Underground Ads (Advertising, Design & Strategy for Non-Profits

Above, an example of the nine-planet crest of the Hosokawa clan, as seen in the Asian Art Museum’s new exhibition Lords of the Samurai, via the museum’s excellent new blog. The exhibition, which I saw when it opened a couple weeks ago, is just fantastically cool, and the crest, which appears over and over again, is just a small part of it.

Now I know what you’re saying: “But Heath, how could this ancient crest depict nine planets when Pluto wasn’t discovered until 1930? Are space aliens involved? Or perhaps time-traveling robots?” This is Japan we’re talking about, of course, and one should not immediately discount science fiction-related explanations.

You’re also probably asking: “What exactly does this have to do with nonprofit communications?”

The answer to that second one is, of course, not much. But it’s Friday afternoon, and someone foolishly decided to leave me with the keys to the blog, so please read on for more examples of the crest, and for the truth about the time-traveling robots.
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i don’t know what is more predictable: the findings of the scientific study on the psychological impact of emoticons, or that 20-something post-docs are using their time, brain and money to study the psychological impact of emoticons.

listen to that.  i am starting to sound like my father. but that makes sense.  these days, there are two camps and the mid-80s is the gap that divides.  either you are hip (you use emoticons), or you are old (you do not use emoticons).  you either multi-task while multi-tasking while planning to do something (emoticons), or you are a luddite and write long hand cursive spirally letters and employ words like “remember” (no emoticons).  either u c, or you see.  and i, you see, remember.

back to the topic - the study found that the content of a message is strengthened by an emoticon and can “create ambiguity and express sarcasm online by varying the valence of the emoticon and the valence of the message. Overall, the authors conclude that to a large extent, emoticons serve the same functions as actual nonverbal behavior.”

so emoticons are like raising an eyebrow.  or furrowing your brow.  so, in place of personal interaction, fine.  but does this mean that is what SMS and email is - a replacement for personal interaction?  before the email why didn’t people have to use squiggly lines and dots with a ballpoint pen and binder paper when passing a message?

language was intended to be short and sweet for text message or email - and it is almost always flat.  unless you know someone well, it is often hard to ‘read’ meaning in these mediums, not only because there is no change in facial expression or penmanship, but becuase the medium is based on brevity and maintaining distance, there is no linguistic nuance.  just a hammer or no hammer.  just a happy or not happy.  just a joke or a not funny joke (usually a not funny joke).  and the emoticon gets us off the hook.  it injects emotion, albeit general and superficial, into an otherwise impersonal medium.  even though it in fact keeps things at a safe distance.  it is a “jk” when you are really not.  an emoticon says “i care, but not enough to take the time to explain that i do.”  it says we are familiar, but with maintained distance.

the emoticon dictionary maintained by netlingo defines something like 200 emoticons.  so instead of wasting time articulating what we mean in depth through actual words, we are developing a whole language of things that mean something shallow.  for example:

:-Z             “Angry Face”

:-{{           “Angry Very”

or,  the always useful

O-)             “Smiley After Smoking a Banana”

cut to the chase here.  this “new” media we are adopting as our language is changing not only the way we communicate, but what we communicate, and what we think.  this internet of ours is not narrow and deep, but very shallow and wide.  perhaps SMS is not the place for a sonnet, but if we consistently reduce our everyday language to LOL, XD, XD, XD, and winky-smiley faces with their tongues wagging out, we are shortsheeting our thoughts for good.

so, if you can’t tell, i fall into the non-emoticon camp, and am writing from that perspective.  and i am open to arguments, to complaints and any apostrophe eyebrow colon dash parenthesis you want to throw my way.

Endless studies on individual behavioral motivation have pointed towards selfishness time and time again, including behavior that benefits the greater group.  In those cases, it turns out the individual benefits long term from the support of the group.  Darwin would call it survival.  Ayn rRnd would call it selfishness.  Either way it’s a personal long term investment.  Apply this principle to marketing, consumerism and the human’s destruction of the earth and you get what we have now: conspicuous environmental and social consumerism.  With the increased interest in sustainability, the Prius sends a more appealing message to the world (read: potential mate) than a Hummer, even though the Hummer is considered a “luxury” vehicle and the Prius is not.  So prius sales are up.  And the Hummer?  Dead in the water.  The Prius owner’s social cache?  Skyrocketing.  The Hummer enthusiast?  RIP, good buddy.  And good luck avoiding key scrapes and curse words.  As a co-worker pointed out, it is like we have transcended class (or at least the division between middle and upper) and moved into a new paradigm where as long as you can afford to be green, you are gold.  So.  Why are we REALLY buying the Prius, Product RED and TOMS shoes?  

A great, albeit lite article in TIME a couple weeks ago discussed just this.

Cited in it is a great study on altruism by Hardy and Van Vugt, University of Kent at Canterbury.  Most interesting:

“Study 3 showed that as the costs of altruism increase, the status rewards also increase. These results support the premise at the heart of competitive altruism: Individuals may behave altruistically for reputation reasons because selective benefits (associated with status) accrue to the generous.”

But.  What i find more important - and more interesting - is does it really matter?

If someone buys a Prius to gain social status, who cares?  It still benefits the group, right?

If wealthy philanthropists are competing for social status through out-giving one another, who cares?  It still helps others, right?

…or does it?

like most things, what you see depends on where you stand.  Socio-political models and theories of change will probably determine your opinion on this, but it seems everyone will agree that selfish altruism has never been more evident than it is right now.  Well, maybe it was in the 60’s.  But now it seems we’re more open to admitting it in ourselves, recognizing and accepting human inconsistencies, keeping both our selfish interests and the greater good in mind - and in marketing, using all that to get people to do stuff.

Speaking of, did you see our new ads for AWEA?

Above, an ad from our new campaign for the American Wind Energy Association, highlighting the contribution wind power can make to a new economy. The people featured in the ad, and in the longer videos after the jump, work for companies like Cardinal Fastener, who makes the bolts for the turbines, and Gamesa, a re-tasked steel plant, now building the turbines themselves. They have the kind of quality manufacturing jobs that help blue collar workers get into, and stay in, the middle class. Sure, wind power means using less coal and it means a fighting chance for all of us against climate change, but it also means good jobs for real people.

Right now, Congress is debating the American Climate and Energy Security (ACES) Act. The bill is a big step towards a new direction on climate change and energy policy in this country, but that doesn’t mean that it’s perfect. In particular, while a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) is part of it, there’s a chance it will get watered down in the horse-trading that accompanies big pieces of legislation. And that would be a disaster– the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that a 25% by 2025 RES would create 297,000 jobs, and anything less than 12% by 2012 would actually mean losing jobs. We just can’t afford that right now.

Renewable energy is a huge growth industry around the world, with 37 countries, including China already having firm RES in place. Standing up for the climate, and the American worker, means doing the same here at home. You can learn more about RES at PowerofWind.com. After the jump, a couple longer videos we did highlighting the stories of some of the workers from the ad.

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