More from that Tom Peters interview with David B. Wolfe…

Check this exchange. Peters says…

But I think somewhat related to this, in the end, brands only survive through collaboration between companies and customers.

DW: Yes.

Can you talk about what that means?

DW: Sure. That is why Starbucks was able to become the international giant that it became with almost no advertising. Because of the customers and the company collaborating in building the brand and giving it meaning.

How? In what way did we Starbucks customers � I go there every day, more than once a day � collaborate?

DW: By your responses. Starbucks never did any conventional research. They didn’t do focus groups, they didn’t do quantitative surveys. Which is quite similar to the way Nike developed. Phil Knight hates research. But he, and later his people, went around to athletic meets and they just sort of breathed the air the customers were breathing. And Howard Schultz, Starbucks, did the same thing. So it wasn’t that the consumers and Schultz’s people sat down around a table and planned; it’s that Schultz put himself and his people in proximity with the consumers and observed them, and followed their lead.

Maybe, just maybe, instead of trying to “out-market” the marketers, we need to go where the people are, breathe the air they breathe, and invest our lives in helping them become what God intended for them to be.

Saw Tom Peters’s great interview with David B. Wolfe, author and expert on marketing and consumer behavior, especially in the sometimes-neglected over-40 age group.

The first line of the interview grabbed my attention. IN response to Peters’s question, “What problem is your book. Ageless Marketing, addressing?” Wolfe’s response is…

The fundamental problem I’m addressing in Ageless Marketing is the incongruity between what marketers are doing and saying and what the consumers are experiencing, in terms of their world views, their needs, their motivations, their values, that govern their shopping and buying behavior.

Wolfe goes on to talk about how youth is not the primary reason for marketing these days, and that those who can effectively target the “New Consumer,” especially Boomer women, are the real leaders in the field.

Interesting stuff, when so much we see in and out of churches and other organizations is geared toward younger and younger demographics. But still, the most telling line is that first one: If you can’t deliver what you promise, you’d be better not promising it in the first place!

Overheard this afternoon…

I’m afraid to pray. I never get what I ask for. In fact, the situations I’m praying about always get worse! I think I’d be better off just not going to the trouble.

What do you say to that? What can you say to that?

Right now, I’m listening to excerpts from his Graceland project from the 1980s! You really can’t help but love “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes”. And who could forget “You Can Call Me Al”? Good stuff!

Thanks to Eileen McDargh for news of this interesting study done each year by the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. It measures standards of educational level, publications, library resources, booksellers, etc. in cities of over 200,000 population. Pretty interesting results.

The Top Ten?

1. Minneapolis, MN
2. Seattle, WA
3. Pittsburgh, PA
4. Madison, WI
5. Cincinnati, OH
6. Washington, DC
7. Denver, CO
8. Boston, MA
9. Portland, OR
10. San Francisco, CA

Oh, Atlanta? Came in number 15 overall.

The other interesting result? Most of these cities are waaaayyyy too cold in the winter, and the people all talk funny! I’ll take number 15, and keep the weather and the drawl just the way they are, thank you very much!

One other note…the study caught my eye because the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater was the site of many of my very favorite summer days back in high school (also known as many moons ago, when Moses was a corporal). We drove up to Whitewater from South Georgia every year for the Drum Corps International Midwestern Championships on the campus of UWW.

Started reading Gordon MacDonald’s Mid-Course Correction tonight. He talks about “vital optimism” and how reality comes along and chips away at the myth and erode our dreams, until…

From living life built on great expectations, we gravitate toward a life built on little more than obligation.

He includes this poem from Ed Sissman…

Men past forty

Get up nights

Look out at city lights

And wonder why life is so long

And where they made the wrong turn.

It is a tough and dangerous thing to get to that place where the optimism ends, never to be recovered.

…about Gary Lamb and his unblogging! I cruised through my links this afternoon, and I just half-heartedly and absentmindedly clicked on Gary’s link. Hallelujah! The guy actually posted something! Three somethings as of this afternoon! And they’re all pretty good stuff! Go over there and check him out!

Brian Thomas writes a concise little article over at THE OOZE about Christians and the arts. Like a lot of folks I know and read, he argues that believers ought to be among the very best creators of art and beauty, because we are made in the image of the ultimate Artist. And the Artist has redeemed us and is constantly scuplting, painting, singing, and writing the image of Jesus into our lives.

Unfortunately, P.G. Wodehouse, whose quote is included in the article, was right…

Whenever Christians, and evangelicals in particular, have attempted to ‘reach the world’ through the media – TV, film, publishing and so on – the thinking public gets the firm idea that, like soup in a bad restaurant, Christians’ brains are better left unstirred.

Instead of driving people away with bad attempts at “art,” dismissed with the excuses of “we don’t have the resources” or “it’s good enough for volunteers” or whatever, those of us who serve the ultimate Beholder should reclaim the lofty ambition of Francis Schaeffer who said…

The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.

I’m challenged and encouraged by people like Brian Ollman and his Millennia Co-op, referenced in Frost and Hirsch’s The Shaping of Things to Come, who are seeking to reclaim the heritage of believers from the earliest days.

Quick stops this morning on the way to something else…

• Jim and Tammy’s son and his ministry in Atlanta
• Dick Staub points us to an article about “Twixters”

On the run…catch you later!

I love books. Books of most any kind. The best kind of books? FREE BOOKS! Especially when they are GOOD free books!

I was cruising along through my blog links a minute ago, and I came across this link to a FREE copy (.pdf) of Alan Roxburgh and Mike Regele’s Crossing the Bridge: Church Leadership in a Time of Change. Thanks, John!

And speaking of bridges, check out Fred Peatross’s parable…