Effigy of “the Donald,” photographed by Shel Horowitz at the Climate March, April 2017, Washington, DC
Just for the record, I am a Jew and I was not offended by her tweet “It’s all about the Benjamins,” about AIPAC’s support for the Israeli government and its frequent mistreatment of its minorities. Criticism of Israel, or of Israeli influence in US politics, is not antisemitism any more than criticism of any US president is antiamericanism. However, I can see where some people would read into it a “trope” that reinforces stereotypes. I don’t agree with them, but I see their point—and so does Rep. Omar, who apologized quickly and meaningfully.
So here’s my question to Donald: If you think Omar should resign over a single ambiguous remark, why haven’t you resigned after a lifetime of hate speech?
So many times, I’ve seen smart people saying we should not impeach or invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment (the Constitution’s presidential removal clause). Here’s why I think we should.
But if he is sworn in after impeachment, he will be very, very careful. He will have to be seen as the unifier, and he will have to walk very carefully to avoid falling into the pit he created by his own actions, his own complicity. I think he will be quite cautious. And if he is not sworn in, the next in line is the very competent and moderately liberal Nancy Pelosi.
The possibility of a maniac like DT in office is why we HAVE the impeachment, emoluments, and removal-for-incompetence/incapacity clauses. We damned well better use them if they are anything other than ink on paper. Not using them forfeits our rights as citizens and makes it harder to challenge the next incompetent narcissist. I wonder: would this presidency have even been possible if GWB had been impeached for his incompetence, the actions of his competent but evil henchmen like Cheney and Rumsfeld, or for the fraudulent justifications for the Iraq war—or if the Democrats had fought hard enough in 2000 to prove that the election was fraudulent and should be overturned, thus preventing the GWB presidency in the first place?
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
In short, a legal maneuver to get DT out of office (and perhaps behind bars) is well justified, even though it will only succeed if several Senate Republicans desert him. Because they will, if a people’s movement demands it and they’d rather not lose their own jobs.
In other words, just because the GOP made a bad strategic decision to embrace the devil doesn’t mean we’re stuck with him. If they see the public swinging strongly against DT, they’ll abandon the sinking ship—but they need to hear from their constituents, loudly and often. They could have reined DT in early and firmly but they didn’t want to annoy his “base”—which as a result thinks those members of Congress are weak and don’t care much, and therefore continue to push the envelope on making very bad behavior acceptable. It’s time to push back and demand accountability for letting an incompetent maniac sack our democracy, burn bridges with our allies, collude with our enemies, and lash out at those who can’t defend themselves.
The faster the Republicans move, the easier it will be to re-cage the monster.
Surely, we can build a better future with technology instead of focusing on autonomous drone delivery of a latte 9 blocks away in San Francisco.
—Seth Godin, December 31, 2018
On New Year’s Eve, Seth Godin riffed on an ambitious list of 23 problems we can focus on solving. A few of my favorites:
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
1. High efficiency, sustainable method for growing sufficient food, including market-shifting replacements for animals as food 2. High efficiency, renewable energy sources and useful batteries (cost, weight, efficiency) 8. Useful methods for enhancing, scaling or replacing primary education, particularly literacy 12. Gene therapies for obesity, cancer and chronic degenerative diseases 13. Dramatic leaps of AI interactions with humans 14. Alternatives to paid labor for most humans 15. Successful interactions with intelligent species off Earth 17. Cultural and nation-state conflict resolution and de-escalation 18. Dramatically new artistic methods for expression
Seth’s list fascinates me because it uses technology as a jumping-off point to solve social problems. Most of us don’t think of technology that way; too often, we think of technology only in terms of lifestyle issues (I don’t even want to label them as problems). Go back to the quote at the very top of this post to see what Seth says about that!
I’m one who does think of technology this way. I’ve written frequently about using technology to turn hunger and poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change into abundance, peace, and planetary balance.
And like Seth, I think we actually can solve these huge problems. As he writes,
[This list seems ridiculous until you realize that in the last few generations, we created vaccines, antibiotics, smartphones, GPS and the Furby].
Not to mention viable solar power, conflict resolution based on deep listening, the ability to access the world’s entire written or pictorial knowledge base from devices the size of a watch, a vast increase in the quantity and quality of organic food…
So I let Seth’s list percolate in the back of my brain for a week.
Here are a few I’d add:
Peace: no more armed conflict as a way to settle grievances, anywhere—and this means diplomats must be trained deeply in nonviolence theory and practice, using not just academic but also empirical hands-on problem-solving and creative thinking
Nonviolent, respectful conflict resolution taught from preschool through college as a required subject, and reinforced through adulthood in the media, the court system, and government—among other things, that means no longer glorifying actual or threatened violence or presenting it as a way to solve problems in film, TV, or literature
New tools for genuine democracy: governments at all levels from village to planet that work for the benefit of their entire population while minimizing any restrictions on personal freedom to act in any ways that don’t harm others, that are based not in who pays the candidates the most but in how each government unit can benefit its population (including the non-humans) and the ecosystem (macro and micro)—this also means ensuring that votes are free and fair, honestly and accurately counted, and allow all citizens to participate
Two-way or multiple-way communication with many plant as well as animal species—maybe even with bacteria—not just by a few outliers, but as other languages people could study
At least 50 percent urban community food self-sufficiency: even our most paved-over spaces, like New York City, should be able to supply 50 percent or more of their own food, using rooftops, windowsills, traffic islands, public green spaces, etc. (This will require cleaning up pollution using plant-based filtration, first—and ending sources of ongoing pollution from fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, buildings, and powerplants)
Complete conversion to clean, renewable, non-fossil, non-nuclear power sources within five years for new construction or manufacture, and fifteen years to phase in the conversion of existing buildings and vehicles
Elimination of all forms of slavery, including not just sex trafficking (Seth’s #3), but also sweatshops, child slaves picking cocoa beans in Africa, prison labor at far below minimum wage…
Speaking of prison—isn’t it time we had more humane ways of dealing with criminals and sociopaths?
Exploration of space in ways that honor the ecosystems, not to rape and plunder their resources but to expand our knowledge, develop laboratories for alternative ways to design a society, and perhaps find other intelligent life forms we can communicate with and learn from, as Seth notes in his #15 and #23
And because not everything has to be so ambitious and grandiose, making email useful again. Figuring out a way to eliminate spam while letting legitimate messages through, even if people write about subjects like marketing or cancer of a the mammary system using the b-word, but keeping the real junk out. That’s actually pretty ambitious, because the only way it’s likely to get done is with a huge leap in artificial intelligence technology—in other words, this is one application of Seth’s #13.
Like Seth, I’ll ask, “What’s on your list?” Please leave a comment whether it’s your top few or a longer list. If comments are closed (which they do automatically after a certain time), write to me at my contact form, https://greenandprofitable.com/contact/, and use the subject, Blog Comment: Seth’s List. I’ll get them posted here.
We hear lots of talk about being customer-centric—but then we see far too many examples of companies that DON’T walk their talk. I still remember seeing a sign inside a Blockbuster Video store, maybe 20 years ago, talking about their empowered employees. I went up to the counter clerk and asked permission to snap a picture of the sign; I wanted to use it as a positive example in the customer service section of the marketing book I was writing—and the clerk said I’d have to call corporate headquarters. What kind of empowered employee is that? I was so disgusted I never set foot in another Blockbuster.
Most companies will need to make three shifts at the same time to become truly customer-centric. All three are challenging but bring very big returns.
Create a culture where employees feel valued and listened to—where what they do makes a difference. Empower them not just to fix customers’ problems but to harness their own creativity to create preemptive change. IN the trenches every day, employees often have the best ideas for improving things. But they will only share those ideas if they think management will pay attention and that they won’t get punished in any way. No matter how crazy an idea may seem, give it a full airing. Often, you can modify it to be practical, and implement those pieces. Consider implementing a reward system for any idea. The reward doesn’t have to be monetary. It could be as simple as naming the employee with the best idea, or with the most ideas, Employee of the Month. However, if the idea saves or makes the company a big pile, the originator should get a money reward too. For hierarchical companies, this means letting go of command-and-control and making line employees feel that management really wants their ideas—which can be discussed in public meetings/assigned to study/IMPLEMENTATION committees and NEVER dismissed out-of-hand by a manager either 1:1 or in public. This takes training, of course.
Really listen to your customers. Don’t just wait for them to complain. Go out and ask them what they love about working with you, and what they’d like you to improve—and why.
A woman on a customer service call, taking handwritten notes
Treat this seriously and publicize the way their suggestions become innovations (including honoring them by name, if they consent). Not only will this show how responsive you are, it encourages more people to jump in with their own ideas.
Align your company with a higher purpose. If people feel that you’re making both a difference and a profit, they will become much more enthusiastic Employee turnover drops while productivity goes up, customer retention increases, and you might even become a media darling. For instance, can you identify, develop, and market a profitable product or service that actually helps turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, or catastrophic climate change into planetary balance?
Bonus tip, because I like to overdeliver: shift from a scarcity to an abundance mindset. Replace “yes, but” with “yes, and”: expand the possibilities, build off that suggestions until you’ve co-created something wonderful. Then go implement it!
Need help? This is what I do in my consulting, writing, and speaking. I’m really good at finding opportunities for almost any company to “do well by doing good” (old Quaker saying): to find profitable niches that make the world better, and to create the products and services to fill those niches. Here’s my contact info. Want to learn more? Drop by https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/ and have an explore.
Never Under-Estimate the Immune System | John Hagel warns us of the almost reflex rejection of new ideas by the innately conservative culture of organizations, and which may be the central weakness of organizations to the world of today:
Every large and successful institution has an immune system– a collection of individuals who are prepared to mobilize at the slightest sign of any “outside” ideas or people in order to ensure that these foreign bodies are neutralized and that the existing institution survives intact and can continue on course. Just like the immune system all organisms have, this institutional immune system is adept at recognizing foreign bodies as soon as they appear and very effective at protecting the institution from infection. It is in fact what has helped large institutions to survive – they are in fact “built to last.”
But here’s the paradox: the immune system that has given large institutions extraordinary resilience in the past may be the very thing that makes these institutions so vulnerable today.
I clicked through to the original article. Hagel continues:
In more stable times, institutional immune systems are very effective at keeping institutions focused and on course, resistant to the distractions that might lead to their downfall. In more rapidly changing and volatile signs, this same immune system can become deadly by resisting the very changes that are required for the survival of the institution…
I’ve been involved in large scale transformation efforts for decades now and there’s only one lesson that I really have to share from all that experience: never, ever under-estimate the power of the immune system of a large existing institution…
[W]e need to craft approaches to transformation that have the ability to respect the power of the immune system and find ways to minimize the risk that the immune system will mobilize to crush the transformation effort. [emphasis in original]
Pointing out that threat-based change increases resistance, Hagel lays out a detailed transformational change action map that positions change as an opportunity. It’s worth reading.
Progressives and environmentalists often try to motivate negatively: through guilt, shame, and fear. And as I think about it, I realize the Right also uses negative motivations, notably fear and greed. Both sides are Chicken Littles, screaming that the world will end. So the far-Left gets people sunk and worried that the world will end, while the far-Right gets people on a treadmill of hatred, xenophobia, etc.
Neither of these approaches create positive social change. But Hagel’s focus on showing the opportunities does.
Boyd focuses on workforce issues, Hagel apparently on organizational transformation. My own focus is on opportunities for transformational social/environmental change to intersect and overlap with business profitability. In my own work, I often talk about the need to motivate positively. I’ve spent the last five years demonstrating those opportunities. I show business how to identify/create/market profitable offerings that turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance–not through guilt, shame, and fear, but through enlightened organizational and personal self-interest. Thus, my speaking and writing focuses on building profitability through those social and environmental change products and services. A successful initiative:
Finds money in making the world better
Creates brand loyalty leading to repeat and ever-larger purchases
Encourages customers to spread the word about your good work, inspiring an army of unpaid brand ambassadors
Reduces operating costs and internal resource consumption (in keeping with Hagel’s challenge to avoid igniting the corporate immune system by minimizing new initiative’s need for resources )
And of course, actually does improve things for those suffering the consequences of crises like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change
Guest Post by Wayne Stevenson Thomas, in San Antonio, Texas
[Editor’s note: We stayed with Wayne on our first trip to San Antonio many years ago, and have stayed in contact. I am always looking for examples of for-profit businesses that serve a greater good. If you’ve got an example and would like to guest-blog, please write to me through this site.]
Thrift Shop Interior
Cliff Morgan was an executive at the local St. Vincent de Paul. They had a big operation of recycling the items they couldn’t sell or give to the poor. But he and the St. Vincent board found that the not-for-profit model didn’t allow him the flexibility he needed to operate. (Something about how all contracts or agreements had to go to the board as well as any expenditures above a fairly low number.)
So St. Vincent decided to spin off the operation into a for-profit, which Cliff owns. SA3 Community Recycling serves three communities of interest: Nonprofits who receive donations they cannot use, nonprofits who need items, and citizens (as represented by our governmental organizations).
He collects unneeded items from providing nonprofits. He pays them for clothing, shoes and bundled cardboard, generating a small revenue stream for them while allowing them to concentrate on their mission, rather than on disposing or selling unwanted material.
He contacts receiver nonprofits to provide them exactly the items they need from the stream of items he receives from the provider nonprofits. He provides exactly what they need. For instance, Dress for Success might need 5 size 16 Women’s business suits. SA3 would pull exactly that out of their stream and no more.
For the citizens as a whole, he contracts with governmental organizations to keep items out of the landfill. For instance he accepts cathode ray tube TVs from the providing nonprofits and disassembles them. He does the same with other electronics (if he doesn’t have another nonprofit that can use them.)
He generates income (as I understand it) by selling the clothing and cardboard for a bit more than he pays for it, and by selling the metal and other material captured from the electronics. He pays his staff, who do the pick-ups and supervise the volunteers who help sort the items that come through the door.
Among the nonprofits he provides with items from his stream are: Habitat for Humanity (building material), the Diaper Bank (loose and packaged diapers), Dress for Success, Spare Parts (an arts nonprofit that provides used and repurposed items to local art educators) and Samministries (household items for families leaving shelters). He also provides items as needed to several St. Vincent operations in South Texas. I believe he sincerely wants to recycle as much as he can within the community (and have connected him with several other receiver organizations).
Wayne Stevenson Thomas is a former volunteer and assistant manager at Jefferson Thrift Store in San Antonio.
Since March, I’ve been writing a Gratitude Journal every day and posting it on Facebook. I’ve gotten a lot of benefit out of doing this, and I make the time no matter how busy I am, and no matter how rotten a day I’ve had. Even the worst days have things I can appreciate.
We do lead an amazing life. But rather than jealousy (and I know you’re speaking in hyperbole), think about what steps you can take to have a more amazing life. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
1) Decide, consciously, to have a happy life; this is something I did in my 20s and I always refer to it as my best decision ever. Even better than my wonderful marriage—because it made that marriage a success.
happy people leaping for joy
2) Frame things positively. This gratitude journal is an example: I had to find good things to say the day we lost a Peru vacation day when our connecting flight from Ft. Lauderdale was canceled, the day [Supreme Court nominee Brett] Kavanaugh was confirmed, and even the day Yoshi [my stepfather] was killed by a careless motorist as he crossed in the crosswalk with the flashing light engaged. Seek out the benefits of every experience.
3) Dedicate one four-hour block per month (to start) to do something amazing. Climb a mountain, go to a spa, start a movement to change something you don’t like…whatever. Everyone can find that much time to create amazingness in your own life.
4) Dedicate some small bit of time every day, even 15 or 30 minutes, to doing something you love and that feels important: read a book, get a little time outside, cook a cool new food…endless possibilities.
5) Notice and appreciate the beauty of ordinary things. I find one of the things I get out of the Gratitude Journal is I’m always on the lookout for what I’m going to write about, so I pay a lot more attention to the beauty around me, and take pictures to help me remember and share that beauty.
And here’s a sixth I should have included: have something in your life that’s bigger than you and gives you purpose. Mine is to help businesses identify, create, and market products and services that address things like hunger, poverty war, and catastrophic climate change–and make a profit. When I discovered this purpose, at age 57, I felt like I finally had an answer for “what do you want to do when you grow up?”
#WeBeleiveHer demonstration supporting Christine Blasey Ford -Northampton, MA, 9-27-18. Photo by Shel Horowitz
This month, in my newsletter, I’ll be reviewing Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect is Tearing Us Apart, by Howard J. Ross with Jonrobert Tartaglione. Ross, of course, wrote well before Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court. But as I was reading, the relevance of his work to the Kavanaugh/Ford hearings stood out for me.
I am a survivor of childhood sexual assault. The attack happened when I was 10 or 11, but I didn’t tell anyone until I was 16. That didn’t make it any less real or any less painful. It was the defining trauma of my life.
The Senate hearings brought something home to me:
White, straight men with economic privilege attacked Dr. Ford for speaking out, for not speaking out right away, for not presenting enough evidence (when the Republicans refused her attempts to call witnesses or have an outside investigation). White, straight men with power were in such a great rush to vote in someone who made obvious lies under oath and may well have been a serial sexual assailant that they belittled her and lionized him. Meanwhile, white, straight men without economic privilege made death threats against her and forced her from her home. White, straight men defended the high school and college rape culture even while accepting Kavanaugh’s unconvincing explanation that he was far too pure to have participated in that oppressive culture–despite considerable evidence to the contrary on his own calendars and yearbook.
In Ross’s paradigm, those white straight men have set up an us versus them situation. They’ve turned Dr. Ford–and by extension, any survivor of sexual assault, including me–into “other”–something to marginalize, ignore, and/or discredit (my choice not to say “someone” is deliberate, because dehumanizing is a lot of what happens in these “other” situations). While both the Left and the Right engage in this kind of behavior, from my point of view, the Right uses the tactic both more viciously and more consistently).
Watching the highlight video clips, I found Ford quite credible. Watching Kavanaugh attack her, I perceived a sense of entitlement, attempts to dehumanize, and even the tired old tactic of calling the whole thing out as a partisan attack–not to mention that his testimony was crammed with false statements. It sickened me, just as watching Clarence Thomas use similar tactics to deflect similar accusations against him sickened me in 1991. To the Kavanuaghs and Thomases of the world, as a survivor of sexual assault, I will always be an outsider, even though I am male.
In Ross’s view, one key piece of identity politics is the difference in perception between members of the dominant and non-dominant groups: members of dominant groups typically don’t often think about the experience of those in non-dominant groups. Yet, a person of color or a woman or someone who identifies as another type of minority experiences daily reminders that society puts up physical, psychological, economic, and other barriers.
The Kavanaugh/Ford hearings illustrate that difference in perception really well.
I think many of us perceive ourselves or are perceived by others as outsiders in various ways. I have certainly experienced that as a Jew, as a northeastern progressive, as an activist, as someone involved in various liberation struggles. Yet, to a person of color or a Muslim, I would be perceived as part of the in-group that excludes them. That these categorizations are fluid was brought home to me when I ran for City Council in my town, in 1985. I knocked on the door of a man who said, “You’re Jewish, I’m Polish. We’re both Eastern European. We have to stick together against the Irish and Italians who run this town.” I had seen the Polish population as very much a part of the majority culture in this area, and I, as a Jew, was an outsider; he saw it differently, and that opened my eyes.
In the Kavanaugh case, the ignoring strategy no longer worked, so he moved to attempts to discredit, presenting a wide range of emotional behaviors in the process.
Back when I was representing domestic violence survivors in their family law cases, I witnessed a very high proportion of the abusive men on the other side cry in court. For a long time, I thought it was intentionally manipulative, but after a while I came to see it as genuine decompensation as they confronted for perhaps the first time their inability to control the realities they had constructed. For once, someone else — their victims, the court — was writing the script, and they simply couldn’t handle it. The mirror held up to their behavior undid them, at least temporarily; even more so, the loss of control over their little worlds.
If I had had any doubts previously about the truth of the allegations against Kavanaugh, they disappeared when I heard him sniffling his way through the small part of the hearings I listened to yesterday. The angry outbursts I read about later further sealed the deal. I found myself not just certain the assaultive behavior had occurred, but concerned about his wife and daughters — a man who would come that undone during high profile hearings is almost certainly still engaging in those behaviors, in my experience, and I’d wager he’s still a problem drinker as well.
The old white guys in the Senate, and the one in the White House, are similarly breaking down. They are grasping desperately at their control of the world, the reality they have lived for decades, and they are angrily and sometimes tearfully acting out as it is slowly but certainly removed from their collective grip.
The fall of white male supremacy really is happening right now, in painful slow motion, and it is deadly for sure: survivors of domestic violence are at the most risk when they finally decide to leave.
Now more than ever, we need to support one another, we need to make collective safety plans, and we need to keep working to leave white male supremacy behind.
As the primary author of two books in the Guerrilla Marketing series (Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World and Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green) and a speaker at the recent Guerrilla Marketing Summit, I was very interested in how the digital marketing pioneer Hubspot views the whole Guerrilla Marketing concept and brand.
In their seven examples, I was particularly thrilled that they included UNICEF’s super-successful Dirty Water campaign.
Screenshot of a still from the UNICEF “Dirty Water” video
After all, my two Guerrilla books are the ones that extend the Guerrilla Marketing concepts to the worlds of social change of environmentalism. This was a bit of a gamble for UNICEF; there were obviously significant costs in everything from developing the branding to shipping the filthy water. I hope they’re replicating the campaign in other cities, and creating strong follow-up messaging targeted specifically to those touched by this campaign, to keep them donating into the future.
My definition of Guerrilla Marketing is a lot broader than Hubspot’s. To me, Guerrilla Marketing has three main parts:
Being nimble in our thinking and actions, seizing opportunities quickly, including news tie-ins
Going outside and beyond conventional thinking patterns–disrupting the mental flow to get noticed, to move people to action, but in ways that don’t feel obnoxiously intrusive
Focusing not on how great your brand is (the mistake I see so many marketers make. I call it “we, we, we all the way home) but on the results: the benefits, the problems solved, the pain relieved, the wants and needs met or exceeded–whether for the individual customer or for the planet and the species that live on it.
Hubspot’s choice of the Bounty sculpture is a beautiful example.
Ideally, Guerrilla Marketing will be done at little cost, too. But, as the UNICEF and Grammy examples show, there are plenty of Guerrilla Marketing opportunities that aren’t necessarily cheap.
Let’s look at those two more closely, because they offer us very different lessons. It will take you exactly three minutes and 40 seconds to watch the two videos. Go ahead; I’ll wait.
UNICEF
This elaborate campaign involved creating a brand, bottling filthy brown water, and offering it on the streets of New York. The goal: to increase awareness that the clean, drinkable water we take for granted in most of the US (and the developed world generally) is unimaginable luxury for people at the margins in developing countries. Many have to drink filthy, disease-causing water, and many get very sick. The campaign encouraged people to use the money they currently spend on bottled water to provide clean water for those who don’t have it. Each dollar could supply a thirsty child for 40 days. The video documents the whole campaign, in a fast-paced three minutes.
I found this very effective. I love the way they were able to not just raise awareness, but funds. The negative branding is definitely a Guerrilla tactic, and the results are clearly positive. Bravo!
Grammy Ad
This was an expensive missed opportunity. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but this one really didn’t work for me. Great concept, but terrible execution. I want the protagonist be moved and touched by what he’s seeing, but he strolls through the talking posters, blithe and indifferent. He’s not even glancing at the posters! What’s going on in HIS head? We don’t even get a hint. Have the talking portraits of Harry Potter and the constant animations of things people didn’t animate in the past made a talking poster no-longer-special? And while my wife frequently accuses me of ADD, I found that I hadn’t even processed and recognized one song before it switched after a few seconds to something else. (And OK, I confess, this was not music I’m familiar with anyway). Some of the problem was that the songs all sounded so similar and all seemed to have the exact same beat.
I also think the choice of having multiple copies of each poster was unfortunate. Yes, I recognize that’s a common way to display posters in urban environments. It has NEVER worked for me. I’ve studied some of the advertising masters like David Ogilvy, and they taught me the importance of white space: of having one central object (or person, animal, tree…) able to stand out from what’s around it, because of that empty space around it. If I were buying billboards, instead of, say, 9 medium-sized repeated pictures, I’d use the space for one much larger version of the image. I’d use that white space and not add to the clutter.
Imagine walking down the street and seeing a 20-foot billboard suddenly start to sing with its one and only mouth! Imagine hearing snippets of three or four songs that each have a clear identity, in a true medley, each sung by one giant poster of an artist you recognize instantly. Would you be as blase as the protagonist? I doubt it!
So maybe the commercial would need a full minute instead of 39 seconds. That’s OK. In print copywriting, it’s perfectly OK to take as much time as you need to tell the story; I’ve seen emails with links to 40-page sales letters. Even in broadcast, even though airtime is expensive, we’ve seen many successful commercials that ran an hour (they’re called infomercials and they run on shopping channels). The UNICEF video was three entire minutes and I watched without multitasking, because I was interested both in their message and how they promoted it. If you can’t get it done in less than a minute, either buy more airtime, or script a commercial that CAN get it done in the time you bought.
When an American father-to-be asked Dear Abby for advice because his Indian wife wanted to use an ethnic-heritage name and he didn’t, she responded:
…Not only can foreign names be difficult to pronounce and spell, but they can also cause a child to be teased unmercifully…Why saddle a kid with a name he or she will have to explain or correct…from childhood into adulthood?
Seeing this as a social justice issue, I could not let her answer go unchallenged. Here’s what I wrote:
Abby, I’ve been reading your column since 1981, but your answer to “Making Life Easy” made me cringe! Part of what makes the US great is our habit of celebrating our cultural diversity, with festivals, ethnic cooking, and yes, our children’s names.
First, every culture will have names that are hard to pronounce and spell–but also easier ones. My own children’s names, Alana and Rafael, are both derived from Hebrew and celebrate their Jewish heritage. Honoring that culture felt all the more important because we live in a community where Jewish is exotic. We rejected names that were too hard to pronounce, like Chanoch; Recognizing that most Americans can’t pronounce the ch, I didn’t want my son to be “Hano.” “Making Life Easy”‘ and his wife will have hundreds of beautiful, pronounceable Indian names to choose from, such as Priya or Krishna.
This beautiful anti-bullying poster came from the US military’s health site, health.mil
Second, the argument about teasing is weak. Bullies will find a reason to tease. If the kids have ordinary names, bullies will pick on them for their skin color or ethnic background, for their good grades or their bad grades, for whatever point of difference they find. And bullies also tease kids about Western names (growing up as Sheldon, I speak from personal, painful experience; names like Sheldon and Norman were often chosen by American Jewish families that wanted to seem more assimilated). The way around this is not to remove any possible fuel for their bad actions–impossible anyhow–but to create a culture in the home and school that teaches respect for and acceptance of difference. This responsibility falls on both parents and educators. My own kids attended a school with zero tolerance around bullying, a school that created a welcoming and accepting culture for all types of children–and we reinforced this in the home, as my mother reinforced it for me when I was growing up.
I believe the self-acceptance I developed as the parent of self-accepting kids proud of their heritage and happy to celebrate the heritage of others helped me find my way to the work I do: working with businesses to identify/create/market profitable offerings that turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. I could not have thought so big if I hadn’t learned to feel pride in who I am and my power to make a difference.
Not ashamed to sign my real name.
Shel Horowitz, Hadley, MA
PS: whether or not you publish this letter, please share it with “Making Life Easy.” Ignoring his wife’s wishes could cause both marital discord and shame in the child’s culture of origin.
<End of my letter>.
What do you think? Please add your comment, below. And BTW, I found this list of 100 recommended but unusual boy names, which features ethnic choices such as Arian, Bodhi, Camilo, Cortez, Dimitri, Dangelo, and Enoch–in just the A through E part of the list, and just one gender.
