Ok, really out there today, so hang on.  I was recently in a meeting with some media vendors who were talking to us about the wonders of music marketing on the internet. Their big capability was connecting brands with new star partnerships to sell more of both the artist as well as the CPG. Think Dannon partners with Demi Lovato before anyone really knows who she is. The trend is increasing that brands are looking at themselves as a media channel in and of themselves. I asked about whether the young people, (teens anyone under 30) was insulted by the completely obvious marketing angle. Apparently not. “Teens expect to be marketed to and don’t care how they get their music”. I was agast. I remember the Clash, The Pretenders (I know I am dating myself) Music was about the voice of the youth before they go into the corporate machine and are completely sucked up. It was the last cry of individuality. Apparently the kids coming up are not so angry or aware of ‘good’ rebellion, ‘bad’ corporate America. Ok. here’s the first jump. They don’t have value judgements that are so fixed, in essence they are able to hold both truths. I am impressed.  Ok. believe or not HERE is where it gets weird.

Enchanted with my insight, I start looking around at advertising sites and find some case studies about using YouTube to sell music as well as Sprite. This ’series’ is featuring a Katy Perry looking singer/songwriter who has agreed to be filmed while she lives in an apartment in NYC with a big G painted on the wall. (sublimal advertising about green/spirte, get it)  She starts singing her song about her boyfriend or whatever and during it they keep cutting to her talking about the process of writing the song while she is singing it in the background along with ‘tweets’ from fans about the song, themselves etc. My first thought is no wonder everyone has ADD now, but my next thought is ADD is good. It is conditioning our brains to hold many different realities at once, thus having instant access to many different realities, dimensions, information. Wow, very cool. (check out Carl Jung, string theory for a better explanation of universal consciousnesses and dimensions) Thoughts?

February 26th, 2010 | Tags: non duality, value judgements, youtube | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (8)

Recently I was watching Larry King on a lazy saturday night. His topic was a surprising one. The show featured Lisa Ling, Delta Burke and other women who were talking about the concept of self-love. I must admit, until recently, I would have turned the channel instantly. I found such talk fluffy, silly, weak and worst of all, not intellectual. But now a lot has changed. I have started to embrace the feminine.

What does that mean exactly? In spiritual circles much has been made of the fact that the “feminine is rising”. Even on that show, Deepak Chopera talked about how we are entering an age of the feminine. What does this look and taste like in a every day way? And what does that have to do with self-love?

In culture it looks like Newsweek devoting an entire week to the role of women in the world. In business it looks like the industry of shopper marketing focusing completely on the female shopper. In politics it looks like Sarah Palin, Tina Fey and Hillary Clinton being a focal point in the presidential election. In the personal it looks like the women at my job who are buying the feminine mystique and asking questions and, most importantly, not settling for bad guys. It looks like women, finally, nearly 100 years after we received the vote, having the courage to really honor and explore what it means to be a woman. To love being a woman, with all of its complexities and contradictions.

Before we start pulling our bras out of the fire and give ourselves a big hug, we are not finished. In fact, I would argue the real debate and conversation is finally starting. Recently, MSNBC featured the top 50 most powerful business women in the world. They looked like every cliche of a woman in power from the 80s, very masculine haircuts with shoulder pads. Some of them feigned a “warmth”, but for the most part they looked tough, like men, not like a woman. Now, I am not saying that all women need to be alike or that it is not authentic for women to show up as very intense. What I am saying it shows that emotion is still considered a weakness, something to be overcome, not an essential part of a whole person. And this lack of acceptance of emotion I would argue is strangling corporate America.

Openess, vunerability leads to expansion and innovation (the latest buzz word in corporate America). It is very difficult to try new things if your organization rewards those who run others over, not who value collaboration and really listening. And guess what? The consumer is demanding it.

Currently CPGs have to think about their brand and how it relates in the context of a total category. Categories such as pain management that have to make room for other brands. If a brand can’t do this, the retailers will not give them space. So they have to get along and actually think about how they affect others, they have in essence develop the capacity for compassion, an emotion.

October 20th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (10)

So my good friend John Z and I were talking about taxes and such. He, a staunch Obama supporter, was defending a more socialist viewpoint of government: public schools, universal healthcare, the usual arguments. I was musing the other side. Was it fair for some people (the more well to do) to pay for most of the services and yet receive none of the benefits? My mother had been complaining that her Medicare payment was twice the normal rate because of her annual income, even though my dad had probably paid seven times more into the system. I could defintely see both sides. Then John said something that changed the whole conversation.
“Annie, is it fair that people who work with their minds over their hands should be better off?” Suddenly it wasn’t about taxes anymore, it was about the evolution of consciousness. (I know I got there fast, but that is how my brain works) What I started thinking about was Ken Wilbur’s work on mapping consciousness. He writes amazing things about how consciousness evolves just as everything else. Where I went to was how at one point we were at a consciousness that was very physical. Farming, roaming for food and that is how people amassed money. Slowly, since the enlightenment, we evolved to a more ‘mental’ I think therefore I am place and wages followed suit. Now as we talk about mental jobs becoming commodities, (evidence includes medical tourism, the computer development market and of course technical support. There is even talk of lawyers and accountants going abroad for cheaper services) it seems that consciousness is pushing us to another economy. People talk of innovation, but I think it is about the spiritual. Now what does that look like? I think jobs, personas and skills will require an unprecedented fluidity in order to remain relevant. And I think people who have the ability to shift, quickly, without needing mountains of rational data, will have what it takes to make it. Our brains need to be able to go big, see the connections between our jobs and our peronsal relationships from a global perspective and then in an instant go small. Making lists, running errands, having small talk with friends, doing our taxes-all still be accomplished as well as having a sense of when to change our perspective to a bigger current.  Understanding what was required for doing a “good job” and therefore a secure job will shift from having a strong level of experience to having an almost alchemist’s ability to know when to discard one’s identity in favor of one that is needed in the moment.

June 22nd, 2009 | Tags: economy, global, personas, rational, shift | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (1)

I ran into an aquiantance of mine recently, one of the many people who has lost their job. “Well it will come back, people will start buying again and it will be o.k.” he said. I had just returned from a major spritual retreat in San Fran and from where I was standing “it” (the economy as status quo) was dead. We had explored the feminine and a more collective type of being and economy. One of the people there said to me, “We are entering an age when ‘currency’ will come to mean what is your individual current or energy, not how much money you have.” Really not the kind of thing you say to someone in Portillo’s on a Tuesday who wants a job in finance. But I tried to engage with him anyway, “Currency will change,” I said cypticly. He didn’t deviate. I know a lot of people like this. My uncle who has lost his millions, my parents who fear their way of life is over for good because of taxes and myself who freaks out when she thinks of raising two girls on her own and all the expenses that come with that, and I wonder, which way of thinking is true, more useful? When I got back, Trader Joe’s certainly didn’t accept my “enegry” as payment for frozen pizza and cookie dough. My Tibetean nanny laughed at me when I told her what the retreat cost. “Anytime you have to pay for wisdom, it is a scam.” She is tough, raised in India without a Dad and a mom who worked all the time to keep things going. She thinks that I am a silly Western woman who needs a reality check , even my co-workers are amused and interested in my observations. And yet, in my bones, I know something is changing, needs to change. I am tired, as are most of the working moms I know. I think about gardening, picking my kids up from school. Spending an entire afternoon doing nothing. There is no space for the nothing, for genrative activites. Even in business, fuctions like innovation or creativity are so regulated and need to be aggregated so precisely that there is no magic. We do not “value” creativity, we do acknowledge the need for space. Why should we care? Well, the earth, the ultimate mother is in big trouble and yet we keep taking. Most women have way too many jobs and we keep giving them more. And business does a good job of talking about innovation and creativity, but few companies really “think outside the box.” (HATE THAT CLICHE) O.K. so I am not quiting my job or stopping working, but what I am exploring is there another type of model, business or otherwise that allows for space? Has some think tank, spritual tradtion what have you, built an economy based on the principle that the individual has value outside of what they earn in raw currency? Looking at the community as a whole?

March 24th, 2009 | Tags: economy, energy, feminine | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (30)