Minority talks, Beavis and Butt-head walks

Beavis and Butt-head, a ground-breaking animated cartoon series on American television that originally aired on MTV is taking a walk, that is, their ideologies are being replaced by minority storytelling. Digital media provides a platform for all kinds of people with all kinds of stories, and these converging stories tend to represent their values and beliefs. Too often, in the past, stories about minorities have been expressed negatively, which leads to the dominant society’s lack of understanding of the minority culture. However, there is a strong possibility that this will change as minority groups migrate online and form communities, and their voices will become more powerful.

 

The television age specialized in a single narrative that was dominated by Western ideologies; the future holds an emergent global narrative, made possible by social media. Social media is an affordable alternative that supports many voices, and therefore, a superb method for delivering a global story. This type of storytelling can move civilization from a globalized monoculture to one of polycultural clusters, where minority groups can eventually be heard. It is very likely that narratives will move societies from the era of Disneyization to differenziation as well as online groupization.

 

In their book, Global Culture Industry, Lash and Lury contend that “in a global culture industry, production and consumption are process of the consumption of difference.” Lash and Lury compare classical culture industry and global culture industry: “Classical culture industry occupied the space of the symbolic: global culture industry the space of the real. Culture industry is Hollywood’s dream-machine, global culture industry brute reality.” Hence, the global culture industry is likely to provide authentic stories through diverse voices. The good news is every dog will have its day!

 

With lovingkindness,

 

The Inside Scoop on Cool Brand Building

At HotDogue culture, we understand the need for a positive way of life and we also understand the impact of culture on brand building. Great brands focus on culture building. If you want a stable and reliable brand, you must focus on your company’s internal culture. Hire people that fit your brand’s culture and then instruct them from the start by explaining the company’s values.  Explain your brand strategy; provide guidelines for delivering brand values and the use of brand communication elements. Employees must understand the values set forth by the management and be inspired by them. What management and employees believe, practice, offer and say must align to have a solid, cool brand.  

 

Developing marketing communication without a strong promise is worthless. Your brand must deliver on its promise. You must establish a sound internal environment that can easily be communicated to your customers. The business environment may change and your portfolio can evolve, but culture endures. To change what you say about your company is easy but to change your culture that’s the hard part. You must focus on the inside culture and you must be consistent with your endeavors. What is more, your culture must be expressed clearly inside, as well as outside by way of the customer experience.  It’s a dog-eat-dog world, so don’t forget to shape and strengthen your internal culture if you want to be considered a cool brand.

 

With lovingkindness,
 

 

To be a Successful Entrepreneur, Think Like a Child

Funny, I sometimes hear my dog master say to her son “stop acting like a child” and he says, “mom, I am a child.” And then they both laugh. Stop acting like a child, and grow up is the common mantra parents tell their children but are we giving our kids bad advice? Young people are creative and imaginative, so why would we want to take that away from them? Growing older, we lose touch with exploring our environments. We become close-minded, focusing more on what is relevant to us instead.

 

I believe there’s a lot of hidden potential in thinking like a child, and the good news is this childlike imagination still resides inside all of us. Children love to ask questions and they embrace not knowing. They’re not conscious of what other people may think of them, as adults are. Pablo Picasso famously said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” As adults, we must continue to imagine, risk and explore. The fear of failure is our biggest obstacle, but the fear of failure is not just an obstacle to creativity.

 

We must remember that most fear is an illusion. Fear is the way the ego keeps us trapped in an illusion. The ego’s perspective does not reflect reality and causes all kinds of suffering. With that in mind, we must get out of our egotic heads and move back into our imagination. Children like to pretend and by pretending we can come up with alternative ways of seeing, which can result in more creativity and problem-solving. We must play, explore, travel and even meditate to get our creativity back! Gee whiz, I’m glad I’m just a dog.

 

With lovingkindness,

 

 

 

The American Chili Dog Has Greek Roots

Hot dogs are a favorite American food, but they have a European origin. The hot dog sausage is also known as a “wiener” and “frankfurter,” and comes from German-speaking countries. The "frankfurter" comes from none other than Frankfurt, Germany, while "wiener" derives from Vienna, Austria and is short for "wienerwurst" or "Vienna sausage." The frankfurter was most likely created in Coburg Germany before 1700 by a butcher named Johann Gerghehner, however, the hot dog gained its popularity in Frankfurt. Around 1800, the wiener appeared in Vienna, Austria, by a sausage maker trained in Frankfurt, Germany.

In the 1850s, the frankfurter was brought to America by German immigrants. The frankfurter had also been called a "Dachsund sausage" or “little-dog” in Germany because of its resemblance to the dog, and this name followed it to America. There seems to be some evidence that German immigrants sold frankfurters, sauerkraut, and milk rolls from carts in the Bowery (southern portion of New York City) in the 1860s. Some say the word hot dog was coined in 1901 at the New York Polo Grounds on a cold day. Vendors were shouting "They're red hot! Get your dachshund sausages while they're red hot!" A sports cartoonist, Tad Dorgan, observed the scene and drew a cartoon of dachshund sausages nestled in a roll. He simply wrote, “hot dog” next to the image because it was easier to spell.

Although all the ingredients for hot dog sandwiches were available, they were not combined correctly into a sandwich until the Greek’s came along and added their touch! The original vendors of hot dogs with chili sauce were of Greek origin, however, the restaurant owners and/or vendors guard their recipes, making it hard to find. The owners usually make large batches of the chili sauce themselves and they never share the recipe with their employees. Many times the recipe dies along with the owner. Sometimes the recipe is handed down within families, or it’s sold. Fortunately, for us, one great recipe was passed along, and you can find it at HotDogue Culture. Here, you can find original chili sauce, not a copycat recipe, which is quite difficult to make anyhow because of the multiple spices that create the rich flavor. Now that’s something to bark about!

With lovingkindness,

 

 

Creativity: The Highest Form of Intelligence

What happened to creative learning? Today, many curriculums are based on what seems to translate to rote memorization and regurgitation of course material. It seems students are being shortchanged at the hands of a system that prides itself on test results more-so than the gift of creative learning.

 

Creativity is the ability to come up with new ideas, but schools trains us to suppress our creative thinking, and we are most often measured by knowledge recall instead of knowledge creation.  For society, it’s much safer to use tried and true methodologies for testing. It’s unfortunate that creativity, our highest form of intelligence, is not well-measured.

 

Studies show that highly creative people are intelligent but highly intelligent people are not always creative (check out the Handbook of Creativity, page 261 for more). Creativity is a higher form of intelligence and the highest level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Today, we have enough time to focus on self-actualization because we have moved beyond the need for survival. Now is the time to align with our highest form of intelligence, and for me that means I should stop thinking about tasty hot dogs and get creative!

With lovingkindness,