Love Marks

Chapter 12

DIAMONDS IN THE MINE

Lovemarks are owned by the people who love them. We have the power and we exercise this power every day when we go shopping.

People People People People

love to shop. want to buy. want to produce. want to sell.

Many of us limit our thoughts about sustainability to our individual choices. Can I afford it, or not? We’re stuck in the ritual of swipe,sign, and you’re mine. Many others (around 2 billion people in fact) face sustaining life itself as a challenge every day. Between these extremes there is a rising awareness that we are not on this planet as lone individuals. We are here with billions of others. How we consume is closely entwined with our responsibility to the future and to each other. We are starting to understand that unless werespect our shared future, there is no Love. Consumers are becoming more and more attracted to where the Love is. Every Lovemark, whether it’s a breakfast cereal, a shoe, a car, or a country, must both love and respect consumers and the world those consumers live in. More and more consumers understand that they can make what they buy matter. Shopping as a form of activism. Choice as a tool. Theywant to do good and to feel good. They are no longer happy to buy sight unseen.

This dynamic has made retail a 9 trillion dollar industry throughout the world. The scale is extraordinary. Billions of shoppers browsing, choosing, and buying every minute of every single day. At the heart of this frantic and primal activity is shopping. Shopping is about the stuff we buy and consume but it alsobrings us hard up against a pressing reality: sustainability. How do we reconcile our needs and desires with how they affect the world? We cannot avoid the fact that resources are finite. That consumption has consequences. But most importantly, that a sustainable world is possible.

Shopping is...
Shopping is necessary.
We all have to shop for the basics of life. From the smallest village marketto the largest Wal-Mart, these are the stores that supply the routines of our daily life.

Shopping is emotional.
Delight at a bargain. Satisfaction at filling the refrigerator. Anyone who thinks shopping is rational has spent too long in the office. Shoppers arrive at the store with hope, anticipation, excitement. The right experience, the perfectly pitched service, ensures they leaveenchanted and uplifted. The wrong note triggers resentment and disappointment.

Shopping is primal.
We were all once proud hunters and gatherers. Make no mistake, shopping keeps those ancient spirits alive. We track, we stalk, we browse, we forage, we close in, we return home in triumph. What else explains the passions of collectors? The adidas Originals store in SoHo, New York knows that old-schoolis forever and plays classic hip hop to prove it.

Barbara Kruger I shop therefore

Shopping is human nature.
We surround ourselves with the things that we love. As humans we are acquisitive and curious, natural born collectors and accumulators. This is the side of us captured by stores like JACK SPADE. Great, well-designed bags and accessories as you’d expect, but also an anti-retail array ofstuff that raises questions. What is it? –A ping pong paddle cover. Who is Sir Walter Scott? –Check it out on Amazon. What’s with the stuffed shark? –Mystery.

Shopping is seductive.
Erma Bombeck, the voice of the American housewife in the 1960s and 1970s, once said:

“The chances of going into a store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are about 3 billion to one.”156

lovemarks

The Theater of Dreams
The drama of Lovemarks can be brought to life in the store. They can transform the shopping environment into a Theater of Dreams and the shopping experience into a delight. The evocative name, Theater of Dreams, comes from one of the most emotional, most inspiring of human activities: sport.

I have watched many soccer games in the original Theater...