A couple of weeks back I was at the London Web summit- a day conference in London about the web and everything related. I was really lucky to get to talk to the iconic Cindy Gallop about her field of work: Action branding – Something I myself am wildly inspired by. I think it’s so important, especially if you’re on a quest to make the world a bit better day by day, from your point of view and as a business unusual activist.
Cindy did an amazing talk at the summit, on her work with her make love not porn startup – a website you have to visit and an utterly important message to both incorporate yourself, but also to teach the children of tomorrow.
Anyway, I wanted to talk to her about her work with action branding and her company if we ran the world. Before heading off to London Web Summit, I read up on her, and found out that she, amongst other things was deemed one of the most accomplished and authentic people by Leslie Bradshaw in this 8-page long article for Forbes ( it’s a must-read people – trust me=)
According to Cindy – what makes a brand sexy is its willingness to take chances. She believes that business is driven by personal philosophies is a viable strategy for the economy of the future- which, if I may add 2 cents of Henriette Weber – also brings my beloved substance to a brand. If you take chances and drive your business by personal philosophies, you’re actually being the change you want to see in the world. Cool n’est pas?
Right now we have a lot of human and corporate good intentions that never get put into action – for the sake of running a business. We’re so busy running businesses, and yep, running a business is an art form in itself, but we need to have the good intentions incorporated – as actions- naturellement.
If you listen to Cindy (including reading up on her amazing body of work, I’ve listed my favorite links at the bottom of this article) you quickly figure out that her message is to make “good intentions put into action” a huge part of the core of the business. In fact, I take that back, it’s not “just” a message, it’s more of a directive for the survival of your company.
We need something she calls micro-actions – the equivalent of 140 characters, but where you don’t just talk – in addition to the talking you actually act on something. It give me a feeling of “enough of co-creation – let’s start to do some co-action” instead (which Cindy also mentioned)- it’s a much more powerful tool – and a tool that I personally think we will see being much used in the future.
So if you were to take it from Cindy – what parts of your personal philosophies could you implement at the core of your business and create action and branding around?
I’ve checked up on the core of henrietteweber.com and Toothless Tiger myself and even though I think it’s well aligned, I think it’s a checkup that everybody should do of their business – you always find something- right?
Anyway here’s some more Cindy rockn’roll:
her talk from ted ’09 on make love not porn
her masterclass on the future of advertising – an hour of brilliance
4 tips she gave to authenticorganizations.com
in addition, I believe she’s one of the first people I’ve had on henrietteweber.com who also has been featured on theselby.com and on Dwell because of her rocking black apartment =) nice
