Yesterday, I got a faux "green" magazine.
Green is so hot, everyone wants on board. One of my local papers, The Battery Park City Broadsheet, was stuffed with something entitled O2: The Riverhouse Guide to Healthy Luxury.
What O2 is not: a green publication. What O2 is: a 65 page glossy magazine-bound brochure for a new residential development in BPC which is, BTW, a green building complex. The brochure was wrapped around some editorial focused on local people and concerns, some "hip" green things to consume, a kind of strange fashion layout...and an article about the design-meisters who created the new development.
The building is probably great. But I found the advertising medium close to creepy.
And there's a giant stack of O2s in the lobby mailroom of my building...whatever doesn't get picked up by residents in the next day will get dumped -- albeit likely recycled -- by building management policy.
Grade for sustainable advertising: C-
Saturday, December 02, 2006
For Another Take on Authenticity...
...try this test to see whether you can spot the fake smiles.
The test is based on the work of Paul Ekman, a psychologist who has an extensive body of work in the neurosciences (and an association with His Holiness The Dalai Lama).
The test is based on the work of Paul Ekman, a psychologist who has an extensive body of work in the neurosciences (and an association with His Holiness The Dalai Lama).
Authenticity
Interesting article in the NY Times about Nina Garduno's Free City Supershop in Malibu, California.
Free City apparently sells a pastiche of recycled and customized bicycles, $200 t-shirts. And tents?
Nina Garduno's point, as reported by the Times, is to offer an authentic experience.
I've been blessed to experience some amazing luxuries in this life. 4 star hotel suites, meals at amazing restaurants, encounters with influential people...experiences that some would call "the best".
Pressed for a dining option, I'd much rather eat breakfast at Lower Manhattan's Kitchenette, a storefront diner and amazing expression of the personal creativity of Ann Nickinson and Lisa Hall. Kitchenette features a lot of decidedly non-vegan menu options that hark back to the breakfasts, on "special" days, of my childhood. My heart seized in my chest when I walked by Kitchenette a couple of months ago to find it closed. Thankfully, they've reopened around the corner on Chambers Street.
Or Bennie's Thai, with the best Thai food I've had outside of Bangkok, started by a woman who came to the US with very little. If I remember Bennie's story correctly, she started out working at at a Subway franchise. Over time, she came to own a Subway, where first she cooked homestyle Thai food for workers, and then for customers. Finally, she opened a little spot at the corner of Fulton and Gold in Lower Manhattan.
And I'd take a meal at Union Square Cafe any day. Eating there is like dining at Danny Meyer's house...I feel like a guest, not a customer.
Funny thing, all of these restaurants endured in a tough time downtown after the attacks on the World Trade Center...Bennie's and Kitchenette are both less than 6 blocks from the WTC. And the restaurant business suffered greatly across the city, for quite some time after the attacks.
These business owners have found a way to tap into their own authenticity and offer it up. This is how the Times article positions Nina Garduno, too.
In Blink Malcolm Gladwell writes about a statue purchased by the Getty museum in the 1980s, and the work done by experts to determine that the antiquity was a fake. And how some of these experts saw -- in a blink -- that the statue was not authentic.
The Times notes that Nina believes that a customer has an instinct for authenticity. She says, "I’m interested in having someone walk out of Free City and having had an experience. That’s what matters. They could buy a cheaper bicycle or T-shirt anywhere."
Hopefully Nina's business will have to survive only the ordinary pressures on a small business. But may it endure!
Free City apparently sells a pastiche of recycled and customized bicycles, $200 t-shirts. And tents?
Nina Garduno's point, as reported by the Times, is to offer an authentic experience.
I've been blessed to experience some amazing luxuries in this life. 4 star hotel suites, meals at amazing restaurants, encounters with influential people...experiences that some would call "the best".
Pressed for a dining option, I'd much rather eat breakfast at Lower Manhattan's Kitchenette, a storefront diner and amazing expression of the personal creativity of Ann Nickinson and Lisa Hall. Kitchenette features a lot of decidedly non-vegan menu options that hark back to the breakfasts, on "special" days, of my childhood. My heart seized in my chest when I walked by Kitchenette a couple of months ago to find it closed. Thankfully, they've reopened around the corner on Chambers Street.
Or Bennie's Thai, with the best Thai food I've had outside of Bangkok, started by a woman who came to the US with very little. If I remember Bennie's story correctly, she started out working at at a Subway franchise. Over time, she came to own a Subway, where first she cooked homestyle Thai food for workers, and then for customers. Finally, she opened a little spot at the corner of Fulton and Gold in Lower Manhattan.
And I'd take a meal at Union Square Cafe any day. Eating there is like dining at Danny Meyer's house...I feel like a guest, not a customer.
Funny thing, all of these restaurants endured in a tough time downtown after the attacks on the World Trade Center...Bennie's and Kitchenette are both less than 6 blocks from the WTC. And the restaurant business suffered greatly across the city, for quite some time after the attacks.
These business owners have found a way to tap into their own authenticity and offer it up. This is how the Times article positions Nina Garduno, too.
In Blink Malcolm Gladwell writes about a statue purchased by the Getty museum in the 1980s, and the work done by experts to determine that the antiquity was a fake. And how some of these experts saw -- in a blink -- that the statue was not authentic.
The Times notes that Nina believes that a customer has an instinct for authenticity. She says, "I’m interested in having someone walk out of Free City and having had an experience. That’s what matters. They could buy a cheaper bicycle or T-shirt anywhere."
Hopefully Nina's business will have to survive only the ordinary pressures on a small business. But may it endure!
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