Yesterday, I went kayaking on Green Lake. It is Wisconsin’s deepest lake at 237 feet deep, and it is wide and windy. Paddle anywhere near an open bay, and you need the upper body strength of the Hulk to keep going. So I clung pretty close to sheltered shoreline. But, what I was thinking about was mostly this lesson I have decided is the most important thing I need to bring home from vacation.
In paddling, and in life, it is not actually necessary to paddle furiously the entire time, as is my tendency and I suspect most of yours.
It is actually OK to stop paddling, float for a while, and just look around you, savoring exactly where you are at this moment, rather than the next point at which you are trying to arrive.
If the swells are up and the wind is high, you might start getting pushed too close to a place you don’t want to be. So, you’ll need to redirect yourself from time to time.
And then, when you’re ready, you can start paddling furiously again, with renewed strength and focus.
This morning, I sat on the bench in this photo with my latte and gazed directly across the lake, at the point where my lovely childhood memories live (see previous post, “Does the web make it harder to appreciate simple pleasures?”). And while I may or may not have shed a couple of tears thinking about how my past compares to my overall present non-vacation state of being, it’s a healthy thing to have one eye on the past, if it helps you redirect your future.
I had to overcome a lot of pressure to come back from vacation yesterday, to attend a meeting today that was planned long after this vacation was planned. And as important as my work is to me, it will never, ever be more important than this time to break away with my family to just enjoy the beauty of the moment and reflect on how we want our future to be.
What do you think? Are you capable of stopping the frantic paddling, to just float on the waves for a while? The last time you did so, what was the result?
When I was a little girl, my family came to Green Lake, Wisconsin, for a week each summer. We rented a cottage, next to my Aunt Ginny and Uncle’s Chuck’s cottage. Along with our four cousins, my two older brothers and I swam like little maniacs, went boating and fishing, beat the crap out of each other and ran around well past dark. I remember playing “Jaws” with my Dad in the water, and getting the bejeezus scared out of me with a Ouija board at bedtime. I don’t recall there being a TV, and obviously there wasn’t wireless internet access, an iPad and YouTube. At least from my vantage point now, a good couple of decades later, it seems like we were more or less always contented with what we had, as long as there was the lake and some Merkt’s cheese and Jim’s summer sausage around. (Ya der, hey.) Of course, we were country kids to begin with, growing up with everything we needed, a few of the things we wanted, and not a whole lot more.
This summer, after not being here for many, many years, I decided to bring my son to Green Lake to get away for a few days. My son — a child of a fairly urban suburb and a web-obsessed Mom — has, at the ripe old age of five, announced that he would like to start vlogging product reviews of his Lego sets.
The first morning we were here, we took him on two-mile hike around the property on which we are staying, the Heidel House (great location, nice views, marginal beds and average food). For all of the complaining, you would have thought we were taking him on the Bataan Death March. He has no interest in swimming in the lake, as it’s too cold, or even the outdoor pool; he requires the indoor pool heated to about the temperature of bath water, and reminiscent of the health club where he takes swimming lessons. Out on the insanely expensive rental boat, he clung to his Lego catalog like a tattered paper life preserver.
He has the attention span of a gnat, and the desire for outdoor physical activity of a sponge. (SpongeBob Squarepants, be damned.) This from a child who uttered the word “outside” as one of his first five words. Now, most of the time, he would honestly rather be watching Lego videos on YouTube than doing most anything. Just now, we forced the end of post-bike-ride-and-swimming “quiet time” — aka video watching — to get him out on the little beach with a bucket and some shovels. There wasn’t much argument about that, but much of the time, when you try to take the iPad away the reaction is like you’re trying to steal a kidney.
My fundamental assertion: kids today have gotten soft.
I do know I can’t blame this all on the web, of course; this is really more of a rhetorical question. It’s not just the web – it’s the onslaught of media in general. And it’s 100% my fault, and my husband’s, that our son gets too much computer time, and watches too much television. When I am on the computer or the iPad during my downtime, what’s he going to want to do in his? Duh. Yet, my husband and I are both active people and generally set a decent example in this regard, and that doesn’t seem to rub off on the little man to the extent that the computer addiction does. I’m sad for him, that he’s not a country kid living in “simpler times”, with simpler parents. We’re trying to set limits, and balance it out with more outside time. And I refuse to, on top of the computer addiction, go out and buy the NintendoDS he already hears his friends talking about. And yes, we do read to him from actual old-fashioned paper books; actually, he taught himself to read when he was three…on pbskids.com.
In spite of all of this, and the questioning that comes along with it, this time has been a gift. There’s just nothing like the smell of your kid’s beachy head on your shoulder on a boat. Yet I knew, of course, that Green Lake wouldn’t be the same. Yesterday, we cruised the entire perimeter of the lake, looking for anything that might remotely resemble my childhood memories. Most of the little cottages are gone, replaced by mega-homes. We found one “ghetto” section of the lake, where there were a couple of cottages that “could have” been the ones. But sadly I found out today from one of my cousins that he was forced to sell the cottage when recessionary times fell on his home-building business last year; the wealthy neighbor to whom he sold it leveled the cottage of my childhood, seeking a little bit of “green space”.
On the upside, the cottage in which my family stayed is being remodeled and will hopefully be available for me to share with my family next summer.
I’ve seen people say before that in social media “You have to give to get.” And to that, I say, AMEN. For most marketers, this is of course a complete and utter disconnect from how they are used to thinking. Yet, I contend, for many it would be the most effective social media/marketing/business strategy they could possibly implement.
Of course, in the past few years, myriad marketers have jumped on the cause marketing bandwagon. And, while rare companies are launching ambitious programs like Kohl’s Cares, and The Pepsi Refresh Project and the like, to be honest, in my experience, most companies I talk to about strategies like this don’t yet understand how giving can benefit them. I could tell a couple of stories here about companies I have pitched this strategy to in the past three months that just didn’t get it at all, but that would be very uncool. They get really excited about it in the initial meeting, because they can see how it would improve perception of their brand and create media interest and online engagement. Then they get cold feet and decide to just keep running some radio or TV spots. And I know why it falls apart. It falls apart because:
1. It is not a “proven” strategy. I can present research on the topic but I cannot prove that it will drive sales. (Of course, no one can prove that radio or TV will drive sales, either. It’s just “safer”.)
2. The company is not “really” driven by community at a DNA level; I am feeling out what they are made of, and it’s not this.
Here’s the personal side of this, the background on why I am thinking a lot about it. I’ve spent, oh, a couple of decades now marketing airlines, computers, motorcycles, clothing, etc. and sadly little of it has ever involved the strategy of giving something back. Until recently. A few weeks ago I was thinking about how it would be super rewarding to use my mad social media skills (yes, I am being facetious) to do something good, give something back.
Enter #saveteecycle and www.saveteecycle.org. Thanks to amazing co-conspirators like @bootyp and Craig Vermeulen from William Ryan Homes and numerous amazing supporters we are all well on our way to rebuilding at least one family’s home after the Brew City Flood. And, honestly, what I have gotten back from this effort in terms of 1) pride and pure enjoyment 2) deeper social engagement (more followers, and more importantly, more followers who actually know me/talk to me and I them) 3) good karma e.g. a really exciting new future possibility for something that makes a difference – all huge. To be clear, none of those are why I am doing it; just an observation of the outcomes. Repeat after me: you have to give to get.
There’s a Jewel song called Life Uncommon that is really powerful and crystallizes this, at least for me. If you don’t know it, check it out and think happy thoughts for @teecycletim and @teecyclejess. Or if you want to cut to the points about branding and strategy and stuff jump down to below the video and lyrics.
And here are the lyrics, just because they ROCK:
Don’t worry, Mother
It’ll be all right
Don’t worry, Sister
Say your prayers and sleep tight
It’ll be fine
Lover of mine
It’ll be just fine.
And lend your voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from
Fill your lives with love and bravery and you shall lead
A life uncommon.
I’ve heard your anguish
I’ve heard your hearts cry out
We are tired, we are weary
But we aren’t worn out
Set down your chains
‘Til only faith remains
Set down your chains.
And lend your voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from
Fill your lives with love and bravery and you shall lead
A life uncommon.
There are plenty of people who pray for peace
But if praying were enough, it would have come to be
Let your words enslave no one
The heavens will hush themselves to hear
Our voices ring out clear with sounds of freedom
Sounds of freedom
C’mon you unbelievers
Move out of the way There is a new army coming
And we are armed with faith
To live we must give
To live.
And lend your voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from
Fill your lives with love and bravery and you shall lead
A life uncommon.
*end of song*
There are a veritable ton of rhetorical questions we could debate on the topic of cause marketing and corporate social integrity strategies.
Why are more marketers really jumping on this strategy? Is it because, as one study indicated, 87% of consumers are likely to switch from one product to another – price and quality being equal – if one product is associated with a good cause, an increase from 66% in 1993? Do consumers really switch brands because of cause involvement or do they just say they will?
Is it because more companies really have more social integrity, or are more just using this superficially as a strategy to differentiate in a world of sameness?
Will Kohl’s Cares, Pepsi Refresh and the like translate to sales and market share? Or “just” some goodwill and good buzz?
What would happen if more companies had the courage to actually step up in a big way and lead a…gasp…social marketing revolution, if you will…in which most brands actually give a crap about their communities?
