In the spirit of dialing things back, I found a passage in Garr Reynolds very fine book Presentation Zen in a chapter called (with pun intended) The Art of Being Completely Present. It already has helped me focus on that most difficult of challenges in our age of continuous partial attention: doing one thing at a time and really enjoying the experience:

“Meditation is not an escape from reality at all, and in fact even everyday routines can be methods for meditation. When you have an awareness that your actions and judgments are usually just automatic reactions based on a sort of running dialogue that you have in your head, then you are free to let go of such judgments. So, rather than hating washing the dishes, you just wash the dishes. When you write a letter, you write a letter. And when you give a presentation, you give a presentation. Mindfulness is concerned with the here and now and having an awareness of this particular moment. You want to see this moment as it is without your ordinary filters, filters that are concerned only with the past (or future) and of how things should or will be and so on….In our daily lives and in our work lives, including presenting, we’ve got to clear our minds and be only one place: right here.”

I love this phrase: “even everyday routines can be methods for meditation.” As we ramp up an ethnographies project here at the agency, it reminds me of a wonderful article from BusinessWeek on daily rituals, defined series of actions that allow us to move from one emotional state to another.

In any case, here’s to being right where you are, and enjoying how that feels.

I was fascinated by the story in today’s FT about Schindler, the Swiss elevator company, a strong BtoB player that has been felled in Japan for simply failing to apologize for an accident it still claims was not its fault. As the article notes, quoting poor Mr. Schindler, “Genetically, [westerners] are pre-programmed not to apologise unless you are guilty.”

So what has Schindler’s failure to apologize for a 2006 Tokyo accident that may not even be their fault wrought for the business? They have yet to sell a single new elevator in almost three years in the entire country of Japan since their ‘killer elevator’ went down the shaft.

I like the checklist at the end of this piece as well. It’s fascinating as an example of how Japan is truly different from the West as well as how plenty of national facets have to be transcreated in marketing as well as translated. Cue image of tardy Chinese officials prostrating themselves in the street before furious mothers who lost their children in shoddily built schools after last year’s earthquakes…

How to handle a product fault in Japan

* Don’t cover it up. This is likely to compound the problem.
* If an accident involves injury or death, display your genuine remorse for any suffering. Offer public condolences.
* Engage Japan’s “press clubs”, where reporters from the country’s leading newspapers attend official ministry briefings.
* If appropriate, implement measures to regain trust. For example, suspend sales or replace management and communicate these changes to the public.
* Establish an independent committee, staffed with trusted figures such as academics, to lead a response.
* Keep staff informed. Morale suffered when Schindler staff in Japan partly learnt about the situation through the media.

I know, no one really wants to, but we’ve got to get through it together.

The Economist already has registered its opinion on where marketers should be in 2009, and it’s clearly in online properties. Emarketer, in fact, predicts nearly 9 percent growth in online advertising for 2009. Even China won’t muster those results for the year.

Besides the smaller piece of the online pie devoted to traditional banners (today less than 20 percent of online advertising is in banners, while more than half is in paid search), engagement will continue to be the name of the game. To quote The Economist:

Online marketing increasingly aims for awareness, consideration, preference and loyalty all at once…[Take] the example of a rich-media ad for Kraft, a food company, in which a yummy image raises brand awareness, a click reveals a recipe that increases consideration, another click provides coupons and yet another click initiates a game that can be shared with friends. Marketing managers can therefore defend their online budgets as being both above and below the line.

We have been practicing this kind of online engagement-based work ourselves for years, although our mantra tends to be “You should never have to leave the banner to get what you need.” Ads are interruptive enough, so why let them drag you off into a corner of the screen when you weren’t expecting them? We use the same philosophy when building plans to appear in social media forums. Be present, supportive, even facilitate an area for a conversation as a brand, but don’t offer an opinion unless someone ask you for it.

This latter formula also works quite well in personal relationships.