ethikus
We are digging this new blog! Great info about businesses committed to ethical and sustainable practices around our hood…
What inspires us: Community
The ideas that have grabbed our attention today
ITP Winter Show 2011
if you’re around this weekend, check out the show from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). Lots of bleeding edge ideas about, well…interactive technology.
Extra bonus: you can see Danny Rosen’s “Wooden Mirror” in the upstairs lobby, one of the coolest high/low tech interactive sculptures I’ve ever seen:
http://www.smoothware.com/danny/woodenmirror.html
Also, if you want to see some cool ideas about tech (and you should), check out the student projects pages: http://itp.nyu.edu/itp/gallery/
The triple bottom line
In the early 2000’s we became aware of a cultural shift towards sustainability — social and environmental consciousness, both in the way businesses were run and in what customers began to demand in brands. Since then, consumers have only become increasingly better at exposing underperforming offerings. So a business may have engaged in green behavior, but in all reality, the bottom line never really changed. At the end of the day they still wanted you to buy more so they could make more.
This article suggests that we may begin to see this changing, and Patagonia seems to be the aggregator — telling their consumers to “buy less”. Most traditional business minded folks might say “but how will they make money if they are actually telling customers to buy less?” I think it’s because Patagonia has done an exceptional job at understanding their customers lives, and building an emotional connection with them that results in brand love, trust and Affective Loyalty. How can a brand fail if it has successfully built honest emotional connections with customers, (in a way that those customers are emotionally connected their family members) based on things that the brand (i.e. stakeholders) actually care about? It’s like what we always try to do with the brands that we work with, find out what the brand truly cares about that aligns with what the people truly care about. The empowering thought in this is that maybe together, we can actually make an impact, create environmental change, or whatever that thing that we the customers, and the business that we support, truly care about in life.
“Affective loyalty is the strongest form of loyalty and will be the most difficult form to compete against.” – Brand Building in Norwegian, Samuelsen, Peretz and Olsen
Fast Company: “Patagonia Asks Its Customers To Buy Less”
The Fearless Revolution + Common
A few cool things to know about, if you don’t already…
The Fearless Revolution is a consumer advocate project started by ex-ad man Alex Bogusky (of Crispin Porter + Bogusky) where he highlights the new relationship between people and brands, with an emphasis on transparency, sustainability, democracy and collaboration among businesses and consumers. http://fearlessrevolution.com
His second project Common, is the world’s first collaborative brand which is a social community “harnessing the power of true, rule-breaking creativity to launch socially beneficial businesses…”: We believe the fastest way to do that is through collaboration. We believe the tired old concept of competitive advantage must give way to a more meaningful system of collaborative advantage.” http://www.common.is
Gowanus Open Studios
This year is the 15th anniversary of the A.G.A.S.T. Open Studio tour, and I’ve had the pleasure of helping to organize it and keep it going. I will be opening up my doors and showing some new work on Saturday and Sunday, October 15th and 16th from 12-6pm both days. My studio is located at 94 9th Street in Brooklyn, between 2nd avenue and Smith Street, 4th floor, #22.
There’s 131 other artists in the neighborhood participating as well, and you can preview most of the artists and get all the information here. You can check my work out here.
The Low Line
I am excited to see what comes out of this great idea!
The Renderings for the Delancey Underground Park on the Lower East Side — New York Magazine.
Dumbo Arts Festival
The Dumbo Arts Festival is this weekend!
NYC Bike Share
New York has picked an operator for the city’s bike share program, which should open next summer. The city has a website where you can suggest locations for some of the 600 planned bike stations.
New York Writes Itself
“New York Writes Itself” is an ongoing series of creative productions fueled by the real people of New York — what people see and hear in the city is recorded as a ‘script’, which forms the inspiration for music, creative writing, art exhibitions and more.
