Thanks for the suggestion. I'll definitely look into it.

(And I'm feeling where you're coming from on the self-righteousness. It's time for the sustainability message to spread beyond the political zealots and go mainstream. Approaches like these will help.)

Best,

Joe

It sounds like the principles are already studied and it's just a matter to tying the ethical marketing experience to the progressive agenda using the usual marketing techniques.

I don't think this needs think tanking, it just needs a marketing budget and some creative people to come up with ideas and test them for framing particular positions.

I do think that fun is a better way of framing that what one experiences from one's peers in some progressive circles. I'm tired of the self-righteous approach to sustainability. It really turns me off to get lectured by my friends when I happen to do a quick errand and forget my reusable bag. Frankly, my time has value, too. It would be nice to change the ambient culture on a larger scale.

- Fun (of course, but that can go for shopping or paintball as well)

- Collective: engaged in by a group as a group vs. as a collection of individuals

- Collaborative: it's only fun if people collaborate, it's not fun if people compete: competition doesn't even make sense in this context

- Public: the group is anyone who wants to take part, and it takes place in a public domain (this one takes place in a public space devoted to public transportation, which I think is great).

Come to think of it, WWO seems to also fulfill tese requirements. Is this general? Can we abstract the essence of progressive fun-practice and use that to imagine (or re-imagine) everyday life?

Luis.

Very interesting comments so far. I think you're onto something, Luis, when you mention the role of practice for developing new understandings. I've become somewhat of a broken record repeating the importance of the lived experience for shifting people's conceptual models of the world.

Rikard, your suggestion that socially engaging (and fun) activities might be able to pull people away from mainstream media. I like this quite a bit and would like to explore it further. Culture jamming is usually done within traditional forms of media (newspapers, websites, video, magazines…). The idea that life experience can be an important medium makes a lot of sense to me. This is, after all, what street spectacles are supposed to do.

Now just imagine a game we could play "in the real world"…

- Joe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je1KOcBYGjM

is probably a great experience for the participants (not the mention the rest of us) and you can do things like this for completely different purposes. Flash mobs seem like great community motivators.

-Rikard

1. Fun is often the result of an interrupted pattern and since patterns are a core component of thinking fun should be taken a lot more seriously. Practicing breaking patterns (like lateral thinking exercises) is a very good way to expand people’s perspective. It increases tolerance for change and lessens fear of the unknown. And it’s fun.

2. One part of ethical marketing is people’s experience of the campaign or company. What’s the feeling people get from a message? Do we feel “ok they’re selling chairs” or do we feel “I RULE!” as a result of interacting with the company? This is the idea that Kathy Sierra promotes.

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/01/keeping_users_e.html

-Rikard

This post reminded me of something I have been reflecting on recently: being progressive is more than believing certain things: it is also something one practices. And the more one practices, the more ingrained and this-is-just-how-people-are it becomes.

That goes for fun, too. WWO involved imagining how one and others would respond to an oil catastrophe and it seemingly did, reading the game archive, change some people's everyday experience. Temporarily, perhaps, but at least it got people to "go there". I believe that is valuable because it primes people for further changes.

There are probably many other fun activities that can seed and reinforce inherently progressive behavior. I don't know what other progressive-practice games (empathyball, anyone? might look like but at least it is good to start imagining them. That's the kind of fun I'm having here.

Regards,

Luis.