Tag: apple

Timelessness: Social Media, Pompeii, Creativity, and Romeo and Juliet

Facebook. Twitter. Linked In. Google+. Its a social media perfect storm out there isn’t it? Even outside the ever increasing social media realm, it seems there’s something new every day. The new technology. The new procedure. The new method. The new ideology. The new initiative. The new leader. The new diet. The new relationship.

The new                                                 .

I love ‘the new.’ I love discovering and exploring and asking ‘what if.’ Yet, in my line of work, I’m continually teaching and encouraging a ‘back-to-the-basics’ approach. As creatives, it’s easy for us to get gaught up ‘the new,’ sometimes to our detriment.

Enter Jon Steel via Ideasicle, one of my favorite think-tanks on creativity and the creative process. Steel is a British advertising giant and all-around creative thinker, creative doer type.

He’s one of my new creative heroes. Chew on this from Mr. Steel:

“It seems to me that we’re absolutely obsessed as an industry with the stuff that’s new and all the stuff we can do. . . I bet there were people shopping in Pompeii who shopped at the places they did to buy their bread or whatever they were buying because they were treated the way customers get treated in the Apple store today. We have got to remember that there are fundamental principles of human nature, of human instinct, the things that make us happy, the things that piss us off, the things that make us excited. Those are the same today as they’ve always been.”

And…

“The great communicators, the great books, the great movies, and the great advertising campaigns are all based on those human truths. It’s why you can take Romeo and Juliet and shoot it in the modern day with Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s why you can take classic Greek literature and make modern versions of it. Because the themes that they’re talking about are timeless. I just hope that people will remember with all this change [technology] going on there are still some fundamentals and things that remain the same.”

What do you think about Jon Steel’s approach to creativity? How do we blend the new with the old in our creative process?

Derek Jeter, Michael Jackson, Tim Tebow and Apple Products

I never did get it. I still don’t get it. And, faithless me, I will probably never get it.

It = watching most sports on TV.

What’s my problem?

Am I not a man?

Should I get my testosterone levels checked?

Two polarized groups: fans and non-fans. If I may, I’d like to have a fireside chat with each for a moment.

For sports fans… The non-fans, like myself, understand your passion; we just don’t understand why you’re so passionate. We too are a passionate people… for things like Apple products. We see this as a more beneficial relationship that doesn’t leave us as empty as watching a game. These products help us. They accomplish tasks. Create art. Improve communication. Entertain us.

“You just haven’t found your team yet,” you say. We’ve tried. To us, they’re all basically the same. Lions, tigers, bears . . .

“What about college teams instead of pro?” Same thing, different paycheck.

“Why are you a hater?” We know you just want us to love your team as much as you do and that our disinterest may seem like hate. It is not. We are lovers, not haters, which is why we’d rather spend our time doing things we love.

We’re not totally ignorant either. I knows some ‘sports names.’ I even put a couple in the title of this post: Jeter and Tebow! Granted, I Googled them before posting this because 1) I wasn’t sure if I spelled their names correctly and 2) I wasn’t sure what their first names were.

For non-fans…  Michael Jackson said it best:

For you are not alone. Not alone ohhhh. You are not alone. You are not alone. Say it again. You are not alone. You are not alone. Not alone, not alone.

There’s other dudes like Brian Regan who may feel the same way. A t-shirt company even came up with a way to cash in on one of Regan’s stand-up routines.

This is my favorite jersey:

Andrew's Jersey

This football season, I want to participate and join the fans by cheering and celebrating as best I know how. I’ll just be wearing my ‘go my favorite sports team’ jersey.

What about you?

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