SCHMITTblog

The end has come

I started blogging seven years ago when it was “cool.”  More than 200 blogs later, I will stop.

Technology has moved on; thus, SCHMITT has to move on.  We will leave the blogging to the professor who discovered it just recently.

Please find (as long as these technologies last):

My videos at www.YouTube.com/MeetSchmitt.

My videos, photos, and text at www.facebook.com/MeetSchmitt.

My short views on things at www.twitter.com/MeetSchmitt 

And all sorts of information at my web site, www.MeetSchmitt.com

This blog will be left as a historical document.

 

Do consumers view technology as magic?

More than a hundred years ago, sociologist Max Weber wrote that secularization—or the "disenchantment of the world"—lay at the heart of modern society. He argued that due to the industrial revolution and advances in science, the modern world had become less mysterious and more predictable to individuals, and society as a whole had become more rational and bureaucratic.

Last week, in a talk here at Columbia, Russ Belk, professor at York University in Toronto and a leading consumer culture researcher, argued that consumers view new technologies – computers, the internet, and nowadays social media – at first, before they get used to the technology, as—magic.   His argument is quite intriguing. As evidence, just watch the resurrected video of Steve Jobs introducing the Macintosh – appropriately dubbed “the magic moment” by TextLab, the discoverers and restorers of that film. 

Belk points to the possibility that our modern world never fully rationalized, that there was always an emotional and magical undercurrent, and that the "theme  of magic" now, paradoxically, manifests itself in consumers’ admiration of the very device that was supposed to erase it—technology.

Yes you can - not blog

Some have asked me whether I am still blogging. Yes … sure … occasionally … less and less frequently.
That is, I have thus entered a new "relationship" with this technology. In stage 1 (blog 1.0, right?), I was curious and cranked out nonsensical blog after blog on a weekly basis. In blog 2.0., I felt obligated to blog every other week, even when I had nothing to say. Now, I have finally reached blogging nirvana: I blog when I feel like it.

Maybe I am not alone?  Anonymous Bloggists come forward!  There is hope … yes, you can, yes you dare—not blog!

So, as we are entering blog 4.0, expect a blog only if the blogger has something to say. 

Encounters in the Global Experience Economy: Matsuhisa Athens

The two blonde hostesses are Greek and well practiced in "Irasshaimase!" I am having a seat at the sushi counter. The sushi chef is Japanese by way of California.

I order an espresso martini. The chef recommends the local sea bass and also the local sea urchin—from Crete, from a special supplier which he personally selected, all natural, without any preservatives, and thus better than the one from Japan. I am asking for both the bass and the urchin as sushi, and also order an eel-and-cucumber roll.

The sushi chef tells me that his daughter just graduated from UC Berkeley. She now lives in LA. He came to Greece two years ago. Not a great time for working at a trendy Japanese restaurant right now. But he says most of the customers are locals, and business is better this year than last.

I am reading excerpts from a new book in German, "Deutschboden." The section I am reading is about a "Super Kleinstadt," Oberhavel in Brandenburg, where life still seems local. Where people at the Stammtisch talk about third league soccer and eat Schnitzel and Currywurst.

My main dish tonight is one of those signature "Nobu" dishes: Chilean sea bass with jalapeno sauce. We all know, from the web, that Mr. Matsuhisa grew up in South America where he learned to mix cuisines … I am wondering if this is the endangered species fish for which he got bad press online.

The waitress forgot my water order and when it finally arrives, it is the sushi-chef who comes around the counter to pour me the water. A Japanese way of apologizing, I recognize. He introduces his sous-chef. "Where is he from?", I ask. "From a special place," he answers, "Blue Island, Quingdao." Thus, we converse on Quingdao beer, and Löwenbräu, and Super Dryyyyyyyy.

I am wondering how to finish the meal tonight. Earlier we had talked about how the Japanese drink a lot of coffee. I decide that blueberry and chocolate mochi ice cream may turn out to be a great complement to the espresso martini.

When I exit the restaurant and walk past the bungalows of the resort back to my room, looking up to the trees and the starry night, I feel as if I am in Bali.

BRITE Rocked

...and now you can rock, too.

Go to the BRITE Conference homepage to check out the content from the event.

Coca Cola Turning Red Square Red

On a recent trip to Russia, I stopped by the Red Square, known for rock concerts by Paul McCartney and Shakira (and a little bit of Russian history). to witness Coca-Cola's Red Square activities for the upcoming World Cup.

Watch how Coca Cola turned Red Square red.

Experience Conference in Belgium

I attended a conference on experiential marketing in Belgium, in the lovely city of Ghent.  After my keynote, there were several great speakers following, talking about Starbucks entering the Belgium market and the launch (sorry, the birth) of a baby elephant in the Antwerp zoo. (I also attended a performance of Don Carlo at the Antwerp Opera, in which the autodafe scene was performed not on stage but in the foyer.)

Watch the interviews I shot with the organizer of the conference, Pascal Libyn, and one with John Deprez who runs a new media agency in Belgium.

Reality Repeating Virtual Reality

The other day, after watching Avatar—in 3D of course—I had an unusual perceptual experience. As I was walking by a tree, I felt as if I was in the Avatar movie. For the first time in my life, I became acutely aware of how my visual system and brain might process spatial information.  It was a strange moment of reality repeating virtual reality.

I understand that 3D TV, which seems to be all the hype among consumer electronics companies these days, might flunk—at least in the short term because there won’t be enough 3D content, or because consumers won’t lay out the money for the new TVs (yet).  I, for my part, will love the 3D technology because it helps me to live a richer real life.

Innovation in Curation

For decades, curating a show in a museum meant putting the works of art together and displaying them (for example, hanging the paintings on the wall with some consideration on where they should hang and perhaps putting some introductory note at the beginning of the show, written in “high brow” art-history lingo). There are still too many shows like that. But the really good ones today are quite different.

 

Like the brilliant show on Spanish Painting & Sculpture 1600-1700 in the National Gallery in London, which I attended yesterday. The show is titled “The Sacred Made Real.” For innovation in curation starts with the name: “Spanish Painting …” is the subtitle; the “Sacred Made Real” is the main title, providing a theme for watching the show. The audio guide, rather “audio program,” is superbly done and really enriches the experience. It is easy to use, includes interviews with the curator and others; allows you to play music of the time, and so on. What else is on? Not only the usual lunchtime talks but also “The Making of a Spanish Polychrome Sculpture,” which reveals the technical process in creating such sculptures.

 

All of this is experiential and customer oriented. That’s why I ask my EMBA students in the Munich program to go to the museums there. As museums have adopted a customer orientation and are wiping off the old dust, managers can learn a few lessons from them about how to innovate in a business in which there had been little change for too long.

Germans Getting Prudish?

Germans love to show off their bodies. Just go to the local saunas: you find both sexes of all ages and all shapes together all nude in one cabin.

But they seem to get prudish when it comes to showing off their bodies at airports. The sheer mention of bodyscanners (called "Nacktscanners" --"nude scanners" here) causes fear and concerns about intrusions into privacy. Rather than looking forward to what's being called "striptease at the airports," German citizens are concerned.

Funny.  The same scanners seem to be already in use in puritan America.  And nobody seems to care.

That's why the German government is changing the term from "Nackscanners" to "Bodyscanners" to  make the devices more acceptable. http://www.taz.de/1/politik/deutschland/artikel/1/sicherheitskontrollen-verschaerft/

Or is something else at play here, something more rational and less exhibionist -- namely fear of radiation? Those body scanners are basically X-rays, and haven't scientists been warning us for years that too many X-rays won't be good for our bodies?