“When I put a question out on PSFK’s Facebook page many readers insisted that the brand is still a magazine. But I’m not sure. I think Monocle has become a luxury product brand that creates content, and owns both online & offline media and retail channels. It has done this by spreading a message about itself by collaborating with other brands (advertisers and sponsors) and then collaborating with brands to create a broad range of premium products that it couldn’t have created alone in the short period of its existence. I would argue that the brand values rival those of Prada or even Tom Ford. And in terms of business-model, Monocle is leaps ahead. Surely a brand like Prada would love to have the magazine’s reach and engagement.”via PSFK: http://www.psfk.com/2012/03/modern-brands.html#ixzz1pxf5zddY

I’m a bit dubious about that TED video in the trailer…they assume we’ll still be using hashtags by 2023! 

I always come across as weird online because I just like putting thoughts down before I forget them but I promise I’m not as strange in real life ;-)

I suppose my thinking was that a week-long conference isn’t a solution to homelessness, but any kind of initiative like that is a good interim step (as BBH Labs said themselves). If you don’t have employment paying you a minimum salary, I can’t fault the opportunity to make an honest dollar. 

Strategy-wise: anything truly solved a the end of the day? Not really. But it’s early days, who’d have thought so many people would write about it? :)

Speaking of which, I read this thing today (not sure if DISQUS supports html so I’ll just paste the URL)  - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/what-isn-8217-t-for-sale/8902/

“But today there are lots of new ways to make money. If you need to earn some extra cash, here are some novel possibilities: Stand in line overnight on Capitol Hill to hold a place for a lobbyist who wants to attend a congressional hearing: $15–$20 an hour. Lobbyists pay line-standing companies, who hire homeless people and others to queue up.”
Context is everything – right near congressional hearings yet invisible! And as the article rightly points out, there shouldn’t be markets in everything but of course it’s a totally different story.

It’s almost like they started with the details but forgot the essential building block of advertising – changing people’s perceptions and behaviours – that homelessness is full of odd associations in people’s heads, brings up bums and people sleeping on the street instead of those who couldn’t keep up with a mortgage payment and were forced out of their homes temporarily (or not). There’s a moral stance in there, and the wording outraged – fine line between exploitative and empowering. But as they say, if people try to bring you down, it probably means you’re above them :)

Iterate, iterate, iterate – but sadly even the smallest of things get blown out of proportion. PS: I really like blogs where there’s a real conversation happening, rather than just people posting a few lines and running away to do other stuff :)

Are you sure about that?

However, the passion and depth of your comment backs up my point: this is a complicated, sensitive issue, which is easily misshapen if manhandled.

There’s a lot more than I can fit into a comment without turning it into a novel, but here’s a big accolade: 

I think in this scenario the 2008 meltdown highlighted the fact that we (what is generally referred to as the ‘developed world’) don’t know what poverty and inequality really mean, nevermind ‘homelessness’. 

Just like you say, ‘execution’ doesn’t exist in the real world, ‘product category’ doesn’t exist in people’s heads, it’s just an artificial construct we use to make our lives easier. When you ask people what poverty *means* for them, the answer won’t be anything scientific, it’ll be like ‘we can’t afford to do/buy ___’. 

So if you subscribe to the view that poverty and inequality are also influenced by participation in society (more than food, clothes and shelter; it also means resources to maintain human dignity and have access to products/goods that are deemed essential in each country) then that makes a lot of sense. People looted shops here because that’s what they felt was necessary to have what we’d term ‘ a good life’. How misguided it is – different story.

I remember when ‘Poor America’ was on BBC and twitter was inundated by those saying stuff like ‘but look! They have a coffee filter!  They live in a big house! Their children have toys! They’re not *poor*’ in one example, it was pretty indicative that inequality/poverty and also homelessness suffer from a branding issue (I’m aware of how this sounds but bear with me). It was later revealed that almost half the world’s “99%” are Americans. That is bad, of course, but we should still look in our own back garden. And the other ‘people are homeless by choice’ which I disagree with entirely. 

Homeless hotspots – good idea: there’s a demand for wifi, we supply it and you pay. The problem is that the strategy could have been better. 

When we say ‘poor’ (Britain or US) we still, for some reason, imagine malnourished children and droughts or walking miles for water and severe deprivation because of this relativity – and not people living in fear of next week. The poverty line in the US is $22,000 or so – earn less than that, you are poor. In Britain it was around £10-£12,000 but not sure what the figure is at the top of my head. 

To close the accolade..

Rather than scorn or demonising one or the other, sorrow and understanding might be more accurate responses to behaviour motivated at heart by a frightened and frustrated desire for dignity, cue the man who said he’d rather be thought of as ‘houseless’, not ‘homeless’. Big semantic difference that aims to improve his self image – a house is a house, it’s not my entire life. If you’re branded as ‘homeless’ and thus dishonourable and you know it to be true, your self image becomes ‘I am dishonourable’. If you think that’s false (eg the episodically poor or homeless, so that not everyone gets lumped into the same meaning-laden ‘homeless’ word), then you think of yourself as ‘I am OK, despite my image’. There may be such a thing as status change through an intellectual conscience. 

Lots to be said. Blunt tools, blunt mark. But I’m glad they did it, I can think of ways to make it better and how you could improve on it but it’s a thorny issue nevertheless. Would love to write a post about it too!