livingbrands

You are a ray of light

I try to avoid getting overly 'Christian' on this blog. But the following passage (edited from Martin Laird’s book ‘Into the Silent Land’) got me thinking both about my own life and the nature of the job I do.

Whether your conception of 'god' is different to mine, or if you have no truck with god concepts per se, you may find it has some pondering value...

A young novice monk is struggling with his calling and doesn’t know how to move forward. He seeks the advice of a wise, if somewhat unorthodox, older monk called Father Alypius.

Crouched over a table, Fr. Alypius was sitting on a stool repairing someone’s shoes. He peered over the top of his spectacles and said, ‘Sit down and tell me what’s wrong.’

The young man went on for an eternity and told him everything about his life.

All the while Fr. Alypius was working away on this one shoe. When the young man had finished, Fr. Alypius said, ‘I have just one question for you: ‘who are you?’’

‘I just told you,’ said the young man.

‘No, you told me about the clothes you wear. You told me your name, where you’re from, what you’ve done, the things you’ve studied. Your problem is, you don’t know who you are. Let me tell you who you are. You are a ray of God’s own light.’

‘Sounds a bit silly,’ the young man thought to himself. But he was intrigued, so he said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘You say you seek God, but a ray of light doesn’t seek the sun; it’s coming from the sun. You are a branch on the vine of God. A branch doesn’t seek the vine; it’s already part of the vine. A wave doesn’t look for the ocean; it’s already full of ocean.

Because you don’t know that who you are is one with God, you believe all these labels about yourself: I’m a sinner, I’m a saint, I’m a wretch, I’m a worm and no man, I’m a monk, I’m a nurse.

These are all labels, clothing. They serve a purpose, but they are not who you are. To the extent that you believe these labels, you believe a lie, and you add anguish upon anguish. It’s what most of us do for most of our lives.’

‘Before you can know in your own experience what the Psalmist meant when he said, ‘Be still and know that I am God,’ you must first learn to be still and know who you are. The rest will follow.’

Advertising...the way it used to be

What is, in some quarters, considered a 70s 'classic': 2 minutes of a blacked-up white man, advertising fags, in Mbongoland. Maybe ironic, who knows (it was John Bird). But things definitely aren’t the same any more!!

Why 'premium' can be self defeating

There's a marketing theory (can't remember where I read it, as it was years ago now) which says pursuing 'premium' (whether through image or functionality) is ultimately a self defeating strategy as you make yourself vulnerable to attack from below: a competitor offers something half as good (but still more than good enough) for half the price, and your customer base walks.

In a recession, this is an ever more real threat, which Tom's latest cartoon captures rather well...

10 things we didn't know before the 2nd week of 2009

1. Moby is related to novelist Herman Melville and was named after his most famous creation.
2. Golf can damage hearing.
3. The average age of MI5 staff is 40.
4. Three billion e-mails are sent in the UK daily.
5. Mosquitoes mate in about 10 seconds.
6. Internet use peaks in the UK between 5pm and 6pm on Sundays.
7. Tasmanian devils are being killed off by cancer.
8. You can hiccup while asleep.
9. Montenegro has the euro despite not being in the EU.
10. Printing more money to increase the supply is known as quantitative easing.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

What's your melody?

I buy a lot of music, most of which I listen to for a few months before moving on to the latest new thing, the CD consigned to an ever expanding mountain in the lounge...and the occasional best bits on the MP3 player.

But there are a few albums which achieve perennial status in the heart and mind, stuff I keep coming back to...and which keep on rewarding.

For me, one of those perennials is the Killers debut, Hot Fuss, nearly a whole album of killer (sorry) tracks. And for Christmas I got their latest, Day & Age, which again keeps funding its way back on to the CD player.

Why? It's not the (objectively) best thing I've got recently by any stretch; it's not even amongst the best reviewed (a ho hum 3 stars in Q I think).

So maybe it has something to do with a comment Bono made about them in a recent interview: "wow! There's melody for you".

The Killers don't do cutting edge, or difficult, or challenging, or (willfully) clever and creative, or sonic art (or whatever). But neither do they do the derivative pap of many wannabees who can barely scrape together one album.

They just do great, popularist tunes which (if it's your kind of thing) you can't get out of your head. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Which got me thinking about the 'melody' and 'tunes' in what we do (honestly, it did - sad I know). And whether sometimes we get too hung up on striving after the cutting edge, clever, 'creative' (pick you C) at the expense of the popularism that 'real' people actually like (but which the beard stroking, muso equivalents of the comms industry turn their noses up at - that's us).

A case of too much Radiohead maybe, and not enough Killers (or, loathed as I know they are by some, Coldplay). Personally, some of the most effective things I've worked on have been in the Killers camp, whilst Radiohead comms (creative as it may have been..or seemed) passed people by.

When voting goes bad

From the various 'rate my…' sites to the reality TV shows where the public gets to decide, mass voting is now big business (except in the situations where it really matters, like elections).

Which is probably why Labour is engaged in yet another cynical exercise of giving people what they like/want not what they need.

First up, voting on (cash strapped, over worked, demotivated) GPs…possibly followed by rating (cash strapped, over worked, demotivated) teachers.

So a great example of democracy in action, or yet another abdication of responsibility (by a Government that is already over reliant on pointless and destructive benchmarking in the public sector), allowing the unqualified (probably with axes to grind) to comment on issues they don't fully understand.

In None out of 10 the Guardian's Marina Hyde goes for the latter (and also asks why politicians aren't subjected to similar constant evaluation - double standards surely…unless they have something to hide!)

Surviving the recession

Arch Misathrope Charlie Brooker, paints a picture of 2009, and goes on to tell what we'll need to do to survive...

"The worst recession in 60 years. Broken windows and artless graffiti. Howling winds blowing empty cans past boarded-up shopfronts. Feral children eating sloppy handfuls of decomposed-pigeon-and-baked-bean mulch scraped from the bottom of dustbins in a desperate bid to survive. The pound worth less than the acorn. The City worth less than the pound. Your house worth so little it'll collapse out of shame, crushing you in your bed. Not that you'll die peacefully in your sleep - no, you'll be wide awake with fear, worrying about the situation in the Middle East at the precise moment a chunk of ceiling plaster the size of a flagstone tumbles from on high to flatten your skull like a biscuit under a shoe, sending your brain twizzling out of your earholes like pink-grey toothpaste squeezed from a tube. All those language skills and precious memories splattered over your pillows. It'll ruin the bedclothes. And instead of buying expensive new ones, your grieving, impoverished relatives will have to handwash those bedclothes in cold water for six hours to shift the most upsetting stains before passing them down to your orphaned offspring, who are fated to sleep on them in a disused underground station for the rest of their lives, shivering in the dark as they hear bombs dipped in bird flu dropping on the shattered remains of the desiccated city above."

LOL

Meerkats are go

Whilst meerkats aren't quite up there with otters (strangely, guaranteed to make me cry) in my personal pantheon of ace animals, they're pretty close to the top. Which is why I love this...

Become a Facebook fan as well. Apparently Alek caused FB to melt down, such is his popularity.

Apple reinvents the Wheel

Always happy to see people have a pop at the Cult of Apple ("I'll buy almost anything if it's shiny and made by Apple" - LOL)...
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Advertising in a recession

More from the Economist on why this is a good thing (and you would hope that they should know!)...

Ads on Edge

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: branding recession)

(Via here)