pleasing ads more than you will with ugly ads. Feng Shui marketing can also increase business profitability, gain competitive advantage, enhance both creator and audience well-being, maximize health, wealth and happiness to run a successful communications campaigns. Feng Shui marketing can reduce stress and turn adversity into your advantage.

The Moots Point 1.0 - The Healing Begins

Chris Coots writes…

From my little corner, I’m going to start doing these more often instead of just talking about them with willing listeners in the kitchen. Films are a center for understanding culture, and the bravest, most important ones often go unseen due to lack of distribution. Maybe this will begin the healing process.

FILM REVIEW

Once directed by John Carney

The Nitty Gritty: A hard-luck friendship story about a heartbroken Irish street musician (or busker) and a pretty Czech woman who escapes from her difficult life by playing the piano. They meet. They play. They inspire each other, deal with their complicated love lives, and unleash musical passion over a subtly epic week. Guy and Girl are played by Glen Hansard of The Frames and Markéta Irglová respectively.

Check out the trailer )

Culture: Once or twice a year, one of the major studios tries to breathe life into the movie musical by gluing together a lavish song-and-dance debacle with big time sets, big time editing, big time numbers and extremely watered down, easy to digest emotions. Dreamgirls is the most recent culprit, and Hairspray will soon follow this summer. The big budget movie musical is part of our culture – and not an embarrassing part. It’s good to indulge in the fancy – we do it often – look at all the stuff we have. Leaving behind the glitzy baggage, John Carney’s Once makes a clean break from the trend with its efficient handheld camera, and low-key style. On the wings of its easy-to-love charm, this film takes you to emotional places that no formulaic flashy production ‘round Christmas could even sniff. For this reason it needs to be acknowledged. And for this reason, it will be remembered.

“In its own way, it’ll blow you away.” – Richard Roeper

go with the 'herd'?

lee maicon writes:

I had the pleasure of joining my friends at Hall & Partners NY (thanks Roger!) for a chat the night before last by the inimitable Mark Earls on the occasion of his new book Herd. I'm very much looking forward to reading the book, which apparently revolves around the notion that the key to altering mass behavior relies on the behavior of the mass. I'm sure I'm not doing Mark's thinking the justice it deserves, but that's why I still have to read the book.

Having not read it yet, I won't get into it here (I'll review it, I promise) but the ideas Mark talked about reminded me a lot of Steven Johnson's book Emergence, which I enjoyed greatly when it first came out. The premise of Mark's book seems to be that the important thing in shaping mass behavior is to focus not on the influencers (although I have to imagine they do have some value) but rather on the fact that we as a species are social animals. The Frog process and creative approach is predicated on the creation of cultural movements, not just advertising, so a lot of what Mark said resonated with our experience here in the Pond.

At risk of superficial comment, two things somewhat at random popped out to me as rather interesting (in no particular order):

First, that as we as marketers now need to think about media (more than ever before) in terms of its value to create opportunities to put the people to whom we're trying to speak inside experiences that somehow highlight or make exciting the behavior or choice we're trying to influence. Act breeds act.

Second, I appreciated Mark's ideas around the (problem with the) ego-centric ideals of Anglo Saxon culture and the (mistaken) premise that the individual is all that matters. To get into theories of interdependence and causality or the social nature of Latin or Asian cultures here would be a mistake (oops, did I just do that?), but new ways of using technology (blogging, SMS, MySpace, Facebook, etc) are reminding us that we share brainspace and are dependent on others in ever more interesting ways.

Anyway, thanks for great pre-summer stimulation & drinks Mark & Hall+Partners...

creativity to the rescue!

lee maicon writes:

lately, as we've been thinking about evolving our work for client MEGA...

the subject of creativity and its ever increasing role in our lives has been explored repeatedly. i'm sure everyone (or at least all you planner types) have read daniel pink's whole new mind. perhaps it's self serving, given what we do, but i can't escape the feeling that it is both the prime business opportunity for countries like the US (and on the other hand, countries like Mexico or India or China) as well as the only thing that will save us all.

there are lots of great lists online to learn how to be more creative. but the following speech is one of the best perspectives i've seen on the subject. it really made me think about myself as both a professional and a parent.

Koninginnedag

Lennert Dorman writes:

Once a year on April 30th we dutch celebrate our Queen's birthday. Over the years it has turned into a national holiday (Queensday) where the whole country celebrates. The biggest celebration is always in Amsterdam. This year 550.000 people came to Amsterdam to celebrate. What do they do you wonder?

A necessary place to start is with yourself. Since orange is the color of our monarchy you have to wear something orange. An orange whig, an orange t-shirt, orange socks, whatever. As long as it is orange. So part of the fun is how other people 'dress up'. There's a 'free-market'. Which means anybody can sell anything on the street they want. The 'best' places on the sidewalks have already been reserved days in advance. There are people walking around who for a euro cite a poem. There are bands performing at almost every corner. The beer is flowing freely.

But the best thing is to be on a boat and float though the canals. Looking at all the people. Having people look at you and just sitting there with a bottle of beer in your hand enjoying the vibe and the sun. If your boat has a band on board then you are definitely in heaven.

Lennert Dorman
New frog in the New York office who has worked for years in the Amsterdam office of StrawberryFrog and has been Dutch since birth.