Two days ago I read an article in the Swiss collection “Marketing & Kommunikation 2007”, about a research on directing attention to the ad messages. Key remarks were: Without attention no advertising effect. And: Mere stirring of attention with sex pictures doesn’t work: Recent psychological researches have shown that women avoid looking at naked skin, and they react with tension on female eroticism. With men, naked female bodies work as “vampires of attention”, deviating the attention from the message of the ad. Viewers thus tend to forget quicker the message of the product. And without attention no conscious perception and thus no advertising impact.
The conclusion was: Erotic pictures should be used only very sparingly and only after intense pre-tests. It seems that the old marketing rule of “sex sells” has become obsolete, and this particularly with the female public.
Directing the attention is also a science in spirituality: To be able to enter into more subtle realms you have to learn to direct the attention inward. And when you are more stable in the inner, your outer attention cannot easily be diverted through outer “vampires of attention”. For this, you might like to read the Lunar Messenger on “Awareness and Thought“.

Every day, since millions of years, sun beams are falling on our earth and giving light and life to all beings here. What would happen if this energy fell down in a more concentrated form?

An ad-campaign of Solon, a Berlin-based enterprise dedicated to the development of photovoltaic technology for the use of solar power, shows in a spectacular blockbuster-like 2 min film what would happen if instead of sun-rays millions of batteries were falling on earth. Funny to see.�

We too are “solar energy cells” having fallen on earth. As souls we are rays from the one light – and by raising up again we overcome the hard “battery state” and re-become “lights of the One light”.� �

�

As I entered the train yesterday afternoon after the online marketing forum, the free daily Swiss newspaper “Heute” (Today) was lying on the seat. My first look fell on a headline: “Successful by Self-Marketing” and on the last paragraph: Mahatma Gandhi once said: “Chose your goals great enough, and the circumstances will orient towards your goals.”

The article was about ego-marketing, to be more successful in one’s job, some general recommendations how to be better perceived by your superior – and a series of “self-branding” books decorating the article. I thought by myself that this Great Soul (: lit. for Mahatma) didn’t have ego-marketing in his mind when he uttered the statement.

Yesterday I was at an Online & Dialogue Marketing Forum in Zurich, with about 200 participants mainly from the business world. It was interesting to see the many ways and approaches to turn people into customers: How do I attract people to buy what I want to sell? One speaker, Markus Gabriel, however pointed out that more and more people turn away from being receptible to traditional advertising activities, by zapping away or by using communication channels without ads. And more and more people like expressing their opinion online – in blogs, forums, comments. He said that about 85% of the content on the web is done by private persons in their freetime – besides enormous amounts of trash you find highly qualified contributions, and all done without financial benefit. The whole Wikipedia encyclopedia lives by this free commitment.
People like to express freely and directly, give comments and recommendations – which are often more observed than the official communications of enterprises. There are blogs with high interlinkings and thus are sometimes positioned as high as the enterprise sites, even of big companies.
The voices of private people become more dominant than official channels. On the other hand companies are profiling customers to be able to approach them more directly with what they suppose people want.
Most important however for people is trust in the information, and thus they go by what their friends recommend them. Mouth-to-mouth recommendations are the strongest.
This I also observe in the field of the good-will website: When the monthly newsletter goes out, normally there are several new people asking to be included in the mailing list. This is probably the result of recommendations of the readers. On the other hand it is true that wisdom does not spread by marketing, but by itself. It attracts people who are searching for it, and no marketing activity would ever really incite someone to follow the path of self-transformation, where an enduring effort and commitment is needed.

Yesterday I was at the Swiss annual ambassadors conference in Berne, looking after a stand during a pause. It was interesting to observe the diplomats – 95 per cent men, in dark suits, grey-haired jovial representatives of Switzerland from all over the world. I had a short talk with an ambassador from central Africa and exchanged some impressions with a gentleman from another stand, of Swiss Timber.
He told me that Switzerland is exporting quite an amount of wood to countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. He had been around the world in several crisis areas and said that, though sometimes ambivalent, the reconstruction in crisis areas is always a big business where many different players are on site. For the export business they keep in contact with the embassies, as door-openers for business interests.
I thought why not door-openers for good will activities. Good will however might not need exportation, since you can meet it everywhere. The work is also mostly more silent, not attracting attention. But if you are engaged in some good work, you represent also its interests.

Do guerilla marketing and spiritualily fit together? I am fascinated by creative examples of this kind of marketing, that create great effects with unconventional ideas and a minimal budget. Of course, good will activities, inspired by the light of the soul, flourish best in silence without ego-marketing. The eternal wisdom, the light of the soul, does not reveal itself by running after things, but by silently applying it in daily life actions.
On the other hand water needs someone constructing the pipeline to your house, and for having access to inspiring wisdom teachings there needs to be an infrastructure to reach interested persons. Our Lunar Messenger newsletter or the good will postcards are instruments of a viral marketing, where people inform their friends of the existence of the good-will website and thus the wisdom teachings availabe there. Every month after sending out the newsletter new subscriptions are coming in, showing that these persons probably have been informed by their friends. But it is the persons themselves who need to show their interest.
Guerilla marketing would take one step further to create attention. One good example: The story of Mary Woodbridge, and elderly English lady of 85 years of age went through the media. She told on her uk-located website as well as in forums that she is planning a Mount Everest expedition together with her dog. She said she got the idea when she bought a certain outdoor jacket, and now she is training an searching sponsors to finance her expedition. On her website she published photos of her training, of expeditions, of letters to and negative answers from sponsors. This created much discussion in the media world-wide. It was only months later that a Swiss outdoor clothes manufacturer outed himself as originator of this hype, with placing a warning on the website of the lady, that their clothes can cause a loss of common sense, because they are so good…
This prize-winning activity uses surprise and discussion in the target-groups as a means of marketing their products. At the same time it was a warning of the many hobby-mountaineers, who each year are rescued in the Alps or in other mountains.
Using pretences and illusion are not the adapt means of promoting good will, but getting people involved in activities for the common welfare and in inner growth are objectives worth while using also uncommon approaches.

Football tickles national emotions, more than any other sport, sometimes even up to violence. The Red Cross however is known for the neutrality of their help. With a wink the German Red Cross made a poster for an ad-campaign on the occasion of the Football World Championship. It shows a sanitary man in the Dutch fan corner of a football stadium helping a Dutch fan, with the slogan “Für jeden im Einsatz” (Serving everybody).
The Dutch Red Cross retorted this campaign with a poster of their own, showing two sanitary men carrying a German football player from the field, with the slogan: “Het Rode Kruis helpt echt iedereen” (the Red Cross is helping really everybody)…
For the German Red Cross the Football World Championship is a great challenge, with hundreds of people in service. If you are interested in the spiritual value of service, you might read this.