My neighbor and his washing machine fire pit idea

Since we moved into our house last summer, we've been loaded with projects. It had been a foreclosure filled with dogs, loose hamsters, wayward kids and a lazy father who never finished anything he started. Then it sat for months discarded.

We've been on clean-up duty ever since.

My next door neighbor is an unusual renter. He's fifty-something, single, and conscientious. He treats his apartment like it's his and mows, weed-whacks, trims, sweeps, welds, repairs, decorates and inspires. This last part is what makes me think of him as one of the Joneses. I like Tom. He inspires me to work hard. If he's working, it's difficult to sit around. When I'm working, it's difficult for him to sit around.

This morning he came over to share a magazine article about a clever chap who built one of those fire pits - you know, the kind you pick up at Lowe's or True Value? Except this guy made his out of the drum of a front-loading washing machine. Attached three legs, turned it so the hole faced upward, and burned away.

See, Tom and I share ideas nearly every day and when we discover something we both like, we jump on it. In this way, we've unintentionally yet clearly become the Joneses to each other.

This realization struck me a few days ago when I noticed that our last few yard projects seemed uncannily related. I'm not trying to keep up with him. He just informs me of things I hadn't thought of. And I do the same. We're both frugal and believe in reusing, so it isn't like we're picking up two of everything at the hardware store. But we say "wow" a lot. And, "Hey, that's a great idea!" Then we split to our respective garages and go to work.

It isn't always so cut and paste, but Keeping up with the Joneses gets a bad rap too often. I think. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut for the sake of getting the consumeristic end of this social phenomenon to swing its pendulum rightfully in the other direction, but I've caught a glimpse of the good end and I don't mind it one bit. 

Read more...

Not Unless I Have To

I've talked about the Good Samaritan story many times in talks with advertisers and advertising majors because of its comprehensive application. Imagining yourself, in your specific career, playing a specific role in this famous story, can be invigorating. This morning over at TheHighCalling.org, I wrote about it and some of my inadequacies as a servant.

One of my favorite adult-life maxims comes from the end of the parable of the Good Samaritan, where Jesus answers the expert in the law and says, “Go and do likewise.” I know he didn’t (and doesn’t) mean, “Go and become a paramedic,” or, “Go and become an inn keeper so that you can lodge infirmed patients.” He simply meant for me to go and do what must be done for folks whose needs I can meet.

To be fair, I do okay. I take out the neighbor’s trash because his disfigurement requires 20 minutes just to get to the alley. I donate to people. And at every chance given to communicate theology on the importance of work in the here and now Kingdom of God, I give it with conviction.

In other words, I get Go and do likewise. Unfortunately, it's a short list and I’m afraid that most of my going and doing is nice-guy personality - not a result of what Jesus said.  

Read "Not Unless I Have To" here.

TheHighCalling.org is a site full of conversations about work, life, and God.

Read more...

Cereal Fetish

Photo credit: Mebajason

Met a woman from Germany on Saturday. She grew up in former communist East Germany and we talked about decisions. I thought it was only American anti-consumerist critics like me who harped about the cereal aisle, but it was one of the first examples she mentioned. (Not that she hasn't adjusted just fine to this American life, having two kids and breakfast cravings of her own.)

Despite my complaints, I keep that particular aisle in business. I like the variety. I like cereal and I like having a greater chance of finding something on sale that my family enjoys.

And I like watching advertisers show off their creativity and strategy, sparring as they do shelves high and 75 remarkable feet wide on a veritable playing field of color and shape, crispness claims, offers of mailable-linkable-retrievable Free Stuff, sugar content, box and oat cluster size, fiber facts, artificial and natural ingredients, fruit bits or chunks or flavors, and Box Top for Education coupons. It's all part of a magnificent display of competition where the weaker brands die and the talented designers move their wares to more prominent positions.

I've shopped long enough to narrow the field; to do my own selection (natural, of course, as I don't care much for artificial), which makes the whole stimulation factor less distracting. In fact, I skip entire swathes of products because I've determined previously that I have no use for them. So on one hand I'm embarrassed that we need so many choices, but on the other, thrilled to have them. Beating the system and navigating the clutter alleviate my guilt enough to keep me from protesting.  

Maybe Tatiana was better off. Communist oppression is no viable option, but humans appreciate products in scarcity more than in abundance. We adapt just fine to having less and we show more gratitude when this is our lot. I know it from wilderness excursions where you carry the minimum on your back, and from being poor as a child. One of the most memorable experiences as a college freshmen was being walked into the cafeteria and shown where to get trays, drinks and any of thirty types of cereal. I asked our campus guide if we were allowed to have more than one bowl.

"Of course," he said. He looked surprised.

We had a half-bowl limit growing up. I spent the first semester eating cereal three meals a day (with salads and sides, of course!), sometimes 4-5 bowls in twenty-four hours.

Obviously, having abundance at my fingertips isn't necessarily healthy. Signs of decay (tooth and otherwise) appear everywhere self-discipline wanes and I too often end up in the display case like the mayor who gorged to a drunken stupor in the film, Chocolat. I need help. We all do.

Can cereal advertisers do anything about it? Should they? Would limitations or discouragement mutate our shopping freedoms into some sort of captivity? These are tough questions for me. Until I find answers, and as long as They send notable coupons, I'll probably keep enjoying the game.        

Read more...

The value of babies and stuff

I received a New Baby announcement in the mail this week. It came from good friends and I was happy to hear the news. In crude terms, the card was a simple advertisement. The family told us about their product: a beautiful child, a boy; and inferred the benefits of welcoming him into our lives: happiness, hope, reminder of new life...

Of course, I don't see their child as a product, and the card did not strike me as advertising in any of the disordered ways we may be influenced to consume. In fact, the following thoughts came to mind only after it sat on my desk for several days in a moment when I was reflecting on two general characteristics of advertising:

1) Declaration of value.
2) Invitation to enjoy this value.

I'm pretty sure all advertising performs these two basic functions. In a similar way, so does the baby card. What perplexed me was why advertising doesn't work more often like the card, or, more clearly said, why the card doesn't feel like an advertisement at all, even if it (generally) acts like one.

Here's a partial reason for the difference. Actually two. Advertising veers away from the beauty of my friends' announcement when it commits either or both of these offenses: 1) The declaration of value fails to match the delivery of value. 2) The values we are invited to enjoy fail at being valuable.

In the first, I'm mislead; in the second, mistreated.

Mislead
Years ago, I bought a camping tent that promised durability. I expected this value to come with the declaration. It didn't. I'm quite particular with my belongings and have made this tent work - without failure - for many years. However, sans meticulous care, it would have failed soon after we got it, and I think about this point every time I set it up and tear it down. I was mislead because of the conflict between declaration and delivery. The declaration of value failed to match the delivery of value.

Mistreated 
It's true that, in a sense, my poor tent value is a form of customer mistreatment. But I wasn't completely mistreated because I wasn't completely mislead. Do you follow? It has been a great tent and, though I've had to be extra gentle, it still does what a tent is supposed to do. I was only mislead on the one point about durability. So a more poignant example of mistreatment can be seen in this Nissan advertisement:

They're being partly facetious, but no copy editor would choose to write "Envy. Terrible to feel. Wonderful to provoke." if a significant percentage of car buyers wasn't actually motivated by insecurity. I've whined about bullying before and I'll do it again now. Companies have control over customer treatment, especially when it comes to the messages they use to declare and invite via advertising. Bullying always mistreats. It may, in a roundabout way, state a deliverable value, but the end doesn't justify the means.

In the case of this magazine ad, I'm mistreated as a customer because the value - making others jealous - is all chaff and no wheat. My insecurity may perceive this promise as worthwhile, but it really isn't. The value we're invited to enjoy fails at being valuable.

Obviously tents and sedans can't be compared with children, but a truth remains. We admire companies that exceed our value expectations and treat us with human dignity, which is exactly what my friends' New Baby card did. It pointed to value I can't possibly estimate and made me enjoy being human.

What if all advertising did this?

Read more...

Style Matters

Image by Jade Pegler.

Byron Borger has been connecting readers with writers for decades. With uncanny insight, an unrivaled knowledge of book titles and the ideas and history behind them, as well as the ability to convince you that every title he recommends is one that you absolutely must have, he's a person you really ought to know (if you don't already).

This morning, I got to publish a "sweet little masterpiece in its own way," as L.L. Barkat put it, of Byron's thoughts, and you can find it at The High Calling. "Style Matters" is about the power of words to inform and transform. It helps that I'm a passionate person, but the article called me to be a better writer who weds his words with style; his craft with art.

Whether you're a casual reader, prolific blogger, aspiring author or 9-to-5 copywriter, you may appreciate "Style Matters" since your life revolves around words.

I will never forget one of the first times I was taken by a book as an older teenager, utterly absorbed, lost in another world. I was a new Jesus Freak in the early 70s and a wanna-be revolutionary. I realized there were changes afoot and I wanted to be a part of them...

Read the article here.

TheHighCalling.org is a site about work, life and God.

Read more...

Ethics in Advertising

"If harmful or utterly useless goods are touted to the public, if false assertions are made about goods for sale, if less than admirable human tendencies are exploited, those responsible for such advertising harm society and forfeit their good name and credibility."

- From "Communio et Progressio," a 1960s pastoral letter written by the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications.

"But whatever product, service or candidate you advertise and no matter how you do it, I would hope you would keep in mind our ultimate purpose in life and make of all of your advertising messages that are true, worthy of the dignity of the human person and helpful to the common good." 

- From Archbishop John Foley at the 50th Anniversary of the World Federation of Advertisers.

Read more...

Vegetarians, don't look. This is a carnivore's delight.

Advertising works when it makes me want to eat the page. I hope they have these in heaven. (Click on the image to enlarge it and then click again for more zoomed pleasure, or to get the recipe.)

From Rachel Ray's "30 Minute Meals"

Read more...

Giving riddles of love

I'm a sucker for honest, smart, neighbor-honoring copy in an advertisement; it goes a long way in earning my respect. Clever also catches my attention but only until the laugh or intrigue ends. Then I'm back to being frustrated. When is it ever appropriate to make consumers feel insecure? When is it helpful to embellish an item with more value than it's really worth?

As far as I'm concerned, using/managing/stewarding/assigning/writing/broadcasting/editing/creating words is a high calling. On Friday at TheHighCalling.org, I wrote about using words as a way of giving riddles of love. Here's the intro and link to read more:

I enjoy solving, and telling, riddles while hiking with others. Like this one: “There are fifty-two bicycles and a dead man in a room. What happened?” Riddles take work to solve - the first time, at least. The second time is a snap and by the third, you know the answer before the riddler finishes the question.

What fascinates me is that no matter how many times you hear the same riddle, your brain still has to solve it. Eventually it may feel like you simply know the answer but that’s only because your solution speed has increased.

Words work like this.

Read the rest of the article here.

TheHighCalling.org is a conversation site about work, life and God.

Read more...

Who Needs You to Go to College?

Image sourced from Microsoft Online.

Most posts here are about advertising, either directly or indirectly. This specific emphasis falls within a larger category of seeing work - all work (sans prostitution and the like which isn't work but some distorted derivative) - as an act of service to others and honor to God. In this broader vein, I want to highlight two items this morning, both containing application points that will hopefully encourage you in the work you do.

Item #1

The first is from Marcus Goodyear, senior editor at the TheHighCalling.org, published poet (you'll see why I mention this) and a thoughtful influencer on the topic of service/honor-based work. His recent blog entry is called Work Isn't Supposed to Be Fun Anyway and here's a teaser:

As a kid I fantasized about traveling to space. Even recently, I was thinking about the Mir space station pictured above. The world needs me in space at the Mir station, I might delude myself. I definitely have a strong desire to go there. I could even imagine that I have talents and gifts that would justify putting me atop one million pounds of rocket fuel and blasting me toward Mir at 29,000 mph.

That’s roughly 28,965 mph over the speed limit in my neighborhood, by the way.

Alas, I do not have a high calling to join the crew of the Mir space station. That is a personal fantasy, not a calling. (Read the rest of his post here.)

Item #2

The second item is by yours truly, and it comes from a growing conviction that we're asking the wrong question about higher education. It isn't logically or practically possible to ask this wrong question, though we do it as consumers and we do it often. So I'm asking a different question, one that is pertinent whether you are in college, going to college or 20 years out. Here is a teaser for Who Needs You to Go to College?:

The Higher Education Research Institute’s Research Brief for the 2010 Freshmen Survey states, “Perhaps most significantly, a large percentage increase (from 66.2% in 2007 to 72.7% in 2010) occurred in students’ views that ‘The chief benefit of college is that it increases one’s earning power.’”

I understand this freshmen view financially. But to what end is it aimed? Work is not separate from community, either in the doing of it or in what it produces. A little creative (and Biblical) analysis will see that education – despite its personal benefits – is ultimately other-centered. (Read the rest of this post here.)

Happy reading.

Read more...

Dying Sailors and a Valuable Lesson for Employees

The Stormy Sea by Gustave Courbet

The first Outward Bound school opened in 1941 for a reason that I think has as much validity now as it did then. Listen to what was happening to WWII sailors:

"Lawrence Holt, President of the steamship company Blue Funnel Line...was greatly disturbed about the number of young sailors who were losing their lives in the service of his company. Battles at sea with Nazi submarines often resulted in sailors having to abandon ship."

"Time and time again Holt noticed that older sailors made up the greatest proportion of survivors." 

"Young men, though often more physically able, seemed to be lost because they lacked the sheer will to withstand the ordeals of ocean travel by lifeboat or raft." (From The Role of the Instructor, by Ken Kalisch)

This fascinates me. One would think physical prowess and youthful drive lead to success, but it turns out they don't. And I'm not sure these characteristics succeed in the pursuit of challenging careers either.

I spent last weekend with thousands of students who sat in session after session learning how the Christian faith, in particular, can inform work. These young attendees weren't learning how to proselytize or hang religious calendars in their cubicles. Instead, they were learning how to study various trades and career paths and the systems that shape and run them; how to orient their vocational vision toward addressing and correcting what's broken in those careers and using the careers to address and correct what is broken on the client end; and how to surrender to a divine call that honors God in the way the work gets done.

In practical speech, it works like this: As Jesus healed lepers, today's engineers protect travelers. As Jesus gave to the poor, today's shoe salesmen promote generosity. As Jesus spread his message with humility and truth, today's advertisers market honestly and with compassion.  

Or that's the way it's supposed to be. Perhaps I should have said, "Sometimes advertisers..." or "Advertisers try to market...." Advertising is one of those careers where the young are often, as we might say, lost because they lack the sheer will to withstand the ordeals of the industry.

I say this as an outsider, and to be fair, I'm pretty sure I would get lost if advertising were my career. Challenges face new employees in every field but advertisers especially seem unusually susceptible to compromising situations. The intersection of mass media, consumer wants and relative anonymity (Can you name anyone who has made a Super Bowl commercial?) creates enormous pressure to do whatever the boss/client demands, even if it makes no sense restoratively. And yet. And yet, it is no less a worthy vocation.

In tougher fields - like advertising - what employees need is a way to build character and resilience and wisdom to buck the broken systems and sustain new, neighbor-loving approaches. I don't know whether that looks like a program or mentorship or simply a community of stalwart encouragers, but if it works anything like wilderness experiences do, then a combination of duress and success is needed. Conscience-squeezing situations, risk, biblical formation, courageous stands, creative alternatives, and at least occasional victories are important elements that increase the survival rate of novitiates.

I've been both the young sailor and the old sailor and and I've drowned a few times. Mostly because in my youth I lacked the sheer will to withstand the ordeals of [fill in the blank].

Read more...