Reading in the Bathroom | Good is the New Cool: Market Like You Give A Damn

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In the last year or so I’ve become guilty about my own success. Though it hasn’t always been easy, I live in a relatively safe and affordable part of the city. I left a lucrative job and I’m currently living off my savings.

But I’m still outraged about the fact that, without unions, many of my neighbors and community members do not make enough to live well without public subsidies. Climate change increases have brought on increasing heat waves and tropical storms, making temperatures in my tiny, pre-war walk-up one bedroom go as high as 125°F, without proper air-conditioning. Suffice it to say, my life is directly impacted by income inequality and climate change.

Living with these two realities means feeling as if I have to trade being outspoken with relative comfort: Why should you be outraged about income inequality? You shop at Whole Foods!, some might say.

Working in the design field portrays a wealthy creative class that can afford to not worry about these issues, but as an African American woman in the design industry, I know that’s bullshit. As long as there’s a racial divide in the creative class, there’s also going to be a class divide that falls along race when it comes to solving social issues. So I attended Designing With Purpose and wanted to meet people who were interested in directly making a difference in their own work.

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I didn't want my legacy on this planet to be that I just helped persuade people to buy my stuff. ~Afdhel Aziz

While there, I bought a copy of Good Is The New Cool: Market Like You Give A Damn, and made fast friends with one of the co-writers, Afdhel Aziz. I chatted with him a few weeks later to learn more about why he felt compelled to co-write this book with Bobby Jones, and start a consultancy, Conspiracy of Love.  He says that one day, as he was approaching 40, sitting front row at a music festival, he thought to himself, “Is this all there is? Or can it be more?” These guys loved being marketers, but the way they were marketing was wearing them out and they needed to find purpose in their work while trading on the cultural currency that is cool.

As soon as I read it on the train headed home, I was immediately struck by these lines in the book,

To put it more bluntly: If we don’t deal with income inequality, no one is going to be able to afford our products.

 If we don’t deal with climate change, there’s not going to be anybody left to buy them

Go on…

via GIPHY

The tone of Good Is The New Cool is frank but hopeful. Advertising/Marketing is considered among the least valuable to society, and graphic designers cannot pretend to disassociate. If consumers don’t trust marketing, they also don’t trust design. But it balances those sober realities with honest experiences from their interviewees. And those examples, I’m afraid, do not include a logo.

Aziz and Jones present Seven Principles for How to Market Like You Give A Damn. They are,

1. Know Your Purpose

2. Find Your Allies

3. Think Citizens, Not Consumers

4. Lead with the Cool, but Bake in the Good

5. Don’t Advertise Solve Problems

6. People Are the New Media

7. Back Up the Promise With Proof

These provide the main framework for how to read each example. Aziz and Jones interview people like Jenifer Willig, Founder of Motive and Whole World Water, Jaha Johnson, Manager of Common and Usher, and Mimi Valdes, Chief Creative Officer i am OTHER. They all work as some part of mass marketing and are all thoughtfully introspective without being pretentious.

And I would be remiss not to acknowledge that not only is Good Is The New Cool written by two men of color; men that we rarely see writing and speaking up about the advertising industry. But men who are experts at what they do, thereby giving their advice authority and authenticity.

But a component missed in the book is ongoing, two-way conversations that happen in social media, which further shape how audiences experience a brand. In the book’s section, “Back Up The Promise With Proof,” they interview Bobby Campbell, manager for pop star Lady Gaga. He talks about, among other philanthropic endeavors, the impact of Gaga performing “Til It Happens To You” at the Oscars. Yes, Lady Gaga made an impact by raising awareness of domestic violence. But she also recorded a duet with R.Kelly an accused child rapist and domestic-abuser, with more than enough evidence  for the consumer-as-citizen to scrutinize and continue to debate.

Though it was written by two guys in advertising and marketing, graphic designers need to read Good Is The New Cool. Graphic design does not operate in a vacuum. A design has an impact — becomes a solution — when people sense it has meaning in their lives. Bobby and Afdhel are pointing to key shifts in marketing that we as visual communicators and should take notice.

The answer is not to get more intrusive. The answers are to create more meaning and purpose.

Diversity Without Pity: Coca-Cola Love Story Ad

Good Is The New Cool: Market Like You Give A Damn is practical, but grants the reader personal agency about how they plan to market with purpose. There are no easy answers, and step-by-step instructions. There is, however, a checklist to help you find meaning in what you do. The book captures a sea change happening in our global culture, where commerce, design, and politics intersect.

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We believe we are at a crossroads: We can either choose to try to prop up an old model that is broken, or we can create a new model that is fit for the unique challenges we see today.

Reading in the Bathroom is a book review series by IDSL. Reading is obviously not done in the bathroom exclusively. Sometimes it’s on a park bench, outdoor cafe, or on the train. But the best reading is done in the bathroom.