#or perhaps to more easily psychologically control the fairly powerful machines?

[junuve]

it literally would have cost Aperture zero dollars to not make everything in their facility self aware and capable of feeling physical pain and existential dread.

[amplesalty]

TV Binging: Wild Wild Country (2018)

Is it really TV binging if it’s on Netflix? Serialised content binging?

This is not a story that is entirely new to me, having previously watched a video by Fredrik Knudsen as part of his ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’ series on Youtube. These are documentary type pieces that seem to flip between weird historical events/figures from history (The Collyer Brothers, Plague Doctors or The Austrian Wine Poisining) and more contemporary oddities from the internet age (Furries, The rise and fall of Spoony or TempleOS). The internet stuff in particular often deals in an individuals spiralling psychological state and this delicate subject matter mixed with some eerie background music and the pace/tone of Knudsen’s voice lend the videos a very creepy quality. I will give Knudsen credit though in that it could easily become a rubber necking way to point and laugh at people with genuine problems, he always seems to approach it in a mature and respectful manner.

His video on the subject of Rajneeshpuram is currently down at the time of writing due to a copyright claim from Osho International, one that I assume is spurious and done only as a means of public image control. At nearly 40 minutes it’s amongst the longer of his episodes (massively dwarfed by the ones on TempleOS and WingsOfRedemption though) but doesn’t have anywhere near the running time of this series which has 6 episodes in the region of 60-70 minutes.  I remember at the time of watching it there were points I felt needed expanding on. I can’t remember the detail exactly, I think it was either a mention of the Rajneesh becoming heavily armed or how they gained control of the town through the elections that felt glossed over, presumably for the sake of brevity. I’ve had this saved to my watch list since then hoping for a more detailed exploration of the events.

02/07/20 EDIT: Found an alternative version of Knudsen’s video that apparently had some minor changes made to it in order to skirt around the copywright issues. https://archive.org/details/20180123rajneeshpuramdowntherabbithole

Ep 1

It’s immediately obvious the difference between Knudsen’s work and this, Knudsen being very much outside whilst this has the budget to be able to speak to people directly involved, from the people of Antelope to Sheela herself. There’s a foreboding opening from the Antelope citizens talking about how at the time they became aware of the situation and what was about to happen, even if they could never have imagined how it would turn out. The show hints at the events that are yet to come with shots of court cases, talk of thousands of felonies being committed along the way.

Which is something to keep in mind because throughout the first episode, things are covered in a rather positive light from the Rajneeshies point of view.  Rather understandable stories of how people were drawn to this when they talk about their fractured relationships or reflections on their own existence, wanting to commit to something greater than themselves and the shallow, materialistic life they lived. Even Sheela’s backstory has a rather sympathetic light shone on it, speaking of her admiration of the Bhagwan, being in awe of him during her meetings with him and how she became a widow after moving to America at a young age.

That opening teaser of crazier things yet to come is perhaps necessary as I feel the first episode starts out a little slow, it does have to establish everything and since everything is being told fairly chronologically, there’s nothing massively dramatic going on in the early goings.

Ep 2

Things continue much in the same vein, the construction of the group’s city seen as this very virtuous mission. It is admirable what they were able to accomplish, turning to the best and brightest minds amongst their community in order to build infrastructure, to build roads, houses, farms, even a bloody airport!  In their minds they just wanted to build their own community free of the of the materialism and hatred in normal society and instead build upon the principles of sharing, peace and love. Only, in the eyes of the people of Antelope, not the kind of love they want to see. A lot of the archived footage of those residents paints them as these old fuddy duddies looking down on these outsiders with their wicked ideas of free love and open marriages.

There’s a rather dramatic shift about a third of the way through the episode when William Gary, serving as the Deputy Attorney General in Oregon at the time, talks about how they were looking into the situation at the time and were worried about the possibility of another incident similar to the Joneswtown massacre in 1976. This was a settlement established by a new religious movement founded by Jim Jones in Guayana and culminated in the loss of over 900 lives including a congressman who was visiting the area at the behest of concerned family members of people who had moved to the settlement. I’ll need to find another documentary on this story as well as this only gives a basic outline of it. It’s interesting that there’s a strong link between the two given that the daughter of the congressman is one of the people that moved to the new city but she actually speaks out at any comparisons between the two.

From here, the tension between the group and the locals of Antelope escalate as surrounding farmers worry about the effects on their land that erecting a city might have. They start getting politics and lawyers involved and you think that might be the end of it but that’s when the Rajneesh get smart; if they can’t build their own town, they’ll just buy another one. And by sheer chance, that other one just so happens to be Antelope. Sure is a lot of houses and land on sale in that town for dirt cheap prices. Lot of old folk too that talk a big game about never selling up but when someone comes around flashing the cash, it’s kinda hard for them to resist.

Maybe it’s just that modern, leftist way of thinking but it does sound kinda bad when you have a bunch of old, white American’s going on TV, telling an Indian based group to get out and openly making threats of violence towards them. Meanwhile, the Rajneesh just take the calm approach of questioning how can the locals tell them to get out of ‘their town’ when this is everyones town and make accusations of bigotry. Some of the Rajneesh followers try and defend their actions by essentially saying it’s a free country but Sheela is a bit more blunt about it when she says that they were exploiting a loophole. There’s something really chilling about how measured and calculated everything is as they slowly infiltrate the town by buying up more and more of the land. It’s like something out of a horror movie, this whole town can see this threat coming but they’re just powerless to stop it. Even when they take the drastic measure of trying to disincorporate the town, the Rajneesh manage to out vote them. There’s a shot in the aftermath of the results where the Rajneesh are celebrating and the townsfolk look utterly crushed that is quite haunting.

There’s a lot of talk of the townsfolks’ slogan in the build up to the vote; ‘better dead than red’, making reference to the robes that the Rajneesh dress in, the idea that they’d rather see the town dead than have the Rajneesh take over. After the vote, one woman makes a rallying cry that someone has to step in before the entire state turns red. I can’t help but feel that the whole red part can be read into a little bit given that they probably weren’t that far removed from the worries that communism might overthrow America. And it’s not like Americans have any history of forcibly taking the land of a native people associated with the colour red or anything...

Tensions only promise to escalate from here though as the episode culminates with footage of the bombing of Hotel Rajneesh in Portland, a Rajneesh spokesman saying they will take any steps necessary to defend themselves in the face of such violence and Sheela talking about how at that point they had to go out and arm themselves in order to defend themselves when no one else would. Maybe those Antelope folks were wrong, clearly going out to arm yourselves with assault rifles in the name of protecting ones self and their family is as American as apple pie.

Ep 3

It’s a little unsettling to go from this peaceful community to the sight of several people in fatigues practicing their arm with machine guns. Something that Sheela is very quick to frame that they were pushed to, that they never had a single gun in their community until their hotel was bombed.

The Rajneesh council take hold but give some token seats to traditional residents, not enough to do anything about the sweeping changes brought forward like renaming the town, streets and introducing a new police force called the ‘Peace Force’. They are likened more to a ‘harassment force’ by the natives though, patrolling the streets with flashing lights late at night, arresting people speaking out about the Rajneesh and openly carrying their weapons. For a town of less than 100 people, it’s a little heavy handed but presumably done as a show of power or even just to rub people’s faces in the fact that they won. There’s a continuing sense of something bubbling under the surface just waiting to explode with talk of civil war, news reporters being monitored by the Peace Force and gun stores in neighbouring cities recording record interest.

There’s something delightful to watching Sheela in all the archive TV appearances she was involved in, very confident and smug at times. When one critic speaks of the wealth of the Rajneesh and the fleet of some 13, 14 Rolls Royces that the Bhagwan has, Sheela quite happily corrects them that it is in fact 17 and it’ll be 20 come next week. She’s very strong minded in the way she defends the Rajneesh and challenges those interviewing her but at the same time she can be rather brash and impulsive. There’s a moment when one lady is criticising her and her rebuttal is just a rather blunt ‘Oh fuck you’.

It’s so far a rare flaw into was has always seemed like a very calculated plan, almost to the point that has me questioning just how much research did they do into this whole plan. It’s been portrayed like they’re always just reacting to what other people are doing and only out to defend themselves but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Case in point, they start bussing in wave after wave of homeless people from around the country under the guise of providing help to the needy. A noble endeavour and another ringing endorsement for their PR. These are people who have been shunned by society, war veterans in some cases who have sacrificed so much for their country only to have nothing to show for it. Now the only people standing up for them are the Rajneesh, a people who in their own mind are being persecuted themselves. All they ask in return is that you vote for them in the upcoming county elections...

Part of the news footage shown is one of the officials being questioned on voting laws, the point being raised that it’s the easing of voter regulations that will allow these out of towners to come in and vote against them. There really is something super villainy how the Rajneesh are systematically using all these different American laws and ideals and turning them back on their own people. But that point about more lax regulations and Oregon being seen as one of the more lenient states in that regard does make me wonder if it was picked out specifically in order to run this plan or whatever it’s all just coincidence.

Officials see where this plan is heading, especially when they figure that the Rajneesh will have thousands upon thousands of voters that will outnumber them so when a bus load of Rajneeshi homeless turn up to register to vote in Oregon, they’re promptly told that all new voter registration has been suspended. In context you see why they’re doing it but it’s kind of a bad look for government officials to suddenly deny people their right to vote. Especially when it’s suddenly African American’s that are usually the ones on camera as examples of the Rajneesh homeless. Again, is that just a coincidence, selective use of footage by the film makers or a calculated move by the Rajneesh as another example of the bigotry they’ve faced?

Sheela really is becoming more and more a figurehead of the movement with her TV appearances and rallying of the supporters. There’s a point as well where it’s mentioned she has private meetings with the Bhagwan each night before returning to inform everyone what has been discussed and what their next moves are. Just how much control does the Bhagwan have though, whos to say she isn’t just making up all the plans herself and telling everyone it’s his command?

By now, the presentation of the Rajneesh and Sheela particularly is starting to shift as their actions become increasingly drastic. With the homeless voter loophole closed, their ace in the hole isn’t so valuable anymore and when reports of some bad apples come to light, orders come down to sedate the homless by spiking the beer supply issued to them with their evening meal. It comes a little out of nowhere and isn’t really reflected on by anyone in the documentary. Then the episode ends with talk of Sheela wanting to escalate matters in order to win the election, even if it means murder...

Ep 4

Starts with inspector talking about a visit to view some of the construction, how they’re initially blocked getting into the city as a road is closed off due to an ‘accident’. Then, when they do get in, they’re fobbed off when they start asking to look inside some buildings. ‘Oh, there’s nothing important in there. Just janitorial supplies.’ ‘Oh, it’s locked and I don’t have the key’. The man reveals that it later transpired that the building he was intending to look in turned out to be their lab so he wonders how things might have played out differently had he pressed the issue. This sounds very cinematic, I can imagine it in my head playing out as a henchman is sneakily cocking a handgun behind his back ready to take out the inspector before he uncovers the truth, smiling politely when the inspector goes along with the story and decides to head home instead.

There’s something very ominous about the Bhagwan finally breaking his silence of 4 years to denounce the now departed Sheela, basically throwing her under the bus for any number of things with accusations of attempted murders within the commune itself and the surrounding communities. It almost feels like a reversal of one of my earlier thought, now she’s not here to defend herself, who’s to say he isn’t using that to make himself look better? Blame her for all this stuff in order to bring everyone back onto his side.

Also pretty chilling with the final statement of ‘If the police will not take action, then my people will take action’ as the footage immediately cuts to a shot of a Rajneesh security guard complete with assault rifle. It’s weird that all this build up of potential violence has suddenly shifted into a civil war of sorts.

Ep 5

Feels like we’re literally going down a rabbit hole when they search Sheela’s old house which seems to have a network of secret rooms that each contain multiple other secret doors and tunnels with switches hidden away in things like air coniditioning units.

There’s a fantastic shot of her paperwork including a book titled “How to Kill (Vol. V)” by John Minnery and a book titled ‘Techniques of HARASSMENT’ which has a delightfully cartoonish front cover. I would encourage you to look up the aforementioned ‘How to Kill’ if only for some of the accompanying blurb and reviews related to it.

Lousy Obama government, cracking down on our freedoms! They’ll put you on a watchlist just for buying this book, like when you ask your school library for a copy of Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto. If Forest Whitaker taught us anything though it’s that Ghost Dog didn’t have any trouble killing.

A rather scathing review from Drew who demands more detail in his murder instruction manuals. It’s just another example of ‘the man’ censoring our attempts to teach the unwashed masses how to make their own homemade guns. This was before the advent of 3D printers though, I’m sure every Tom, Dick and Harry has their own downloaded rifle these days.

There’s also an amazing story of potential tampering of the local water supply, a unverified story mind you, where someone had heard that beavers are ridden with bacteria so they had sought to introduce beavers into the water supply. However, after finding that the potential entry point had a mesh covering preventing directly putting the animals in, they then killed the beavers, liquefied the bodies and then poured that into the water. Again, only allegedly. Granted that took a rather sour turn once the killing of the beavers was introduced but I can’t help but be amused at something that ridiculous. I guess it reduces the possibility of connecting it to anyone is they were to be discovered. You might find a paper trail for chemicals but you find a few beavers swimming in a dam and you might chalk that up as bad luck.

In what seems to be a running theme in this series, there’s even more talk about the stockpile of arms that the Rajneesh have assembled and the possibility that the government might end up having to mount a full scale assault on this community in order to enact their plans to arrest the suspects in their investigations. One news report suggests they have 96 AK-47 rifles and 1 million rounds, with one of the Antelope contributors suggesting their arms outnumbered that of the entire combined police forces in Oregon.

But it’s all for nought when the Rajneesh basically smuggled the Bhagwan out in the middle of the night on a jet. It does feel a little sensationalist of the producers of this series to keep building up to these supposed skirmishes that will take place but never actually do.

Ep 6

Another thing that seems to be consistent throughout is the reserved manner in which the apparent crimes of the Rajneesh are handled. Talk of assassinating politicians, the sudden outbreak of food poisining or highjacking planes in order to use them on a suicide mission to crash into a county building very quickly comes and goes, never really being focused on or allowed to settle.  Maybe it’s a way of underlining just how causally the Rajneesh ultimately viewed these acts, thinking nothing of hurting other people so long as they gained from it. There is some hesitation and remorse from the people recounting these stories but with the overall sympathetic slant of the series in my view, it can come across a little apologetic.

Thankfully, the final episode seems to indicate it was more of a pacing or story telling choice, with them now really going all in on everything once the government has access to the inner workings of the Rajneesh and have an informant ready to tell all. Whilst Sheela was prosecuted for all manner of poisonings, arsons, assaults and conspiracy to commit murder, the Bhagwan himself rather tamed in comparison with only charges relating to immigration fraud that was eventually bargained out to him agreeing to the leave the country.

The part that stands out though is Jane Stork or Ma Shanti B. Hiding out in Germany in order to avoid extradition to America for prosecution for her part in Sheela’s plans, she receives news of her son having a terminal illness over in Australia but due to the outstanding warrant for her arrest, she’s unable to travel unless she goes and faces the music back in the US. She describes herself as throwing herself at the mercy of the court, something she’s given as she’s sentenced to time served and becomes a free woman. It’s all told in a very triumphant tone, something you’d normally get in a story with an innocent person finally being exonerated. Like there’s all these drawings peppered throughout the footage with a very cold, shadowy look to them up to the point where she is essentially freed, where the colours become much warmer and clear. It’s very odd, not least because that freedom is now tinged with the fact that it’s not much of a celebration considering she has to go watch her son die.

Being the finale, the episode looks at the ramifications on the Rajneesh community itself, with both its spiritual and admistrative figureheads gone, it’s position becomes untenable and people start to move away. It’s quite a sorrowful piece, with people reflecting on their time there and one person even being reluctant to go in spite of what’s happening, insisting he’ll be the last person out of there and that they’ll have to have to come and physically remove him. Even the talking heads within the series still seem very attached to the community all these years later, with Philip Toelkes (Swami Prem Niren) speaking passionately about the continued success of the Bhagwan’s teachings to this very day and being visibily moved when talking of his passing.

It’s one of things I’m taking away from this show, how surprisingly positive it’s looked at by those involved and even the show itself. Maybe I’ve just interpreted it in a different way then it was intended but this was ultimately a group, or at least niche sections of it, responsible for the largest bioterrorist attack in the US. It’s a shame that the Knudsen episode is down as it would be interesting to look at it again for comparison, I can’t seem to find a mirror of it anywhere either. He is quite clinical and matter of fact though so I suspect it would be more damning as I think it covers a lot of food poisoning and plotted assassinations.

I think the most interesting parts to me though are the middle block of episodes covering the growth of the Rajneesh community and its interactions with the wider community around it. Again, the fact that the producers could draw upon all of this archived news footage gives you the chance to see what reactions were like to the saga at the time. There’s even a clip of Johnny Carson leading a goodbye song to the Bhagwan when news comes out of him being deported. I was just really fascinated with the way that Sheela manipulated the virtues of American society, the supposed land of freedom and opportunity, to her own ends.

I would encourage anyone to give the show a watch, if only to witness the crazy turn of events as the Rajneesh go to greater and greater extremes to reach their goals. It’s a lot like 2020; each time you think you’ve reached a new low and have bottomed out, the floor suddenly gives way to new unthinkable depths.

[markjsousa]

FEAR: The Ultimate Brand Builder?

Plenty of companies have built their brands on promises based on addressing fears – the needs for protection, for reassurance, for status, for achievement, recognition and so on – in a world where so many of those things are portrayed as being at risk. But how successful is fear as an emotive driver today and should we still be using it as a motivation to get people to buy more?

First thing to be aware of – fear works. While some marketers regard fear as an old-fashioned way of changing attitudes and behaviors, a study published by the American Psychological Association in 2015 and based on 50 years of research shows that fear-based appeals are still effective, particularly when they contain recommendations for one-time only behaviors. According to the article, including a fear element more than doubles the probability of change relative to not presenting a fear motive or including an appeal that has a low fear component.

Some of the reasons for this seem obvious. Fear gives people a reason to pay attention and therefore it instills an emotive reaction. Fear plays to our view of a changing world. And it seems we live in an age where fear is a significant component in the media. As someone remarked recently, the world is now presented to us as an ongoing sequence of dramas. So much is such a big deal that if your message lacks an element of primal response, there’s a risk some will feel that your brand could easily be lost in the noise. The temptation for brands to play up fear is also brought on by the observation that others seem to be using it successfully.

Keith Payne, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, makes the point that the brain is a pattern-seeking machine. In the absence of patterns, we go looking for regularities to make our lives work, he says. Chaos and randomness stress us because they make us feel left out, left behind or out of control. Lack of pattern and predictability induce fear. Too much pattern and predictability, on the other hand, quickly incites boredom and rebellion. We all want to know where we stand. At the same time, we don’t ever want to feel stuck or being seen to be stuck. We fear that.

Social media has generated its own fears, particularly around failure. The article I read that quoted Keith Payne also pointed out that Facebook et al have exploded notions of what is normal. Perfection is now portrayed ubiquitously as achievable and expected. In a time where so much is streamed to us as picture perfect, the fear of missing out or of not keeping up is driving many of those who interact with their world digitally to be highly anxious and chronically over-aware of other people’s achievements and opinions.

Another reason why fear gets our attention is because we have conditioned ourselves to believe that we must not just solve the problems that we face, but do so in ways that vanquish them completely. One of the key reasons for that, according to Brene Brown is we live in a culture with a strong sense of scarcity. We’re told we’re not getting enough sleep. We worry that we’re not getting enough done. We’re concerned that we’re not perfect enough. And we feel an expectation to deal with those concerns comprehensively; to use the resources that we have available to us to make the problem go away once and for all. But Brown makes the point that the opposite of scarcity is not necessarily abundance or completeness. Sometimes, it’s the ability to do enough, just enough, and then stop.

That brings us back to the point in the research – that people are looking for answers that resolve what concerns them; answers that they understand and can act on.

If you believe as I do that brands are most effective when they address a need state simply, clearly and distinctly, then the path to being competitive may not lie in simply adding to the burgeoning fear factor. If they want to avoid being caught up in this escalating volume of drama, outrage and concern, brands may want to adopt a different approach. As Anne Bahr Thompson points out, millennials rely on their favorite brands to help them feel less anxious and more emotionally balanced and fulfilled in a world that is increasingly complex to navigate. And so brands could, perhaps should, be making better use of that reliance to help them achieve a balanced response to the demands of their social media peer group and to develop more valuable relationships in a range of ways. I think her ideas are potentially applicable to all sorts of brands:

1. Deliver Leadership – in a world where people are concerned about quality of life, longer term security and family, brands should be looking for ways to inject confidence about the future and the planet and to embed broader societal solutions into their ways of doing business.

2. Be Realistic – brands need to help people connect with what really matters to them in life. The most powerful way they can do is by example – by being genuine and sincere themselves in how they interact with customers and potential buyers.

3. Protect The Relationship – brands need to respect buyers as people and treat data as a relationship building tool rather than as a sales platform and a means to stalk shoppers. Inevitably that means addressing the irony of a desire for more personalized interaction with a willingness to set boundaries around intrusion.

4. Treat People Fairly, Starting With Your Own People – brands need to establish their credentials as good citizens by behaving fairly and openly, but they also need to build a deeper and broader sense of community by taking opportunities to involve more people in how they develop products and set and deliver policies.

5. Defend And Support Wellbeing – in much the same way as brands need to consider how they can offer solutions for the world, they should also look at how and where they can help people function more effectively and in a more fulfilled manner. That may well mean looking out beyond what they feel they are responsible for (via their products and services) to a broader consideration set of human factors that they could positively influence.

Increasingly, it’s not good enough for brands to simply focus on what they want to get out of their relationship with customers and to use whatever means necessary, including fear of failure, to achieve that. While the pressures to deliver profitability internally may be as strong, if not greater, than ever, and certainly more complex, the onus for brands now is to participate in a much more rounded and considered way with those who buy from them.

So if fear works as such a powerful motivator, how do we harness it without relying on it? As Martin Lindstrom wisely pointed out, what’s more important for brands is to use our fears as the starting point for helping people to better manage their lives:

Convert problems into assets – People always have problems. Rather than highlighting those, find answers to the underlying difficulties. For example, he says, no one knew they wanted an airbag, but everyone agreed they wanted safer cars.

Add a practical dimension to an irrational decision – if you want people to buy something that rewards them emotionally, find a way to include elements that seal the deal.

Don’t just play on the fear. Instead, look for ways to systematically remove it, so that people feel a sense of progress and personal achievement.

Brad VanAuken captured much of my perspective on how to best think about fear when he covered this topic a few years back: “People’s deepest feelings generally fall into two buckets: (1) anxieties/fears and (2) desires/longings. People try to avoid that which they fear and seek that for which they long. I personally believe that we marketers should pay more attention to people’s desires and less attention to their anxieties. It would make for a far more sane and pleasant world.”

Agreed, and, to Brene Brown’s point, brands need to do so in ways that are practical, finite and provide a sense of closure and resolution. Brands should inspire customers to achieve what they want (by, getting back to Payne’s point earlier, perhaps providing them with a clearly patterned and structured way to do so), but also help them set limits on where a sense of fulfilment ends, and unhealthy obsession begins.

That conversation – the one about brands’ responsibilities for responsible consumption – is only just getting started, and there will be some who fear it’s a step too far because it’s not the role of brands to define when enough is enough. But as brands like Patagonia have shown, calling time on what counts as *enough* builds trust and reinforces authenticity.

My (professional) fear is that unless brands choose to see their behaviors in the wider context of social responsibility, and check them accordingly, they will continue to play powerful emotions like fear for the quick wins they can get now, at the expense of the brand’s deeper, long term value and trustworthiness to customers.

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[glenmenlow]

FEAR: The Ultimate Brand Builder?

Plenty of companies have built their brands on promises based on addressing fears – the needs for protection, for reassurance, for status, for achievement, recognition and so on – in a world where so many of those things are portrayed as being at risk. But how successful is fear as an emotive driver today and should we still be using it as a motivation to get people to buy more?

First thing to be aware of – fear works. While some marketers regard fear as an old-fashioned way of changing attitudes and behaviors, a study published by the American Psychological Association in 2015 and based on 50 years of research shows that fear-based appeals are still effective, particularly when they contain recommendations for one-time only behaviors. According to the article, including a fear element more than doubles the probability of change relative to not presenting a fear motive or including an appeal that has a low fear component.

Some of the reasons for this seem obvious. Fear gives people a reason to pay attention and therefore it instills an emotive reaction. Fear plays to our view of a changing world. And it seems we live in an age where fear is a significant component in the media. As someone remarked recently, the world is now presented to us as an ongoing sequence of dramas. So much is such a big deal that if your message lacks an element of primal response, there’s a risk some will feel that your brand could easily be lost in the noise. The temptation for brands to play up fear is also brought on by the observation that others seem to be using it successfully.

Keith Payne, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, makes the point that the brain is a pattern-seeking machine. In the absence of patterns, we go looking for regularities to make our lives work, he says. Chaos and randomness stress us because they make us feel left out, left behind or out of control. Lack of pattern and predictability induce fear. Too much pattern and predictability, on the other hand, quickly incites boredom and rebellion. We all want to know where we stand. At the same time, we don’t ever want to feel stuck or being seen to be stuck. We fear that.

Social media has generated its own fears, particularly around failure. The article I read that quoted Keith Payne also pointed out that Facebook et al have exploded notions of what is normal. Perfection is now portrayed ubiquitously as achievable and expected. In a time where so much is streamed to us as picture perfect, the fear of missing out or of not keeping up is driving many of those who interact with their world digitally to be highly anxious and chronically over-aware of other people’s achievements and opinions.

Another reason why fear gets our attention is because we have conditioned ourselves to believe that we must not just solve the problems that we face, but do so in ways that vanquish them completely. One of the key reasons for that, according to Brene Brown is we live in a culture with a strong sense of scarcity. We’re told we’re not getting enough sleep. We worry that we’re not getting enough done. We’re concerned that we’re not perfect enough. And we feel an expectation to deal with those concerns comprehensively; to use the resources that we have available to us to make the problem go away once and for all. But Brown makes the point that the opposite of scarcity is not necessarily abundance or completeness. Sometimes, it’s the ability to do enough, just enough, and then stop.

That brings us back to the point in the research – that people are looking for answers that resolve what concerns them; answers that they understand and can act on.

If you believe as I do that brands are most effective when they address a need state simply, clearly and distinctly, then the path to being competitive may not lie in simply adding to the burgeoning fear factor. If they want to avoid being caught up in this escalating volume of drama, outrage and concern, brands may want to adopt a different approach. As Anne Bahr Thompson points out, millennials rely on their favorite brands to help them feel less anxious and more emotionally balanced and fulfilled in a world that is increasingly complex to navigate. And so brands could, perhaps should, be making better use of that reliance to help them achieve a balanced response to the demands of their social media peer group and to develop more valuable relationships in a range of ways. I think her ideas are potentially applicable to all sorts of brands:

1. Deliver Leadership – in a world where people are concerned about quality of life, longer term security and family, brands should be looking for ways to inject confidence about the future and the planet and to embed broader societal solutions into their ways of doing business.

2. Be Realistic – brands need to help people connect with what really matters to them in life. The most powerful way they can do is by example – by being genuine and sincere themselves in how they interact with customers and potential buyers.

3. Protect The Relationship – brands need to respect buyers as people and treat data as a relationship building tool rather than as a sales platform and a means to stalk shoppers. Inevitably that means addressing the irony of a desire for more personalized interaction with a willingness to set boundaries around intrusion.

4. Treat People Fairly, Starting With Your Own People – brands need to establish their credentials as good citizens by behaving fairly and openly, but they also need to build a deeper and broader sense of community by taking opportunities to involve more people in how they develop products and set and deliver policies.

5. Defend And Support Wellbeing – in much the same way as brands need to consider how they can offer solutions for the world, they should also look at how and where they can help people function more effectively and in a more fulfilled manner. That may well mean looking out beyond what they feel they are responsible for (via their products and services) to a broader consideration set of human factors that they could positively influence.

Increasingly, it’s not good enough for brands to simply focus on what they want to get out of their relationship with customers and to use whatever means necessary, including fear of failure, to achieve that. While the pressures to deliver profitability internally may be as strong, if not greater, than ever, and certainly more complex, the onus for brands now is to participate in a much more rounded and considered way with those who buy from them.

So if fear works as such a powerful motivator, how do we harness it without relying on it? As Martin Lindstrom wisely pointed out, what’s more important for brands is to use our fears as the starting point for helping people to better manage their lives:

Convert problems into assets – People always have problems. Rather than highlighting those, find answers to the underlying difficulties. For example, he says, no one knew they wanted an airbag, but everyone agreed they wanted safer cars.

Add a practical dimension to an irrational decision – if you want people to buy something that rewards them emotionally, find a way to include elements that seal the deal.

Don’t just play on the fear. Instead, look for ways to systematically remove it, so that people feel a sense of progress and personal achievement.

Brad VanAuken captured much of my perspective on how to best think about fear when he covered this topic a few years back: “People’s deepest feelings generally fall into two buckets: (1) anxieties/fears and (2) desires/longings. People try to avoid that which they fear and seek that for which they long. I personally believe that we marketers should pay more attention to people’s desires and less attention to their anxieties. It would make for a far more sane and pleasant world.”

Agreed, and, to Brene Brown’s point, brands need to do so in ways that are practical, finite and provide a sense of closure and resolution. Brands should inspire customers to achieve what they want (by, getting back to Payne’s point earlier, perhaps providing them with a clearly patterned and structured way to do so), but also help them set limits on where a sense of fulfilment ends, and unhealthy obsession begins.

That conversation – the one about brands’ responsibilities for responsible consumption – is only just getting started, and there will be some who fear it’s a step too far because it’s not the role of brands to define when enough is enough. But as brands like Patagonia have shown, calling time on what counts as *enough* builds trust and reinforces authenticity.

My (professional) fear is that unless brands choose to see their behaviors in the wider context of social responsibility, and check them accordingly, they will continue to play powerful emotions like fear for the quick wins they can get now, at the expense of the brand’s deeper, long term value and trustworthiness to customers.

Build a human-centric brand. Join us for us for The Un-Conference: 360 Degrees of Brand Strategy for a Changing World, April 2-4, 2018 in San Diego, California. A fun, competitive-learning experience reserved for 50 marketing oriented leaders and professionals.

The Blake Project Can Help: Accelerate Brand Growth Through Powerful Emotional Connections

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[joejstrickl]

FEAR: The Ultimate Brand Builder?

Plenty of companies have built their brands on promises based on addressing fears – the needs for protection, for reassurance, for status, for achievement, recognition and so on – in a world where so many of those things are portrayed as being at risk. But how successful is fear as an emotive driver today and should we still be using it as a motivation to get people to buy more?

First thing to be aware of – fear works. While some marketers regard fear as an old-fashioned way of changing attitudes and behaviors, a study published by the American Psychological Association in 2015 and based on 50 years of research shows that fear-based appeals are still effective, particularly when they contain recommendations for one-time only behaviors. According to the article, including a fear element more than doubles the probability of change relative to not presenting a fear motive or including an appeal that has a low fear component.

Some of the reasons for this seem obvious. Fear gives people a reason to pay attention and therefore it instills an emotive reaction. Fear plays to our view of a changing world. And it seems we live in an age where fear is a significant component in the media. As someone remarked recently, the world is now presented to us as an ongoing sequence of dramas. So much is such a big deal that if your message lacks an element of primal response, there’s a risk some will feel that your brand could easily be lost in the noise. The temptation for brands to play up fear is also brought on by the observation that others seem to be using it successfully.

Keith Payne, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, makes the point that the brain is a pattern-seeking machine. In the absence of patterns, we go looking for regularities to make our lives work, he says. Chaos and randomness stress us because they make us feel left out, left behind or out of control. Lack of pattern and predictability induce fear. Too much pattern and predictability, on the other hand, quickly incites boredom and rebellion. We all want to know where we stand. At the same time, we don’t ever want to feel stuck or being seen to be stuck. We fear that.

Social media has generated its own fears, particularly around failure. The article I read that quoted Keith Payne also pointed out that Facebook et al have exploded notions of what is normal. Perfection is now portrayed ubiquitously as achievable and expected. In a time where so much is streamed to us as picture perfect, the fear of missing out or of not keeping up is driving many of those who interact with their world digitally to be highly anxious and chronically over-aware of other people’s achievements and opinions.

Another reason why fear gets our attention is because we have conditioned ourselves to believe that we must not just solve the problems that we face, but do so in ways that vanquish them completely. One of the key reasons for that, according to Brene Brown is we live in a culture with a strong sense of scarcity. We’re told we’re not getting enough sleep. We worry that we’re not getting enough done. We’re concerned that we’re not perfect enough. And we feel an expectation to deal with those concerns comprehensively; to use the resources that we have available to us to make the problem go away once and for all. But Brown makes the point that the opposite of scarcity is not necessarily abundance or completeness. Sometimes, it’s the ability to do enough, just enough, and then stop.

That brings us back to the point in the research – that people are looking for answers that resolve what concerns them; answers that they understand and can act on.

If you believe as I do that brands are most effective when they address a need state simply, clearly and distinctly, then the path to being competitive may not lie in simply adding to the burgeoning fear factor. If they want to avoid being caught up in this escalating volume of drama, outrage and concern, brands may want to adopt a different approach. As Anne Bahr Thompson points out, millennials rely on their favorite brands to help them feel less anxious and more emotionally balanced and fulfilled in a world that is increasingly complex to navigate. And so brands could, perhaps should, be making better use of that reliance to help them achieve a balanced response to the demands of their social media peer group and to develop more valuable relationships in a range of ways. I think her ideas are potentially applicable to all sorts of brands:

1. Deliver Leadership – in a world where people are concerned about quality of life, longer term security and family, brands should be looking for ways to inject confidence about the future and the planet and to embed broader societal solutions into their ways of doing business.

2. Be Realistic – brands need to help people connect with what really matters to them in life. The most powerful way they can do is by example – by being genuine and sincere themselves in how they interact with customers and potential buyers.

3. Protect The Relationship – brands need to respect buyers as people and treat data as a relationship building tool rather than as a sales platform and a means to stalk shoppers. Inevitably that means addressing the irony of a desire for more personalized interaction with a willingness to set boundaries around intrusion.

4. Treat People Fairly, Starting With Your Own People – brands need to establish their credentials as good citizens by behaving fairly and openly, but they also need to build a deeper and broader sense of community by taking opportunities to involve more people in how they develop products and set and deliver policies.

5. Defend And Support Wellbeing – in much the same way as brands need to consider how they can offer solutions for the world, they should also look at how and where they can help people function more effectively and in a more fulfilled manner. That may well mean looking out beyond what they feel they are responsible for (via their products and services) to a broader consideration set of human factors that they could positively influence.

Increasingly, it’s not good enough for brands to simply focus on what they want to get out of their relationship with customers and to use whatever means necessary, including fear of failure, to achieve that. While the pressures to deliver profitability internally may be as strong, if not greater, than ever, and certainly more complex, the onus for brands now is to participate in a much more rounded and considered way with those who buy from them.

So if fear works as such a powerful motivator, how do we harness it without relying on it? As Martin Lindstrom wisely pointed out, what’s more important for brands is to use our fears as the starting point for helping people to better manage their lives:

Convert problems into assets – People always have problems. Rather than highlighting those, find answers to the underlying difficulties. For example, he says, no one knew they wanted an airbag, but everyone agreed they wanted safer cars.

Add a practical dimension to an irrational decision – if you want people to buy something that rewards them emotionally, find a way to include elements that seal the deal.

Don’t just play on the fear. Instead, look for ways to systematically remove it, so that people feel a sense of progress and personal achievement.

Brad VanAuken captured much of my perspective on how to best think about fear when he covered this topic a few years back: “People’s deepest feelings generally fall into two buckets: (1) anxieties/fears and (2) desires/longings. People try to avoid that which they fear and seek that for which they long. I personally believe that we marketers should pay more attention to people’s desires and less attention to their anxieties. It would make for a far more sane and pleasant world.”

Agreed, and, to Brene Brown’s point, brands need to do so in ways that are practical, finite and provide a sense of closure and resolution. Brands should inspire customers to achieve what they want (by, getting back to Payne’s point earlier, perhaps providing them with a clearly patterned and structured way to do so), but also help them set limits on where a sense of fulfilment ends, and unhealthy obsession begins.

That conversation – the one about brands’ responsibilities for responsible consumption – is only just getting started, and there will be some who fear it’s a step too far because it’s not the role of brands to define when enough is enough. But as brands like Patagonia have shown, calling time on what counts as *enough* builds trust and reinforces authenticity.

My (professional) fear is that unless brands choose to see their behaviors in the wider context of social responsibility, and check them accordingly, they will continue to play powerful emotions like fear for the quick wins they can get now, at the expense of the brand’s deeper, long term value and trustworthiness to customers.

Build a human-centric brand. Join us for us for The Un-Conference: 360 Degrees of Brand Strategy for a Changing World, April 2-4, 2018 in San Diego, California. A fun, competitive-learning experience reserved for 50 marketing oriented leaders and professionals.

The Blake Project Can Help: Accelerate Brand Growth Through Powerful Emotional Connections

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

[randylubin]

Blockchain and Gaming

I’ve been exploring blockchain opportunities and which blockchain startups might make sense to found today. One of the sectors I’m intrigued by is gaming, partly because I love playing and making games and partly because gamers are early adopters. This post will look at some of the ways blockchain is already being used by game companies and some way it might be used in the future.

I’ll break it down by use case:

Currencies

Virtual Goods

Gameplay on the Blockchain

Pay for Computation

Pay for Service

Currencies

The earliest experiments on the blockchain were currencies, like Bitcoin.  I’ll break game related currencies into three categories: in-game currency, play tokens, and developer compensation.

In-game Currency

Games have long had types of in-game currency that players can earn through actives and spend on upgrades; sometimes this takes the form of ‘gold’ or experience points.

In the late 2000’s social games (think Zynga) made a lot of money allowed players to spend real world money on in-game currency. Typically these games are free to play but there is heavy pressure to buy in-game currency to speed up the boring parts or gain a competitive edge. This is often derided as ‘pay-to-win’ and can incentivize companies to make games that aren’t fun but prey on weaknesses in human psychology.

It’s easy to replicate in game currencies on the blockchain but I don’t see why a game with blockchain currency would have an advantage over a non-blockchain game.

Tokens

In the heyday of electronic games, most people played at arcades where they bought play sessions by putting tokens or quarters into an arcade machine. This style of pay-per-play could easily translate to the blockchain but, as with virtual currency, it’s unclear if there’s a strong reason for why it would be better than a pay-per-play game off of the blockchain.

Furthermore, it’s unclear if gamers are interested in returning to a pay-per-play model after growing accustomed to buying games outright and having unlimited play sessions.

Developer Compensation

Blockchains could have an advantage when it comes to new publishing and distribution models. Over the past many years digital platforms like Steam have disintermediated traditional publisher and distributer channels and this process continues with platforms like itch.io that don’t take any commission. While the supply chain has changed, the revenue models are largely in two categories: buy up front or micro-transactions (like the pay-to-win discussed above).

Blockchains might be able to enable news forms of compensation, like having gamers pay based on time spent in game. Platforms like Flattr have tried this on the web and it might work for gamers, too.

There are a few different models that might work. There is Netflix or Spotify approach where gamers pay a subscription and then revenue is shared among developers based on play time. There could also be a donation based approach where players set how much they want to spend on games and that gets divide on a pro-rata basis. Another option builds on the previously discussed idea of tokens, where several developers choose to accept the same token.

Of all the currency related blockchain opportunities, this approach might make the most sense. Gamers are already used to virtual currencies but this models could be implemented without the player having to consciously deal with the blockchain. Instead, the system could be used only to track play time transparently and ensure developers get paid fairly. This might be especially advantageous if developers are comfortable trusting a third party to run the system. (e.g. https://mobilego.io/)

Virtual Goods

Virtual Goods refer to digital items that players can hold, use, and trade. There’s already a big market for virtual goods that range from purely decorative (like in Team Fortress where players spend tens of millions of dollars on digital hats and accessories) to the function (spaceships and EVE might be worth $5000).

Putting these virtual goods on the blockchain means that trade can happen between peers, outside of a centralized market controlled by the developer. If the goods are built by one for their one specific game, it’s unclear why this is advantageous over doing it off blockchain.

Virtual Goods on the blockchain becomes more interesting in a few cases. If goods are meant to be used among different games or environments, then having it stored in a trusted, decentralized way might be preferable than having just one company control the information.

Virtual Goods on the blockchain also might make sense if the items are designed by independent designers who want to track sales and make sure they receive proper royalties; this is a similar to what the music industry is considering implementing.

While it can line up with several of the above use cases, collectible trading card games (like Magic: the Gathering are especially aligned with scenario and there are experiments along these lines (see http://www.blockchainga.me/, http://ownage.io/)

Gameplay on the Blockchain

The above examples have used the blockchain for elements related to a game but not for the actual game play. There are a few scenarios where it might make sense for the actual gameplay to take place on the blockchain.

Games of Luck

There are several reasons why games of luck (blackjack, roulette, etc) might make sense on a blockchain. Because the computation of the results is transparent, the casino couldn’t cheat the player. Furthermore, there could be games with less unfavorable player odds because the casino would have less overhead with everything being automated.

Games of Skill

The same benefits apply to skill based gambling: trust and low fees. Casinos are already experimenting with skill based gambling, there are big prize tournaments for some video games, and there are experiments for other gaming competitions that involve cash prizes. (e.g. Kickback.com)

Loosely related to games of skill are wagers the folks might make amongst themselves. Blockchains can make it easy to define a given bet as well as the judges who can decide who won. The trust and escrow components of the blockchain might make a better option than doing it offline but it’s unclear if there is a big business opportunity.

Skill Tracking ELO

The blockchain might be a good option for managing official rankings in games or sports. It’s decentralized nature allows players to compete against each other away from the blockchain (or on it) and then record the outcome on the blockchain. There could be automatic and, with the addition of a referee, trusted rankings much like ELO rating for chess. The decentralized and trusted abilities of the blockchain might make this a good candidate but, again, it’s unclear if there is a substantial business opportunity here.

Pay for Computation

A blockchain use that goes beyond games is pay for computation – earning cryptocurrency by having your computer performing operations. There might be a few interesting applications related to games.

There could be a decentralized alternative to the old OnLive, where folks with powerful gaming rigs could have other players use them via remote control over the internet. I’m not sure if this would be more compelling than having it centralized with one company and my guess is that there might be legal issues with renting out one’s copy of a game.

Another option could be paying for players to simulate or store parts of a very complex world in a distributed manner. I can’t think of a specific features which would merit using this decentralized approach but perhaps it could pave the way for an indie MMO with relatively low server costs; that said, I don’t think server costs are the main barrier to an indie MMO.

Pay for Labor

Another bucked of uses would be using the blockchain to compensate folks for work. There are a few ways this might work:

Paying someone to GM / facilitate an RPG or custom adventure

A game studio paying actors to take over NPCs to create content for other players

Players paying someone else to level up their character for them

The former two options don’t seem to have a strong advantage for happening on the blockchain. The third one might because it could take place in a low trust environment where the contract automatically executes when it sees the character has reached a certain level.

Final Thoughts

As with all blockchain startups, there needs to be a compelling advantage gained by using the blockchain. While this isn’t true for many of the use cases I’ve mentioned, there are a few that might make sense today.

Did I miss anything major? Disagree with anything? I’d love to hear!