terça-feira, 18 de maio de 2010
segunda-feira, 17 de maio de 2010
quarta-feira, 1 de abril de 2009
Barry Schwartz and "The Paradox of Choice"
In his 2004 book The Paradox of Choice , Barry Schwartz tackles one of the great mysteries of modern life: Why is it that societies of great abundance — where individuals are offered more freedom and choice (personal, professional, material) than ever before — are now witnessing a near-epidemic of depression? Conventional wisdom tells us that greater choice is for the greater good, but Schwartz argues the opposite: He makes a compelling case that the abundance of choice in today’s western world is actually making us miserable.
Infinite choice is paralyzing, Schwartz argues, and exhausting to the human psyche. It leads us to set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. His relatable examples, from consumer products (jeans, TVs, salad dressings) to lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, who and when to marry), underscore this central point: Too much choice undermines happiness.
Schwartz’s previous research has addressed morality, decision-making and the varied inter-relationships between science and society. Before Paradox he published The Costs of Living, which traces the impact of free-market thinking on the explosion of consumerism - and the effect of the new capitalism on social and cultural institutions that once operated above the market, such as medicine, sports, and the law.
Both books level serious criticism of modern western society, illuminating the under-reported psychological plagues of our time. But they also offer concrete ideas on addressing the problems, from a personal and societal level.
Infinite choice is paralyzing, Schwartz argues, and exhausting to the human psyche. It leads us to set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. His relatable examples, from consumer products (jeans, TVs, salad dressings) to lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, who and when to marry), underscore this central point: Too much choice undermines happiness.
Schwartz’s previous research has addressed morality, decision-making and the varied inter-relationships between science and society. Before Paradox he published The Costs of Living, which traces the impact of free-market thinking on the explosion of consumerism - and the effect of the new capitalism on social and cultural institutions that once operated above the market, such as medicine, sports, and the law.
Both books level serious criticism of modern western society, illuminating the under-reported psychological plagues of our time. But they also offer concrete ideas on addressing the problems, from a personal and societal level.
segunda-feira, 30 de março de 2009
Luc Ferry - Environnement
Selon le philosophe contemporain Luc Ferry, il existe deux écologies. L'une privilégie la nature ("deep ecology") et estime que celle-ci a une valeur intrinsèque , l'autre ne considère la nature que dans sa relation avec l'homme ( écologie environnementaliste). Le seconde , qui est humaniste, est plus modérée et préférable.
L'une et l'autre demandent évidemment que l'on prenne ses distances à l'égard des idées cartésiennes:
"Si l'animal n'était qu'une machine, comme le pensent les cartésiens, la question de ses droits ne se serait jamais posée. Ce qui peut éveiller à son propos le sentiment d'une obligation, au-delà même de la compassion et de la pitié qui relèvent de la simple sympathie, c'est le caractère non mécanique du vivant qu'il incarne. [...] Bref, tout se passe comme si la nature, dans l'animal, tendait en certaines circonstances à se faire humaine, comme si elle s'accordait d'elle-même avec des idées auxquelles nous attachons un prix lorsqu' elles se manifestent dans l'humanité.
[...] Car c'est bien la nature elle-même qui fait signe vers des idées qui nous sont chères, et non pas nous qui les projetons en elle: à l'encontre de ce que pensent les cartésiens, il semble raisonnable d'admettre que les cris des animaux qui souffrent n'ont pas la même signification que les sons égrenés par le timbre de l'horloge, que la fidélité du chien n'est pas celle de la montre. De là le sentiment que la nature possède bien cette fameuse valeur intrinsèque sur laquelle s'appuient les "deep ecologists" pour légitimer leur antihumanisme (1. Mais d'un autre côté, et c'est là ce qu'ils manquent, ce sont les idées évoquées par la nature qui lui donnent tout son prix. Sans elles, nous n'accorderions pas la moindre valeur au monde objectif. Bien plus: c'est parce que la nature, souvent, va à l'encontre de telles idées, parce qu'elle est aussi génératrice de violence et de mort, que nous lui ôtons aussitôt la valeur que nous lui attribuions l'instant d'avant, lorsqu'elle nous semblait belle, harmonieuse, ou même, dans l'animal, intelligente et affectueuse."
L'une et l'autre demandent évidemment que l'on prenne ses distances à l'égard des idées cartésiennes:
"Si l'animal n'était qu'une machine, comme le pensent les cartésiens, la question de ses droits ne se serait jamais posée. Ce qui peut éveiller à son propos le sentiment d'une obligation, au-delà même de la compassion et de la pitié qui relèvent de la simple sympathie, c'est le caractère non mécanique du vivant qu'il incarne. [...] Bref, tout se passe comme si la nature, dans l'animal, tendait en certaines circonstances à se faire humaine, comme si elle s'accordait d'elle-même avec des idées auxquelles nous attachons un prix lorsqu' elles se manifestent dans l'humanité.
[...] Car c'est bien la nature elle-même qui fait signe vers des idées qui nous sont chères, et non pas nous qui les projetons en elle: à l'encontre de ce que pensent les cartésiens, il semble raisonnable d'admettre que les cris des animaux qui souffrent n'ont pas la même signification que les sons égrenés par le timbre de l'horloge, que la fidélité du chien n'est pas celle de la montre. De là le sentiment que la nature possède bien cette fameuse valeur intrinsèque sur laquelle s'appuient les "deep ecologists" pour légitimer leur antihumanisme (1. Mais d'un autre côté, et c'est là ce qu'ils manquent, ce sont les idées évoquées par la nature qui lui donnent tout son prix. Sans elles, nous n'accorderions pas la moindre valeur au monde objectif. Bien plus: c'est parce que la nature, souvent, va à l'encontre de telles idées, parce qu'elle est aussi génératrice de violence et de mort, que nous lui ôtons aussitôt la valeur que nous lui attribuions l'instant d'avant, lorsqu'elle nous semblait belle, harmonieuse, ou même, dans l'animal, intelligente et affectueuse."
Gordon Torr "Managing Creative People"
Good ideas cannot happen in the abstract. They are born out of specificity. Only individuals can have ideas. Groups can't. It may seem counterintuitive, therefore, but in the case of global brand ideas the only good ones will come from creative people working to real life briefs with real life consequences in real life geographies and in real life markets. And they need real life clients with real life pressures. Local specificity is the agar in the petrie dish of the imagination. The pressurised air of a business class cabin is not a workable substitute.
But that doesn't mean you have to rely on luck. It is quite possible to manage great global ideas into existence. It's just a question of knowing when and where to apply the pressure.
There is a simple solution, but it demands a deep understanding of the creative process, which in turn demands the kind of patience marketing and advertising people seldom have space for in their diaries.
During his international tenure in the advertising industry, Gordon Torr worked with an extraordinary variety of creative people on many of the world's largest multinational brands. From teas to telephones — he created campaigns for a challenging variety of clients including Unilever, Ford, Nestle, Kellogg’s, Kraft, Kodak, Philips, Shell, Vodafone, ABN AMRO, De Beers and the Diamond Trading Company as well as Smirnoff, Baileys, J&B, Malibu and Tanqueray for Diageo.
Gordon believes that his book, Managing Creative People, could not have been written without the extensive experience he gained working as Global Creative Director on these brands. All of these clients wanted global advertising ideas. The most liberal of them were happy with local brands working within global strategic templates. Others wanted single global executions. There is no simple answer to which approach works most effectively for which type of category, but there's a rule of thumb that suggests that if your brand isn't in Duty Free you're better off looking at meta-ideas, that is, generalised concepts that can be reworked strategically and creatively at the local level.
The problem with looking at things globally is that you start seeing the world from the window of a 747, and you forget that geography still matters. Most people on the planet — the vast majority of the consumers of these goods and services — live in particular places and cultures, so they view brand communications and brand experiences through the prism of their language and locality.
There's an obvious wisdom in "think globally, act locally", but it clearly hasn't helped the majority of clients or their advertising agencies to solve the problem or where these big brand ideas should come from. Centralist agendas favoured by marketing or advertising people with global hats on are unlikely to succeed as long as budgets are held anywhere outside the centre. The collaborative approach, which has local marketers nodding to the global PowerPoint presentation in a basement conference room in Florida, only exacerbates the divide. Local ideas get patronised; global ideas get ignored.
The default way to solve the issue is to appoint a network agency, or a network creative director, to police the planet on behalf of the global marketer, a practical enough idea on paper but a recipe for inevitable political disaster. Centralized creative resource makes the problem worse, not better. Global creative gangbangs are an enormous amount of fun but rarely produce anything other than great Facebook photos. So sooner or later someone - or everyone - gets fired and the whole process starts over again.
But that doesn't mean you have to rely on luck. It is quite possible to manage great global ideas into existence. It's just a question of knowing when and where to apply the pressure.
There is a simple solution, but it demands a deep understanding of the creative process, which in turn demands the kind of patience marketing and advertising people seldom have space for in their diaries.
During his international tenure in the advertising industry, Gordon Torr worked with an extraordinary variety of creative people on many of the world's largest multinational brands. From teas to telephones — he created campaigns for a challenging variety of clients including Unilever, Ford, Nestle, Kellogg’s, Kraft, Kodak, Philips, Shell, Vodafone, ABN AMRO, De Beers and the Diamond Trading Company as well as Smirnoff, Baileys, J&B, Malibu and Tanqueray for Diageo.
Gordon believes that his book, Managing Creative People, could not have been written without the extensive experience he gained working as Global Creative Director on these brands. All of these clients wanted global advertising ideas. The most liberal of them were happy with local brands working within global strategic templates. Others wanted single global executions. There is no simple answer to which approach works most effectively for which type of category, but there's a rule of thumb that suggests that if your brand isn't in Duty Free you're better off looking at meta-ideas, that is, generalised concepts that can be reworked strategically and creatively at the local level.
The problem with looking at things globally is that you start seeing the world from the window of a 747, and you forget that geography still matters. Most people on the planet — the vast majority of the consumers of these goods and services — live in particular places and cultures, so they view brand communications and brand experiences through the prism of their language and locality.
There's an obvious wisdom in "think globally, act locally", but it clearly hasn't helped the majority of clients or their advertising agencies to solve the problem or where these big brand ideas should come from. Centralist agendas favoured by marketing or advertising people with global hats on are unlikely to succeed as long as budgets are held anywhere outside the centre. The collaborative approach, which has local marketers nodding to the global PowerPoint presentation in a basement conference room in Florida, only exacerbates the divide. Local ideas get patronised; global ideas get ignored.
The default way to solve the issue is to appoint a network agency, or a network creative director, to police the planet on behalf of the global marketer, a practical enough idea on paper but a recipe for inevitable political disaster. Centralized creative resource makes the problem worse, not better. Global creative gangbangs are an enormous amount of fun but rarely produce anything other than great Facebook photos. So sooner or later someone - or everyone - gets fired and the whole process starts over again.
quarta-feira, 25 de junho de 2008
WALLY OLINS (Saffron Branding Consulting)-Viewpoints
IMAGINE a world without brands. It existed once, and still exists, more or less, in the world’s poorest places. No raucous advertising, no ugly billboards, no McDonald’s. Yet, given a chance and a bit of money, people flee this Eden. They seek out Budweiser instead of their local tipple, ditch nameless shirts for Gap, prefer Marlboros to home-grown smokes. What should one conclude? That people are pawns in the hands of giant companies with huge advertising budgets and global reach? Or that brands bring something that people think is better than what they had before?
The pawn theory is argued, forcefully if not always coherently, by Naomi Klein, author of No Logo , a book that has become a bible of the anti-globalisation movement. Her thesis is that brands have come to represent a fascist state where we all salute the logo and have little opportunity for criticism because our newspapers, television stations, Internet servers, streets and retail spaces are all controlled by multinational corporate interests. The ubiquity and power of brand advertising curtails choice, she claims; produced cheaply in thirdworld sweatshops, branded goods displace local alternatives and force a grey cultural homogeneity on the world. Brands have thus become stalking horses for international capitalism. Outside the United States, they are now symbols of America’s corporate power, since most of the world’s bestknown brands are American. Around them accrete all the worries about environmental damage, human-rights abuses and sweated labour that anti-globalists like to put on their placards. No wonder brands seem bad.
(...)
The Economist 8 Setemebro 2001
The pawn theory is argued, forcefully if not always coherently, by Naomi Klein, author of No Logo , a book that has become a bible of the anti-globalisation movement. Her thesis is that brands have come to represent a fascist state where we all salute the logo and have little opportunity for criticism because our newspapers, television stations, Internet servers, streets and retail spaces are all controlled by multinational corporate interests. The ubiquity and power of brand advertising curtails choice, she claims; produced cheaply in thirdworld sweatshops, branded goods displace local alternatives and force a grey cultural homogeneity on the world. Brands have thus become stalking horses for international capitalism. Outside the United States, they are now symbols of America’s corporate power, since most of the world’s bestknown brands are American. Around them accrete all the worries about environmental damage, human-rights abuses and sweated labour that anti-globalists like to put on their placards. No wonder brands seem bad.
(...)
The Economist 8 Setemebro 2001
SARAH SILVERMAN-Hostile Acts
SARAH SILVERMAN-Hostile Acts
“The Sarah Silverman Program” puts the mean back in funny.
Hostility may be the engine of humor, but the broadcast networks dread its snarl. Whenever they air a truly mean sitcom, such as the long-gone “Buffalo Bill” or “Action,” the audience flees, so TV executives have learned to muffle their comedies’ barbs in “Only kidding” smirks and “You’re the greatest” hugs. Even on “Seinfeld,” which forbade hugs and learning, the core foursome reserved their mockery for outsiders, for the close-talkers and re-gifters. They were there for one another—the network made sure that we saw the love beneath.
So “The Sarah Silverman Program,” much the meanest sitcom in years—and one of the funniest—premières this week, perforce, on Comedy Central. Silverman, the telescope-necked comedienne, has had trouble finding the right showcase for the contrary elements of her persona: the post-feminist tomboy who’s sexually cocky and emotionally frigid, the eerily alert counterpuncher who’s totally self-involved. (In her 2005 concert movie, “Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic,” Silverman makes out with her own mirrored image.) She is best known for jarring “The Aristocrats,” the documentary about a legendary joke, with her deadpan claim that “Joe Franklin raped me,” and for dropping the epithet “chinks” into a joke on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” Unlike many comedians, Silverman excavates prejudice less by digging into her own background (though in one episode she insincerely promises “full-frontal Jew-dity”) than by strip-mining the turf of other minorities, particularly blacks and gays. Her game is to throw out stereotypes in a little-girl voice and with a winsome look that suggests no offense can legitimately be taken. You might admire Silverman’s boldness, or you might feel that there’s something sneaky in her appropriation of slurs that never wounded her—that it’s the standup equivalent of the person who cuts in line and then can’t believe you object.
In order to read the rest of the article about this sparkling mind please go to:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2007/02/05/070205crte_television_friend?currentPage=2
“The Sarah Silverman Program” puts the mean back in funny.
Hostility may be the engine of humor, but the broadcast networks dread its snarl. Whenever they air a truly mean sitcom, such as the long-gone “Buffalo Bill” or “Action,” the audience flees, so TV executives have learned to muffle their comedies’ barbs in “Only kidding” smirks and “You’re the greatest” hugs. Even on “Seinfeld,” which forbade hugs and learning, the core foursome reserved their mockery for outsiders, for the close-talkers and re-gifters. They were there for one another—the network made sure that we saw the love beneath.
So “The Sarah Silverman Program,” much the meanest sitcom in years—and one of the funniest—premières this week, perforce, on Comedy Central. Silverman, the telescope-necked comedienne, has had trouble finding the right showcase for the contrary elements of her persona: the post-feminist tomboy who’s sexually cocky and emotionally frigid, the eerily alert counterpuncher who’s totally self-involved. (In her 2005 concert movie, “Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic,” Silverman makes out with her own mirrored image.) She is best known for jarring “The Aristocrats,” the documentary about a legendary joke, with her deadpan claim that “Joe Franklin raped me,” and for dropping the epithet “chinks” into a joke on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” Unlike many comedians, Silverman excavates prejudice less by digging into her own background (though in one episode she insincerely promises “full-frontal Jew-dity”) than by strip-mining the turf of other minorities, particularly blacks and gays. Her game is to throw out stereotypes in a little-girl voice and with a winsome look that suggests no offense can legitimately be taken. You might admire Silverman’s boldness, or you might feel that there’s something sneaky in her appropriation of slurs that never wounded her—that it’s the standup equivalent of the person who cuts in line and then can’t believe you object.
In order to read the rest of the article about this sparkling mind please go to:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2007/02/05/070205crte_television_friend?currentPage=2
segunda-feira, 23 de junho de 2008
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