Here’s a better solution: Make the donation be WITHIN the price of the product. And let the consumer know this and they will talk about it.

If these businesses really care THEN  JUST DO IT. Remove the choice and guilt trip you put on us at the very of end of the process.

When it comes time to pay I don’t think people would suddenly look in disgust and leave the bottle on the counter when they see 18 dollars instead of 16 dollars. They would enter that business knowing they donate with every purchase.  Why? Because people attach themselves to companies they relate to. Because they feel good about them. Make your business stand for something!  The beer drinkers or grocery consumers will buy products from those companies that have those set of values in place. In this case to do good for the world.

Don’t believe this will work? Here’s excerpt from page 182 of Max Lenderman’s Brand New World:

A survey reported in Advertising Age found that 90 percent of millennials – those born between 1979 and 2001 – said they were “very likely” to switch from one brand to another that had a strong association with a good cause.

Think of all the messages that are driven into your head every day you go to work, return from work, at work even (radio), its just non stop advertising madness. Now imagine if it were all taken down. You probably would start notice the architecture in your city a bit more (or lack of ). Watching that film to me was just so refreshing, because there is a price to pay for all this distraction – you are to some extent a product of your environment.  For Sao Paulo it reached a point that billboards were labeled visual pollution.

Many of the advertising biggies in the film Art & Copy called certain advertisements done well to be considered art. I agree certain ones are awesome. They can change your perception of something and make you like something even more.  But when is too much too much?

The other thing to question is do billboards even work anymore? Old marketing was pushing business on people. I argue it doesn’t work as much anymore. Just like you can’t buy friends, I don’t think buying billboards can buy customers.  It has to be something that people care about.

We have to stop adding to the clutter and if not try to make it something more. There is billboard in South Africa, advertising a bank - where electric solar panels are on top of the billboard and are literally providing electricity to a school. NOW that stands out and it’s actually meaningful.  Advertising done to do more good in this world.  That is worth responding to.

What’s this?

A trolley loaded with luggage? Nope.

This is a giant cake! With chocolate,  strawberry, and blueberry icing.

One of my favourite scenes from the Hindi movie Jaanu Tu ya Jaane Na is when Meghna asks these kind of questions to Imran Khan. They play this game called… “What’s this?”  It’s where you look at something ordinary and you try explain it in a exciting way. It’s a pretty decent game if you ask me.

Ken Robinson gave a talk recently at the Art of Marketing here in Calgary where he mentioned this concept  – divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to come up with lots of possible answers or interpretations to a question.  He showed statistics indicating we lose this ability at a rapid rate as we get older and get more educated. An education system that emphasizes linear thinking, multiple choice testing – where you have to converge on one answer to get the correct answer. That’s fine, but what happens if a student doesn’t learn that way?  What about having some wit? Scoring 190 on an IQ test isn’t the only barometer for intelligence. What if your talents lay elsewhere? How do you nurture that? We are definitely due for a revolution in education.

Because its those who improvise, live in randomness, are ready for whats thrown at them. They can make connections that others can’t see. Paul McCartney had it right:

I use to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.

hot rocks (credit: dwhartwig)

I feel like a  lot of these big companies are living in self delusion.

When all the media in the world is focused on a disaster, you can’t pretend nothing is happening.  You have to fess up to it. Be open to criticism. Kinda of hard when your brought up in a culture that doesn’t care for anyone outside your bubble. Out of mind, out of sight.

Until now.

It’s not some fad to be socially responsible, it’s expected. The companies that get this will survive. The dinosaurs that pretend everything is alright, will make a lot of noise, then disappear.  It all reminds me of a chapter in Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, Crush it. In Chapter 9, the title is “Best Marketing Strategy Ever”. It’s only 1 page long and he writes one word: CARE.  People who really care are the ones that win in the long run. I love that. Sometimes you gotta fake it, because its expected. But you can only fake it for so long, eventually someone will see through the bullshit.

Evernote: Use this to eliminate paper as much as you can, just scan it and you can easily search for the document later, because it finds those words in the scanned document. GENIUS.  No need to remember anything ever again. For free.

Delicious: Allows you to access all your bookmarks from  any computer. Get the Mozilla add-on. It has fundamentally changed how I find and save funny, interesting, any kinda of information on the net.

Dropbox: Don’t need external hard drives (usb) or email to back up your files. More secure than a big investment bank.

A notebook: Yeah that’s right-  a notebook. Helps you jot down ideas or whatever comes to mind on the spot.  I trust writing stuff down more than the best memory in the world.

Now this to me is the definition of a free spirit. I was watching this guy dance like a maniac for about hour BEFORE this even happened! But then one person decided to join him, and then seconds later came number 3 running down and it became cool. That 3rd guy in my opinion made it legit. Everyone went  mental after that!! It switched from being about him to being this awesome dance party.  I love the fact the song being performed was Unstoppable by Santigold.

Which brings me to another point: Santigold should give him a yearly dividend. Cos he created a movement that single handily made this song massive!! The dancing guy videos went viral and when that happens,  its word of mouth on steroids. Don’t believe me? Check out all the comments for the Unstoppable track on youtube.. they all mention the dance party!  It should be taken as a blessing from the skies for any tune to go viral nowadays of 1000 niche musical tastes. Sasquatch should give this guy life time tickets to the event as a token of goodwill!  You simply can’t create this again! If it were to happen, it would always be compared to this.

We need more people to be like the dancing guy. It takes guts, but others will listen eventually, if you got something to say, something unique to offer. People just wanna dance.

Its called the iRobot Roombe and it cleans your floor, and afterwards goes back to its docking station. This may seem like “so what? ” to some people, but this blew my mind.  Are we that far off from technological wonderland that was the 80′s cartoon, the Jetsons? When can I have robot cleaning lady who takes away my dirty dishes and puts in the washer? Hopefully by the end of this decade.  Or is this convenience just another reason to be more lazy? I don’t think so.

We should embrace robots to do the things we don’t want to do, like cleaning our floors, so we can have more leisure time. This is the reason why we have cars, instead of riding horses, why they invented airplanes instead of ships to travel long distances. I patiently await the supersonic Maglev trains of the future. Imagine Tokyo to London in 3.5 hours.

Hollywood does an amazing job of portraying a Terminator 2 type future.  A doomsday scenario where we will all be enslaved by robots. There is some merit to that. Aren’t we already to our cellphones? I’ve seen it countless times at restaurants, two people at a table busy texting to someone (maybe to one another, who knows) for up to 10 mins, instead of chatting to one another. Remember the film Wall-E? We become fat asses and just press buttons, that this eventual artificial world will separate us from nature. That is true if its used that way. The end of the movie showed that technology properly used will help humans cultivate their true nature – that it must be subordinate to human progress, and help move that along.

looks refreshing, so must be refreshing

Just finished reading Dan Ariely’s  Predictably Irrational, which talks about making better decisions and the mistakes we make without realizing. It’s on the field of behavioral economics and I love this stuff. The placebo effect in particular got me thinking.

Dan talks about surgeries that weren’t performed, yet the patients felt no pain as they were told they had surgery done. Simply being told by a doctor that something was fixed and thus they didn’t feel any pain! THIS IS NUTS.  This reminded me of the book Born To Run, that discusses everything doesn’t need to be fixed.  New running shoes don’t make you better at running. But they do an excellent job in making you feel like it will!

Obviously this whole placebo effect is quite effective in marketing products.  For example, when you pick up Vitamin Water,  you may read the label because it describes all the effects of the vitamins and minerals in such a manner that you just can’t wait to quench your thirst!  You’ve just convinced yourself that its gonna make you feel like super man. See I love that! I want to believe it will make me super healthy!

But the same thing doesn’t sit well with me when similar marketing is used for the sham that is bottled water. Watch the Story of Bottled Water by Annie Leonard to know why. Lots of people in Canada believe bottled water is better for you, more healthy, sadly in a country that has the best tap water in the world. Dan Ariely mentions there is ” blurry boundary between beliefs and reality.” This is the moral dilemma of placebos.  Marketers want to create perceived value, but should be wary of stretching the truth or outright lying. Not sure who makes the decisions of what crosses the line. Be aware.

Highly recommend this book if your curious to learn more about human behaviour.

Oasis took on innovative marketing campaign back in 2008 in promotion of their last album, Dig Out Your Soul, by giving away  unreleased music to street musicians at NYC subway stations. This way thousands of people  would listen to four new Oasis tracks, from the ground up – by buskers who might have made money off famous Oasis covers in the past. However,  this time they got directly paid for doing it. How legendary is that!? They would mention they are playing new Oasis tracks, backed with album poster and then perform the tunes in their own interpretation. This is a nice slap in the face of other bands who keep songs hush hush before the release date…aaah true OASIS.

The clip below describes it all:

One of musicians mentioned  his rent between 1996-2000 was paid off the back of the tune Wonderwall. Liam Gallagher interjects and says its helped pay for his as well! Playing for the love of music. Personally I just loved listening to the different versions of the tunes. This creates more interest in the songs and that’s what its all about. If someone were to like the tune, she might be curious to hear how it sounds originally or to check them out in concert.

Other thoughts

While watching the tunes being played, I wonder would people stop and be in awe if Oasis themselves actually decided to play as street musicians in the subway? Would they attract the same crowds without of course anyone knowing its actually them performing? Because these street musicians are also very talented, and if they were marketed differently and put in a concert format, perhaps they would receive similar adoration as Oasis? I’d assume the casual music fan might not care, but the hardcore fan would know the difference. I’d like to see a big band experiment with that.