Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

Walking away from a wonderfully hilarious David Sedaris show last night, my sweetie said, “It’s Halloween, and all I want is a few peanut M&Ms…”

It was 10:00 p.m. We stood in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square waiting for our MAX train to take us home, trying to figure out where we might get a bag of peanut M&Ms.

Unwilling to pop into one of the (fairly seedy) convenience stores downtown late on a pretty crazy Friday night, we decided we’d be quite happy with the delicious dark chocolate marshmallows we’d gotten for Halloween from Alma Chocolates.

As we walked the fifteen minutes down the hill from the train, though, her craving became mine, and my craving became almost obsessive.

Just a few peanut M&Ms…

We laughed at ourselves - frustrated and craving peanut M&Ms on the biggest candy night of the year - as an Audi station wagon drove by, windows down, occupants yelling “Happy Halloween!”

Thunk, thunk. They had thrown something out the window toward us.

I looked in the street, and lo and behold, right next to the curb were two little yellow packets of peanut M&Ms.

Turns out it was a miraculously Happy Halloween.

In my email today came an interesting bit of research: the 2008 Presidential ImagePower Survey by Landor Associates and Penn, Schoen & Berland. It describes the two presidential tickets’ brand associations, as selected by a survey of voters:

Click on the thumbnail for larger viewing,  the PDF of the results as announced by Penn, Schoen & Berland is here.

I found it interesting that the candidates complemented each other so well… and that Obama and Palin were more similar than not, in terms of brand perception, especially in being “different.” She was a Wendy’s in a sea of McDonalds, he was an iPhone in a bunch of Blackberrys.

The survey was conducted in early October, where 1002 Democrats, Republicans and Independents voted their brand associations.

I’m participating in an international movement called Blog Action Day, sponsored by Blog Action Day.org. From their site:

Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

The subject of this global discussion today is poverty.  And I know more of us are feeling impoverished as the world’s economy teeters on its axis. But feeling impoverished is not poverty.  For many of us, it’s likely to be an emotional feeling rather than physical state of homelessness, hunger, cold…

In the Oregon area, requests for food assistance have grown by almost 5% over the past year, for the first time in four years, according to the Oregon Food Bank, which served more than 792,000 boxes of food to people in need last year. Some stats from their most recent report:

• More than 200,000 people per month ate from an Oregon Food Bank box this year, up from 192,000 in 2006/7
• Every dollar donated to the Oregon Food Bank will buy five pounds of food to supply the food boxes
• About 61% of the food in food boxes comes from the food industry themselves, but that still leaves 39% on our shoulders
• About 16% of the food comes from food drives - learn how to hold your food drive here.
• Anyone can drop off food at one of the food banks, if you’d like to donate. They’d just like you to contact them first, so they can be prepared for you.

I’m a big believer in blogging for social good. I hope this little post will inspire someone to contact the food bank and either donate, learn how to hold a food drive, or drop off some food for those in need.

Trust has been a common theme that the universe keeps thrusting in my face of late.

• Our planet has been shaken by a lack of trust and transparency in the mortgage, banking and financial markets.
• Our nation’s political leaders’ approval ratings (a form of trust) are in the toilet, and the mud-slinging has just begun in earnest as our future political leaders jockey for votes. Whom do we believe?
• Closer to home, people are having trouble paying their bills. For a (sorry) myriad of (sorry) reasons, sorry. We’ll write the checks this week.

I’m a living microcosm of the world. And right now, that’s not a good thing.

On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, trust is broken when shelter, food and sleep are threatened. And a breakdown of trust is ugly. Even in a microcosm. Who isn’t feeling the general malaise gripping our globe?

My personal mistrust and malaise are showing in the following ways:

• Scattered attention - that never bodes well for clients…
• Irritation - knowing I can’t do more than pick up a phone and beg them to write the checks tomorrow, as promised…
• Disappointment - at myself for not following up more promptly, or checking in to remind them to approve the invoice, please…

Which, in turn, thwarts productivity, purpose, creativity, graciousness, my sense of humor.

[Rarely do I use this little pulpit for personal gripes. In fact, I'm not sure it's happened before. But (as I tell my clients) this is my living room, it's my choice what I share, and apparently I need to get this out of my heart. If you see yourself here, forgive yourself.]

Rebuilding Trust - One Gesture at a Time

So. How am I going about rebuilding trust with my fellow world travelers? By trying to make even tiny gestures matter:

• Thanking those who pay their bills early (! and there are those who do!)
• Being polite to those with whom we deal - and offering help where we can
• Understanding that people forget - my inbox has some ‘reminders’ I need to pay attention to… (noted)
• Kindness is important - one of my mantras - and especially appropriate in today’s times
• Prying the mind open - and the ears while we’re at it - and listening to others’ points of view

Just as we’re being told to take a long-term view of the financial markets and not panic; I think we’re in a place where we need to take a long-term view of humanity and know that this is an impermanent breakdown in concentration, efficiency, abundance and trust.

In the spirit of “the greed that got us into this situation is the greed that’ll get us out of it…” Trust is the first step to reparation.

Let the spirit of trust (and the abundance that comes with it) begin to flow…

Sometimes we have to make significant choices. I believe my clients would rather deal with a woman with a soul than a machine tethered to technology. Which is why I chose (consciously, many times over the past weekend) to stay unplugged from the grid.

On Friday afternoon, we packed the dog in the car and drove the short, 70 miles it takes to get to the Oregon coast, where friends had invited us to stay for the weekend.

I had packed my laptop (to write the second in a series of “how-to” digital marketing papers I’m working on) and a manuscript on mobile marketing (for which I’m providing a pre-release quote) - both with good intentions to finish them.

We arrived at sunset, and - martinis and champagne in hand - we toasted weekend ahead outside and (because it was chilly) inside the house, enjoying an unobstructed view of the big red sun slipping into the water for the evening.

It was a great start to a delightful weekend of ignoring car, computer and iPhone. Here’s what we did instead:

• Walked to coffee (six times in two days)
• Walked to lunch and looked at places for sale
• Let the dogs romp along the beach (exhausted Joey was a trouper on those three-inch legs)
• Played cribbage again for the first time in 30 years (won one game, lost one…)
• Bought lottery tickets (people from small towns win more often than those who buy in big towns)
• Watched a sea eagle hunt for dinner over the dunes
• Contemplated the randomness of life, observing flowers change while walking by the place where a plane crashed into a home in August (that happened to be right along our walk)

I can read the manuscript in the evenings, and write my paper between meetings this week.

My choice to unplug means I will always have the memories we generated at the coast this weekend. Some delightful, some contemplative, all fuel for my soul.