A new world for me...

I'm in this odd phase of discovering myself as an artist. Interestingly, my friends would tell you that it has always been there, but it continues to surprise me.

Recently, I was invited at the church I attend to be part of the team to create this mural. There are three of us: Jody Neice, Sunny Raschke and myself. We began by painting a tree modeled off of a piece we saw on the internet and modified for our purposes. Then each of us has been painting a scene live during worship that centers on the piece of the Bible that is being taught. The series goes through the whole story of the Bible in eight weeks.

This week was my week to add. (I also did the 'dove' piece above.)

One of the things about painting in worship is that you focus on the symbology. Never before did I notice the continuity of the dove that came to Noah with a twig in Genesis and the dove as a representation of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel books. Never did I notice the theme of the thorns as part of the curse in Genesis and the crown of thorns in the Gospel books.

This idea of creating art during worship is not unique to my church. It has become a trend. A trend I believe is fueled by the image-rich, interactive digital world that we live in.

I'm really enjoying this.

© Cathy Hutchison 2009

Thoughts on Marketing | Culture Shift

Every day in my marketing world I’m living in a culture shift.

I have to say, I am very fortunate to be part of Acoustic Dimensions. We’re wired collaborative, we’re wired connected and we’re wired future. (If I had to work with a group that was in an old “command and control” model, I’d have slit my wrists long ago.)

I’m used to thinking differently. I can pursue people over projects and relationships over spreadsheets. I’m allowed to experiment simply by sharing the strategic thinking behind it. Here’s the thing. It has been wildly successful.

A couple of weeks ago, Seth Godin posted this: “If it gets to the RFP stage, you lost. Great business to business marketers (and profitable ones) make the sale long before that happens. The RFP is an organizational punt, it's a way of saying, "it's all a commodity, we can't decide, cheap guy wins." The cheap guy, of course, never wins.

The thing is most people in our industry chase leads over building pipelines. And every once in awhile when I’m confronted with that fact, it seems anachronistic.

Today, I responded to a nuts and bolts RFP and I received a call from a very nice marketing rep who shared information on a possible lead in Nebraska. This stood in stark contrast to our efforts earlier in the week providing a highly creative, collaborative, visual deliverable to help a strategic partner win a project in Dubai.

It’s a weird thing to surf a culture shift. Luckily I’m finding myself more often on the future side than in the past.

© Cathy Hutchison 2008

To the Class of '09

Craig is speaking to architecture students at the University of Kansas today. When we were brainstorming his topic, I came up the idea to use this image from the perspective that university students don't need to know that the world is changing.

They are a product of that changed world. What they need to know is how to survive in a corporate culture that can't see that the world is changing. Cisco has a great commercial for their telepresence product that shows a staring contest between children from different continents. The video is a beautiful illustration of growing up in a world without boundaries.

Growing up in this world changes perception about what is possible. Add to that the culture of mass colaboration....Wikipedia, Open Source, Modding, Steampunk, Mashups, etc, and you have a culture shift where people feel it is their right to be able to impact and contribute. The thing is, they will quickly disconnect if isolated in a cubicle where they have to follow old rules that don't allow them to have input.

Luckily, the Net Gen shouldn't have to wait too long for the rules to change. If corporate America doesn't take advantage of their energy, they'll simply go out and make money without us. After all, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Anshul Samar are already there.