backyard flowers

Web 2.0 and Marketing

The rise of consumer control over market messaging is a revolution that will reform how marketing and advertising companies communicate. In the spirit of revolution, we hold these truths to be self-evident:

• Consumers will actively avoid advertising and marketing unless there is some ROI (Return on Involvement) and technology makes it easy to do so
• The most trusted source of information about a brand is friends and family
• Technology allows anyone to publish anything - including opinions about brands, services, and products
• Social networks can be an extremely efficient communication channel and a way to involve consumers in creating the brand
• Companies that embrace new media and consumer-controlled communication will flourish; those that don't ignore this trend at their peril (of becoming irrelevant)

The Tipping Point

http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/

So I am sure that lots of you already know the power of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, but I just finished it and, DAMN, is this an important book.

If you dig psychology, and want to get a great rush, read this book!

The power of Word of Mouth is becoming truly evident in marketing and advertising. MySpace and Facebook and other social networking sites are going to be the only channels that matter very soon.

Tip of the cap to the references to Albert Bandura and Bibb Latane' in the book - two really influential social psychologists.

And if you don't know what the Fundemental Attribution Error is, then don't complain about relationships until you do the homework, bucko. The bottom line: human nature is not simple, not at all.

Self Awareness and Self Actualization

I had an interesting conversation with friend Steve regarding prerequisites for making choices about our lives. What is required to make a healthy choice about something that might be potentially unhealthy, like drinking alcohol or using drugs or having sex with someone for the first time?

As usual, Steve is thoughful and cogent. He suggested that it requires the ability to be self aware (how am I handling this? Is this causing me pain? Is it causing others pain?) and at least some understanding of what it means to be self actualized.

The latter is important. Although most of us aren't self actualized, if we do not understand the concept of self as independent and whole, it can be dangerous to use substances that cause great emotional or physical pleasure, because we may turn control over to that substance (or person associated with it).

Before experimenting with some of the "dynamite" laying around in our lives, it seems best to make sure that you know what makes you good and whole. If you start off that way (good and whole), then anything you add to the mix isn't the cause of it, and therefore you can control it.

Thanks, Steve, for the conversation and insight.

On Crises of Middle Life

I am feeling a strong ennui in my life. Each day seems a bit redundant, even pointless at times. I get up, go to work, solve problems, handle crises, and I am not sure what, if anything, it means. I talked with my friend and fellow psychologist Steve and he reminded me of something we learned many years ago in our graduate studies.

Erik Erikson, a German development psychologist and psychoanalyst, created the Stages of Psychosocial Development. Similar in structure to Freud's Stages of Psychosexual Development, Erikson looked beyond adolescence to the whole human developmental life span. Maybe there was something to learn here.

Erik Erikson

Erikson postulated eight stages of psychosocial development. Each is described as an Ego conflict that must be resolved. In mid-life, Erikson thought the primary conflict was Generavity vs. Stagnation.

This stage starts when you are in your late 20's and extends throughout your middle life (nowadays, often defined as 60 or 65). It is your productive years, and those who resolve their Ego conflict in the direction of Generavity do so by raising children, contributing to a productive work life, and taking part in community activities. Other activities that support Generavity include mentoring, teaching, writing, social activism, creative artistic expression or anything that satisfies the need to be needed.

However, if you don't resolve towards the Generavity pole, and instead slip into Stagnation, your life is characterized by a slide into self absorption, manifested by rejecting others and not really caring for anyone else. That seems to be the core: if you resolve your conflict towards Generavity, you create the ability to care within you - care about others, care about the planet, care about justice, care about truth and beauty - just the ability to give a damn.

Later psychologists have warned that a headlong rush into Generavity can lead to overextension (someone who is so busy they have no time for themselves). I don't know how I managed it, but I seem to be both overextended and stagnant at the same time. I find myself pumping innumerable hours into work, but I don't get any satisfaction from it, nor do I feel needed. I feel like a cog in a machine, to cliche' it.

Lately, I have found myself exhibiting signs of self absorption. I am more withdrawn from those around me, and I have turned to more hedonistic pleasures (drinking, gambling) to try and fill in some space within me. I think this is dangerous, and highlights the difference between being productive as defined by the GNP and being productive as good ol' Erik might have meant it.

What to do? I started a blog. Good thought starters are hard to come by, and I hope to toss some out. And I think I will look for a way to teach. I used to teach formally (college professor) and I have spent a good deal of my working life teaching informally. I have a granddaughter on the way, a built in reason to care and share.

Any thoughts on this subject are most welcomed.

Road Trip

The iconic representation of a generation caught between "On the Road" and "On Golden Pond."

The Road Trip is an event that never fails to live up to the hype. It is reinforced by the strong draw of novelty, seeing things you never thought you would. It could be the Grand Canyon, or the father of two of your best friends that you didn't know were related, or a deep woods woman serving BBQ out of a roadside shack, but the road trip always shows you something unexpected.

The road trip maintains its allure through the support of the Out of Town phenomenon. When you are on the road, you are whatever you want to be. There is no reference point. You are just a stranger in a strange land, just an ephemeral spirit passing through. You might sit down to a chicken fried steak dinner in a small town in Iowa, and strike up a conversation with the waitress, and find out she is 20 and the daughter of the owners and when you pay, she says, "Where are you going? Can I come along?" And as you drive off in twilight, headed back to a life that disappeared for a weekend, you wonder "What if?"

As you drive all night, hurtling towards a known but not yet understood destination, maybe you find yourself in New Orleans at 6 a.m. Maybe you want beignets and coffee, or maybe you want a drink. And maybe you find a bar open in the French Quarter with a three-legged dog and a sign behind that bar that reads, "You bartender is . . . Pamela, John, Willy, Amelia . . . and as you order a Bloody Mary and lean in between the regulars downing gin at 6 a.m., you ask, smart-assing it, "Which one are you?" The bartender is everything about the place, eveything that is there. And you are not; you are everything that is different and anticipatory and disruptive. "Which one do you want me to be?" and you collapse in shock and admiration, because that is what you needed to hear!

The road trip distracts you because it does not require you to make meaning of anything that happens. You may step back from the requirement to justify your existence, and instead allow the world you drop in on to be what it is, and you watch it like a movie, involved but not integral. You have no meaning in the world where you find yourself on a road trip. All your meaning is located elsewhere. When you travel, you slip the bonds of personal definition and become just an object in another person's existential angst.

Whether you catalyze the action (Dean Moriarty) or simply observe the flow (Sal Paradise), the road beckons.