Harry’s Place Arts

Apparently petty greed is taking its place as the marketing theme that will define the first ten years of this century. To those of you who thought Flock of Seagulls and Ronald Reagan were swell, this is not their big shiny Wall Street greed. Indeed this is the miniaturized version spawned by the isolating effects of the ipod and Generation Y’s fragmentation of cultural memes into a billion web pages viewed behind closed doors on wireless networks. I almost long for the golden calf we used to worship that was so much grander than the one we have now. Do you recall the mantra “he who dies with the most toys wins”. Now we are reduced to “I want your worthless crap and I’ll take it whether you like it or not”.

If you don’t believe this is happening simply turn on your television and watch the advertising - usually a good yardstick of what ails us as a society (fight the uge to reach for the TIVO remote). Much of the pitch appeals to your petty greed, often involves what can only be called petty theft and always flaunts the rules of good citizenship we learned as children. It is the disturbing portrayal of parents and children, husbands and wives, best friends, even clergy and their flocks trying to screw each other out of anything and everything for their instant personal gratification. Most of it is borderline criminal behavior that would not result in your arrest but would probably see you beaten within an inch of your life.

Thanks to Robert Fulghum, author of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, here is a list of lessons learned as children that as marketers we would do well to remember:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

I have included a few 30 second blots on our society. Think how wonderful this world might be if the respective creative teams were made to go and sit in a corner for a few hours.

The joys of domestic violence and automobile ownership.

Sharing! What the hell is that?

Starring the one man that gets my giddy goat … I could not resist.