April 2006 Archives

The following is a recommended resource list that I handed out at my presentation at the Christianity in a Consumer Culture.

Branding Books
All Marketers Are Liars, Seth Godin, Portfolio, © 2005
Brands and Branding, Rita Clifton & John Simmons, Bloomberg Press, © 2003
Good to Great and the Social Sectors, Jim Collins, © 2005
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, Al Ries & Laura Ries, Harper Business, © 1998
The Culting of Brands, Douglas Atkin, Portfolio, © 2004
The Power of Cult Branding, Mathew W. Ragas & Bolivar J. Bueno, Crown Business, © 2002
Rules for Revolutionaries, Guy Kawasaki with Michele Moreno, HarperCollins, © 1999

Christianity and Culture Books
American Jesus, Stephen Prothero, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, © 2003
Consuming Faith, Tom Beaudoin, Sheed & Ward, © 2003
Consuming Religion, Vincent J. Miller, Continuum, © 2003

Design Books
Beyond the Mac is not a Typewriter, Robin Williams, Peachpit Press, © 1996
Design Workshop, Robin Williams & John Tollett, Peachpit Press, © 2001

Blogs & Sites
Garr Reynolds

Seth Godin

Guy Kawasaki

Edward Tufte

Brand Autopsy

Spirit Garage

Microsoft redesigns the iPod...

Seth Godin Speaks with Google

In preparing for a presentation I'm doing at the Christianity in a Consumer Culture conference I'll be speaking at friday, and following a recommendation, came across a great presentation that marketing guru Seth Godin gave at Google.

The nut of his presentation is:
A) Do or make something that is worth talking about;
B) Give people who are interested in it a way to talk about it.

This stands in opposition to the variety of marketing that is dependent on spending piles of money to interrupt people. He also makes a key point that technology is not the most important thing in creating a great business, rather, having a good story makes the difference.

Thanks to Ben for tipping me off to this article on Saddleback Church and its pastor Rick Warren written by Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point. I'm way too busy right now to do an in depth analysis. However, I'd love to hear what you think about it, so comment away if you have an opinion about it.

In some fun news, the Spirit Garage bands will be having a CD release show at the Fine Line Music Cafe (a great club in downtown Minneapolis) on April 22. All three bands will play as well as local artists Epic Hero. It should be a great show and you can come for free, just download and print off the postcard with the comp ticket on it and bring it to the show. (ps it is a 21+ show)

Download the Postcard & Comp Ticket

The National Geographic Society has released that it has been working with an ancient document that contains The Gospel of Judas.

The National Geographic Society has been part of an international effort, in collaboration with the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art and the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery, to authenticate, conserve, and translate a 66-page codex, which contains a text called James (also known as First Apocalypse of James), the Letter of Peter to Philip, a fragment of a text that scholars are provisionally calling Book of Allogenes, and the only known surviving copy of the Gospel of Judas.

The Gospel of Judas gives a different view of the relationship between Jesus and Judas, offering new insights into the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Unlike the accounts in the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in which Judas is portrayed as a reviled traitor, this newly discovered Gospel portrays Judas as acting at Jesus' request when he hands Jesus over to the authorities.

There will be more about the Gospel of Judas on a television special Sunday night and in the May issue of National Geographic. Judas has been an interesting biblical character to me for the last couple of years partly because I want to understand his motivations; was he selling out Jesus, trying to force Jesus' hand, or as this docuement may say, acting on Jesus' orders. I look forward to finding out more about what the Gospel of Judas.

We spent some time in my Gospel, Media & Postmodern Cultures class discussing the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster which has arisen to noteriety amidst the debate of teaching intelligent design theory in US public schools and the new book The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If you go to the FSM site, take some time to read the religious and negative response mail posted there.

So it’s Saturday morning 6 AM and I’m in the Sea/Tac airport looking for some caffeine and a pastry while waiting for my delayed flight. I wander down to the food court and there I find what I’m looking for and more. In fact there are two coffee stands not 30 feet apart, closer to one another than any other shop in the area. One of them is the Isletante Mocha Café, the other, Starbucks. While Starbucks has 25-30 people in line, Isletante has one. Weird.

These shops are in an international airport and I’m guessing that most of the people in line at Starbucks have never been to both of these establishments and thus are not making a judgment based on experience. Both shops sell coffee and pastries, yet people are willing to wait in line for Starbucks when they can get the same items a few steps away without waiting. Ah, the power of the brand.