Groundswell

nathan.mcdonald

Our friend Faris, who’s in London this week from NYC (we hope to catch up for a beer), has written a review of Groundswell, which I’ve also been reading. He makes a point which could have been taken from our “why we do it” page:

Man is a naturally gregarious animal. It is the very essence of human beings: doing things together defines us. It’s why we have such large frontal lobes: modelling human behaviour in groups is recursive and quite amazingly complicated. I have to consider how what I do affects you and how that affects her and how that affects you and I, and so on, ad infinitum, a mise en abyme of cause and effect endlessly reflecting back on each other. It’s why we have language: it allows us to more effectively act in groups.

In a nutshell: we are social. Faris continues:

you need to know about this stuff. It’s not going to go away and it is going to affect your business. The very nature of advertising is changing in response to an audience that can create and propagate ideas.

We couldn’t agree more. It’s probably too late to order it from Amazon in time for Christmas, but in the meantime check out Charlene Li, one of the co-authors, who recently gave a talk at Google covering the topics in the book. It’s 45 mins long, but worthwhile watching, so get your favourite festive beverage and settle down to watch:

More importantly, as Faris says: “get out there and start being social” yourself.