brands and smelly fridges...

In my strand of psychotherapy there is a concept called a "condition of worth" - a framework to understand psychological distress. It is understood that if left unquestioned - they can distort a person's sense of self. Knocking them out of shape psychologically.

In formative years - and beyond - other peoples' values and scales of merit are often foisted on us - sometimes we're conscious of them - sometimes not. Sometimes they are useful - in as much as they resonate with our own, core beliefs. If we internalize those that don't sit with us however - then it is said we have adopted a "condition of worth".

"Oh Jonny, you’re brilliant at football" (when Jonny is actually a bit crap - and Jonny knows it) is a condition of worth. Jonny is likely to either attempt to fulfill this condition he has been pushed to adopt - or rebel against it. In either case the condition hasn't resonated with his core - what he "really" knows - deep down. A conflict is established.

It follows of course, that negative conditions "you're stupid, you're not attractive, you're thick" are equally damaging - but these are usually less obvious than those that appear on the surface to be well meaning, "positive" ones.

It is these positive, but ultimate untrue, seemingly constructive conditions which brands seem to have become at a macro, societal level - artificial belief systems which we, as marketers attempt to impose on others. By the invasive nature of their existence - they are distorting society’s own sense of self.

"Your Asda" - it may well resonate with you - perhaps you really love Asda - but for those of us who know them to be exploitative, money grabbing and ultimately bad for the people who make their products and consume them - it jars. It makes our lives less colorful when we are told something is ours when it is not - but it also sets up a conflict, all of us, as a society, may eventually need to resolve. For the majority of us who don't believe £2 t-shirts being made by 6 year olds in sweat shops is a good idea – it’s the equivalent of a smelly fridge. Sooner or later, we’re going to need to clean it up.

Take any metric, any measurement of happiness since the 1970s and it has fallen. My feeling is the rage within society - visible in pretty much any news story you care to pick up - is because a lot of us simply don't have the tools to resolve the conflicts brands (and the values they try and impose on us) create.

When I see "your Asda" - I think - f**k off - you're nothing to do with me, I don't support or endorse your way of doing business, I go home have a rant, maybe write a post on my blog. I explicitly invite myself to try and resolve the conflict between my core values and those being forced upon me. But it's becoming increasingly hard. I had to do some work for Nestle recently. I genuinely believe Nestle is one of the most poorly run, exploitative and unprincipled brands in the word. But they're paying my mortgage.....

riz is a genius....

morons buy (and sell) activia...

The reason you have a "bloated" feeling is cos you've just eaten your body weight in chips and gravy love - its got f**k all to do with the bacteria in your gut

human's have managed to evolve over the last 4 billions years without the need for activia's "wonder" food

if we stopped lying to our customers perhaps they might trust us a little more?

the 6 c's of social marketing...

6 Cs Of Social Marketing

View more documents from Mark Bjornsgaard.

This is a template presentation I'm using to introduce clients to social media. I've found it particularly powerful when I insert tactics for a client after the examples in each seciton - reinforces the idea that major brands are already involved in the space and gives clients reassurance.

the dead girl.....

Why the the f**k is there an Iranian girl, coughing up bloody and dying on my computer screen as I sip my coffee this morning?

Does anyone linked to Iran - that most fascist and backward of Islamic states - truly believe that this is an acceptable way of behaving towards it citizenry in the 21st century?

Of course they don't - but (as with all religious people) those within the Iranian regime who give orders to fire indiscriminately at their populations - are burdened by guilt. And guilt corrodes our humanity.

Aside from the fact that the historical story of the Christian faith (and that of all the other major religions) is so obviously just a mash up of different European superstitions and pagan rituals – guilt is what I truly despise about religion – both the presumption and tolerance of it.

To begin with guilt, such a heavy burden when trying to figure out who you are – is truly destructive.

Yes we all know religious people have a lower IQ than atheists, yes we know that religion is just a device to keep rich people – well rich – and yes of course we know the Catholic Church and all other “faiths” have been buggering, slaughtering and humiliating their customers for 2000 years – but its guilt that makes religion such a deadly poison in our modern society.

Guilt - knowing one is behaving in a way which fundamentally conflicts with ones organism’s tendency to want to cherish and to grow - is what drives religious bloodshed.

If we are ever to consign religion to the dustbin of history we will not do so with rational, Dawkins style belief. We will do it by figuring out a way of helping vast swathes of the world's population come to terms with their guilt.

From bible bashing red neck racists - to misogynistic mullahs - to tight lipped, “church going” middle England. If we can figure out a way of helping those people come to terms with the guilt we all of us live with - then there is a chance we can rid the planet of man’s most primal, ignorant and destructive of forces.

Clay Shirky Talk...

As a rule I wouldn't simply repost stuff - but this is a great TED - bets I've seen since Dawkins I reckon

Wobbly bridges, marching bands, traffic jams and 21st centruy marxism....vol.1

I've been working on a project called "sling shot" for several years. Much of my free time has been consumed by it.

Its now pretty close to an alpha launch. I've pretty excited about it, not so much because it has the potential to make money, but more importantly, it represents my own contribution to the debate on how turbo-capitalism and the dogma of the free market affect our society.

In a nutshell - I'm setting up a hedge fund, which will give everything it makes to charity.

So what (I hear you say) – there are probably 20 of those.

As it is, actually, no completely “charitable" hedge funds exist (which I think in itself is pretty interesting – reworking a pillar of the capitalist establishment and making it a force for good appeals to the tree hugging 6th former in me) but I do accept giving away, potentially even hundreds of thousands of pounds to charity in a world of multibillion dollar, Bill Gates sized donations, is hardly exceptional.

What I think makes this project really interesting is how the hedge fund makes money…. to cut a very, very long story short, by crunching a mind boggling amount of data (3 old PC's sitting in my office running macros pretty much constantly for 3 years) I think I've proved that at certain times of the day in liquid markets you can place a trade, and never lose (see picture above).

There could be several explanations for my data. But one, is that as more and more people take up day trading - individuals on the web, smaller hedge funds - they are beginning to create momentum, at specific times of the day, which is over riding the normal trading patterns of the big institutions.

Put it another way, aggregated behaviour is leading to otherwise innocuous trends becoming magnified - a bit like when the military break step marching over bridges to prevent damaging them, the “wobbly bridge” in london and the phenomena of traffic jams here.

The "democratization" of capitalism - allowing anyone to participate in the market with a broadband connection and a PC - seems to be starting to prevent markets working efficiently – worse (or better depending on your perspective) – the more people who know about these specific time periods – the worse in theory it’s likely to get over time. It’s the virtual equivalent of a few people discovering a casino which always pays out at 11:45 if you bet on black.

There are all sorts of very good reasons why I could be wrong – and I’ll explore these in future posts along with my data - but lets for the moment have some fun and wonder what the implications could be if I’m right....

First of all – using my own capital and that of enlightened individuals we should be able to contribute hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to good causes (before we bring down global capitalism of course.....) which in itself is pretty cool.

Taken to its logical conclusion though, actually, the effects really could be much more profound - if only in theory. Everyone betting at the same time in the same direction would pretty soon render the markets redundant.

Who would take a bet when the whole world was betting the other way?

Is the core instrument of capitalism - the market - fundamentally flawed? I rather doubt it. But it is interesting - that rather than fewer asymmetries of information leading to a more “perfect market” operating more efficiently – the reality could be that the more people who know something (in this case the killer time to place a bet) – the worse the market operates.

Could the world be forced in time to adopt a socialist, inclusive, non-beggar my neighbor model for co-existence, not out of choice, but because the principle methodology of defining price has been broken by the semantic web, digital communication and people talking to each other…..its interesting to speculate.

If anyone knows of anyone else working on a similar idea I’d love to hear about it.

BTW - The picture associated with the post shows a backtest of the “killer bet” – 2003-2009 - pretty soon I'll know whether its killer enough to power a hedge fund....