Love this post on Boing Boing relating to a person selling an old Seven-Up print plate with the wording as follows on it (and showing a baby drinking from a Seven-Up bottle).
So pure…So good… So wholesome for everyone… including the tiniest tots!
Why I find this both hilarious and interesting is that I’ve been thinking about and seeing a lot of these kinds of things lately around me (especially in advertising).
In effect, how many things are we doing today that seem normal, yet in the future we’ll look back and say how stupid and absurd we we’re? Or put another way, the "right way" to do something today may be the "wrong way" to do something tomorrow.
2 replies on “Present Normality, Future Absurdity”
The more and more promotions I run the clearer it becomes. In today’s attention economy, being different should be the prime directive of any company. I’m starting to get the zig down to a science. You can look to culture to define the zag.
"In today’s attention economy, being different should be the prime directive of any company."
I guess the way I look at it is, instead of being different, just be yourself. In being yourself, oftens times you will be different. I think the problem with many people and companies today is that they try to be too much like others and often loose their identity in the process.
Therefore, I think the greatest problem for people and companies today is finding out who they really are and what their greatest strengths are (and weaknesses as well) because we’ve become so used to trying to be like everyone else (i.e. pop culture). Once they figure out who they are though, they can just be themselves and be different at the same time. 🙂
I think a lot of people and companies today actually are fearful of being different though because in being different, you’re forging ahead in uncharted areas and taking risks instead of staying on the safer tried and true path.