February 2012
2 posts
“We have landed on a world where the faint sun glints off methane lakes, seen...”
– Brian Cox, Why Quantum Theory Is So Misunderstood (via cuckoocuckoo)
“As we awaken from sleep, our consciousness undergoes a radical transformation...”
– The science of waking up, from Antonio Damasio’s excellent Self Comes to Mind – an exploration of what makes us human. (via)
January 2012
2 posts
Leonardo's Wormholes and the true meaning of...
People in marketing routinely talk about “iconic” brands and “iconoclastic” personalities. I’m sure Richard Branson has at least once been referred to as “iconically iconoclastic.”
But what does it really mean to be iconic and iconoclastic? Ikenei in Greek means to “look like.” An icon is a likeness.
The oldest monastery in the world also...
Do we live in a sleep-disordered culture? →
Having just moved to London and, adjusting out of jet lag, I am acutely conscious of the all-powerful, easily neglected, restorative powers of sleep. Here’s a fabulous reminder infographic. Wow. Everybody get an extra hour of zzz’s tonight! Look at the benefits!
November 2011
1 post
October 2011
7 posts
You knew me when. →
September 2011
1 post
4 tags
August 2011
3 posts
4 tags
2 tags
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The crisis of American culture in 2015 as foretold...
In 1991, Strauss & Howe published their landmark book, Generations, The History of America’s Future. Almost all generational insight today still owes them a considerable debt. Here is the prediction they wrote twenty years ago about where our culture is headed by 2015. Thought-provoking and startling, to say the least.
“The mood of a crisis era reflects society’s transitions...
July 2011
3 posts
6 tags
Why I think my daughter insisted I see "The Tree...
At the University of Paris, I was taught one of the great lessons of anthropology: culture hides more than it reveals and, what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants.
If we had to have conscious, explicit and rational understanding of every single social thing we do, we would freeze up or, worse, go mad.
Of course, that is a disturbing truth to our ego and so we file it...
June 2011
3 posts
3 tags
Fast food, tangy BBQ sauce and loud ads in ancient...
In Rome, you likely lived in an “insula,” a crowded apartment building, and you most likely bought most of your food already prepared if you even ate at home at all. Chances are you stopped off at a fast food vendor and ate it there on your way home.
I just read Dr. Penelope Allison’s analysis of everyday life as excavated in the ruins of Pompeii. Very little evidence of...
3 tags
For Millennials, the absence of diversity is...
I interviewed high school students on behalf of a university’s recruitment department. The students all described how to do a recruitment ad visual. “There has to be at least one Latina, one Black girl, maybe too, an Asian guy, maybe a white guy but he shouldn’t be too white, like a white guy with dreads…that’s perfect.” They all laughed at how much of a predictable formula is being followed...
4 tags
The Elusive Art of Surprise and Admiration
Best-in-class experiential branding delivers the ultimate prize: a state of surprise and admiration. You can see that emotional state captured in a sketch by the 17th Century portrait artist Charles Le Brun in his “visual treatise on the passions.” Across the centuries, this is still very much what it looks like when a brand gives us an experience way beyond what we were expecting - one that...
April 2011
1 post
March 2011
4 posts
Thanks Richard, for getting to the heart of what is happening in digital right now. It’s all about real connections - for consumers & brands, not about the shiny object. The new tools that can easily allow consumers to connect are those that will succeed.
-DigitalFLashNYC
4 tags
SXSWi - Everything old is new again
The air was filed with digital innovation as Mirrorball’s Michael Blatter and I arrived in Austin - and SXSW hadn’t even started yet. The entrepreneur who rented us our share-house used his iPhone to order and to pay for a pedicab with an app called Uber. The pedi-cabist got his order via iPhone mounted in front of him and tapped it to accept payment. OK!
At SouthBy, itself hundreds upon...
9 tags
Charlie Sheen’s addiction drags us down the FameUs...
The literary critic Lionel Trilling predicted in his 1972 book Sincerity and Authenticity that our culture would come to a point in which the only truly authentic artist was an insane one.
If all you have to rebel against is “whatever you got,” then rebellion for rebellion’s sake turns against your own humanity.
How seductive is open-ended rebellion when it first blooms in the heart of a healthy,...
January 2011
2 posts
5 tags
“Guys and Dolls”: the end of PC Unisex and the...
In the Schizogendria trend, Millennial men and women are experiencing an alienating split between “should” and “feel” in their gender roles; both parties to the drama sense they are losing something valuable.
Schizogendria’s countertrend is Guys and Dolls, whose name takes its inspiration from the musical enjoying several revivals since it first debuted on Broadway in 1950. Its anthem...
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Schizogendria: the lose-lose cultural trend that...
A beautiful French woman who is a high-ranking government official once told me, “I find American men unappealing because they always talk to me as though I were just another man.”
I suspect it’s not just French women who feel this way. But being bi-cultural, French and American, I knew exactly what she was talking about. What in France would be welcome as a gallant compliment might in...
December 2010
2 posts
3 tags
94.6% of all advertising is designed to make...
Designer Cheena Jain recently interviewed me for her upcoming book on Design, Media and Creativity.
Cheena:
There are a lot of talented people in advertising. Why are there so few good ads then?
Richard:
The truth is 94.6% of all of the advertising in the world is designed to make someone’s boss happy.
That’s why 94.6% of all of the advertising in the world sucks.
Because it wasn’t designed...
Tired of being the FameUs star of your own...
Business writer Mark Schaefer asked: what if you combined social-media Klout scores with facial recognition in a new app? You could hold up your phone to any crowd and instantly pick out the heavies. Interesting, no? I asked for comments on this and my fellow brand anthropologist Aurora, a charismatic and much-beloved woman who is a HUGE user of social media and has every gadget and gizmo,...
November 2010
1 post
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The FameUs Trend: we're all celebrities now
Pictured above, “Paparazzi” sunscreens in Brazil turn a dashboard into a FameUs cultural commentary.
A recent survey of Millennial teens by the Barna Group showed that over 1 in 4 believe they will “probably” or “definitely” be famous or very well-known by the time they are twenty-five.
Some might say these Millennial teens are delusional and blame it on their over-empowering...
What’s behind America’s growing passion for...
Famers Markets, or Green Markets, are one of the fastest growing phenomenons of the last ten years, jumping, according to the USDA’s last count, from 1,700 to nearly 5,000 nationwide.
Fresh food, quality food, supporting the local farmer, reduced carbon footprints, pleasant atmosphere…farmers markets have so much to offer, on the rational and sensual level, that we might forget to pay attention...
September 2009
4 posts
Why Microsoft shouldn't chase "cool."
Crispin Porter’s Alex Bogusky appeared on the cover of Fast Company a year ago with the title “Can this man make Microsoft cool?”
Since then we’ve all seen the Crispin’s “I’m a PC” branding work for Microsoft with the “Life without Windows” thematic.
It’s interesting stuff stylistically, but I think it fails to recognize that the social currency of both brands is grounded in an entirely...
2 tags
The changing meaning of "hip."
African Diaspora: from West-African dialect meaning, “to know.
Early Jazz: a “hep cat” was a musician who truly “gets” Jazz.
Beat Generation: a hip-ster was a white person who frequented jazz clubs, smoked reefer and was sexually promiscous.
Woodstock Era: originally designating very young hipsters, “hippies” grew to mean consumers of psychedlic drugs,...