You're good at what you do. You study and listen and read - honing your trade - only to understandably and occasionally forget that behind the progress toward success are real neighbors consuming your work.
So you must ask - and keep asking - not the myopic, "How can I get customers to fall in love with my product?" but a more generous, "How can I love by getting this product to my customers?"
The CCO cares very much about "being good neighbors to the consumer next door." In fact, this tagline here at New Breed of Advertisers was inspired by my work with the CCO over the past 15 years, and also my work with The High Calling over the past four or five years. We care about every provider/consumer relationship, in fact, not just Advertiser and Consumer.
Doctor and Patient, Teacher and Student, Artist and Aficionado. Each one matters.
Since the late 70s, the CCO's flagship conference, Jubilee, has attempted to help college students and young professionals understand those relationships in a way that demonstrates love. Jesus kind of love.
Thousands fill the hotel and ballroom in Pittsburgh for conversations about work and faith. Veterans in a host of vocational fields share their stories—what works, what doesn't, what the Bible says about something like scientific research or accounting.
Navigating our work life is not always easy. It requires discernment, community, mentors, and faithfulness. But we can get the conversation started at least.
I'll be heading back to Jubilee again on February 15-17, 2013, and I hope you'll join me. The world needs more workers who love the consumer next door. Jubilee inspires those workers. Jubilee is a great place to find encouragement as well as perhaps a calling for the first time to something bigger.
Enjoy this playful parody. It's obviously geared toward toward a young audience, though Jubilee has gifts for everyone. Pass it along to those who need to "Sign Up, Maybe?"
Read about how Jubilee has inspired my vocation here.
My daughter just entered middle school. It's the age of bullying, the life spell when kids find their way, sort each other out, make decisions about what fits and what doesn't.
Anti-bullying education has been a primary social focus in these first few months of her year. Videos, assemblies with outside speakers, a poster campaign, all of it to postpone the inevitable. Bullying seems to exist as an unavoidable rite of passage, a gauntlet for punishers and those who run between them. Both parties could use the extra help.
I'd like to think we grow out of this painful activity, but election year competition proves we don't. Stand-up comedy sarcasm proves we don't. Prime Time elimination shows prove we don't, especially when nationally televised audiences inflict flagrant disapproval upon the serious souls who risk self-esteem to stand before them.
And what of advertising? One print ad for Nike lacrosse cleats reads, "Made with absolutely positively no regard for your opponent's feelings." Blatancy looks more like exaggerated humor than bullying. I knew a lacrosse player who beat his head against the wall before games to stimulate adrenaline. If he thinks a shoe will boost his dominance over competitors (who wear the same laced promise), who can reason with him? He's a bully who feeds on being bullied.
Advertising works more often in subtleties. Though not regarded as a chief perpetrator of meanness, advertising—the sort we criticize for doing harm in the world—leaves its mark, whittling with a slow and consistent stroke. Consider the following example.
A magazine advertisement for the 2013 Lexus ES states, "May cause technolust." Creatively poignant, this phrase, though it is unclear who it marks as the target. Let's say it's you, the buyer on the lot. Lust is a longing for something you haven't got. You haven't got the all-new, tech-loaded Lexus ES. Lexus makes a light pass at your current status, and insecurity stirs beneath the surface. The seemingly benign expression resembles little of real bullying, perhaps confirming why the insult earns our pardon, if we have caught on to its malice at all.
Lexus 1, Consumer 0.
Now let's say it's your friend, not you, with the technolust. You converted $40,000 into magnificent wheels, and the showroom still lingers in the seat leather and bamboo trim around you. Your friend slides in and sins a little.
Lexus 2, Consumer 1, Friend 0.
Lexus gives you permission to do this stirring. You're nice about it, of course. Your friend is your friend. But condescension is never kind. Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn, we're told. Instead, Lexus says, Rejoice when others mourn, mourn when others rejoice.
Causing technolust isn't giving someone a swirly; it is a pricking we tolerate because it feels mild, clever even.
The call to become good neighbors requires abstinence, a willingness to set aside predictable factors that aggravate others' weaknesses. I can't stop advertisers from bullying. But I can refuse to play the accomplice; the bully who feeds on bullying. And maybe, if I employ some of the tools my daughter and her friends are learning in middle school this year, I can learn to ignore the pricking. Enough of us doing the same might even make the bullies go away.
