I've been enjoying Jonathan Harris' Today project very much. Today's set especially. The note that goes along with the above image from Jonathan says:
From Reykjavik to the far north of Iceland was a 12-hour Odyssey that could have been flipped through like Cliff notes by plane.
But planes don't see
yellow tools,
black rocks,
red horses,
dark girls,
gold towns,
weird mounds,
purple hills,
fjords,
or wild skies.If you want your life to look like that, take the road and watch the sky.
There is an interesting tie here to marketing research. So often we're too easily drawn to the comfortable and easy—focus groups, surveys, on-going panel studies, etc. Certainly, all of these have their time and place, but we've way over-used and abused them.
We're going through the motions to check the box that says we've done some research to support where we're going and in the process, we skip over the really good stuff. The stuff that will give us the insight and clarity we need to truly help people. Nothing opens your eyes to new opportunities like getting out and spending time with the people you're trying to build a relationship with.
If you truly believe that the future of marketing is about finding ways to make people's lives better by doing things with and for them, you aren't going to find the best ways to do that sitting in the office or hanging out at a research facility. You can't see the red horses, purple hills, golden towns and wild skies from behind a two-way mirror or in a pile of survey data.
You can only do that by taking the road and watching the sky; not the other way around.
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