In a recent conversation with a friend and business associate, I bring up the "slow food, slow sex, slow travel" movements. He perks up, "Slow sex?"
I purposedly chose the provocative title of "Barbershops, Trading Posts, Coffeehouses, Parisian Salons: How Intimacy Seals Deals" for a session I led at MarCamp held Tuesday at France Telecom/Orange because marketers' intentions are nearly always suspect.
Seals deals? Sounds slimey, eh?
And people sometimes think that's who I am: I'm a role. I am a marketer (pssst, I'm just me). So if I'm a marketer, I must confess that I'm into slow marketing lately. Not that it's necessarily opposed to buzz marketing, but slow marketing is a focus on human, one-on-one connections sans stress ("yikes, will it scale?!?') rather than a focus on the mass, aggregate, broadcast-blast level.
Slow marketing is intricately tied to slow conversation, naked conversations. It's very very old-world. I learned it by osmosis in the piazzas of Italy, the cafes of Vienna, the chicken-buses of Guatemala, and I let it seep inside while chatting on donated furniture in a makeshift wooden shelter where a family that lost everything, including a son, shared tea and cookies and their tears with me.
Slow marketing's a bit harder to map out a concrete campaign for. I had no intention of spending the entire afternoon at Vino Locale in Palo Alto (I was checking them out for an upcoming interview series, and a potential hosted salon). I hadn't anticipated that Mary Beth's favorite book was East of Eden, or that she was a English Lit major/Art History minor who worked in high-tech marketing for 25 years and is working on a novel herself or that Mike Mann of Mann Cellars (yes, they grow wine not just garlic in Gilroy) would walk in and open his silky Syrah 2004 for a tasting or Lynn Fielder, a talented jeweler and art curator for Vino Locale to sit down beside me, or Kirpal, a rosé lover and software entrepreneur, to waltz in after his lunch at Zibbabu because he heard the laughter.
"Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn." - Elizabeth Lawrence (from one of my favorite slow magazines, La Vie Claire)
"No sane adult moves to the Bay Area for the lifestyle," says Paul Kedrosky. He, he, well, my sanity is questionable, but I am living here precisely for the lifestyle. I live a Mediterranean-inspired slow-food life right in the heart of Silicon Valley (yup, I reside near HP and Apple).
And I'm not alone. "There was an increased hunger for connection, and people were eager to find out about these things - the farmer, the fisherman, the cheesemaker," says Jim Denevan of Santa Cruz. Jim's company, Outstanding In the Field, brings one-evening impromptu restaurant right to small farms. In 2004, he took his farmer dinners national rippling out from his Northern California roots.
Denevan says it was modeling in Europe in his twenties that planted the seed: "Seeing the richness there inspired me. When you ate at little cafes and agriturismos, it was all very intimate, very direct. I remember a beautiful old farmhouse with a kitchen garden and vineyards right out the door. It really left an impression." (All Denevan quotes from article "Feasts of the Field", La Vie Claire, Fall 2006)
Slow marketing? Denevan: "It's amazing hearing from the people who make the products, who create the culture of the table. You get to hear the farmers telling their story, how and where they spend their days."
Slow travel? When life is a possible poem, then it becomes one grand adventure. Even marketing. A pilgrimage of discovery, mystery, serendipity, synchronicity, spontaneity. Joy:
For one friend who had difficulty remembering details from his travels, I suggested he take on the task of writing a poem every day during his journey abroad. The daily task proved impossible for him, so he decided to focus his attention on a one-week stretch through Paris, Prague and Florence. To this day, his memories of that time are the fondest of all his travels because, as he has told me, "when everything is a possible poem, the world is suddenly far more interesting." - from The Art of Pilgrimage, by Phil Cousineau
And slow sex? What's the hurry, we'll get around to that eventually too.
p.s. I'd love to go to the next Outstanding in the Field dinner (that is one that's not already sold out). Email if you want to come along too: Details: October 15: Soquel, California at Everett Family Farm (photos from I Love Farms). Guest chef: Justin Severino, who is busy opening his butcher shop, "Pigs in Zen," makes a return appearance to Outstanding in the Field. $150/pp.
images 1) Photo by Wyatt Dexter from Outstanding In the Field's site 2) Gary Ibsen, host of the Carmel Tomato Festival. Mike Mann - "Are you the winemaker?" "I'm the wine grower, salesperson, delivery person too" - reminded me I justed missed the Tomato Festival (slow travelinig in Manhattan). Yet another reason to live in the Bay Area: heirloom tomatoes. Photo by © Tana Butler from I Heart Farms: Stories and Pictures of Real People and Real Food blog (a heavenly slow blog).
Thank you for this post.
I've recently published a book as well as started a micropublishing company. Your words remind that slow is better.
I'd rather have twenty-five committed readers than five hundred who are not!
Kind regards,
Jay
Posted by: Jay Sennett | Oct 04, 2006 at 12:45 PM
Evelyn,
I just had this thought -- that slow marketing inverts the relationship of transaction to relatioship.
Regular marketing: relations are built over time through transactions (sales)
Slow marketing: transactions (sales) result over time from relationship
Would that make sense? The shift of focus from making a sale to maintaining a relationship makes sales the result of relationships, not the cause of relationships.
It's pre-capitalist, really. In pre-modern times, before society was organized according to functional value, economic relations were subordinate to social relations.
Goffman has a concept of "open states of talk". I use it all the time as a way of discussing social software/online community (which to me are "talk systems" that facilitate "open states of talk").
In an open state of talk, talk is not episodic (opening, middle, conclusion), but is kept open. I think that's the kind of relationship brands would like to have with us: open, ongoing, called up at any point when there's something to be bought or sold. The problem is the relationship is one way, really.
Interesting issue: extent to which marketing can really be modeled on talk/conversation (versus, for example, mass media advertising image propagation/propaganda...)
cheers,
adrian
Posted by: adrian chan | Oct 06, 2006 at 03:16 PM
slow travel will be the next luxury
try www.seat61.com and www.freighter.com for slow more enviormentally friendly ways to travel. Also do you know The Idler Magazine?
Posted by: m | Oct 08, 2006 at 08:12 AM
Slow Leadership is a movement for everyone who wants to act on the knowledge that work is about more than economics and getting and spending.
You might like to check out the website at http://www.slowleadership.org. It reflects much of the thinking that went into this excellent post.
Posted by: Carmine Coyote | Oct 08, 2006 at 09:37 AM
I found this post via Andrea Weckerle's PR blog, and am glad I did.
Unlike a lot of our friends, we still do family dinners almost every evening, Sunday dinner is an institution that is only cancelled once in a long while.
It's our little way of slowing down our lives for a few minutes each day. The payoff in relationships and calm is amazing!
Posted by: Eric Eggertson | Oct 28, 2006 at 11:55 PM
I most certainly enjoyed reading this post.
A few years back I read an excellent book discussing the issue of slow time called The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility. It was a very informative. It was quite interesting to note that electronic media and media on CD-ROMs and DVDs do not have a long life. Words on paper tend to last a very long time. Obviously, words and metal or in stone have a much longer lifespan. I personally enjoy traveling to the Caribbean because they have a much different concept of time than do my fellow Americans. It is very instructive to note that both concepts of time can be useful depending on the circumstance.
Posted by: feeboshal | Apr 20, 2007 at 05:37 PM
That is a wonderful idea:) slow travel will be the next step and I think it is the right way:)
Posted by: steven davies | Jul 07, 2007 at 01:02 AM
It is not a well know fact that it was The World Institute of slowness that came up with the term slow travel back in 1999. The idea was of course influenced by slowfood. When The World Institute of Slowness came up with the term slow travel in 1999, It recognized that slow travel can be done in many ways but it should always be done in a way that fights the “mood” of always being in a hurry.
The World Institute of Slowness,which are the organization behind slowplanet. Slowplanet’s mission is to ‘show the way to a life form that is based on the good values coming with slowness, and consequently fight the need for always being in a hurry.’ Slowplanet are involved in every facet of everyday life, from slowbusiness, slowshopping, slowtravel, slowideas, slowfashion, slowdesign, slowgarden etc. In order to fight fastness.
Regards Geir Berthelsen The World Institute of Slowness
Posted by: Geir Berthelsen | Jul 25, 2007 at 01:02 PM
The shift of focus from making a sale to maintaining a relationship makes sales the result of relationships, not the cause of relationships.
Posted by: Mesothelio | Nov 05, 2008 at 01:16 AM
The idea was of course influenced by slowfood. When The World Institute of Slowness came up with the term slow travel in 1999, It recognized that slow travel can be done in many ways but it should always be done in a way that fights the “mood” of always being in a hurry.
Posted by: Monavie | Nov 11, 2008 at 01:38 PM
The World Institute of Slowness came up with the term slow travel in 1999, It recognized that slow travel can be done in many ways but it should always be done in a way that fights the “mood” of always being in a hurry. they will be helpful.
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