The Google of Desire

500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider

What are you looking for? People are searching Google for “oil spill in gulf of mexico.” St. Louis, MO is the world’s epicenter for people typing in “how to find a boyfriend.” The number one city searching for “sex” is Delhi, India. The number one city searching for “peace” – Edmonton, Canada.

I’m going to follow the high (Canadian) road and try some Google searches before hoisting a cold drink and paddling a kayak into the Labor Day sunset. Here are my results, not all of them real.

Normally this Google search returns an administration that is wrongheadedly driven to job generation by building more roads, more airports and increasing our dependency on fossil fuels. That’s my read on Laura Tyson’s recent New York Times op-ed piece.

But when I did this Google search, I got something that didn’t suck. My search returned a president who delivers on his promise to build a green infrastructure for America, with solar and wind power. His administration helps move us away from oil, cars and bad mortgages and into something smarter – new online technologies and training and a green economy.

This returns yoga studios that offer classes by donation, like YogaCo and Yogis Anonymous, in Santa Monica. You simply pay what you think the class is worth. Your class is not some recurring charge on your credit card, or a health-club membership, or some other obligation like changing the oil in your car. The health club, credit card model of yoga doesn’t teach us as much about ourselves. As Max Strom writes in A Life Worth Breathing, we can’t use the methods we commonly employ in business and commerce to learn about ourselves. It’s like using a hammer to brush your teeth. Money needs to change hands for yoga classes, but just in a different way.

This search returns links about Bruce Lipton, a biologist who is leading a re-examination of Darwinian evolutionary theory. He spoke at a great event that I attended this week. Bruce says that Darwin’s concept of evolution, the “survival of the fittest,” has led humanity into competition and war. He thinks evolution is really about “survival of the fittingest” – successful species are those that adapt, fit in with nature and play well with other species. If we understand this in time, and stop killing the planet, Mother Nature might not need to cast us out of her garden.

This returns a link to this video, which is coffee porn for the overcaffinated engineer mind. The search does not return any links to Starbucks, which has a good health plan for its employees but teaches them to make an indifferent espresso, a great tragedy for dopamine delivery.

My dream Google search returns news of Architecture for Humanity’s efforts to rebuild in Haiti, Black Entertainment Television’s financing of local housing materials manufacturing in Haiti, and World Shelters’ work here and abroad to put a roof over everyone’s head.

Eastern Nebraska. Huh. Always wanted to know that.

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Values and Branding: Are You For Real?

Tapped is a movie about water. The kind we drink in bottles that we throw away. Water that in many cases is free, municipal tap water that Coke and Pepsi repackage at a huge profit. Yup, Coke and Pepsi sell you water you can get for free from a faucet. We feel good drinking bottled water, but we’re just helping Coke and Pepsi keep their market share. Tapped sounds like the kind of movie that should play on Planet Green. But the producers of Tapped found that Planet Green won’t show the movie because it might upset Planet Green advertisers like Nestle, Coke and Pepsi. You know, the people selling us all that hugely-profitable bottled water. Planet Green brands itself as an environmentally green network. Looks like they care about a different kind of green a lot more.

Capitalism sucks, right? Well …

Causecast is a group that is using the engine of capitalism to drive social change. (RED) is a cause-driven marketing campaign that has raised millions of dollars, using capitalism to divert corporate marketing budgets to address HIV health issues in Africa. Creative Visions Foundation supports creative activists worldwide. LivingHomes uses a for-profit capitalist business model to build healthy, green sustainable houses. The people who founded or manage these companies were on a panel this week called Changing the World IS My Business hosted by The Writers Junction, Smarty, and Causecast.

The message was simple. You can do well by doing good. Making money is okay.

(RED), for example, is a for-profit business that hired a talented marketer named Julie Cordua. She signed brands like Apple, Gap, Converse, Dell, Starbucks and Nike and got them to buy into the idea (literally – the corporations pay license fees to participate) that a shopper’s purchase would benefit The Global Fund.

Causecast informs you about causes and encourages you to help. Its founder, Ryan Scott, created “opt-in” email marketing and made a bundle, so he knows about capitalism. Capitalism, as everyone on the panel pointed out, is a huge social driver. Why not use it to drive social change? Ryan cited a study that showed that corporate values matter to buyers. According to the Cone 2007 Cause Evolution Study, 83 percent of Americans say that companies have a responsibility to support causes and 92 percent say they have a more positive image of a company that supports a cause they care about.

It’s good for business if a company’s values include supporting a worthy cause.

It’s good for your company if you filter your actions through a clearly-defined set of values. So what’s up with Planet Green? Spurred on by Stephanie Soechtig, the director/producer of Tapped, people are friending Planet Green’s Facebook page to tell them to act, um, a little more green. Facebook — an engine of social change? Another Cone research study has it that 62% of Americans believe they can influence corporations by sounding off on social media platforms.

Big companies may act like infants sometimes, grabbing at an advertiser’s money at the expense of their stated values. Do we really have to be the parent here? Yes, we do, when it comes to helping corporations remain true to their stated vision. Online voices like this one keep corporations real.