Adventures in Candyland

Today I worked with Soul’s Calling at the Los Angeles Gift Show. And here’ s my observation — very few companies think anything or even understand what a brand is and how portraying it with thought is meaningful to buyers, writers and consumers. When you are thoughtful about creating a pleasing poignant environment that aligns with the messages and products you are pushing out - the result is something so strong that people react and respond to it even if they’re not conscious of it. But, it should be very consciously developed by the company. Some brands do, and for me, I am automatically attracted to those brands. But, overwhelmingly and shockingly (though maybe it shouldn’t be), only about 10 percent of the company’s exhibiting made their brand a focus. For the rest, they just throw a bunch of stuff together in a booth. Here’s a shot of the Soul’s Calling booth - it’s an example of how someone puts a lot of effort into creating a booth that spreads her message and makes you feel a certain way when you step across the boundry into the brand’s world. She even had a booth scent….It’s time for every company to be thoughtful and take it up a whole bunch of notches.

So, even though it’s 2008 (where has the time gone?!) I am going to sound very early ’90s right now. Here goes…The Internet is the coolest invention ever!!! I think most people hold that belief in some form, but now we take it for granted as it has become so embedded in almost every society and we’ve already even moved past it in its purest sense. But truly, it allows for such amazing information sharing that sometimes I just get newly excited by its concept. I think we should take a second to remember how hard it was to get information before we had this unbelievable global source available to us 24 hours a day. Of course, some people may believe that this has created a societal decline in a number of ways, mais pas moi.

Anyway - I only bring this up because today, I became overly enthused by three things I bumped into.

1) I have always loved metromint water - so refreshing - been buying it at Whole Foods since the first day I saw it (along with my favority energy drink, Inkos White Tea - so good!). Yes, it’s only spearmint and water and , yes, I could make it on my own or drink it hot (Isreali-style), but of course I often choose the convenience path and pay the price. During the last few years, they have extended their product line with peppermint, orange and lemon, but OMG - I have no idea what to say about this next iteration. If you know me or even read my yelp reviews, you might realize I have a strong predilection for chocolate and mint, together that is — since I was a little girl. To me it’s one of the most refreshing and luscious pairings. Today, I come to find out that MetroMint is launching ChocolateMint water. Yes, chocolate water may sound a little scary, but I’ll be trying it as soon as I can get my hands on it at my mecca, Whole Foods. I mean no sugar, no preservatives, no CALORIES - this is January 3rd - so I will take my dessert calorie-free thank you - at least for this month that is (well, let’s be honest, maybe this week).

2) Okay, along the same vein, if you like food, if you like cooking, if you like pairing flavors, but sometimes you feel like you don’t know what would compliment what, you must check out Foodpairing. Yes, we all know that gruyere is phenomenal in potatoes, but did you know it also can pair with licorice? Not being trained at le Cordon Bleu shouldn’t prevent you from trying unique flavor combinations for friends and family, but it also might be good to have a the pizza menu handy — sometimes experimenting with weird stuff can end up, well, weird, so it’s a good idea to have a back-up plan. In any case, I think this is so cool and I will definitely be a frequent visitor here.

3)Now, this one doesn’t have to do with food (I know, shock), but it does have to do with two of my other obsessions - Japanese minimalism and architecture. Toyo Ito is one of my most favorite architects and Sendai Mediateque is such a unique and breathtaking structure. I can’t wait till the day when I get to experience it in person. Here is my newest fave -Kengo Kuma. Check out the Lotus House…..amazing.

See why I love the Internet.

Update..got to add one more - this one from Danielle, but I had to include it as belongs in the same Asian modern minimalism/nature category as the above, is beautifully subtle yet exquisite and one of the collaborators is another amazing Japanese architect, Tadao Ando. Check it out…

I’ve always felt like cube farms sucked the life from you. I know I’m not the only one. For years, many companies, mostly European or creative, have been experimenting with better ways for their employees to work. I once worked for a Scandinavian company who had us sitting in pods of four, which I originally thought were cool, but then realized were just as confining as cubes, but looked better. Thankfully, change is afoot. With the advent of Starbucks, wireless and the next generation workforce (the millenials), organizations are learning they need to create freer, more open environments for collaboration and concentration. These millenials won’t stand for bordom, repetion and Office Spaceness (my made up word, but you get it). They’ll just go find a more fun job where they won’t have to whither away in a cube for 9 hours.

In today’s PSKF, they made mention of a NYT article talking about this new way to work.

And yes, we work in one room with our back to one other, but we understand the importance of white space. In fact, Danielle blogged about this very idea a couple months ago. Her blog mentioned creating physical and mental white space - and I think offices who embrace this new way to work will be on their way to helping to create more of both and a lot more positive productivity for everyone.

How many of you have imbibed with the obligitory watermelon loaded with vodka? I sure have and though not the classiest way to get inebriated, it was always a little more fun then the plain old swallowing of alcohol (yes, this took place in college).

As I get older, it’s a goal to bring a little bit more class and sophistication into my life, hence the edible martini. If you couldn’t tell from this blog, we’re fans of innovation and creativity. This is just another case of taking the common and twisting it into something unique and beautiful. And I want one of those vacuum things!

Is what someone would typically hear when I call them accidentally on my phone. It actually happened to me yesterday. I almost always lock my phone - but, sometimes I forget and sometimes the silly thing refuses to lock (an aside: does technology advance us or debilitate us?? I mean, really?). At that point am I supposed to turn it off? OF COURSE NOT. So…there is the possibility of me accidentally calling the last person dialed, texted OR the first person on my contact list. So, sorry if you hear me belting out my favorite song of the week (this week it’s Mal Poli by Yelle). We all know I’m not the only one in this predicament. Undoubtedly, someone besides the phone company is taking advantage of this situation monetarily. Thankfully, it’s to help others.

The ingenious, A Blind Call, was developed by this Belgian ad agency, Duval Guillaume, and asks people to add its phone number to your phone list. So everytime you accidentally call “A Blind Call,” a cut of the proceeds go to the League for the Blind Fund. A call never costs more than €.75. Sadly, not in America. But what an innovative and unique idea - to take an annoying everyday occurance and twist it to raise funds for something worthy. Nonprofit creativity is so cool!

Yesterday we toured a very cool house in Brentwood. Wired Home by Living Homes (obviously, Chris Anderson didn’t completely turn me off). The house used state-of-the-art technology and environmentally conscious steel, glass and reclaimed redwood-encased Prefab for Living Homes by celebrated architect, Ray Kappe. The home is completely wrapped in windows - allowing the outside to be brought it - a concept that is throughly appealing to me. It was 4,000 sq. feet of design and technology exquisitness and absolutely the kind of house I see in my future. There was so much coolness in this house (forget the house keys, how about an iris reader instead) and we’re real suckers for it. Here are a few shots(sorry about the crappy camera phone) that really don’t do it justice.

The interior was also pretty spot on - modern yet not cold. The art was interesting, particularly from this artist -Andy Diaz Hope. Here’s something kinda trippy that I took - reminded Danielle of the show, “Flight of the Concords”. This was the mirror in the upstair bathroom.

But, there was only one issue - the price tag. The house is on the market for 4.3 mill. I don’t know if I will be able to afford this in the near future. And that begs the question, how many people really can? I understand that this home was for touring and sets the standard, but when will the masses, or even the upper middle class, be able to afford a sustainable PREFAB home. The definition of Prefab has definitely changed and so has the price. I don’t know the exact price of putting one of these homes up, but I’m assuming it’s quite costly even when they aren’t customized.

For me, the home symbolizes the green movement. Lots of new ways to be environmentally conscious, yet ironically, the majority of products are typically more expensive than their non-green counterparts. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule so you don’t need to list off all the ways or products I’m wrong about, but if we are to move in this direction, I hope that this kind of lifestyle can become more cost-effective and easily accessible for more people in the near future. I, for one, am waiting for the day.

We’ve been working on some Web 2.0 marketing campaigns for some of our clients, but none of them have been nonprofits.  But we have been talking alot about how more nonprofits can and should be taking advantage of Web 2.0.  The thing is, we haven’t seen all that many good creative examples of this, particularly for smaller organizations.  Even when we scour nonprofit resources, much of what they advise seems pretty basic and formulaic…not much creativity.

BUT…yesterday I saw this article in The Washington Post about how the local Goodwill chapter has created a YouTube fashion show video and a blog with vintage fashion tips.  Now there’s some creativity!

If you know of some smaller nonprofits using Web 2.0 in creative ways, let me know.

I’ll admit it - every once in awhile I need a distraction during the day.  We all do it - read our fave blog that has nothing to do with work (in my case Notes from the Trenches), browse Zappos, IM our friends, etc.  In fact, if you’re reading this, you’re probably looking for a distraction yourself.

A few weeks ago, Lauren had a bad distraction.  She had borrowed her father’s Nintendo Brain Age and was totally addicted.  For two day I heard that beeping little game.  Well today I found my newest addiction - and it couldn’t be more perfect for us!  FreeRice is an online vocabulary game - you guess vocabulary definitions and every time you answer correctly, ten grains of rice are donated to starving children.  As writers, expanding our vocab is always fun for us…and when you put a good cause behind it, how can we resist?  

So how does it work?  Throughout the game, sponsors are listed on the page and the sponsors donate money to the UN World Food Program.  When FreeRice launched on October 7th, they donated 830 grains of rice.  Since then, they have donated 165,000,000 grains of rice. 

Today I donated 1,100 grains of rice and learned three new words.  Now that’s a worthwhile distraction.

Did you know today is Blog Action Day? It’s a cool idea. Basically, a group of bloggers set out to heighten the awareness of one of the most important topics, environmentalism, throughout the blogoshpere and all on the same day. This mass blogging event will be the topic of the day on 15,000 blogs and reach 12 million readers. So - of course I wanted to participate. What is more important than preserving our earth?

So full disclosure, I am kind of a dork (yes, I like Sci-fi) and I love the NEW Battlestar Gallactica. The premise is humans invented robots, the robots rebel, kill many and take over the world, so the humans left have to flee into space to preserve the what’s left of the race. The characters are constantly craving earth’s environment, so they all want to get away on this one ship that replicates the beauty of earth’s outdoors. A reoccuring theme in shows of this nature for sure, but it always reminds me of how many of us take what we have here for granted. So, hopefully all this awareness will turn into action and not peter out because the reality is: this kind of revolution takes time. This month’s issue of Wired focuses quite a bit on this topic of time and trial and error particularly in regards to the future of energy.

One of the articles addresses the very prevalent molecule, cellulosic ethanol. This molecule is the answer to all our energy woes and even better, it’s just waiting for a good use in everyone’s lawnmowers! Problem is - it’s hard to break down. So even though there are ways to do it, it can’t be done at the proper scale and speed at this point. Sort of the like the whole corn ethanol deal - fuel can be made from it, but it’s not effective and efficient enought. I’m not going to get into the chemistry of it, but I think the underlying topic here is creative solutions and raising awareness regularly so people will continually clamor for solutions even if there isn’t a real answer for many years. Because in truth, there is no option for the US or the world whether due to the environmental or financial ramifications. Therejust isn’t a choice. And there needs to be mavericks who make it their goal to not let these issues just coast along.

In fact, check out these two guys, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger. These two probably might not being having a lot of “coffee talk” with mainstream environmentalist. A result of their controversial manifesto from 2005, “Death of Enviromentalism” and new book titled, “Break Through: From “The Death of Environmentalism” to the Politics of Possibility,” but I bet they do inspire passion and hopefully change. They opine current mainstream ideas proposed aren’t extreme enough to make an actual dent in the reality of greenhouse emmisions and the only way for change to be had is if the solutions are, “pro-growth, pro-technology, and pro-environment.” Seems like common sense right, but apprently these are the non-conformist ideas that will turn the enviromental movement onto its ear so something actually gets accomplished. Well, that and money of course.

Whatever they inspire, at least at least they inspire something! Me, I am going to do something too, not world changing big, but world changing in my life big. I drink coffee at least once a day, so I going to make it a point to to use my own cup because it kills me when I see the 30 cups from the past week piling up in the trash. It’s definitely not going to make the impact Nordhaus and Shellenberger want to make, but we all got to start the change somewhere. What are you doing?

Throughout the week, Gina’s guest post about creativity was on my mind…particularly while attending two very different panel discussions - one about luxury design and one about being a successful female entrepreneur.  And I began to notice a theme emerge in our week…I’ll call it “Creating Space.”  By this I mean one of two things - creating physical spaces that inspire your own creativity OR creating space within yourself to allow the creativity to bubble up.  At Sweet Talk, both types of space are really powerful tools for our creativity. 

We realized a few weeks ago that when we need to rework an idea or brainstorm a new one, we find it really helpful to get out of the office and go somewhere for inspiration.  We’ve had some of our best ideas emerge while browsing a bookstore, visiting furniture and design showrooms or eating at good restaurants.  This is our version of creating physical space to emerge creative.

But we also know that we have to create some space within ourselves to allow our creativity to surface.  When we’re too bogged down by details, or have negative energy from each other or from clients, our creative process stalls out.  So we’ve started reminding each other to “create space,” essentially our term for letting things go.  This week, Lauren had a really inspired idea when she created space to think of something other than upcoming deadlines. 

Sooo…in the realm of creating space, here are just a few of our favorite things this week:

Art for everyone at www.20×200.com might help you create an inspiring space.

For some truly beautiful images of space, check out Luce et Studio architects in San Diego.  We were awed by the Nissan Design Studio they created in Detroit.

And for a good example of someone who creates space within himself, check out journalist A.J. Jacobs’ new book, The Year of Living Biblically.   

How do you create space?