Tanya tells her experience of being an aspiring actress in 1998 in Chicago Illinois, a young women who because of the forces around her, helped shape an idea to start a Theatre Company. Her world of work was then controlled by the perceptions of others and their expectations of what she should be and what role she should play as a Latina Actress. Expectations that often judged her culture, her gender, her race and ethnicity. Expectations that didn’t showcase and champion her artistic talents or the life stories she felt were not being told. Instead they judged her – casting call after casting call. These experiences led Tanya to the idea of creating a theatre company.

Through a collaboration that started between Coya Paz and Tanya Saracho that grew into an ensemble of 10 women from diverse Latina/Hispana backgrounds, Teatro Luna in 2000 was born. A theatre company formed through on group of women each sharing stories and experiences, an ecological system of collaboration and cocreation based on sharing. The sharing of stories, from which the group learnt. Creating meaning in who they were, what they were doing and in this, created a voice and the power to share with hundreds of people who came to see their productions, the stories of Latina/Hispana women and their communities.

Why was this collaborative group so important to each of these women and the formation of the organisation that is known as Teatro Luna? Tanya states it very eloquently: “In the group there were no outside forces telling us women could not be funny.” It became a supportive and dynamic collaboration that evolved from the interactions of a group of artistic women, cocreating a creative process, a process formed from discussion, sharing and learning about the stories of others, stories of Latina/Hispana women with the central idea of telling these stories through the medium of Theatre.

Teatro Luna is Chicago’s first and only all-Latina theatre, organized for the purpose of exploring the varied experiences and cultures of Latina/Hispana women, showcasing their creative talents and telling the often political, social and emotional stories of their communities. This is a wonderful and insightful story on how collaboration through the power of stories when shared both within and outside our organisational communities, shared through communication, shapes us. And as I spoke about in my last blog post everything communicates not just the words we use.

Please share this video and the story of Teatro Luna.

Tanya Saracho from Arts Alliance Illinois on Vimeo.

Smiles

Kelly

Share and Enjoy

Here is a list of ideas to keep the mystery (or creativity) in Electronic Marketing … or should I say the marketing in electronic marketing.

Marketing, after all is not just a management planning process, but a creative process based on ideas, not just the resources used to manage and implement these ideas.

1. Defy reason – make a decision for your product or brand based entirely on feelings and emotions (not data) …
2. Allow for the unexpected – play with social media such as a blog, FB group page etc for your brand and just see what happens …
3. Invite difference – post messages on twitter, comment on blogs and talk to strangers about your brand (not just folks in your company or contracted to work for you) …
4. Don’t just search – use the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ function on Google and think how the site you come across might be connected with your product/brand …
5. Enjoy and celebrate the unsettling feeling of not getting ‘it’ 100% right’ on your website … yes it is ok! Uncertainity, change, failure and imperfection are natural elements in life … just as they are in the use of technology in marketing, be it your website, social media campaign or just use of work email … enjoy the fact you still have 100 emails in your inbox …
6. Walk away from your computer, grab a piece of paper, some coloured pens and draw something … anything … to remind you that marketing is also about creativity …
7. Wonder at old technologies … the printing press, the telephone, the turntable, the cassette tape …
8. Don’t send that email … pick up the phone, walk down the corridor and have a conversation, a coffee or just hi …
9. Spend a day with a child or teenager having fun and ask them to show you how they see electronic technologies through their eyes … it’s not just about data and information, it’s about having fun, being connected …
10. Never forget that electronic marketing is actually about people, not just technologies … with electronic technologies we are observing someone, contacting someone, interacting with someone … so think people first!

« CASE Insights: Exploring Marketing’s Evolution Through Technology »

Share and Enjoy

Imagine if we found answers for everything, could explain anything … we should therefore know how to market to you, to everyone? But perhaps more importantly, it is the imagination, the creativity of marketing that we would lose, not just the mystery of our markets!

A sense of mystery is intrinsic to the human condition. In the article, Les Lancaster, a professor in transpersonal psychology from Liverpool John Moores University indicates that ‘it is intrinsic for us to seek answers.

It is our evolutionary heritage, moving us forward by motivating us to find out more and use our imagination’. The author Ken Kesey (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest!) writes ‘the need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer’.

So perhaps in a time where the focus in marketing is on measurement, proof, evidence, answers, outcomes and the use of electronic resources to assist us in finding the answers, the information for more informed marketing decisions … perhaps we also need to enjoy some of the mystery.

By this I mean some of the mysteries of new technologies, of market trends, of unexplainable phenomena, these might remind us to enjoy the ‘process’ of what we do in marketing more and focus on the outcomes less.

Perhaps we should just play with marketing, be creative … play with social media and see what happens? I know I can hear your thoughts from here … ‘that costs money’!!!

Let’s look at this another way. In the article the author provided a list of 12 things to help maintain the mystery in one’s life … so with a little creative thought, I edited this list of items to help keep the mystery (and creativity) of marketing alive in a time of rising electronic resources … so we don’t become too explainable!

A manifesto for Mystery in Electronic Marketing!

« CASE Insights: Exploring Marketing’s Evolution Through Technology »

Share and Enjoy

Today while sitting in the sun reading the June edition of Psychologies Magazine I read an article titled ‘Why Mystery matters?’. It provides an interesting insight into Tanis Taylor view of the effect of constantly trying to control, survey, monitor, examine, plan and audit every minute, every moment and every action in our daily lives … what happens … we lose the mystery!

We can explain everything … or at least we try to!

One thing the growth of electronic technologies have most certainly done is developed a world where we try to explain everything … we live in an information age where we can access information at the click of a button if we can’t answer the ‘why’ question to our son or daughter, we Google it! If we feel out of date we subscribe! If we want to know what you are doing we follow you!

What of the Mystery in Marketing?

This is also true in marketing. Like what is happening in our everyday lives, in marketing we are also constantly focused on explaining everything, developing plans and strategies to remove uncertainty and control the impact and outcome of our marketing activities.

Why not just come up with a list of ideas and see what happens? Can you imagine that? Creative – Yes! Full of mystery – Yes! Would we be permitted to do this – NO!

This mindset of explaining and planning everything is further heightened by the impact electronic resources have and are having on marketing. We have at our finger tips a plethora of electronic resources that help us to collect data on those we regard as our markets – our customers, buyers, consumers – and with data comes a need to explore and profile that data.

Look at the Tesco Clubcard Scheme and the strategic analytical programme put in place by Dunnhumby, the people behind the scheme. They can identify from this data the type of household I live in, the type of lifestyle I lead and provide some explanation of my future purchase behaviour based on what I have purchased in the past!

Armed with this they already know what type of coupon or incentive to send me to intise me back into my local Tesco Extra. Great – marketing is becoming more accountable, measurable and …. my life more explainable!

But what of the mystery of people … marketing afterall has people at it’s centre .. the people who work in marketing and the people and communities to whom we market (or have a dialogue).

If we can measure and observe everything about people, than will this not result in us knowing everything about them?

In addition to the Tesco Clubcard Scheme, Tesco can also monitor your web behaviour what pages on their site you visit, what files your download, what purchases you make online. They can then merge this web usage data with your purchase data from their stores already they are starting to build a pretty good picture of who you are and how to reach you.

Oh and don’t forget your purchase fuel from their service stations, have your car insurance with them and have a Tesco-linked credit card! Are we getting the picture?

« CASE Insights: Exploring Marketing’s Evolution Through Technology »

Share and Enjoy