Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

A lovely example of an act that inspires through its simple, human appeal and relevance.

Read all about it here.

(Those crafty Canadians!  :)  )

Thanks Mylene!

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To raise awareness, in 2007, our Leo Burnett colleagues in Sydney came up with Earth Hour, getting local government, the press and the residents and businesses of Sydney to switch off the lights for 1 hour. Because great ideas are worth repeating, 2009 will hopefully see another earth hour. By now, the concept has been exported to a whole bunch of other cities, and we hope that it catches on in Europe too.

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One of the core differences of Leo Burnett’s HumanKind approach is that we should observe human behavior rather than just inferring knowledge by asking people things. This way, a brand can create acts that play into and enable people better than pure ads that bombard them with irrelavtn messages.

Experience Planning has used this type of insight generation for a long time, but now that we’ve mixed methodologies with traditional methods, I asked myself, who outside of advertising or marketing or academia already observes human behavior in their daily line of work?

It’s pretty obvious: it’s comedians. Like no other group do they make their living of being able to spot trends, behavior, knacks, idiosyncrasies people or groups and serve them up as “funny insights.”

In a way, the better and uncommon the insight, the louder the audience’s applause. It is a very human thing to be able laugh at some fundamental truths being unearthed in front of you. You see youself, and groups around mirrored before you, which can be an inspiring act. As planners, this is what we should aim for. We shouldn’t necessarily make creatives laugh (they are used to making the jokes themselves), but whether we are planners or creatives, we should aim to inspire others in that way.

Here is one of my favorite comedian insights, in this case about men and women fighting (warning: liberal use of expletives!)

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Kiva.org is a site that allows you to support entrepreneurs and their causes all around the world try to make their world a better place. Using individuals to create loans for other individuals is a neat idea, especially in a climate of institutional subprime disasters. Just last week 1,500 entrepreuneurs were funded. Oh, and, yeah, they pay you back. What a great HumanKind idea!!

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