Ideasicle Podcast

Dr. Bob Deutsch, CEO Brain Sells, The Alchemy of Difference - Episode #30

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He's back. Dr. Bob Deutsch challenges us to consider his theory on "The Alchemy of Difference."

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Dr. Bob removes a piece of paper from his microphone at about 13 minutes in and it sounds way better. So hang in there.

SHOW NOTES:

  • We live in a "world of too" - too much, too complex, too everything.
  • The world has shifted from the world of choice ("or") to a world of "and." It's a much more complext world.
  • Like tradition AND modernity. How can we take that seeming paradox and make it innovative? A new concept in which a person lives.
  • We discuss this paradox as it relates to politics. A leader achieves emanence by being familiar AND mythic, accessible AND the one who knows the way. Being a leader is already a paradox.
  • Famous people are paradoxes. Elvis - sacred and profane. Marlon Brando - tough and tender. Each of us is a "democracy of disparate voices" - we live in paradox, it's our self-narrative.
  • Marketing makes a mistake - it tries to slice up existence so small that in that place and time is predictable and linear. But it's not reality. We think about people as "consumers." That's absurd. They are not stimulus/response machines.
  • Dr. Bob interviewed jazz great, Wynton Marsalis, about improv. Great story. The role of trust, curiosity, openness, sensuality, and large doses of "directed serendipity."
  • Creativity - you have to do it through your own self-system. Creativity is not about what you know. It's about passing what you know through the sieve of who you are. Wow.
  • "There is no one alive who is youer than you" - Dr. Seuss
  • We even get to the meaning of life. Did we crack it? That's up to you.
  • It's about the co-authoring of you. Bob Dylan: "I was born very far away from where I was supposed to be born. I'm always on my way home."
  • We discuss Bruce Springstein's SXSW speech. Dr. Bob has watched it 25 times it's so great. Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWbv0SUVQjM
  • We discuss how brands can help people expand their conceptions of themselves in the world. Before you make money, you have to make magic. The goal is for customers to see your brand as a venue for their own self-expansion. Brands are not an end point. You are a venue.
  • You Tools - Dr. Bob's upcoming new book about this entire topic.

    • BIO:

    From contributing to Military Review magazine to portraying a college professor in a McDonald’s commercial, cognitive anthropologist Dr. Bob Deutsch (founder of consulting firm Brain Sells (www.Brain-Sells.com), Boston, MA), breaks the mold.

    Bob has worked in the primeval forest and on Pennsylvania and Madison Avenues. His focus, since the mid-’70s, when he was living with pre-literate tribes and chimpanzees, has been understanding how ideas take hold in cultures. Since opening Brain Sells, in 1990, he has applied this understanding to how people attach to products, persons and performances. He is fond of saying, “Reasoned judgment about attributes is not the issue. The brain evolved to act, NOT to think.” Bran Sells’ retail clients include: TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, Home Goods, Radio Shack, Sephora, Verizon stores, McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts, and Toyota.

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    Ideasicle PodcastBy Will Burns