That was the title of a talk I gave to students, staff and community at Brandcenter (http://www.brandcenter.vcu.edu/) at Virginia Commonwealth University on Friday on advertising for social and environmental good. Nervous as I was (a crowd of 200 ain’t nothing compared to an inaugural crowd, but it looks big, and i remember being a grad student, and i know where they are – and where they’d rather be), I think it went alright.

 Brandcenter is one of the top advertising graduate programs in the country with tracks in creative, strategy and brand management. Their teachers are the best. Their books are the best. They like to think they are the best (and perhaps they are). But what struck me was how little opportunities the best have to learn Good. I was the first speaker to come and talk to them about advertising for social and environmental issues, but it was like the second coming. So many students expressed an interest in working on the socially beneficial side of the communications game that i stayed after for at least 30 -40 minutes repeating to students who gathered around, “yes, for real. Underground is for real.”

This said a lot about two things: first, that young adults today seem to be increasingly socially minded, and have a keen interest in using the tools of creative business to effect change. Second, they are beginning to learn that they CAN do this in school. Thank God. And third, that Underground is a pretty rare and special place. No matter how wonderful our partner, we can sometimes forget to appreciate how lucky we are to be greeted by them. No matter how dear our friends, we can easily dismiss a date, making up for it another time. No matter how lucky we are to have our jobs, we can often get wrapped up in the paperwork, bitch and moan and forget the view, the purpose, the why we are here.  We stop imagining ourselves at our best, most true, feeling right and doing something that matters resoundingly to us.   We forget to be students and appreciate every new thing, and constantly refind our selves – sometimes in new things like non-profit advertising, sometimes in familiar things like a person riding the subway, or cooking dinner tonight.

So this is less a puff piece and more an appreciation – for students who turn their heads to find a different direction that might make more sense to them than selling beer and chicken- for the leaders at the schools and universities that bring in ideas that risk their own standing – and for people at work, mine or anyones, who dedicate their time and energy in a hundred different ways get the Good work done.

Even if i means paper work .  (Yes, Tony.  I’m doing my timesheets.)

Last summer, I had the great privilege to attend a “listening session” hosted by the Brookings Institution and Business for Diplomatic Action at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy on the subject of, well, public diplomacy.

The session, along with several like it that took place in other cities, brought together some very smart people from government, academia, entertainment, and communications to talk about what’s gone wrong with the way our country is perceived abroad, and what can be done to change it. It was a little intimidating looking around the table that day, to be sure, but I did my best to speak up for the non-profits we work with, which have such a vital role to play in shaping our society, and how we’re perceived around the world.

Specifically, there was a lot of discussion about the creation of private-public partnership– what that might look like, who should be involved, and where the pitfalls of something like that might lie. It was an absolutely fascinating conversation, and the end result (at least for now) is a report called Voices of America: U.S. Public Diplomacy for the 21st Century. Rebuilding our image overseas is going to be a key challenge over the next four years, and it’s good to know that such smart people are thinking about how we can all contribute to that.