Neon Grave

Cool Hunting introduced me to this cool site this morning — a flikr of Vegas' Neon Graveyard.

It is a great collection of photos that struck me. Perhaps it's a metaphor for the old-school, one-way process of promotion. Probably too deep a thought for a Friday morning.

Never mind.

Just explore and enjoy.

What's in a name?

PSFK has a post this morning regarding the conference in Los Angeles. At this conference, the group has agreed to drop the term "marketing" from the agenda. The reason the article cites is that the PSFK team and attendees believe marketing is too limiting a descriptor. The conference is about ideas and trends.

It brings up an interesting point for me. For the last five years of my career, I've wrestled with this same issue. In the two years I've been with GCG, for example, we have described ourselves as a "full service advertising agency with special expertise in (healthcare, business-to-business)." However, we do so much more than just advertising and design. We are consultants. We help write business plans. We create sales tactics. We write software solutions.

Seems to me, at the end of the day, we are about solving problems. It just happens our training and experience is filtered through a lens of creative communications.

What is a succinct way to describe what we do when talking with current clients and prospects? What is the cocktail party description? Any suggestions would be more than welcomed.

Technology is a swingset?

PSFK had a link to a Reuters article this morning about how the ubiquity of technology has caused most kids to not even acknowledge the innovations that package their lives and drive many of their social interactions.

The comparison of today's digital devices to the swingsets of my youth as a force in socialization was an interesting way to frame the perspective.

In addition, it brought to mind the virtually inseparable divide between religion and daily life in certain cultures. My family (and culture) saw life and religion as two separate things. My wife's family (and culture) can't distinguish between where faith starts and family begins.

Does anyone else know of any knowledge base highlighting the connection between culture and technology? Are there other non-technology comparisons that come to mind?

The Brain Amazes Me.

Last night I read an interview with Joseph LeDoux that shook me like a cheap snowglobe.

He is a neurologist at NYU who is interested in the formation of emotion and consciousness and how music may be the key to unlocking these things. In addition, the interview introduced me to the concept of "synaptic plasticity" and how our personalities may be formed by the malleability of our gray matter through both internal and external factors.

The "money" paragraph from the article as far as I'm concerned was:

The fact is that there are many different systems in the brain -- perceptual, emotional, motivational, cognitive and so on. And within each of these broad categories there are lots of divisions. All of these run in parallel. Neuroscience has learned a tremendous amount about how systems and brain areas work. But our self, our personality, is not just the sum total of our brain systems. Our self can be thought of as a particular configuration of functional activity occurring in many systems at once. These configurations are determined by our genetically based wiring and by the experiences we have as we go through life. When it comes to mental life and behavior, nature and nurture are not two different things but two ways of doing the same thing: wiring our synapses.

Go ahead. Call me a neophyte. I'm just getting into this planning role at my agency and soaking up everything I can like a sponge.

This is fascinating stuff that has a direct correlation to the notion of how a company's brand personality is developed in the market -- through a combination of internal factors and the external perceptions that consumers bring to the value transaction. In fact, I believe this is related to the notion of transmedia planning I've seen attributed to Faris Yakob -- where different messages to different consumers through different media assemble the mosaic of a brand's personality.

Is the development of our consciousness and personality in our brains an appropriate analogy? Am I just getting up to speed on thinking in the market?

Definitely worth a read.

First Things First

This is my first attempt at developing a blog. I hope I don't screw it up. I suppose I've come into the game a bit late, but perhaps my intentions will make up for my tardiness.

In the last few months, I've been more and more interested in the state of affairs in this country and around the world. Being well over 30, I only recently have had a political awakening of sorts. The Republican household I was raised in is hundreds of miles away and immediately transitioning from that environment to a conservative college in the middle of Bush country in North Texas (one of the many "Bible belt buckles" of the South) didn't provide rich soil for me to develop progressive thoughts.

Now that I'm married and have two young children, I am more attuned to the need for our society to return to true American values — progressive values that reflect our country's foundation of fairness, respect, honor and freedom. With what seems to be happening with the current regime in power in Washington, I can't help but be frightened for the future of my family. The fact that I'm even concerned that the "Patriot" Act-ors could monitor this post causes me to shudder. That more than 1,800 men and women have perished in the sands of Iraq under false pretenses...How did this happen?

I'm but a lone voice. I have only a father's perspective. I would never pretend to know all the answers and maybe all I can do is ask the questions. That is what I will use this bandwidth for.