John Winsor

What the Hell is Esho Funi?

I mentioned Esho Funi in a blog post a couple of days ago. I'm sure you thought that I'd lost my mind. So I thought I'd better post this. Again it's from Flipped. Enjoy.

In order to understand how to start a dialogue and where things should go next, it is good to understand what an ideal relationship is. Here’s one way to think about it:

Esho Funi is a central tenet in Japanese Buddhism. It means that a person is at one with his or her environment; where one actually becomes indistinguishable from his/her environment. Nichiren Daishonin, the 13th century Japanese sage, expressed it in one of his writings: “Environment is like the shadow – and life, the body. Without the body there can be no shadow. Similarly, without life, environment cannot exist, even though life is supported by its environment.”

The principle of Esho Funi suggests that we are not simply conditioned by our environment, including our customers and the marketplace. We are actually compelled to live our best within it; because there is no essential difference between our lives and our environment, our lives actually affect our environment and vice-versa. Think of it this way: How do you feel when you walk into a favorite store? Do you feel like you’ve entered an environment synonymous with the store’s focus? Can you and your company be at one with your customers and the marketplace? Can you be the center of your community?

We typically regard the environment and the individual as two separate phenomena; we even see ourselves as having an 'inside' and 'outside,' with our skin as a kind of dividing line. But if we really think about it, we know that human existence is impossible to sustain without a supportive environment. An individual without food, water and air from the environment will die. Similarly, human beings can either support and protect the environment or damage and pollute it. So although we tend to see self and environment separately, in reality they are clearly, intimately connected.

We often blame people and situations 'outside' our control for the circumstances we find ourselves in. But the principle of Esho Funi shows that because the individual and his environment are inseparable, both the causes and the solutions to our problems are not 'outside' but rather, lie within us. Esho Funi teaches us that we don't have to wait for anyone or anything else to make change. It starts with us. Any change in the environment is a manifestation of a simultaneous change taking place within individuals.

I Love the Ad Industry

Some might read the title and think, “What the hell is Winsor talking about?” I know. I’ve been seen as bit of an nonconformist in the last year or so. I accept that.

It’s true: I love this industry of ours. Sure, it’s full of big egos, petty jealousy, calcified old-schoolers, young misfits, angry despots, fervent critics, misguided bomb throwers, and many other fringe elements. But that’s what makes it great. People are trying to protect business models, others are trying to launch new ones, and clients are looking for help understanding the rapidly changing environment. The culture is changing so damn fast.

I got a chance to hang with some amazing folks at SXSW: Kat Egan, Heidi Hackemer, Conrad Lisco, Brandon Berger, Lars Bastholm, Gavin Becker, Edward Boches, Bud Cadell, Stuart Foster, Ricky Engelberg, Maria Eriksson, Mel Exon, Mike Geiger, Alastair Green, Matt Howell, Len Kendall, Lauren Crampsie, Steve Bendt, Brian Morrissey, Sloane Occhiuto, Patricia McDonald, Colleen DeCourcey, Eugene Chung, David Cameron, Sandep Rahi, Alessandra Lariu, Tim Malbon, Ty Montague, Richard Shatzberger, Bastian Unterberg, Shaun Abramson, Saneel Radia, Michael Tabtabia, Rosie Siman, Shane Steele, Matt Van Hoven, Seth Weisfeld and Faris Yakob, to name a just a few.

These are the folks that represent the future of advertising. They’re creative, bold, honest, collaborative and passionate. They understand the old and welcome the new. I’m humbled every time I get to hang with these guys.

While some say advertising is dead, I say long live advertising. Five years from now the industry might not look the same, but with the energy embodied in this crew it will be alive and kicking.

The Power of Creating an Ecotone

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why companies are successful in the long-run. It definitely has to do the size of a company’s ecotone.

Ecotone, you ask? This is something I wrote in Flipped to explain it.

Many models can be used to aid the thinking about the relationships that exist in any community or ecosystem and how they might inform a bottom-up strategy and prompt real innovation. I like to think of this eco-system approach in terms of an “ecotone.”

An ecotone is a place where two different, distinctive ecosystems meet, such as where a forest and a wetland meet. In this zone, the ecosystem is neither a forest nor a wetland, but has all of the attributes of both. Ecotone is used to describe a place where evolution happens, where a natural dialogue is occurring. In the business world, all brands live in an ecosystem made up of many components. An ecotone from this perspective can represent the opportunity that lies within the overlap of a business or brand and its market.

The bigger the ecotone – the more overlap between the two ecosystems internally and externally – the deeper the dialogue and the greater the opportunity is for the business. For most companies, it is at the fringes of the organization that the ecotone exists and where all the growth in understanding and meaning happens. This is also true in natural systems where an organism or ecosystem expands at its fringes.

While every brand’s ecotone is different. I’ve been thinking lately that maybe the brands with the largest ecotones, ones where internal cultures and external cultures mirror one and other. These brands deeply understand and interact with their customers in a seemless way. Think about Harley-Davidson, Nike, Apple and Patagonia. These cult like brands have two advantages. They have a deeper, more defensible, relationship with their customers. Both employees and customers are part of the same culture, something that’s bigger than the brand itself.

Maybe instead of spending a lot of time trying to convince customers that you’re product is better than your competitors it might be worth creating an internal culture that is a matter of creating Esho Funi.

Esho Funi?

It certainly deserves it’s own post.

My Favorite Ads Worth Spreading at TED

It was an honor to be a judge for TED's first annual Ads Worth Spreading Intiative. This feels like a really important project. As we become more digitally connected what an ad is has changed. When I had a chance to look at all of the great enteries I was most interested in ads that couldn't have been made before the explosion of digital connectivity. This has brought on a new way to collaboratively produce new kinds of messages. A couple of my favorites that exemplify this new shift are The Wilderness Downtown.

and The Johnny Cash Project

   

While these two are a product of a new medium, lot's of others with more traditional story arcs really struck a cord for me.

First, was an amazing ad for the Topsy Foundation:

And, this great ad for Dulux:

As advertising creativity change accelerates it's important to have a new kinds of encouragement, like TED's Ads Worth Spreading Initiative.

Is This the End of Advertising?

Deb Roy was one of my favorite speakers at this year's TED. What started as an exploration into how his son begins to speak and develop language. Deb has begun to point his tools towards public media creating both a content graph and a social graph. This segment starts at 11:00. So my question is when we can objectively connect every piece of content with every social conversation and track real media consumption, engagement and behavior, how will advertising compete with everything all the other content?

My sense is that advertising that can quantifiably effect cultural change will be worth a lot more and all other advertising will be worth a whole lot less.

Art Can Inspire Change

Being at TED last week was mindblowing, as always. I'll be sharing some of my favorite talks here. To start with check out JR and how he's changing the world through his photography.

It's time for all of us to take the tools we have and use them to promote postive social and cultural change.