Hard to measure

Foreign Policy magazine shows a provocative graph ( below)
At Greenpeace, we spun a similar story in the No Fish No Forest No Future campaign, back in the 1990s. Ecology makes long term financial sense. What was missing from the message was the reluctance we have to think about others, the reluctance to think long term, and the gavel ( or hammer) of the state. The result: a message that was mostly all talk.



















"The environment" is a host that suffers from the problem of the commons" though it is better for all of us if we treat each other with respect, it may be to my advantage to take all I can for myself and disregard others.

To support govt mandate of environmental protection, special interest groups need to come forward and, like the English landowners of the 1770's, insist on the new boundaries. These groups need to prove they are or will be losing money as a result of things-as-is. It can't be "all talk" - they need to hammer this point home with actionable threats.

In the end politicians who enact effective enviro policy get to be hammers, not nails.
Without action to back it up, this article too is "all talk."

Into the gap

Neil at Only Dead Fish
- their major research project (sample size of over 3000 adults) into people’s attitudes to environmental issues found what he describes as a fundamental responsibility gap:
"95% of people said that the environment is ‘everyone’s responsibility’ yet only just over 40% think it’s ‘mine’. "
His company's advice for eco initiatives: Make it real, make it easy, make it inclusive. Like these guys

On green brands: "If green is good"

Cartoon by Hugh at Gaping Void.


Brands are usually designed to linger on the mind. Which means they focus our attention and also displace it from other things - sometimes referred to as "grabbing eyeballs."

The goal of branding can be to be "first in mind"; failing this, it should be memorable, persistent. Branding is considered very successful when Coke, for example, has become refreshment.

Today there is talk about green brands. But can a brand, as we know the term, be green? If "green" is about maintaining attention to the environment, and is about respect, maybe green marketing has to take a different approach than the "first in mind" principle. Doesn't conventional brand building result in non biodegradable mental products, after all?

Words and symbols are often mistaken as a kind of seminal basis of things. This is probably a deformation of the Information Age. As a result, technology abounds, lies spread, and relationship suffers.

Ideas don't matter

In one of my lives, writing technical manuals for a vendor to the US Navy, we went through an interesting process: sitting through teleconference documentation reviews with US Navy personnel. One reviewer seemed to be trying to score points by being as caustic as possible. Her manner was not addressed by anyone until we signed off, when she was finally slapped down by one of her Navy colleagues, who had control of the conferencing tool. He (playfully) mentioned that he could delete her document - no he couldn't , she needed it, she said. Yes he could, he said: "I have control of the computer."

Whoever is at the helm, rules. All cherished ideas of justice etc get slapped down eventually, might as well get used to it. Action matters. Grab the wheel.

Being an influencer is OK. Being an asshole is not.

From Seth Godin's post on responsibility:

"If marketing works, it means that free choice isn’t quite so free. It means that marketers get to influence and amplify desires. The number of SUVs sold in the United States is a bazillion times bigger than it was in 1962. Is that because people suddenly want them, or is it because car marketers built them and marketed them?"

"If you get asked to market something, you’re responsible. You’re responsible for the impacts, the costs, the side effects and the damage. You killed that kid. You poisoned that river. You led to that fight..."

Political policy in a multi channel universe

The expansion of pluralistic ownership of communications has grown alongside the persistence of unpopular or unpopular governments. eg Bush administration. Mass marketing and social media can be see as tools of governance.

Politics is trying to catch up with the available technology, and the way people are organizing themselves/interacting in a wired world. Seth Godin refers to rifting. Room for big innovation in politics and the dissemination of social policy these days.

[ from Clay Shirky's many-to-many blog]
"Technology ushers in new forms of social organization that escape notice precisely because they are invisible to adherents of the old paradigm. By the time anyone notices the impending social transformation, it is too powerful to contain, and social transformation cascades across the landscape. Or so the theory goes.

Powerful forces can kill you. Unhappy industry groups. Media owners. Foreign governments. There is a need to compromise to keep these groups in the tent, while fulfilling need number 3, within reason.

People still crave feel-good nonsense. How else do you explain the large, continued use of Television, and our penchant to oversimplify complexity using feel-good anti-intellectual labels like "flip-flop"?

A long as people like to follow good leaders are needed. One the one hand, reassuring people ( if possible) that their reptilian instincts are OK, good, in the right - at the same time, ushering in a future that necessarily replaces and possibly undermines the things we think are solid.

Dynamic content

I looked at Aboutglasstile on the weekend, as I showed it to a friend. By doing this, you get a chance to see through another person's eyes etc.
The site has lots of instructional tutorials and galleries - all slideshows - but still....What struck me was how static the site is. The ubiquity of cameras, and the success of Youtube has already revolutionized our notion of how to consume content. I guess that authority is about compelling content, either by sword or pen; same old thing, new technology. So the so-called meritocracy that dynamic web content offers may free up some people, while the NBCs of the world scratch their heads. But as for enabling democracy - let's say that democracy may be available to those who crave it.
But chances are, politics will continue to be administered and interpreted by people who can create compelling Imagery.