tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-151006652024-03-05T16:01:10.773+11:00Never get out of the boatUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1185125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-65963780989995939892022-11-10T12:55:00.003+11:002022-11-10T12:55:20.988+11:00Cheap dialogue<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbLnpxqY3U12uIGKlx_XO6CbK36bslJkXk7reS2Uu6PB0vcnwhpThPmzS2DYI-UrHGkszTM3qoVOLI3Ogn7ms7YrKTeZPgFD2U4K5P2lrrcGPhyXn1p8TTLdpIZS0f6jw9ONNLfW2OgcqdIm9MfxZdZve8oOHwYGLzB2ee_B1G0s61gZlPAg/s306/holidays%20in%20the%20sun.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="206" data-original-width="306" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbLnpxqY3U12uIGKlx_XO6CbK36bslJkXk7reS2Uu6PB0vcnwhpThPmzS2DYI-UrHGkszTM3qoVOLI3Ogn7ms7YrKTeZPgFD2U4K5P2lrrcGPhyXn1p8TTLdpIZS0f6jw9ONNLfW2OgcqdIm9MfxZdZve8oOHwYGLzB2ee_B1G0s61gZlPAg/w400-h269/holidays%20in%20the%20sun.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>
There's some sort of Double Jeopardy effect going on with round the big tech layoffs at Meta and Twitter.<div><br /></div><div>People are getting laid off by small firms every day and no one is particularly interested, but when a big number go from big firms then all the LinkedIn do-gooders want to help. </div><div><br /></div><div>When working for NFPs and charities we used to invoke the 'identifiable victim' effect. People are sometimes more likely to donate if you zone in and name an individual. </div><div><br /></div><div>This is the inverse. </div><div><br /></div><div>The 'identifiable saviour' effect. </div><div><br /></div><div>A cheap holiday in other people’s misery</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-34684327827979831352020-12-24T15:58:00.004+11:002020-12-24T15:58:52.544+11:00merry christmas from this almost abandoned blogHark! The Herald Angels sing-uh.<br><br><iframe allow="encrypted-media" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="380" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/6Zqw0ivegYnlrsaTKQsg6o" width="300"></iframe><br><br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-66081955563307890722020-09-15T13:05:00.004+10:002020-09-15T13:05:54.083+10:00interview in evolutionary IncHere's a short interview I did for <a href="https://mailchi.mp/7335772676e6/evolutionary-psychology-meets-advertising-an-interview-with-eaon-pritchard" target="_blank">Lachezar Ivanov's Evolution Inc</a> newsletter.<div>It comes out every week and is well worth subscribing to<b>.</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>---------------------------------------------</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Evolutionary Psychology Meets Advertising: An Interview With Eaon Pritchard </b><div><br /></div><div><i>Evolutionary psychology is the study of the innate programs of the human mind. </i></div><div><i>Due to its meta nature, evolutionary psychology represents a very broad field, with implications in business, public policy and more. </i></div><div><i>This interview is part of a series interviewing prominent people in the field. </i></div><div><i>In today's interview, we are talking with Eaon Pritchard. </i></div><div><i>After unsuccessful attempts at neo-expressionist painting, punk rock stardom and, later, Balearic/acid DJ superstardom (although he did achieve one global techno-house hit in the mid-90s) Eaon finally turned to advertising as a last-gasp creative outlet.
Initially (and equally unsuccessfully) as a Creative Director he eventually found his calling in Account Planning and Strategy when he found out who Tessa Pollitt’s dad was.</i></div><div><i>Eaon’s 20+ year advertising career includes multi award winning spells at Weapon7 in London and Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne.
He is widely regarded as an ad industry authority on consumer psychology and is author of two books ‘Where Did It All Go Wrong?’ from 2018 and ‘Shot By Both Sides’ in January 2020. </i></div><div><i>Eaon is now the founder and principal of ArtScienceTechnology, an applied evolutionary psychology business consulting firm working with global clients out of Melbourne, Australia. </i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>When and how did you encounter evolutionary psychology? </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Around 2008 some sections of the advertising community in London latched onto Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational, and I was among them. </div><div><br /></div><div>I’d been working as a creative/tech hybrid since the rise of digital media in the early 2000’s but Ariely’s book switched me on to the human psychology component to advertising and comms. </div><div><br /></div><div>I became a proponent of applied behavioural
economics and suchlike in the following years, however, there was a point about 6 or 7 years ago where it occurred to me that advertising planners invoking cognitive biases had taken on
‘magical’ properties. </div><div><br /></div><div>It seemed too easy to me for every planner and their dog now like to point
out how human decision making had become bamboozled by biases. To paraphrase Feynman, knowing the name of something is not the same as knowing something. </div><div><br /></div><div>I’d already figured out that these cognitive biases do not ‘produce’ or ‘cause’ behaviour, all they do is describe behaviour that’s already happened. And it follows that there must be a more fundamental, or ultimate, cause of behaviour. I read Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained and the Dawkins Selfish Gene and then I was off down the rabbit hole. </div><div><br /></div><div>I then invested in a couple of textbooks, the David Buss one and Tooby/Cosmides and decided to take some time learning about EP properly as it seemed to be such an elegant theory and proved to be revelatory in how I approached my advertising work. </div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>How do you apply evolutionary psychology to improving advertising? Can you give one insight as an example?</b> </div><div><br /></div><div>There are many ways that even a basic understanding of how the mind works could improve advertising.</div><div><br /></div><div>In a simple sense, understanding that the mind is a collection of evolved, domain-specific
programs and whatever a person is thinking and doing right now depends on which of these
programs is currently in command of the ship. </div><div><br /></div><div>This fact alone has big implications for things like brand positioning, targeting, segmentation and selection of media. In segmentation of audiences, for example, most segmentation studies are based only on proximate needs. These are typically specific to the category, so not transferrable. </div><div><br /></div><div>In any case, the methods used to try and uncover these consumer ‘insights’ (e.g. focus groups, surveys) are unlikely to reveal anything of importance.
By giving much more attention to the ultimate motives driving consumer behaviour and preferences, communicators could speak more directly to what consumers really want, even if the consumers themselves don’t know it. </div><div><br /></div><div>And those motives are almost certainly not identifiable through traditional self-reporting methodologies. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>What are some key insights you wouldn’t have discovered void of evolutionary psychology? </b></div><div><br /></div><div>Many of the problems we face in the modern world are down to modern society representing an
evolutionary ’mismatch’. A mismatch happens when people (or a species) are faced with a fast-changing environment to which their bodies and minds – their hardware and software – are not
well-adapted. </div><div><br /></div><div>We should be afraid of cars and electricity. But we’re not. These are evolutionarily novel sources of
danger. Too novel for our old equipment. Instead, our innate fears - spiders, snakes and the dark, for example - have more ancient origins. </div><div><br /></div><div>When I was working with a government road safety department I wanted to put pictures of redback spiders on road safety billboards to get attention – in Australia we have nearly all of the top ten most venomous and lethal spiders in the world. Unfortunately they didn’t buy it but I stand by the idea. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Pick one of these three groups — businesses, consumers, policy makers — and give your best piece of advice.</b> </div><div><br /></div><div>For policy makers, I’ve been disappointed with almost all the COVID comms from governments around the world. Messages about ‘we are all in this together’ and ‘save other lives by staying home’ etc are out of step with human nature. </div><div><br /></div><div>The desired behaviour framed around self-interest and status motives would have been much more effective. Although it would have to be cleverly disguised as few people like to believe that they are acting out of self-interest or competitive altruism. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Which evolutionary psychologists would you love to read an interview by? </b></div><div><br /></div><div>Robert Trivers. He’s not strictly a psychologist but is one of the greats in evolutionary biology and quite a character. Probably the only white scientist to be a getaway driver for the Black Panthers, he’s been arrested numerous times, in prison at least once and almost got killed in a yardie attack in a Kingston brothel while living on and off in Jamaica since the 70s. And when a couple of machete-wielding burglars had tried to get into his house, he stabbed one of them in the neck. </div><div><br /></div><div>Not your typical professorial behaviour. </div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps his most influential theory - that self deception evolved to facilitate the deception of
others – was introduced as an almost off-the-cuff remark in the foreword to The Selfish Gene for Dawkins. Apparently, he’d planned to flesh out the theory a bit in a proper paper but didn’t get around
to it because he was smoking too much weed at the time. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>What is a message that you want to spread across and where people can find you online? </b></div><div><br /></div><div>The best place to connect with me is via the website artsciencetechnology.com, we are always looking for new clients or projects to help with.
Or on LinkedIn.
Both of my books are available on Amazon worldwide in paperback or for Kindle. Readers may find the odd spelling mistake, I call it jazz-grammar.
</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-45994970801185600862020-04-08T17:26:00.002+10:002020-04-08T17:30:24.159+10:00 saving the world (or, can brands really be altruistic?) WDIAGW revisitedThis was a chapter in my first book, <i>'Where Did It All Go Wrong?'</i> from 2017.<br />
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Seems to be kinda relevant these days, too....</div>
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Different philosophers define altruism in different ways, however, most definitions will generally play in and around describing altruistic behaviours as actions that benefit others rather than oneself.<br />
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The term altruism (French, <i>altruisme</i>) was coined by the 19th century philosopher - incidentally, also the founder of the discipline we now know as sociology (although we won’t hold that against him) - Auguste Comte.<br />
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He described altruism as our ‘moral obligation to renounce self-interest and live for others’.<br />
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Aside from ethics, altruism in biology similarly describes a range of behaviours that may be performed by animals, which benefit others while seemingly to their own disadvantage.<br />
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We say ‘seemingly’ as there is no moral lens that can be applied.<br />
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For instance, by behaving altruistically, an organism may reduce its own chances of survival, or the number of offspring it is likely to produce itself, but give a boost to the likelihood that other organisms that share its genes may survive and produce offspring.<br />
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<b>It doesn’t make any Darwinian sense to share food with just anybody, it is far more sensible to share with your relatives - they are genetically similar to you.</b><br />
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The costs and benefits of animal altruism in the biological sphere are measured in terms of the resulting reproductive fitness, or expected number of genetic descendants.<br />
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It is, therefore, reasonable to suggest that the biological notion of altruism is somewhat different from the ethical concept.<br />
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For humans, an act would only be called ‘altruistic' if it was done with the conscious moral intention of helping another, but in the biological sense, there is no such requirement.<br />
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<b>So, which definition is appropriate when talking about brand altruism?</b><br />
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In 1973, the Russian biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously wrote ‘Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution’.<br />
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It could also be noted that nothing in brand behaviour makes sense except in the light of evolution.<br />
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Brands, like organisms, have two principal concerns. Survival and reproduction.<br />
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Survival should be a self-evident notion, just staying in business. For reproduction, we could think about the number of category entry points in which the brand is salient and perhaps breadth of distribution as measures of fitness.<br />
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But, so-called, brand altruism, is perhaps better understood through the lens of Biological Market Theory.<br />
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Animals (including humans) can be observed exchanging benefits through reciprocity mechanisms. This happens in a variety of ways and in a variety of scenarios, however, the common thread is that benefits in kind almost always find their way back to the original giver.<br />
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This (r)evolutionary theory of reciprocal altruism was originally developed and published in 1971 by the biologist Bob Trivers in order to explain to explain instances of (apparent) altruism among unrelated organisms, including members of different species.<br />
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Trivers' basic idea was pretty straightforward: it may payback to help another if there is an expectation of the favour being returned in the future.<br />
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Equivalent to the heuristic ‘You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’. The classic tit-for-tat strategy.<br />
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The cost of helping is offset by the likelihood of the return benefit, allowing the behaviour to evolve by natural selection.<br />
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However, even reciprocal altruists are vulnerable to exploitation by rogue non-altruists.<br />
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Suppose we have a group or category - let’s say supermarkets - made up exclusively of altruists, all playing nicely together, and placing the benefit of their suppliers and customers above their own needs.<br />
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It only takes a single mutant to enter the category, adopt some selfish policies to gain relative fitness advantages then the altruistic system starts to collapse and eventually become overtaken.<br />
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Altruism, by definition, incurs a fitness cost. So why would a brand perform a costly act?<br />
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As an aside, it’s probably no accident that the current popularity of the brand altruism idea corresponds with the development on another on the consumer side - virtue signalling.<br />
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Much has been written elsewhere on the pros and cons of online virtue signalling - the highly conspicuous expression of particular moral values done primarily with the intention of gaining status within a social group - but suffice to say that (and depending on which report one believes) apparently upwards of 70% of millennials will claim that the social responsibility record and ‘altruism’ of a brand is a major factor in their propensity to buy or use that brand. Sure.<br />
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It is also claimed by many that this generation of consumers is even willing to PAY MORE for altruistic brands! Right.<br />
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Maybe so, but what cannot be disputed is the propensity of the connected generation to perform actions (mostly online) that signal to others that ‘I'm a good person'. It’s worth noting that the message need not be actually accompanied by actually doing anything good. This opens the window for brand altruism as a virtue-outsourcing vehicle.<br />
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The ‘feelings’ of self-righteousness are so good so it’s no wonder that we are inclined to seek them - and will happily take a shortcut to acquire them.<br />
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So, is brand altruism something of a misnomer, and simply a contemporary biological market tactic pandering to the current cultural mode for a particular flavour of virtue signalling?<br />
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If this were the case then that may cause some significant cognitive dissonance for the authenticity-seeking future consumers.<br />
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(Not all is lost, however. Lack of millennial buying power notwithstanding, there is still much fun to be had given that the only thing people seem to like more than virtue signalling is judging other people!)<br />
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<b>Perhaps another idea to consider is this. Brand altruism may simply be interpreted as signal. A costly and strategic signal, that provides an honest indicator of quality.</b><br />
A brand might make a strategic investment in altruism that acts simply as a signal of its ability to BE altruistic - the brand signals that it has the assets to do so.<br />
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In this sense, brand altruism is simply another form of costly signalling the same as investing in high-quality advertising and equivalent to the ‘handicap' for which the peacock's tail has become a metaphor.<br />
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It’s kinda altruism, but it’s competitive.<br />
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Let’s return to Ambler and Hollier’s <i>The Waste in Advertising</i>, again.<br />
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‘The perceived extravagance of [a brand’s altruistic acts] contributes to advertising effectiveness by increasing credibility. It draws especially on the Handicap Principle in biology: animals use wasteful characteristics to signal their exceptional biological fitness. It hypothesizes that excesses in [altruism] work in a similar way by signalling brand fitness…’<br />
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In summary, we should probably understand this emerging idea of brand altruism as a part of the brand marketing process through which brands compete with each other in terms of conspicuous generosity (or if you prefer, observable competitive altruism) in order to enhance the status, reputation and perceived quality of the brand.<br />
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<b>If some good is worth doing, it’s worth doing in public. And, of course, the more salient the ‘altruistic’ acts of the brand are then the associated ‘generosity’ traits transfer to buyers and users of the brand, more grist to our virtue signalling.</b><br />
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For sure, it is good that brands may wish to contribute to a greater good, or to society as a whole.<br />
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But let’s not get too caught up with esoteric notions of ‘pure’ altruism.<br />
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<b>Rest easy advertisers and marketers. We can make the world better and still be our selfish, insecure and status- seeking selves.</b><br />
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Or just believe in magic.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-32577743898552094382020-03-19T14:43:00.000+11:002020-03-19T14:43:37.723+11:00cognitive biases. flaw or feature?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It wasn’t that long ago when the subject matter and context in pop songs had somewhat more substance and sense of inquiry.<br /><br />Yes, kids, this was pop, believe it or not.<br /><br /><i>‘There’s definitely, definitely, no logic, to human behaviour. But yet so, yet so irresistible. And there is no map…'</i><br /><br />Human Behaviour is the opening track on <i>Debut</i>, the breakthrough album by Icelandic singer- songwriter Björk. The set was produced by Bristol Underground graduate Nellee Hooper and first dropped in 1993.<br /><br />Talking about the inspiration for the record, Björk looked back on her schooldays.<br /><br /><i>‘When I went into the sixth form at school, I choose science, math and physics and thought psychology, anthropology, sociology and history and such was for sissies. They call subjects in school about people ‘kjaftafog’, which means nattersubjects.<br /><br />As I got older, I have learned to appreciate nattersubjects and recently read many books for the first time about psychology and... So I have learned a little about humans.’</i><br /><br />But yet so, yet so irresistible. And there is no map<br /><br />Is there a map? What does motivate human behaviour?<br /><br />I’ve been a proponent of applied behavioural economics and suchlike in recent years, however, even invoking cognitive biases has now taken on ‘magical’ properties.<br /><br />When wearing my consulting hat, I sometimes help clients evaluate creative pitches from agencies.<br /><br />Of course, I pay most attention to the strategy parts of the pitches. It’s always interesting to see what the competition are up to, or where their heads are at.<br /><br />Some form of applied pseudo-behavioural economics theory is clearly the <i>flavor du jour</i>.<br /><br />It’s been a remarkable rise. In just a few years behavioural economics has gained significant traction in advertising agencies to the point that nearly every planner and their dog now like to point out how human decision making has become bamboozled by biases.<br /><br />The irony, of course, is that the standard line trotted out to preface the ‘insights’ – humans are irrational and make emotional decisions etc. – is as fallacious an example of thinking, as the thinking ‘errors’ of consumers the planner is trying to describe.<br /><br />Planners fail to understand that biases are just tendencies and are also highly context-dependent. This - very thin - focus on biases is unhelpful in several ways. It’s Wikipedia planning.<br /><br />In one particular pitch I sat in on, every agency played a (magical) loss aversion card in their ‘consumer insights’ slide. Yet demonstrated little real understanding of the concept and where it might or might not come into play, and what purpose it serves in decision making.<br /><br />They knew the ‘name’ of the thing, though.<br /><br />Being able to reel off a list of definitions of cognitive effects does not magically turn someone into a behavioural practitioner.<br /><br />The thing is, most of these commonly invoked ‘irrational’ biases evolved for excellent, rational and adaptive reasons.<br /><br />When resources are scarce—as they were for 99.9% of our existence as a species—loss aversion would have been a perfectly rational bias to possess.<br /><br />For early humans, the implications of losing a supply of food would have been significant.<br /><br />Almost certain death.<br /><br />Whereas gaining a week’s worth of food meant survival and perhaps trade opportunities for one more week.<br /><br />Your mind is a collection of evolved, <i>domain-specific</i> programs and whatever you are thinking and doing right now depends on which of these programs is currently in command of the ship.<br /><br />Each of these programs is functionally specialised for solving a different adaptive problem that arose in what is called the <i>Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness</i>, or EEA.<br /><br />EEA describes the situational and external factors in which an evolved trait adapted over time. And the collective influence of selection pressures that caused an adaptation to develop.<br /><br />The EEA of early humans that produced our brain development – from around one million years ago until around ten thousand years ago - is very different from our modern world.<br /><br />And so, it’s an important distinction to make. Being well adapted to a particular environment and being adaptable to environmental change are different.<br /><br />This is why many psychologists are arguing that many of the problems we face in the modern world are down to modern society representing this evolutionary ’mismatch’.<br /><br />A mismatch happens when people (or a species) are faced with a fast-changing environment to which their bodies and minds – their hardware and software – are not well-adapted.<br /><br />We should be afraid of cars and electricity. But we’re not. These are evolutionarily novel sources of danger. Too novel for our old equipment. Instead, our innate fears - spiders, snakes and the dark - have more ancient origins.<br /><br />It’s not always neat. In fact, it’s a bit messy.<br /><br />Not least because these programs, or modules, all evolved at different times in our evolutionary history. Not only that, but they also are quite distinct from one another, and can (simultaneously) hold contradictory views.<br /><br />Although, I’m in two minds about that.<br /><br />The classic rational economists and the modern behavioural economists have both got the story part right but also partly wrong.<br /><br />For sure, our decision making is biased in ways that sometimes lead us to make silly choices.<br /><br />But this does not mean that our decisions are dumb or irrational.<br /><br />And those economists are correct that we are rational and smart. Just not in the way they think we are.<br /><br />When we look at the deeper logic of human minds, it becomes clear that all decision making is geared to promote deep-rooted evolutionary goals.<br /><br />If a cognitive bias positively impacted fitness in the ancestral environment - and if it's still around today then it almost certainly did - it is not a design flaw, it is a design feature.<br /><br />----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Adapted excerpt from ‘Shot By Both Sides: What We Have Here Is Failure to Communicate’<br /><br />Available now at Amazon worldwide and in discerning bookstores.<br /><br /><a href="https://t.co/oLsAr3ZGd7?amp=1">amzn.com/1655342916</a><div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-60817488354869722762019-09-06T08:58:00.000+10:002019-09-06T14:10:26.208+10:00fairies AND gnomes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It’s now just over 100 years since the famous Cottingley fairy hoax. Two spotty teenage English cousins called Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright took photographs of ‘fairies ‘at the bottom of the garden of the house belonging to Elsie’s parents in Cottingley, a leafy West Yorkshire village close to Bradford. <br />
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Of course, the photographs are clearly staged. The fairies are simply paper cut-outs Elsie had copied from a popular children’s book, <i>Princess Mary's Gift Book</i>, published just a couple of years earlier in 1915. The girls were having a bit of creative fun, hoping to wind up Elsie’s father whom they had borrowed the camera from and been given some quick photography lessons. <br />
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It was all harmless fun until Elsie's mother, Polly, attended a lecture on ‘spiritualism’ a couple of years later. Following the talk, she dug out the photos bringing them to the attention of Edward Gardner, a leader of the Theosophical movement. <br />
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Boom! The photos were declared totally “genuine unfaked photographs of single exposure, open-air work, show movement in all the fairy figures, and there is no trace whatever of studio work involving card or paper models, dark backgrounds, painted figures." <br />
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Very soon the validated fairy pictures began circulating throughout the spiritualist community and landed on the desk of Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. <br />
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Whilst the fictional Holmes is arguably the epitome of rationality and scepticism, the avid spiritualist Doyle immediately endorsed the fairy pics as clear proof of the existence of supernatural entities. <br />
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Before you can say ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth’, Doyle had sent Gardner up to West Yorkshire to interview the girls, collect some new photos of the fairies (and a couple of Gnomes who happened along), and penned an ecstatic article for the December 1920 issue of The Strand Magazine. Within weeks the Cottingley fairies became among the most widely recognised examples of early amateur photography in the world, their authenticity further endorsed by Gardner who - having taken a registered psychic with him on the trip oop t’north just to be sure - declared the whole area to be teeming with fairies. <br />
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Things had clearly got out of hand, but the girls decided to roll with it. What started out as a bit of kid fun had seemingly caused a large group of adults to completely lose control of their minds. What should they do? Confess to the hoax and face the wrath of cheated believers? Or just carry on with the fiction and go along with what the grown-ups want? <br />
<br />
The thing is, the time was just about right in 1920 for the Cottingley fairies. <br />
<br />
Throughout World War I, spiritualism had grown in popularity with the grieving British public. <br />
<br />
Amid the chaos of war, with deaths occurring in almost every family there arose a sudden and concentrated interest in ideas of the afterlife, and so the prospect of being able to access some supernatural power, or otherworldly influence, would have been consoling. <br />
<br />
Spiritualism, mediums and psychics role was twofold; to reunite families with their dead sons and husbands with ‘evidence’ that they were in a better place and as a reassurance of an afterlife that represented a promise of respite from the hardship and turmoil experienced during and after the Great War. <br />
<br />
Of course, Spiritualism's success was its entrepreneurial egalitarianism. <br />
<br />
<b>The ability to incorporate a variety of other supernatural concepts, including fairies and gnomes, into its repertoire without blinking is phenomenal agility. </b><br />
<br />
New technology also played a major role. Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law states that <i>any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic..</i> <br />
<br />
This was certainly the case in the early 20th century with the advent of ‘radio’, and telegraphy linking people together during the war. This was close to magical and gave people a way of understanding Spiritualism. <br />
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A medium making contact with the spirit world would ‘tune-in’ to the ‘channels and wavelengths’ of the ‘other side’. Even the real world of wireless communications led to experiments in ‘psychic telegraphs’, which inventors claimed could pick up ‘auras’. <br />
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In 1920 even any kind of photography was still quite a new idea for ordinary people. The world’s first mass-market camera, the Brownie from Eastman Kodak had only been invented twenty years earlier in 1900. <br />
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The most remarkable part of the Cottingley hoax is not that two young girls pretended they found fairies at the bottom of the garden. That is what children do. Play make-believe. <br />
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<b>What is remarkable is that so many adults really wanted it to be true. </b><br />
<br />
Fairies and gnomes.<br />
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This is a short excerpt from the chapter 'A Cauldron of Illusions' which examines 'magical thinking' and why smart people believe stupid things.<br />The full essay is in Eaon's forthcoming second book <i>'Shot By Both Sides: What We Have Here is a Failure To Communicate'.</i> The book will be available towards the end of 2019.<div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-7760112219601161262019-08-30T12:36:00.001+10:002019-08-30T12:37:14.371+10:00short excerpt from 'notes on the bullshit-industrial complex'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM_ab54-zYTwmFJHcW70-zCR0FyZAamJZyZSdaPBqWbGx2MeeMuqEw1CE9v_jNrqXV3ALxkhZXBajn_gntk0wAWYMVAxt2K_8_fau9IQka3Yn7wTaXMjsSDKxFmjUJjsrojSA3/s1600/Screenshot+2019-08-30+10.43.36.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="358" data-original-width="723" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM_ab54-zYTwmFJHcW70-zCR0FyZAamJZyZSdaPBqWbGx2MeeMuqEw1CE9v_jNrqXV3ALxkhZXBajn_gntk0wAWYMVAxt2K_8_fau9IQka3Yn7wTaXMjsSDKxFmjUJjsrojSA3/s400/Screenshot+2019-08-30+10.43.36.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Noam Chomsky once noted that Michel Foucault– often cited as among the post-structuralist and postmodernist thinkers although he didn’t like these labels - was actually intelligible if you sat him down and had a normal conversation.<br />
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(Unlike many of the other French philosophers).<br />
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Chomsky explains, ‘I don’t particularly blame Foucault [for obscurantism], it’s such a deeply rooted part of the corrupt intellectual culture of Paris that he fell into it pretty naturally, though to his credit, he distanced himself from it.’<br />
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Interestingly, Foucault confessed to his friend the American philosopher John Searle, that he intentionally complicated his writings to appease his French audience.<br />
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Searle has revealed that Foucault privately admitted this to him,<br />
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<b><i>"In France you must make 25 percent incomprehensible, otherwise people won’t think it’s deep–they won’t think you’re a profound thinker."</i></b><br />
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The French structuralist Pierre Bourdieu claimed it was markedly worse than that. The BS quotient in the ‘works’ of Jacques Derrida, for example, is probably closer to 100%.<br />
<br />
Foucault concurred, saying that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism).<br />
<br />
<i>“He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, ‘You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.’ That’s the terrorism part.”</i><br />
<br />
But a background theory is mandatory. <br />
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This is a short excerpt from the chapter 'Notes on the bullshit-industrial complex' in Eaon's forthcoming second book<i> 'Shot By Both Sides: What We Have Here is a Failure To Communicate'.</i> The book will be available towards the end of 2019.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-7197275904088462412019-07-10T16:04:00.001+10:002020-06-18T09:31:44.930+10:00how does it feel to feel?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuMfQlqXlCA5UeGHPPr2Os-MKZRtToEK9bLjp8u-KOC6m_5fQyHKtpgsd7gKZjejI6c_Iuu80SxnIXO8MWzWHBZllUazA6DB5bxFFciYFc6QD6nCRMRQVp5cdI9AEzacKme5DU/s1600/anger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="389" data-original-width="850" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuMfQlqXlCA5UeGHPPr2Os-MKZRtToEK9bLjp8u-KOC6m_5fQyHKtpgsd7gKZjejI6c_Iuu80SxnIXO8MWzWHBZllUazA6DB5bxFFciYFc6QD6nCRMRQVp5cdI9AEzacKme5DU/s400/anger.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<h4>
People - especially ad people - get terribly confused about what is meant by ‘emotion’.</h4>
For a start its not just one thing.<br />
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There are distinctions between the functional emotion (‘the emotional state’), the experience of the emotion, our ability to perceive and attribute emotions to other people (and to animals).<br />
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Also our ability to think and talk about emotion and, of particular interest to advertisers, the behaviours caused by an emotion state. The expressions and emotional responses.<br />
<br />
But emotions are first and foremost about the <i>states </i>and everything else flows from that.<br />
<br />
In essence, to understand what emotions are, and what they are for, requires a fundamental or <i>ultimate </i>explanation.<br />
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Your mind is a collection of evolved, <i>domain-specific</i> programs.<br />
<br />
Whatever you are thinking and doing right now depends on which of these programs is currently in command of the ship.<br />
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It’s not neat. </div>
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In fact, it’s a bit messy, not least because these programs, or modules, evolved at different times in our evolutionary history. Not only that, they are quite distinct from one another, and can (simultaneously) hold contradictory views.<br />
<br />
Although, I'm in two minds about that.<br />
<br />
Each of these programs is functionally specialised for solving a different adaptive problem that arose in what is called the <i>Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness</i>, or EEA.<br />
<br />
EEA describes the situational and external factors in which an evolved trait adapted from over time. And the collective influence of selection pressures that caused an adaptation to develop.<br />
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It's worth pointing out straight away that the EEA of early humans that produced our brain development – from around one million years ago until around ten thousand years ago - is obviously very different from our modern world.<br />
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Our brains and minds evolved to operate in hunter-gatherer and nomadic societies.<br />
<br />
And so it's an important distinction to make. Being well adapted to a particular environment and <i>being adaptable to environmental change</i> are different.<br />
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This is why many psychologists are arguing that many of the problems we face in the modern world are down to modern society representing a '<i>mismatch</i>'.<br />
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Evolutionary mismatch happens when people (or a species) are faced with a fast-changing environment to which their bodies and minds – their hardware and software – are not well-adapted.<br />
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We should be afraid of cars and electricity. But we're not. These are evolutionarily novelsources of danger. Too novel for our old equipment. Instead, our innate fears have more ancient sources. Among them, spiders, snakes and the dark.<br />
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And social exclusion (so I have so many followers on Twitter...but why don't they share my post?)<br />
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Each of these mental modules, our software or <i>apps</i>, is a specialised structure sculpted to carry out a particular function. But integrated into a complex whole, and activated by a different set of cues.<br />
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These functions include 'basic' things like breathing, heart-rate regulation, sleep management, and perception.<br />
<br />
Alongside all-important social mechanisms designed for face recognition, mate choice and ‘reading’ other peoples minds. A more ‘recent’ adaptation would be language, of course.<br />
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Steven Pinker describes resulting social behaviour as <i>the outcome of an internal struggle among many mental modules, and it is played out on the chessboard of opportunities and constraints defined by other people's behaviour.</i><br />
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Of course, this internal struggle between cognitive programs creates another adaptive problem.<br />
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Programs that are designed to solve very specific adaptive problems could, if activated at the same time, conflict with one another, interfering with each other.<br />
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For instance, a sleep mechanism has to be over-ridden if cues for self-protection are present. If the house is on fire you better get out.<br />
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To avoid misfires, the mind must then be equipped with other superordinate programs that can override some programs when others are activated.<br />
<br />
At the same time, certain adaptive problems are best solved by activation of multiple mechanisms at the same time, running from the fire in the dark needs to pump up heart rate regulation and spacial awareness mechanisms.<br />
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A <i>superordinate system</i> is needed to co-ordinate the activity of neural systems, snapping each into the right configuration at the right time. Emotions are functional states that regulate behaviours.<br />
<br />
This is what Emotions are for.<br />
<br />
Orchestrating the mind’s many and varied subprograms so that at any given time the organism is functionally coordinated.<br />
<br />
<i>Emotions are adaptations that have arisen in response to the adaptive problem of mechanism orchestration.</i><br />
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Emotions arose and assumed their structures in response to conditions, contingencies, situations, or types of events that recurred during evolutionary history.<br />
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Mating and fighting are two big ones, for a kick-off.<br />
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Avoiding and escaping from predators, parenting, exchange of trade and favours, establishing rank and status, dealing with the death of family members.<br />
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Anger, revenge and love. Deciding what to eat (and not) and predicting other people’s behaviour. These are just a few.<br />
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Repeated encounters with these situations selected for adaptations that guided information-processing and behaviour.<br />
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Emotions are the superordinate programs that mobilise a subset of the mental mechanisms in any given configuration in response to recurrent situations.<br />
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<b>When a condition or situation of an evolutionarily recognisable kind is detected, a signal goes out from the emotion radar that activates the specific combination of subprograms appropriate to solving that type of adaptive problem(s) - and also deactivates programs whose operation might interfere with solving the most pressing problem.</b><br />
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In ‘simple’ terms, an emotion is a SUPERORDINATE program whose function is to direct the activities and interactions of the other mental subprograms.<br />
<br />
<i>Perception; attention; inference; learning; memory; goal choice; motivational priorities; categorization and conceptual frameworks; physiological reactions; reflexes; behavioral decision rules; motor systems; communication processes; energy level and effort allocation; affective coloration of events and stimuli; recalibration of probability estimates, situation assessments, values, self-esteem, estimations of relative formidability, relative value of alternative goal states, and so on.</i><br />
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Because emotions are clearly a product of adaptive design they cannot be irrational. In fact, emotions are super-rational adaptations, finely tuned to countering threats and recognising opportunities.<br />
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<b>An emotion cannot be reduced down to any one category of effects because it contains evolved instructions for ALL OF THEM.</b><br />
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Consider this before reducing the assessment of advertising to ‘emotional’ or ‘rational’ appeals or entertaining 'new data' that claims to compare the emotional connection rankings of top brands.<br />
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There's either a response or no response. Your superordinate system of emotions decides.<br />
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Further reading: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Adapted-Mind-Evolutionary-Psychology-Generation/dp/0195101073/">The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture - (Barkow, Tooby, Cosmides</a>)</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-51059591993796161552019-05-15T14:54:00.001+10:002019-07-10T15:54:57.086+10:00live and dangerousI've not posted anything for a while.<br /><br />I've been busy getting together the next book.<br /><br />It's in the final stages and going through the mincer, with a bit of luck it will appear later this year.<br /><br />In the meantime - and closing the chapter on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1544901054?tag=bizzi0d-20">'Where Did It All Go Wrong?'</a> - here's a video of the talk-of-the-book from the Mumbrella260 conference in Sydney in July of 2018.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="215" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nx5et597VMc" width="460"></iframe><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-72464545231727280722019-02-06T09:23:00.000+11:002019-12-17T13:30:39.371+11:00deeply superficial<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV97JBBq0wPrOeQ_RgKox1r6KBqfXXS9Jq2hU6SgKWn3i2O4oU3thNrno5e4WX6gZ4lTNBPSZ_WVTiY5g1a1pfFmVpzBrsUY-3QnYTYV7u6jRPcesLBs4L99Ja9eDN5hI8E23U/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-02-06+at+9.17.02+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="327" data-original-width="790" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV97JBBq0wPrOeQ_RgKox1r6KBqfXXS9Jq2hU6SgKWn3i2O4oU3thNrno5e4WX6gZ4lTNBPSZ_WVTiY5g1a1pfFmVpzBrsUY-3QnYTYV7u6jRPcesLBs4L99Ja9eDN5hI8E23U/s400/Screen+Shot+2019-02-06+at+9.17.02+AM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Andy Warhol’s famous <i>Brillo Boxes</i> were first exhibited at The Stable Gallery on West 58th Street, Manhattan in 1964.<br />
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More than any other early works it was these boxes that shot Andy into superstardom, and prompt the Columbia University philosopher and critic, Arthur Danto to proclaim ‘the end of western art!’.<br />
<br />
Those boxes posed this question. ‘What distinguishes a work of art from an identical looking object that is not art?’<br />
<br />
In an amusing coincidence, the original commercial Brillo packaging as recontextualised by Warhol was designed by a fella called James Harvey.<br />
<br />
Harvey was a lower league abstract expressionist painter – so far down he wasn’t even on the map - who (struggling to pay the bills through his art alone) had bitten the bullet and taken a job in advertising!<br />
<br />
<i>Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose</i>, and advertising is still a business that few people really aspire to join. In particular, many creatives would much rather be directing movies or writing their novel than trying to get people to buy car insurance.<br />
<br />
And so closing the irony loop, the striking Brillo logo had been designed by an action painter; a practitioner of exactly the kind of non-representational, raw expression art that Warhol’s was a reaction against.<br />
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Harvey wasn’t a fan of Warhol's work, although he did attend the opening of the 1964 exhibition and is said to have had a long chat with Andy. But didn't mention having designed the original Brillo packaging.<br />
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Never cross the streams.<br />
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‘66 Scener Fra Amerika’ (66 Scenes from America) is a 1982 documentary film by Danish director Jørgen Leth.<br />
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It presents a variety of short vignettes with no discernable connecting narrative, other than exhibiting a seemingly random patchwork of objects and scenes that all together resembles a collection of cinematic postcards from a road trip. Essentially an experimental visual time-capsule of nothing-much-happening smack in the middle of life in Reagan-era America.<br />
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The film's best-known scene is a four and a half minutes long segment of Andy Warhol tucking into a Whopper from Burger King. An obvious pastiche of Warhol’s own signature film style, although the entire film is Warhol-esque.<br />
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While doing their research in advance of preparing a campaign for Burger King, the fast-food giant’s agency stumbled upon the Andy footage on YouTube and took it to their client.<br />
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After much high-fiving and a year of wrangling with the various parties and rights owners, they had secured usage rights and set about preparing it to run as a showpiece in the advertising event of the year, the 2019 SuperBowl.<br />
<br />
If not the most flamboyant, it is undoubtedly one of the more extraordinary SuperBowl ads of recent times when looked at from a philosophy of advertising standpoint. Not least in the way it spectacularly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, as we shall see. <br />
<br />
The Warhol/Burger King spot is, in effect, a ‘readymade’.<br />
<br />
Readymade was a term coined by Marcel Duchamp, exemplified by the notorious 1917 ‘sculpture’, Fountain. <br />
<br />
Duchamp was a French-American painter turned sculptor. While he made his name as a kinda Cubist, he is widely regarded as one of the primary influencers in the rise of conceptual art. His <i>Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2</i> brought the house down at the 1913 New York Armory Show – even the Manhattan art public was scandalised by this European weirdness - however following that he pretty much abandoned painting and focussed on ‘sculpture’, creating the first of his readymades in 1913.<br />
<br />
The theory behind the readymade practice took a while to develop. It was finally explained in the editorial of the May 1917 issue of the avant-garde magazine <i>The Blind Man</i>, edited by Duchamp.<br />
<br />
<i>Whether Mr Mutt, with his own hands, made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, and placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.</i><br />
<i>The object has been recontextualised.</i><br />
<br />
There are three essential components to the readymade provision.<br />
<br />
Number one; the choice of object is itself a creative act.<br />
Number two; by doing away with the function of an object, it becomes art.<br />
Number three; presenting the object as art gives it a new meaning.<br />
<br />
In a nutshell, <i>what is art is whatever the artist says is art</i>.<br />
<br />
This mini-manifesto represents the beginning of the movement towards conceptual art – and the post-modern aesthetic - as the status and relationship of the artist and the object are <i>called into question. </i><br />
<br />
The new postmodern artists disparaged modernists and their naive belief that a work of art could somehow appeal to a broad audience who had neither the time nor inclination to get up to speed with the latest continental philosophy gobbledygook.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Vous m'avez mal compris, vous êtes idiot.</i><br />
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If the readymade concept can be understood, at the very least, as a deliberate assault on the conventional understanding of the status and nature of art, is Burger King’s use of an existing non-advertising object ‘found’ by the agency and recontextualised as a 45 seconds SuperBowl spot a assault on the conventional understanding of the status and nature of advertising?<br />
<br />
Almost. It is achingly close to being a <i>dialetheia</i>. Or a 'true contradiction'.<br />
<br />
Had they pulled it off we could have been saying this Warhol film – this object - is an ad <i>only insofar as it is not an ad. </i><br />
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It is what it <i>is not</i> and this is why <i>it is what it is. </i><br />
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This idea slightly offends objectivism, in where contradictions cannot be true – check your premises! - yet Burger King’s spot is oh-so-close to being an ad that isn’t really an ad and a found object that is not just a found object.<br />
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YET IT IS ALSO BOTH.<br />
<br />
Take the statement ‘this sentence is false’. <br />
<br />
This is the famous “Liar’s Paradox”, the statement that everything being said is a lie. So, if the liar is lying, then the liar is telling the truth, which means the liar just lied, which means they’re also telling the truth, which means it’s a lie and so on, and so on.<br />
<br />
With Fountain and many of his other 'sculptures', Duchamp’s only contribution was to sign the object and exhibit it as art. Similarly Warhols only contribution to many of the works produced in his 'Factory' (including the Brillo Boxes) was to ‘sign’ or 'authenticate' them as art.<br />
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What are potentially true contradictions in media? Or advertising?<br />
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What is media insofar as it is not media?<br />
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What could we simply label as advertising by ‘signing’ it?<br />
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Burger King’s marketing people are quoted in the press as saying 'we didn’t want to change or touch the film in any way that would take away from its original intent’.<br />
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Yet they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by adding the superfluous #eatlikeandy hashtag on the end frame. <br />
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Before the big game, BK's social media followers had been encouraged to claim a free Mystery Box Deal via UberEats style meal delivery service DoorDash. The box contained a silver wig, a bottle of ketchup and a Whopper voucher redeemable on game day. It was anticipated that recipients would don the wigs, eat the burger and post pictures and videos of themselves, and some of them did.<br />
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But now that made it an AD.<br />
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It then ceased to be what it is not – and became only what it is.<br />
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To simply run the film and sign it with the logo would have been it.<br />
To allow simply the choice of object is itself to be the creative act.<br />
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What could be more of an all-American trilogy!<br />
Andy, Burger King and the SuperBowl.<br />
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And a burger chain decontextualizing and commodifying an artist who famously adored advertising for its powers of decontextualization and commodification. <br />
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The balls to do that!<br />
<br />
But they blew it at the last second. <br />
<br />
By the inclusion of a self-conscious, self-contradictory (in the<i> wrong</i> way, keep up) and self-undermining element, what should have been a piece of supremely confident branding on the biggest stage instead becomes more like an overly hesitant parody.<br />
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And even after the fact, the boffins of mediocrity at Kellogg School of Management guffed in their assessment ‘It’s also unclear how many viewers will recognize Andy Warhol, who died in 1987, which limits the appeal of the commercial.’<br />
<br />
Kellogg could not be more wrong. Warhol is very much an artist of our time. <br />
<br />
Self-commodification is now ubiquitous. The idea of a Facebook ‘friend’ is not only a reified commodity but is also now increasingly becoming the way we understand the nature of authentic friendship.<br />
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Instagram influencers are not influential through possessing any particular expertise or knowledge, one now becomes an influencer by merely declaring oneself an influencer (a readymade) - and Warhol's 15 minutes of fame dictum is more accurate than ever in the social media era.<br />
<br />
Parody is, of course, distinct from pastiche.<br />
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Compromise is often thought to be in play when ideas have things taken OUT, but sometimes the most dangerous compromises are the things you put IN. <br />
<br />
It can be the difference between an ok SuperBowl spot and what was nearly THE greatest SuperBowl spot of all time.<br />
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</style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-31389473584627323912019-01-31T13:02:00.001+11:002019-02-04T13:46:44.687+11:00i can't see much of a future unless we find out what's to blame, what a shame.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The journalist Paul Morley said <i>'Buzzcocks came from the better side of punk, the bands who were aware of things like Faust and Can.'</i><br />
<br />
He wasn't wrong.<br />
<br />
By early 1976, and after building his own <i>oscillator</i> from scratch, Bolton Institute of Technology engineering student Pete Shelley had already completed a whole 'album' of experimental synth music, inspired by his love of Kraftwerk and other <i>krautrock</i> bands.<br />
<br />
It was there that he first met Howard Devoto who was looking for someone to soundtrack an art movie he’d made. Howard was studying philosophy down the road.<br />
<br />
Both Pete and Howard were avid NME readers and after reading a small review of relatively unknown London band, Sex Pistols, and inspired by a quote in the piece attributed to Pistols guitarist Steve Jones ('we're not into music, we're into chaos'), the new friends booked a small room at Manchester Free Trade Hall and invited the Pistols to play. This event June 1976 has gone down in history as 'the gig that changed the world' (among the 30 or 40 misfits in the audience were future members of Joy Division/New Order, The Smiths and The Fall.)<br />
<br />
The day after the show the pair immediately formed Buzzcocks and booked the Pistols to play again six weeks later with their own combo as support. At the second gig the hall was full to its 150 capacity.<br />
<br />
The rest is history, of course.<br />
<br />
Billy Bragg once remarked that if everyone who claimed to have seen the Pistols in '76 really had they would have sold out a month at Wembley Stadium rather than a few one-nighters at assorted Soho strip clubs. Correspondingly, if everyone who claimed to be at one of the Manchester shows had attended it would have been a week of sell-outs at the G-Mex.<br />
<br />
(If every ad planner and marketer who claim in-depth knowledge of Ehrenberg-Bass principles had bought '<i>How Brands Grow</i>' then I reckon Byron and co would be kicking back on a private island next to the ones occupied by Richard Branson and assorted retired Bond villains rather than still pursuing their academic careers.)<br />
<br />
Paul Morley is also on record as claiming ‘I remember delightedly screaming, <i>“This is like...Ornette Coleman!”</i> when I went to see the early Buzzcocks play.'<br />
<div>
<br />
(But he was now just being a bit silly, albeit setting the tone for much of his subsequent writing.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
Shelley’s iconic <i>deliberately inane</i> minimal two-note guitar solo in <i>Boredom</i> (from Buzzcocks debut EP <i>Spiral Scratch</i>) was pretty <i>conceptual. </i><br />
<br />
The solo consisted of just two notes repeated 66 times, ending with a single <i>modulated seventh</i>. One suspects that it was this last flourish that Morley interpreted as the <i>free-jazz</i> component.</div>
<br />
Pete played a Starway, a cheap Japanese brand of guitars sold in department stores. </div>
<div>
A rudimentary instrument, the Starway featured just one pickup and two control dials for volume and tone.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Shelley is said to have bought his in a Manchester branch of Woolworths. </div>
<div>
(While the guitars were sold there, Pete actually acquired his one - second-hand - in a charity shop.)<br />
<br />
To be more exact, the four tracks on '<i>...Scratch</i>' were recorded using just TWO-THIRDS of a Starway.<br />
<br />
Pete had accidentally smashed his axe into two pieces during a rehearsal.<br />
<br />
The top part of the body snapped off but the guitar was still totally playable, and so continued to be his main tool until the band had a few hits and he could afford to upgrade to the (only marginally more sophisticated) Gibson Marauder.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If inspiring the DIY punk <i>revolution</i> with only two-thirds of a guitar was not minimal enough for you, Shelley's engineering chops learned back at Bolton Tech came in handy.<br />
<br />
It's often been said that creativity can be propelled by constraints - even if the limits are artificial.<br />
<br />
He rewired the insides of the Starway to bypass the volume and tone dials, sending the pickup direct to the jack - it was now two-thirds of a guitar with only ONE sound. It was a pretty good sound, though.</div>
<div>
<br />
The economist Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher once coined the term <i>appropriate technology. </i>Meaning the 'simplest level of technology that can achieve the intended purpose'.<br />
<br />
Simplicity has never been a bad idea.<br />
<br />
In a world of applied <i>appropriate advertising technology</i>, most of the links in our complicated and bloated demand/supply chain - SSPs, DSPs, exchanges, third-party verification systems and various proprietary reporting mechanisms - wouldn’t even have a business. They wouldn't exist.<br />
<br />
So-called 'safety' tech vendors have even more mysterious incentives given that they DEPEND on the continued existence of botnets, domain-spoofers and malware fraudsters for their own business model.<br />
<br />
But when every step in a web ad 'value' chain is deliberately opaque, they all do to some extent.<br />
A cynic would call it a cynical exercise in deliberate obfuscation.<br />
<br />
The funny thing is that we think we know how this advertising technology demand/supply chain works, and the more available information we have, the more our confidence grows.<br />
<br />
This is the Illusion of Explanatory Depth (or IOED) - the persistent illusion people have that we know more about more than we actually do. IOED was coined in 2002 by cognitive scientists Rozenblit and Keil.<br />
<br />
Rozenblit and Keil asked people to rate their knowledge of how mundane mechanisms worked – things like zippers, refrigerators and toilets.<br />
<br />
Respondents rated their comprehension highly, but when pressed to explain their understanding, they tended to fail miserably.<br />
Or the technological sophistication inherent to the adtech paradigm offers a <i>veneer of profundity</i>.<br />
An illusion of explanatory depth.<br />
<br />
As the old adage goes; where there's a mystery, there's a margin.</div>
<div>
<br />
Fritz Schumacher also famously said; <i>'Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.'</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
But as the number of businesses between advertisers and publisher the advertiser grows - all claiming to do <i>something</i> - and 70 cents in every dollar gets eaten up by whatever that something is, we've never been further from <i>sending the pickup direct to the jack</i>.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But, you know the scene - very humdrum.<br />
<div>
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<i>These people 'round here,<br />Were beat down, eyes sunk in smoke dried faces,<br />They're resigned to what their fate is,<br />But not us, no never - no not us, no never,</i><br />
<i>We are far too young(ish) and clever...</i><br />
<br />
You're probably<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><i>au fait</i> with the ‘10,000 hours’ theory popularised by Malcolm Gladwell.<br />
<div>
<br />
In one example from his bestselling book <i>Outliers</i>, Gladwell asserts that getting in 10,000 plus hours of practice in the relative obscurity of Hamburg strip joints between 1960 and '62 helped the Beatles to propel - fully formed and honed - to <i>the toppermost of the poppermost</i> in 1963.<br />
<br />
Dexy’s too, I don't know if they are known to Malcy although he is on record as being a bit of an Anglophile and a fan of Billy Bragg and Elvis Costello.<br />
<br />
Dexys Midnight Runners were formed in 1978 in by fellow Brummies Kevin Rowland and Kevin Archer from the remnants of punk band the Killjoys. Their first single hit the UK top 40 in '79 representing a transformation from one chord wonders to sophisticated soulsters in less than 12 months.<br />
<br />
The band's name was derived from <i>Dexedrine</i>, a brand of dextroamphetamine. 'Speed' pills popular with dancers at Northern Soul all-nighters. Presumably, strategic usage would have been useful in enabling Dexy’s to get their 10,000 hours in a bit quicker.<br />
<br />
This is entirely plausible. Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols claimed to have learned guitar this way. Going from scratch to developing his unique power-chord style and recording the first Pistols demos in about 3 months by playing along - in marathon amphetamine assisted all day sessions - to the first New York Dolls album and the Stooges <i>Raw Power</i>.<br />
<br />
Gladwell’s piece was based on the research of K. Anders Ericsson, a Swedish psychologist and professor at Florida State University.<br />
<br />
Ericsonn specialises in the science of peak performance and, while probably grateful for the exposure Gladwell gave his work, is careful to add that not just any old practice counts towards the 10,000-hour rule.<br />
<br />
It has to be deliberate, dedicated time spent focusing on improvement.<br />
<br />
For Ericsonn, <i>deliberate practice</i> means getting outside of your ‘comfort zone’ and pushing yourself to improve beyond your current abilities.<br />
<br />
This is important because just being able to competently reproduce skills you’ve already mastered might feel good, but it’s not enough to make you get better.<br />
<br />
But what happens physically, as we learn?<br />
<br />
As it processes information, your brain makes connections growing and strengthening the synapses that connect neurons. Making new connections and breaking old ones.<br />
<br />
But once a circuit is made, it needs to be used if it is going to stick around.<br />
<br />
This physical process is myelination - the process whereby a circuit that is stimulated enough times grows a covering of membrane called myelin.<br />
<br />
The wrapping of myelin increases conduction speed, making the circuit work more efficiently. The more the circuit gets exercised, the more it wraps and the stronger the connection becomes.<br />
<br />
What, then, is the best way to learn things and retain them?<br />
<br />
Deliberate practice, focused attention and actively recalling the learning causes your brain to strengthen the new connections as does linking new bits of information to what you already know.<br />
<br />
There’s a great myth – mostly perpetuated by youngsters - that we stop learning as we age. There’s no physiological reason why this should happen.<br />
<br />
It’s more likely that many people just spend less time learning new stuff as they get older, and even when we do, we maybe don't do it with the same enthusiasm as we did when we were younger, so the neural connections don’t get made, the myelin doesn’t wrap. Too-rye-ay.<br />
<br />
Ageing can also bring about the loss of some brain tissue, but this may have more to do with lack of exercise. Regular physical exercise has been shown to increase the size of the hippocampus area of the brain - crucial for learning and memory – in people of all ages, improving connectivity and making it easier for new things to stick.<br />
<br />
Keeping that in mind, it makes sense of the new look adopted by Dexy’s mk2 of 1981-82, a move away from the young soul rebel ‘street cleaner/docker’ chic to the <i>Rocky</i> garb that included hooded tops, boxing boots and a corresponding strict fitness regime.<br />
<br />
Kevin had the band working out together and running to the recording studio for 8am starts.<br />
The band would also do group exercise sessions before shows and needless to say, alchohol and recreational pharmaceuticals were also strictly <i>verboten</i>.<br />
<br />
Whilst not exactly textbook rock’n’roll behaviour the now ripped mk2 band shortly went on to produce - via another costume change, this time to an Okie farmhand/Irish gypsy hybrid - the gazillion-selling <i>Too-Rye-Ay</i> album and global number one hit <i>Come On Eileen</i>, at the same time pushing their sound into a new genre-defying combination of horns and fiddles driven <i>blue-eyed-soul</i> and <i>celtic-folk </i>crossover.<br />
<br />
As far as science knows, no brain has ever run out of hard-drive space.<br />
<br />
But some neuroscientists do agree on another reason cognitive skills may often slow down with age, not because the brain deteriorates, or fills up, but because it does need the occasional <i>defrag</i>.<br />
<br />
So probably just as important as continuing to push yourself and your learning to develop new skills, is having a clear out of the crap you don’t need.<br />
<br />
Come on myelin.<br />
<br />
In this business that's probably never a bad idea. Even better, start young.<br />
<br />
<i>Keep quoting Cabaret, Berlin, Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Duchamp, Beauvoir<br />Kerouac, Kierkegaard, Michael Rennie,<br />And I don't believe you really like Frank Sinatra...</i><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-9961297308425268902018-12-24T17:02:00.000+11:002018-12-24T17:02:35.502+11:00when those blue snowflakes start falling<iframe width="460" height="215" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FU9FJj4-xBM" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><br><br>
Merry Christmas from Never Get Out Of The Boat.<br><br>
Extra special thanks to everyone who bought <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-All-Wrong-Advertising/dp/1544901054/">my book</a> this year.<br><br>
Watch out for the new one coming in early 2019.<br><br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-16236409527290000902018-12-04T12:01:00.002+11:002018-12-07T11:23:23.885+11:00is it art?A couple of New York-based Russian artists, Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid conducted a ‘conceptual' art experiment back in the mid-1990s.<br />
<br />
To begin, they appointed market researchers Martila & Kiley Inc to conduct surveys on aesthetic preferences and tastes in painting in over a dozen countries.<br />
<br />
The goal was to find out what a ‘people's art' might look like. When the results of these surveys came in the dynamic duo would make the paintings to reflect the results. The resulting artworks were billed as ‘Most Wanted'. In contrast, they also produced paintings to reflect the ‘least wanted'.<br />
<br />
Melamid described their concept for the project in this way:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>In a way it was a traditional idea, because faith in numbers is fundamental to people, starting with Plato's view of a world which is based on numbers.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i> In ancient Greece, when sculptors wanted to create an ideal human body, they measured the most beautiful men and women and then made an average measurement, and that's how they described the ideal of beauty and how the most beautiful sculpture was created. In a way, this is the same thing; in principle, it's nothing new.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>It's interesting: we believe in numbers, and numbers never lie. Numbers are innocent. It's absolutely true data. It doesn't say anything about personalities, but it says something more about ideals, and about how this world functions. That's really the truth, as much as we can get to the truth. Truth is a number.</i></blockquote>
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In just about every country, the favourite – the most wanted - was some kind of landscape featuring a few human figures going about their business, some animals in the foreground, with a big blue sky and some coastline or a path extending into the distance, and some water - a river, the sea or a lake.<br />
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(Just about every country wanted this - only the Italians deviated slightly, although the ideal was still heavily figurative.)<br />
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And almost universally rejected – the least wanted - were abstract compositions, featuring geometric or angular shapes. That's not to say non-figurative or non-narrative painting although can't still be appealing. Humans have a permanent innate taste for virtuoso displays. Spectacular giant Pollock's or the Rothko room at the Tate, for example. Rothko was influenced by Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library in Florence.<br />
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But science still has no agreed explanation for why anyone should claim to enjoy 'conceptual' art, 'installations' or participating in art-speak. Some kind of pretentious trait counter-signaling is likely.<br />
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The disappointed artists remarked ‘in looking for freedom, we found slavery.’<br />
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Really?<br />
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Of course, one of the great mysteries of art is why it even exists in the first place.<br />
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Although every culture draws and paints, dances, sings, makes music and tells stories the origins of human aesthetics are still mostly a puzzle.<br />
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But the origins of visual art might be a wee bit clearer.<br />
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As our Russian friends found out, across all cultures humans tend to prefer representations - visual experiences - depicting environments where they have; a vista - an advantage in height, there is an open terrain, diverse vegetation and a nearby body of water. Because a landscape such as this was ideal survive-and-thrive habitat for our ancestors who lived on the African Savannah.<br />
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This doesn’t sound much like modern cities, of course.<br />
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Although it does explain the price of an apartment in a block overlooking Central Park in New York or Hyde Park in London – there’s a nice one on <a href="https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-76109300.html">Bayswater Road on the market today for 18.5 million.</a><br />
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Some problems in the modern workplace may also result from this kind of mismatch.<br />
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An evolutionary mismatch occurs when evolved traits or mechanisms that were once advantageous become maladaptive due to changes in the environment, particularly when environmental change happens fast.<br />
Most of human evolution took place in hunter-gatherer groups of 50-150 individuals that worked together to find food and protect the village.<br />
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There was no middle-management, HR departments, unconscious bias training, or strategy away-days. There was not even any real distinction between work and life.<br />
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If you look around the typical modern office if there's virtually no greenery and it's challenging to get sunlight (windows don't count, you need to actually get outside in the sun for at least half an hour a day).<br />
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Vitamin D deficiency is a huge problem, even in countries like Australia, where I live.<br />
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Goodness knows what the situation is like in places inside the Arctic circle, like parts of Sweden and Finland where it’s basically dark for 6 months of the year.<br />
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Our psychology - and our physiology - are still primarily aligned for the Pleistocene era, but we're in an environment that's very different.<br />
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Lush green landscape and blue skies are an innate, evolved preference, present in human nature since that time, the two million or so years during which modern human beings evolved.<br />
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Apparently, Arthur Danto, a Columbia University philosopher and postmodern art theorist, suggested that the results of the ‘Most Wanted’ experiment were a product of the hideous worldwide 'calendar' industry (reproductions, poster shops etc) – toeing the cultural relativism party line, he means our tastes (as uneducated plebs) in art are purely a product of social construction or ‘culturisation’.<br />
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But the calendar industry [sic] has not conspired to influence taste, but rather any success it has experienced is because it caters to universal, deep-rooted, prehistoric, innate human preferences. Aesthetic taste is an evolutionary trait, and is shaped by natural selection.<br />
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Something we’d do well to remember in the advertising business, from time to time.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-6818306754650560022018-11-27T15:55:00.003+11:002018-11-27T15:55:46.281+11:00beware of the semi-attached figureWhat can you do if you need to convince someone of something, but you don’t have proper evidence?<br /><br />One simple way is to demonstrate something else to be true and then just pretend it’s the same thing.<br /><br />In statistics, this trick is known as the ‘semi-attached figure’.<br /><br />Simply pick a couple of things that sound kind of the same – though they aren’t (this is the important point) – and make a comparison between them to validate your conclusion.<br /><br />An everyday example would be the number of reports that contrast hours spent TV viewing with hours spent on the internet, as though those activities were the same thing.<br /><br />One reputable market research firm recently tried to convince an audience I was in about the popularity of a particular on-demand Aussie TV channel.<br /><br />‘Who is watching?’ they asked. ‘Well, 90% of viewers are aware of the service!”.<br /><br />Sounds impressive, however, awareness of the existence of something is not the same as usage of the service.<br /><br />It has long been a common tactic of persuasion to cite information that initially seems to uphold an assertion, but upon closer inspection is pretty much irrelevant to the actual claim.<br /><br />This means stating one thing as a proof for something else.<br /><br />For example, if some report claims says ‘85% of CEOs think that Blockchain will change the way their organisations do marketing by 2020”– what does that actually prove?<br /><br />This implies that CEOs are some sort of authority on the application of Blockchain technology.<br /><br />Or marketing.<br /><br />There’s no shortage of reports showing the decline of advertising spends on printed news.<br /><br />The implication is that advertisers should spend more on whatever the alternative is that’s being sold.<br /><br />Of course, a decline in advertising spend does not necessarily mean a decline in readership.<br /><br />When dealing with any ‘evidence’ of this nature, ask yourself how the evidence specifically proves the claim. Could there be alternative explanations that would make the claim false?<br /><br />If the evidence isn’t necessarily relevant to the conclusion then you are probably dealing with a semi-attached figure.<br /><br /><br />(Note: For more fun with statistics I always recommend <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728/">'How To Lie With Statistics'</a> by Darrel Huff, first published in 1954.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-8562192054486250252018-11-27T15:52:00.001+11:002018-11-27T15:52:36.110+11:00tinbergen's four questionsThe Dutch ethologist and ornithologist, Nikolaas Tinbergen - along with colleagues Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz - received the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for their 'discoveries concerning organisation and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns'. Essentially kickstarting our understanding of the innate properties of animal behaviour.<br /><br />Alongside this accolade, Tinbergen’s most famous contribution to science is the ‘four questions’ framework, originally posed in his 1963 article ‘<i>On Aims and Methods of Ethology</i>’.<br /><br />This simple framework goes a long way towards explaining how and why any animal exhibits a behaviour, and was instrumental in putting the nature vs nurture debate to bed once and for all. The model shows how all behaviour (and all traits) are products of complicated interactions between genes and the environment.<br /><br />Tinbergen and his colleagues argued that any analysis must address four aspects of a trait: how it works, what function it serves, how it develops, and its evolutionary history.<br /><br />Although not posited as explicitly evolutionary, Tinbergen’s Four Questions - as they have since come to be known - detail the basic considerations a researcher should want to make. And they still hold.<br /><br />(Ethologists tended to focus on observable behaviour and so didn't go deep into the psychological mechanisms, that came later as areas of ethology morphed into evolutionary psychology.)<br /><br />The four questions are grouped under two headings.<br /><br />Proximate questions.<div>
1. What are the mechanisms? - how does the behaviour get elicited, what signals or primes are required, and which pathways within the organism are involved?<div>
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<br />2. How does it develop? - how does the behaviour change with age, experience and environment?<br /><br />Ultimate questions.</div>
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3. Why did it evolve? - how did evolution and earlier generations/species contribute to this particular behaviour?</div>
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<br />4. Why did this behaviour help the organism/species survive/reproduce?<br /><br />To illustrate how this framework can be applied, think of the last time you stuffed a Big Mac into your face. What was the decision process behind that?<br /><br />Was I hungry? Perhaps it was just convenient? I had a hangover? Or it’s a treat every now and again?<br /><br />These kinds of explanations for behaviour operate at the proximate level.<br /><br />These causes point to relatively up-close and immediately present influences—to what you are presently feeling or thinking or a plausible story you tell yourself.<br /><br />Yes, proximate reasons are important, but they tell only tell part of the story.<br /><br />Proximate reasons don't address the broader question of why Big Macs are appealing in the first place.<br /><br />Understanding the deeper reasons for preferences and behaviour requires an ultimate explanation.<br /><br />Ultimate explanations focus not on the relatively immediate triggers of behaviour, but on its evolutionary function.<br /><br />In the Big Mac scenario, humans have psychological mechanisms that respond positively to the sight, smell, and taste of foods rich in sugars and fats.<br /><br />These mechanisms exist because an attraction to these kinds of foods helped our ancestors obtain calories and survive in an environment that where they were often scarce.<br /><br />So whereas the proximate reasons you bought a Big Mac may be many and varied, the ultimate cause is that a desire for sugary and fatty foods helped solve the critical evolutionary challenge of survival in the ancestral environment.<br /><br />McDonald's, Burger King and KFC have become some of the biggest brands in the world and wield colossal global advertising budgets. However, it's no accident that they got there selling burgers, fried chicken and milkshakes rather than salad.<br /><br />Market researchers, like social scientists, have typically been concerned with the proximate influences on behaviour.<br /><br />Moreover, anything masquerading as insight asserting that people generally want to experience pleasure or happiness, and to avoid pain or sadness is just banal.<br /><br />However, an evolutionary perspective highlights that there is a deeper level of explanation rooted in the adaptive function of behaviour.<br /><br />This is a useful lens through which to look at motivation because while there could be any amount of proximate motives for a given behaviour and many goals people pursue, there is a much smaller set of ultimate evolutionary functions that behaviour might serve.<br /><br />These functions are almost certain to be connected to recurrent adaptive problems that our ancestors would have faced. And as they are rooted deep in our long evolutionary history, they can shape all stages of consumer journeys and decision-making processes.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-11835433013355996742018-11-27T14:18:00.001+11:002018-11-27T14:18:16.340+11:00the reverse naturalistic fallacyThe naturalistic fallacy, as outlined by Scottish philosopher David Hume, is the leap from <i>is to ought</i>.<div>
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The tendency to believe that what <i>is</i>, is good; therefore what <i>is</i>, is what ought to be. <br /><br />The moralistic fallacy, is the opposite. It refers to making the leap from <i>ought</i> to <i>is</i>. The claim that the way things <i>should be</i> is the way they <i>are</i>. <br /><br />This is sometimes called the <i>reverse naturalistic fallacy</i>.<br /><br />For example, take some randomly selected Simon Sinek platitude like this:<div>
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‘Great companies don't hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them’.<br /><br />Or how about:</div>
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‘The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.’<br /><br />This kind of glibness falls squarely into the <i>reverse naturalistic</i> bucket, which makes them great Linkedin fodder for the mass of <i>suckers</i>. <br /><br />Nice ideas. But just because that’s the way things ought to be doesn’t mean it’s anything like the way things really are.</div>
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Outside of Simon’s world, for most people the reality of their jobs is what the anarchist philosopher David Graeber calls ‘the shift towards an immaterial economy that creates large numbers of jobs without an obvious social value that are often experienced as being purposeless and empty by their occupants.’<br /><br />Sinek himself is no <i>sucker</i>, of course. I’d kill for one-tenth of his book sales.<br /><br /><br /><br /><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;} @font-face {font-family:Georgia; panose-1:2 4 5 2 5 4 5 2 3 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:647 0 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --> </style></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-21517457372289782032018-10-19T09:47:00.000+11:002018-10-22T09:52:04.365+11:00magic<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixMKJhds6TcyoNGnTha95juQsxVhrPfJjnLRjwOaIoxFeFodzFZV8jQ8nBNBXxXmOrdGnhguW2q7V0G9s5W1ALpEoYHSaYZUumLJA6YdWk-VCLL1ltZ2_cDimrvJcGfMPs_ozr/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-10-19+at+12.33.04+PM.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" data-original-height="399" data-original-width="820" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixMKJhds6TcyoNGnTha95juQsxVhrPfJjnLRjwOaIoxFeFodzFZV8jQ8nBNBXxXmOrdGnhguW2q7V0G9s5W1ALpEoYHSaYZUumLJA6YdWk-VCLL1ltZ2_cDimrvJcGfMPs_ozr/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-10-19+at+12.33.04+PM.png" width="400" /></a><br />
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Magical thinking can be simply described as the assigning of patterns and causation to events where those patterns and causation don’t actually exist. </div>
One of the main reasons psychologists give for why people engage in magical thinking is that it can give a sense of security – a feeling that one possesses some special knowledge about how to influence outcomes that would normally be out of one’s control.<br />
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Sometimes it’s just a bit of fun, of course.<br />
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The philosopher Daniel Dennett has this anecdote about his friend the theologian Lee Siegel.<br />
Siegel has published a number of papers and books on Indian religion and culture including this 1991 book on Indian street magic, <i>Net of Magic: Wonders and Deceptions in India</i>.<br />
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Siegel explains that when he told people he was writing a book on magic, he was often asked “Is it a book about <i>real magic</i>?”<br />
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By 'real magic' of course, people mean ‘miracles’ and acts involving ‘supernatural powers’.<br />
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Seigel would answer, ‘No, the book is about conjuring tricks, rope tricks, snake charming, illusions etc. Not real magic.'<br />
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So when people say ‘Real magic’, that really refers to the kind of magic that is <i>not</i> real.<br />
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Magic that cannot be done.<br />
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Whilst the magic that is real - the kind of magic that CAN actually be done - is not ‘real magic’.<br />
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It’s a trick.<br />
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‘Real magic’ is miraculous, a <i>violation of the laws of nature</i>.<br />
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Yet many people still want to believe in real magic.<br />
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A strange compulsion to believe in ‘real magic’ affects many people when the topic is advertising and brands.<br />
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This magical thinking assigns patterns and causation to events where patterns and causation do not exist.<br />
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Arthur C Clarke famously observed that 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'.<br />
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But did he mean ‘real magic’? Or the kind of magic that can be done?<br />
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My good friend Mark Earls proposed, <a href="https://herd.typepad.com/files/big_data_not_magic_data.pdf" target="_blank">back in 2013</a>, that we should try substituting the word 'Magic' for 'Big' in Big Data.<br />
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<i>‘…if we only master Magic Data, it will make us all-powerful; the sword of Magic Data will banish all evils.’</i><br />
<i><br /></i> Magic data is now inexorably linked to <i>magic </i>AI and <i>magic </i>machine learning.<br />
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Not to mention the enduring popularity of other ‘magical’ things like content marketing, influencers, the enduring cult of ‘Lovemarks’, and a multitude of other maladies.</div>
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(I've been a proponent of applied behavioural economics and suchlike in recent years, however even invoking <i>cognitive biases</i> has now taken on 'magical' properties. More on that in another post.)<br />
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Gossage's observations in 1960-odd seem prophetic, now.<br />
<i><br /></i> <i>‘Advertising…is constantly being lured into seemingly allied fields that have little to do with its unique talents and often interfere with them. … But there is one job it does well that no other communication form does at all: the controlled propagation of an idea with a defined objective though paid space.’</i><br />
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One reason that we can tend to engage in magical thinking is that it gives a small feeling of security in our professional lives. That we have special knowledge about how to influence outcomes. </div>
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Magical thinking is really about anxiety reduction.<br />
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But there is, of course, a kind of magic that CAN be done - namely, make something creative and interesting and put it in places where people will see it - <i>the controlled propagation of an idea with a defined objective.</i><br />
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Or if you prefer the 2018 version, it's what <a href="http://effworks.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/MEDIA_IN_FOCUS_FINAL_PDF_909.pdf" target="_blank">Binet and Field call the virtuous circle</a>.</div>
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'... creating consistently great creative content over several years and promoting it heavily through massive exposure in paid advertising media... [the] paid media helps generate earned media, which then amplifies the effect of paid media, creating a virtuous circle of rising fame and increasing effectiveness.'<br />
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It might not be '<i>real magic'</i> but, when it works, it’s magic nonetheless.<br />
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<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="215" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0dSvrZiX2Z0" width="460"></iframe><br />
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<i>'Trust none of what you hear,<br />And less of what you see'</i><br />
<i><br /></i> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Helvetica Neue"; panose-1:2 0 5 3 0 0 0 2 0 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-452984065 1342208475 16 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"0\.£œ˛"; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-alt:Calibri; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --> </style></div>
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Brands are complex abstractions.<br />
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Advertising had made it possible for consumers to make some sense of these complex abstractions.<br />
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But because the concept of <i>what-is-advertising</i> has now been twisted out of recognition – principally by the emergence of highly targeted surveillance-fuelled direct response, content-factories, influencers [sic] etc etc - the NEW ‘advertising’ (ie the abandonment of any conventional ideas of originality, creativity in favour of pastiche and mediocrity - bearing a <i>resemblance</i> to advertising ) cannot fulfil this need.<br />
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And now, because people have started to ignore and block this kind of advertising, they don't remember, or credit, the role advertising performed in culture, when it used to BE advertising.<br />
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And more worrying is this.<br />
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<b>As it becomes more and more accepted that this new definition of advertising IS the advertising, we are failing to distinguish between what is real advertising and what are, in fact, the products of the destroyers of advertising.</b><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073786111 1 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --> </style></div>
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<style type="text/css"> p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 9.5px Helvetica; color: #484848} </style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-34402785437830735152018-07-24T09:36:00.001+10:002018-07-24T09:36:53.330+10:00a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown<i>'A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation -- or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown.'</i><br />
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Ayn Rand, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Who-Needs-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451138937" target="_blank">Philosophy: Who Needs It?</a> 1984<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-73925043692612844282018-07-06T13:43:00.000+10:002018-07-09T13:04:36.058+10:00death by 6,000 nibbles<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Yellow Tang is a brightly colored fish that swims in the tropical reefs of the Indian Ocean.<br />
<br />
When it needs cleaned, the tang looks for its pal, the Cleaner Wrasse who can be recognised by its bright electric blue colour and black stripe that runs down the length of its body. <br />
<br />
Cleaner Wrasses hang around in 'cleaning stations'. Agencies in the reef.<br />
<br />
The Wrasse is given access to the Tang’s gills and mouth, and then it eats any parasites and dead tissue off larger fishes' skin in a <i>mutualistic</i> relationship that provides food and protection for the wrasse, and considerable health benefits for the Tang. A reciprocal situation.<br />
<br />
And so in order to gain access, the Cleaner Wrasse must first perform a <i>secret dance</i> – a special ‘code’ - in order to win the Tang’s trust.<br />
<br />
This system normally works out fine, the symbiosis between two species, both partners are indispensable and the mutual advantage is obvious. <br />
<br />
But there’s some other fish that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimicry">mimic</a> Cleaner Wrasses. For example, a species of Blenny called <i>Aspidontus Taeniatus</i> has evolved the same behavior.<br />
<br />
It is almost identical in size and appearance to the Cleaner Wrasse. It even sports the same shiny stripe down its back and lurks around near the same reefs watching.<br />
<br />
If approached by a Yellow Tang, the deceptive Blenny also knows the code. <br />
<br />
The secret dance.<br />
<br />
But once allowed in, instead of providing a cleaning service, the rogue Blenny uses its super sharp teeth to rip chunks of flesh from the hapless client. <br />
<br />
Rather than <i>ridding his client</i> of parasites, Blenny IS the parasite. But in disguise. <br />
<br />
The murky world of advertising technology [sic] contains many similar parasites, well adept at making themselves appear to be useful.<br />
<br />
They look a bit like <i>something to do with advertising</i>, they can talk a language that’s a bit like<i> the language of advertising</i>. They know the code, which kinds of <i>secret dances</i> will get them access to the big fish.<br />
<br />
And there’s lots of them.<br />
<br />
This year’s <a href="https://chiefmartec.com/2018/04/marketing-technology-landscape-supergraphic-2018/" target="_blank">chiefmartec.com adtech ‘lumascape’ graphic</a> actually charts 6,829 marketing technology solutions from 6,242 unique marketing technology vendors.<br />
<br />
While that represents ‘just’ 27% growth from 2017’s total (5,381) solutions, the percentage of growth the scale and velocity of this space is staggering.<br />
<br />
<b>In fact, the size of the 2018 landscape is equivalent to all of the marketing tech landscapes from 2011 through 2016 added together. Indeed, in 2011 they numbered just 150.</b><br />
<br />
All of them having a nibble. All of them getting a chunk.<br />
<br />
Where does all the money go? <br />
<br />
Some of these companies are legit.<br />
<br />
Some of the money may even find its way back into the industry, somehow.<br />
<br />
But once you let them in, they keep biting.<br />
And there are so many it’s hard to see how they can be kept out.<style>
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Then it's death by 6,000 nibbles.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-43641898473263785372018-06-29T10:11:00.001+10:002018-06-29T10:11:08.471+10:00adaptive<div>
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<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>'All over the country, we want a new direction,</i><br />
<i>I said all over this land, we need a reaction,</i><br />
<i>Well there should be a youth explosion,</i><br />
<i>Inflate creation,</i><br />
<i>But something we can command,</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>What's the point in saying destroy?</i><br />
<i>I want a new life for everywhere,</i><br />
<i>We want a direction, all over the country,</i><br />
<i>I said I want a reaction, all over this land,</i><br />
<i>You g-got to get up and move it, a youth explosion,</i><br />
<i>Because this is your last chance,</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><b>Can't dismiss what is gone before,</b></i><br />
<i><b>But there's foundations for us to explore,</b></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>All around the world I've been looking for a new'</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
The 19 year old Paul Weller intuitively knew something of adaptive leadership.<br />
<br />
Adaptive leadership is about change that enables <b>the capacity to thrive</b>. <br />
<br />
Adaptive change interventions <b>build on the past rather than jettison it. </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Organizational change happens through <b>ex-peri-ment-ation</b>. <br />
<br />
Adaptive leadership values <b>diversity of views.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
New adaptations have the potential of significantly displacing, re-regulating, and rearranging old structures.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-89799628506975269872018-06-27T14:56:00.002+10:002018-06-27T17:07:49.166+10:00successful adaptations are both conservative and progressive<i>'Successful adaptive changes build on the past rather than jettison it. <br /><br />In biological adaptations, though DNA changes may radically expand the species’ capacity to thrive, the actual amount of DNA that changes is minuscule. <br /><br />More than 98 percent of our current DNA is the same as that of a chimpanzee: it took less than a 2 percent change of our evolutionary predecessors’ genetic blueprint to give humans extraordinary range and ability. <br /><br /><b>A challenge for adaptive leadership, then, is to engage people in distinguishing what is essential to preserve from their organization’s heritage from what is expendable. </b><br /><br />Successful adaptations are thus both conservative and progressive. <br /><br />They make the best possible use of previous wisdom and know-how. <br /><br />The most effective leadership anchors change in the values, competencies, and strategic orientations that should endure in the organization.'</i><br />
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky | <i>The Practice of Adaptive Leadership:
Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World </i>| 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-57784757222485055182018-06-27T12:52:00.001+10:002018-06-28T10:33:07.830+10:00nothing cooks without some heat<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In his autobiography Miles Davis tells a story about the 1970 line-up of his touring band - this was the band that featured on the live half of the <i>Live-Evil</i> album - the one that featured the legendary Keith Jarrett on keys and briefly included the equally legendary Gary Bartz on sax. <br />
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Bartz had been grumbling a bit in private about Jarrett over-playing 'busy shit' behind his sax solos. Eventually he approached Miles and asked him to have a word with Kieth.<br />
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Miles agreed.<br />
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Later Keith Jarrett was talking with Miles about some other bits and pieces and as he was leaving Miles calls Keith back to tell him how much Gary Bartz was loving what he was doing behind his sax solos and could he please do even more of that kind of of thing.<br />
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Cookin' with Miles. <br />
Nothing cooks without some heat.<br />
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</style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15100665.post-47602074934414471432018-06-04T11:59:00.003+10:002019-02-27T15:24:00.202+11:00prestige intelligence and the transcendent selfThe philosopher Daniel Dennett recalls the time computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum – a good friend of Dennett’s – harboured his own ideas and ambition about becoming a philosopher.<br />
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Weizenbaum had recounted how one evening, after ‘holding forth with high purpose and furrowed brow at the dinner table’, his young daughter had exclaimed, <i>‘Wow! Dad just said a ‘deepity!’</i><br />
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Dennett was suitably impressed – with the coinage, not necessarily his friend’s ambitions in the philosophy department – and subsequently adopted ‘deepity’ as a categorising device and explains correct usage like this.<br />
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<b>‘A deepity is a proposition that seems both important and true— and profound— but that achieves this effect by being ambiguous.’</b><br />
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Pictured below is some expensively produced promotional collateral given to attendees of an ‘upfronts’ type showcase from an Australian media organization that we attended recently.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg091oqUlxRbEdknNoIaXDvyZG6ed4OMGHTN0VDrmilznJ1XDtMfQ9luVPyMstBOvvRfYLp09m1rSGOx2t57IP1mZp1ozHQu6HqH4UXEvIhG1ux6U1KonRZKWYdxTSaAvvamze6/s1600/image1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1148" data-original-width="1600" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg091oqUlxRbEdknNoIaXDvyZG6ed4OMGHTN0VDrmilznJ1XDtMfQ9luVPyMstBOvvRfYLp09m1rSGOx2t57IP1mZp1ozHQu6HqH4UXEvIhG1ux6U1KonRZKWYdxTSaAvvamze6/s400/image1.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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Deepity indeed. ‘Disruptive collaboration' is a favourite but all seem to fit Dennett’s description perfectly.<br />
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Strangely out-of-place is the final card promising ‘commercial solutions’. How dull in its pragmatism and downright usefulness.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifNyQ4lAbtkmm3Hlt6wSD5d7HhGZNYdMNlIOVCZXEicWyPH6v1YqjccyzT5MVteB4jSlaF0gikdOXGWHngy3LKXSf3h7xfQJh7mH0Dd75DIy9sJyfnqYbCkNP5Qf2V0D4tYoli/s1600/image2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="817" data-original-width="1600" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifNyQ4lAbtkmm3Hlt6wSD5d7HhGZNYdMNlIOVCZXEicWyPH6v1YqjccyzT5MVteB4jSlaF0gikdOXGWHngy3LKXSf3h7xfQJh7mH0Dd75DIy9sJyfnqYbCkNP5Qf2V0D4tYoli/s400/image2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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