This afternoon I went to a talk announced as “Guerilla Marketing in the Web – Affiliate-, Viral-, Blog- & Buzz-Marketing etc.” from a group called “Internet-briefing.ch – Where Web Pioneers Meet”, on the site of the Topsoft software fair. Was it already guerilla marketing announcing this title to attract people and then change it to “Web-woven promotion” (a word-play in German) at the presentation?

Though basically well-known, but astonishing again – all these tricks marketeers use to channel the waters of attention to their mill-wheels. Such a great human creativity used to catch people’s awareness and get them into the desired direction – and this by giving them the feeling that they act by their own free decision: Viewing YouTube-videos or down-loading desktop gadgets with ads, or, even more important, getting into the talks of the people.

The presenter quoted from the Cluetrain Manifesto, that markets are conversations (“A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies. These markets are conversations. …”).

This is a very important point, and it is also true for non-marketing purposes. You can also use it for spreading ideas and concepts of spirituality. However, this is much more difficult than to work will mass-consciousness, as the marketeers do.

In the East the power of the word is called Saraswathi, the goddess of speech and of wisdom. Going into wisdom, however, is not just that what marketeers are interested in.

Markus Gabriel, CEO Angelink, preparing for the talk

After the lecture I strolled along the stands of the Topsoft exposition – a fascinating world of hopes and promises, with dark-clothed smart salespeople or a bit more freaky open-sourcelers. I had nothing lost in this ambiance and left the fair again.

The Topsoft-flag lying on the floor at the entrace, and people leaving.

Christmas is the time of presents – this is also the case in the business world. A number of Christmas presents popped in at my office. It seemed that the agencies and partners want to outdo the others in originality – and not necessarily in beauty and style. In some case there is a subtle material “aggression” behind – a kind of an endeavour to gain favours to get another order or contract. I don’t assume bribery ambitions, but there is some kind of this tendency.

Last week however, I got a very original small gift from an agency which has developed a media management system we use for administering our photos. It is a very good system, and I appreciate the executive director very much – he has an enormous commitment, not only for his enterprise, but also in social activities. Over the last decades he has built up in Andhra Pradesh, India, a mango cultivation and distribution system, which helps hundreds of farmers to have a good job. And then he built up several clinics, and also opened an office of his agency in Hyderabad where they do development and distribution of their media managing system.

The last years he sent always very creative little presents: Once a little granite stone with moss from a pass in the Alps, with a little booklet on how mosses survive in most difficult surroundings, showing parallels to our lives. Last year a stone with petrified little fish from South America, and a small booklet about the evolution and power of life. This year he sent an old Intel Pentium (c) chip, which people from a prisoners rehabilitation centre had opened and prepared, together with a booklet on silicon – how silicon, a material second-most spread on the surface of the earth has become the pivotal point of or technical development. By using the qualities of this semiconductor we are now able to reach technical heights unthinkable of only a few decades ago. The booklet mentioned that for the first flight to the moon the Nasa computers had less capacities than nowadays every cellphone has: We have entered into a silicon age. Now silicon starts even to emit light, through its use in LED light emitting diodes. A real step into the sublimation of matter.

The chip – a little work of art, with a beautifully reflecting centre

Today I came across the site FreeRice, an online English vocabulary learning game to help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on the site. By improving your vocabulary your donated rice enables hungry human beings to live and be productive. The sponsored money is given to the United Nations World Food Program.

Though it is a marketing instrument for the enterprises advertising, the game is serving a good purpose. There is a database containing thousands of words at varying degrees of difficulty. There are words appropriate for people just learning English and words that will challenge the most scholarly professors.

There are 50 levels in all – I quickly reached level 49, though the vocabulary was very difficult – not because of an excellent knowledge of English, but because I had in a second window the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, which found the meaning of the different search-words. FreeRice is making no profit, all the rice “won” goes for sponsoring food. It is a sister-site of Poverty.com, where you also can see how much the different countries gives as international aid.

This morning, when I came into my office, there was a big parcel lying on my desk, sent anonymously from a town near Zurich. I didn’t expect any packet. When I opened it I saw a chequered bag filled with nuts and sweets, sent by a web-marketing agency with whom I’m working. I thought, nice greetings from Santa Claus and distributed the content in our office (of course I took also some sweets and realised again that I’d better not…).

Then, in the afternoon, I even caught a short glance of Santa Claus: He was walking through the church garden past my window, followed by some people. I quickly took a shot of him.

Beyond all commercialisation – his inspiration of sharing with others is a genuine message of good will.

At the online marketing forum I attended a few days ago a presenter spoke about the phases of turning people into customers: 1. Awareness, 2. Interest, 3. Consideration, 4. Purchase. At the steps 1-3 many persons turn away, especially at the moment of ordering or payment.

This funnelling of people to customer sometimes takes long time and has to do with the channelling of attention and focus. It reminds me of the long process on the spiritual path, where an individual very slowly awakens to the inner direction.

It might take many years between the awakening of a general awareness of the existence of subtler dimensions and the focused commitment. Many people get stuck at phase 2, where they are interested, but don’t step on to a regular, rhythmical practice. And even then only a few go on from considering many ways to the way and dedicating themselves to focus their energy in one direction.

At one point or the other you have to overcome the split attention, sort out the side-ways and set forth in one direction. This has nothing to do with getting blind towards other things, but with the inner urge to grow in depth. As long as you are fascinated by the many side-tracks, the main track remains vague or veiled.

There is an increase of joy related to the increase of focus, and this is independent of outer situations. You stay in tune with your self even in the onrush of other impulses.

Road in Iceland, a photo of my brother

Today I was at the Online Dialogue and Marketing Forum ODMF in Zurich Oerlikon. About 200 marketeers – representatives of enterprises and marketing agencies – in black suits and with sober faces had assembles in a conference centre to hear about innovations and methods of web-related marketing – search engines, website-optimizing, e-mail trade… An aura of smartness surrounded most of them, you could nearly grasp the ambience of intelligence focused on “seducing the prima donna”, the consumer, as one of the presenters called it. One of the first speakers introduced the distinction between the “digital immigrants”, those born before 1980, who had grown up in a world without internet and electronic media, and the “digital natives”, the afterbornes, who take the new media as a natural part of their lives. I belong to the immigrants, though I feel quite well in the new world…

It was interesting to observe these condensed thought energies of marketing specialists, ready to sell their services to whatever has to be marketed. The online market has other rules and mechanics than the traditional media market, and the behaviour of the people, too, has changed with the online world. Customers have become more independent, volatile, deciding themselves about where to stay and where to click. An enormous creativity from the side of the specialised agencies has brought about fascinating approaches to capture the attention, and award-winning examples were presented.

The energy of marketing can be directed into all kinds of directions, but normally its master is money, not man. When the energy is steered towards life-supporting products and attitudes, this will surely have a great impact on mass consciousness. It is a matter of good will to use the instruments for the general well-being and not for manipulation, may it go to realise goals of good will.

You might be interested to read the blogposts on Vampires of Attention, or on Marketing and Commitment.

Direct marketing on the market

A friend of mine who is teaching at an American university sent me yesterday the following interesting lines:

“I have been cruising the web the past days for material I can incorporate into the class I teach and found a current development in Hollywood circles quite inspiring. It seems that more and more celebrities take action toward a good cause and use their fame and social status to help make the world a better place.

For example, Leonardo DiCaprio has produced a documentary about environmental damage and its effects on our planet titled The 11th Hour. What is most incredible about it is that he and his team don’t leave it there. They have created a website with a lot of information for people on how to make changes and contribute individually.

Another actor who’s been in the media recently for his activity for a good cause is Brad Pitt. He’s spent millions of dollars to help rebuild New Orleans’ homes in an environmentally friendly way.

Someone who is having a great impact on the Native American nation that is close to my heart is Viggo Mortensen. He founded a publishing house where he publishes books about the Lakota Sioux nation of the Dakotas. Mortensen was a published poet and painter already before he landed the role as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. Among other books that pertain to Lakota culture, he wrote a book titled Miyelo in 2003 in which he documented the history of the Lakota and the tradition of the sundance. The greatest part of the sales of the book flows toward the Pine Ridge Reservation where Mortensen was welcomed when he learned the Lakota language for his role in Hidalgo. It seems he has found a second home there.”

Doing good doesn’t only inspire Hollywood stars. Today I came across an article about “Silent deeds for a better world”, an ad-campaign of a German soft drink producer (“the official drink for a better world”) who has realised a website called Stille Taten (Silent Deeds), which inspires to do anonymously good deeds to others and gives an occasion to write reports on it. This initiative has caused a great deal of discussion in blogs and the press. Though it is an PR-campaign, it leads people into a good direction.

Another friend from the States sent me today the following lines of H. P. Blavatsky’s “Secret Doctrine“, which fit very well to this theme:
“Altruism not simply in name. The suppression of one single bad cause will suppress not one, but many bad effects. If virtue in distress, and vice in triumph make atheists of mankind, it is only because mankind has ever shut its eyes to the great truth that man is himself his own savior and his own destroyer.”

Spreading some sunlight into the life of others

Yoga is in – at least doing physical exercises for training the body. The consumer magazine of the Swiss store chain Migros published in their latest number a photo of “New Yoga York” – Silence in the chaos – over 800 people practising yoga on the Times Square to realise inner silence in midst of cars and staring passengers:

And Swissmilk, the marketing organisation of the Swiss milk producers has just launched a summer campaign: “Swiss Yoga“, about wellness and enjoyment with the cow “Lovely” doing yoga exercises and thus promoting “milk gives you strong bones”…

(More pictures, also as screen-backgrounds you find here.)

The marketeers of course want to promote their milk – but do a humorous promotion for yoga as well. And people might not only get to the wellness aspect of yoga as some trendy body culture, but find a way to the inner world. For yoga means union – experiences the oneness with the Divine, the eternal existence. Thus practising yoga is an inner technique of alignment to the higher self and thus for transformation of one’s life. You may like to read more in “Yoga – the Path of Synthesis” of “Basics of Spiritual Life“.

Yesterday a friend from Barcelona sent me a note about a film called The Secret. For personal use it is also available for free on YouTube in a series of 10 parts ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), of about 20 min. each. There is also a version with Spanish subtitles available.

I had a look through the first part – and it tasted quite “American”: for my taste too much of marketing an idea, which is basically correct. The story goes: “One spring day towards the end of 2004, Rhonda Byrne discovered a secret – the secret laws and principles of the universe. Almost immediately her life was transformed, as she began to put into practice what she had learned. It seemed to Rhonda that almost no-one knew the things that she had discovered, even though the concepts could be found in almost every religion and field of human endeavour throughout history. And in that moment her greatest wish, and mission, was to share this knowledge with the world…”

The “miraculous” idea for the missionary zeal is, with statements from the film:
Every thought has an energy, which an even be measured. Thoughts are sending out magnetic signals and attracting things. So thoughts become things. People attract what you think of, when they think negative, it attracts the bad things. And when you think of things you don’t want, you also attract what you don’t want. The law of attraction is always working, if you want it or not. Mind is shaping the thing it perceives. It is working in an ongoing manner.

They are ballyhooing: “A New Era for Humanity – For the first time in history, the world’s leading scientists, authors, and philosophers will reveal The Secret that utterly transformed the lives of every person who ever knew it… Plato, Newton, Carnegie, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Einstein. Now YOU will know The Secret. And it could change your life forever.” And as clever businessmen they are trying to create a community, so they have added blogs, newsletters, shop articles…

Everything has its value for those on a certain level. So also this film reveals as something totally new an aspect of the timeless wisdom teachings which in less sensational words can be found in many teachings. What seems to be totally new for one might be known since long by others. However, transformations by “magic want” generally don’t work in the long run, you need to transform your character by regular training and sticking to the regulations of the path. You might have a look to the Lunar Messenger on Awareness and Thought.

The power of thought is compared in the film to Aladin’s Magic Lamp:

A news in the German IT-newsletter Heise.de reported games developers are sure that in 2 years characters in computer games will have photo-realistic faces with authentic facial expressions, expressing emotions. These human-like characters should be difficult to distinguish from presentations of human beings. Ian Livingstone, from Eidos, the producer of the “Tomb Raider“- series even says: “We will be able to play with the emotions of the people – we can make them laugh or cry, we can make them sad.”

Digital life is more and more mingling with real life, the boundaries are getting more and more blurred: A whole parallel universe is developing on the platform Second Life, a virtual 3D internet world with over 3 million gamers. Here nearly everything is like in real life – shops, banks, enterprises – and above all entertainment: Chatting with friends, going to parties, creating your own fantastic outlook or surrounding – in a city or on an island of your own.

The virtual life is also a bonanza for making money or marketing. So it is no wonder that the “real” world is penetrating the virtual world with big enterprises like Mercedes or IBM opening branches there. Sweden has opened an “embassy” there and the big German media house Bild.T-Online is publishing an English second-life magazine called The AvaStar, reporting only about events in the virtual world, of course available only electronically. The title is a combination of the words “star” (and everyone in Second Live wants to be a star) and “avatar”, the virtual personality – and in spirituality an incarnation of the Divine.

The virtual second life reminds of the etheric plane or more subtle planes of “first life”, which you might contact in out-of-body experiences or about which people with near-death experiences report: After having shed the body and before passing on to higher planes the soul stays for a while in a world of subtle forms called kama-loka in Eastern wisdom, the world of desire-forms. You can get stuck there – very much like in the virtual world of electronic games. The headline of The AvaStar: “Newbies Lost in Grid Chaos – confused newbies suffer first day nightmares in Second Life” could very well refer to the experiences of a person arriving in the world of near-death experiences. Have a look at the Lunar Messenger on “Etheric Existence and Good Will“.