Terence McKenna - Eros & The Eschaton (Why Consumer Culture Is Brainless Culture)

"We have to stop consuming our culture. We have to create culture. Don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are -- NOW -- is the most immediate sector of your universe. And if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered. You're giving it all away to ICONS. Icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that, you want to dress like X or have lips like Y... This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion. What is real is you, and your friends, your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And, we are told No, you're unimportant, you're peripheral -- get a degree, get a job, get a this, get that, and then you're a player. You don't even want to play that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world."

Chris Hedges - Empire Of Illusion (Society Of The Spectacle)

I was just watching Chris Hedges being insulted by Kevin O'Leary of CBC. He asked him if he was a left-wing nutbar after Chris made an uncontroversial and appropriate response about the people at the #Occupy movement being perfectly aware which institutions are at fault. Chris then went on to dismantle Kevin O'Leary live on TV before departing with a derisory comment that he wont be returning to CBC who till then, he imagined, hadn't yet sunk to the depths of FOX news. 


You can watch that video which is shooting up the Youtube charts here but for a much more comprehensive display of one of the last remaining erudite and well informed Americans I urge you to watch the video embedded above where he burrows down into the pornification of wrestling or the wrestle-fication (violence) of porn and ultimately the corporatisation and commodification of everything in the United States.

I've blogged about Chris Hedges before when I first discovered him and somehow I forgot how respectable he is. I realise now that he's a person I need to go through his entire video archive as he has an ability to articulate that is the essence of calm, thoughtful and lucid analysis. Kevin O'Leary broke CBC rules of conduct with his insult but it's a little late for him to recover any credibility he aspired to for being anything other than the odious money grubber he is.

Culture & Ideology Are Not Your Friends

There are a number of shorter Terence McKenna clips condensing this theme but I don't think there's any substitution for listening to one of Terence's finest think pieces on the subject of culture and ideology, which just like nationalism, flag waving and patriotism are the most urgently needed legacies of the nation state era that we need to dispense with. 

I say it again. People who wave flags (metaphorically or literally) are dangerously misinformed. Those ideas belong to the 18th century and are part of the problem instead of a global solution we most urgently need.

Pigs Buried Alive

Is this who we really are? How long can this kind of thinking continue? Indeed how long can we continue to daily wrestle our consciences away from the important matters under the pretence that we have no other option?. Are you part of the problem or part of the solution? At least watch it and have a clear moral position.

Is This The Voice Of Consumerism?

4am Materialism

Attachment is suffering.

Joyeux Noel

I don't celebrate Christmas. It's been a long time since I wasn't turned off by the commercialisation of what is after all meant to be a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, a figure who by any metric began a story which in the age of horse travel was beating at the gates of power in Rome within half a century or so.

Are Vogue doing this for commercial reasons? I don't know but I can imagine some curled lips at both this and the mention Jesus' gets in the post. More over here.

The Business Of Skin Whitening In Asia

I've been talking about this for so long that the only thing that really interests me is why anybody in marketing and advertising who would want me do for some work with them, might not have googled my name and Unilever + Skin whitening. 

In any case it's still worth making a quick summary because money doesn't come first in my universe. Skin whitening creams in Asia are broadly speaking about hierarchy. The whiter the skin the less likely you are to be fresh from the rice paddies. The less likely you come from the rice paddy, the more likely you are to be hired, promoted, secure a Blu Ray DVD player, iTablet, BMW 3 series and/or shiny white teeth.

Though it strikes me that for someone who argues a woman is entitled to make her own decisions about abortion that the final decision on what colour one wishes to be is down to that person. So I'm not anti skin whitening.

They say that holding opposite and conflicting thoughts in our heads at the same time is a mark of evolution and so the only position I can take when thinking about this category is that it behooves the multinationals; that is the onus is upon them. That they bear the responsibility that there is a clear responsibility to fulfil and articulate, that melatonin expectation transactions should come with an unambiguous message that Unilever, P&G, Johnson & Johnson et al respect all people of all colours. The reverse isn't true for tanning lotions because that hierarchical imposition isn't present within that context. I maintain it's a great communication opportunity of the win win variety - if it's with sincerity.

Anyway, above are a series of ads by Ogilvy & Mather Hong Kong regional office. They look innocuous and in some markets they may well lean more towards the beauty end of the spectrum than concealment but as I've mentioned over here in the comments; the focus groups are revealing because with skilful moderation, the kind where dirty secrets surface...well they tell the story of skin whitening. 


And it aint pretty.

SALE SALE SALE

I went to Gaysorn Plaza, a luxury shopping mall in Bangkok today before having a wonderful lunch with Tim who generously gave me some time and thoughts on a simulacra post that I want to write at some point - he's massively brainy like that. Tim is a writer who also does restaurant reviews when not contributing to The Guardian, The Bangkok Post, writing a book or blogging over here, and it was toptastic to have a humungus steak and a charmingly insolent bottle of red which for professional reasons I was largely forced to polish off on my own.

I was struck how empty Gaysorn Plaza was. The luxury brands are commencing a world of pain over the next five to ten years and I think it's safe to say that the awful moniker of masstige brands may finally be buried along with all the other marketing hubris we inflated ourselves on in the bubbled up economy.

I was however delighted to see a few early birds taking a flyer and doing 40% discount sales which is unheard of in the run up to Christmas (widely celebrated in this Buddhist country - not the day - the festive season) but even more pleased to see that one brand has taken an interesting approach to the way that they advertise a sale.

Good recessionary thinking. Think up not down.

Chinese Advertising

One planning topic that needs some understanding in developing economies is media literacy. Mary Goodyear has looked into this subject extensively, and you can read all about it over here and Fredrik did a splendid post related to the topic over at his.

From the outside it may seem that the creativity is often lackluster in this part of the world and for sure, it is in the main, like pulling teeth to coax the clients (and agencies) to go the extra mile and explore some of the dimensions of advertising that can be achieved. Forgive me if this seems like I'm pulling out unremarkable ads but this is one of the first commercials I came across that stood out.

This is actually quite a big deal for a paint ad in Asia. I can just see the spreadsheet marketer saying stuff like "you want to show people throwing my paint around?" or "what have birds, hay and diving got to do with my brand?", "why isn't there a paintbrush in the picture?", "can't we have a basso profondo voice in the ad?" and so on and so forth. The reason is that the people who frequently manage marketing and advertising in Asia are often the kind of people who can cope with high volume but really struggle with ideas like metaphors, feelings, emotions and expression. I should call a halt to this right now because I could go on and on but suffice to say that a lot of people have made a lot of money managing that huge growth and volume over the last 15 years or so and are at the top of their game without actually ever squeezing out a creative puppy.

So I think its a big deal that Saatchi & Saatchi advertising got this through and I believe it was subsequently awarded an Effie which pleased me if only because championing creative is so hard and because it won for those very same reasons I listed above, that I believe most China based marketeers and agencies are simply not geared up for. Clearly Chinese customers felt differently than the average marketing whizz often does, because they voted with their wallets and gave a 46% increase in sales value of high end products nationwide and more than doubled the targeted 20% increase. There are however a few problems before we pop the Veuve Clicquot, because the ad is way clearly an homage at best, and rip off at worst to the Fallon ad for Sony Bravia, which I think is even better than Balls. Here it is.

So you can park that Effie and all the planning plonk that goes into saying how good the agency and/or planner and/or creative and/or client were because all they did was probably add extraneous process between looking in the right direction for inspiration and actually getting on with ahem 'copying it'. I would however like to see more emulation of the good stuff and a stiff brush to sweep away the marketing mediocrity that needs to make 5.5 (million dollars) by 55 years of age....you know who you are! The problem is that a certain genre of adman has made a tidy living out of punting the lamest of the lame creativity and the emperor needs calling out on the absence of threads.

Sticking out is a big deal in Asian culture. There is an expression that the nail that sticks out gets hammered in, and yet it is my belief that this cannot pertain to advertising. The nail that stands out gets noticed in advertising or can even be outstanding. I've spent a lot of time listening to greatly opposing forces in meetings with spadefuls of advertising spiel and waffle that talks a good game on words such as creativity, brand values and vision but all boils down to the infinitely bland. Why is this happening? Take a look at that Joy Island's photography and the last few seconds of the Nippon paint ad and you'll start to make the connection because as soon as I saw it on the web, I knew I needed to know the story and find the photographer.


Lovely isn't it? There's more...


Brutal huh? Probably not for marketing communications but maybe another day as one of my more challenging traits is that I like to press buttons. Its only when someone explodes that I know their breaking point that I understand what they care about. One of my closest friends had exactly the same characteristic as me. We were both political junkies and we'd be at each other's throats over CNN and BBC world news. As early risers this would sometimes happened before before 6 AM when we shared the same apartment. Great times looking back, but returning to my point, through a process of saying the wrong things and seeing where the greatest sensitivity lies I've uncovered an uncomfortable truth about the powerhouse economy which isn't really a brilliant insight as its all been said before. It is however the most raw nerve in China. Innovation is not a trait that springs to mind in the PRC but the one that created the darkest face was when I rationalized the extra 40 slides being asked of me as along the lines of "so what you're saying is to copy other brand's mediocre strategy?"

I've since found that the "copy" word is like a red rag to a bull, like spilled blood to a boxer, like throwing paint around to a paint marketer (ok I'm exaggerating) because in the absence of innovation all that is left is correctional marketing and 'the middle way' between too much emotional and too much rational in a brand. Then stick it through the research process designed to remove any of the interesting bits and lastly link test it so that if there is a shred of an idea remaining, we can drill it out and stick in something the respondents wanted instead. I ask you, why don't we just give our TARGET market some pens and watch them under the cross hairs with a snipers bullet until they have written the ads themselves?

Maybe this is why some people don't want the blue collar migrant workers as their customers because WHO would want those people in our nice focus group room with free snacks and refreshments, even though they are the backbone of the country. I mean, their media literacy sucks anyway doesn't it?

I always thought that the point of really good advertising, as with any facet of popular cultural expression is to lift people in some way through humour, feelings or observation because ulimately it elevates us all in the end doesn't it?

Or as a very clever and young person said to me last year. Confusion makes you smarter.

Money From The Environment

Some of us have talked a fair bit in the past on the environment blogs including John Grant's Greenormal that going green is actually a massive business waiting to go ballistic. I guess I should have remembered this while meeting a twenty something in a Beijing bar who repeated three times that she was making amazing money from 'wind energy' farms in China... I thought it was a bit crass at the time but with the U.S. economy tanking on debt that only the consumer society could have created, it's probably good timing given that the banks are now being propped up by the Fed with our money).

Anyway, Amy from Terrarossa asked me to see what you think of this clip. I'd be grateful if you could let her know your reactions to any of it in the comments below. I've already given my feedback.

Commercial Break

Quite a few of you have asked me about the signature I use on my email and where its from. I found it on Pajamas media which is a U.S. right wing blogging syndicate that I read. Many might be surprised that The Huffington Post or The Daily Kos isn't content that is more reflective of my political leanings towards Socialism. I love that word Socialist, it gets right up the noses of those who shriek at the word Liberal.

I read these right wing blogs mainly because the content is invariably material that I disagree with - but that doesn't mean always. My political mentor and close friend taught me the value of this exercise a few years back. As hard as I tried I couldn't win any political arguments with him as he was well versed in the hypocrisy of the both the left as well as the right (if those terms mean anything anymore). I fondly recall him saying that both sides wanted to tax the living hell out of him and just spend it differently.

Its my view that planners should able to cut through subjectivity and aim for objectivity by understanding the arguments and not the sentiments. Interestingly I've found that the picture above is deeply ambiguous depending on who reads it, as is the title of this post. Any thoughts?