We are all convinced we are living in freedom and democracy, we feel proud of our civilization and ready to condemn any other way of living.
I don’t!
I think we are living under the rule of the market, a much more subtle and dangerous dictatorship than the classical one. The typical dictator imposes his power by using military force and everybody is aware of this and can choose whether he wants to accept it in silence or rebel in some way.

The market, on the other hand, keeps us in the illusion of being free, in the illusion that what we choose is what we really want and if we find that our choice was wrong, we have many other choices. This kind of dictatorship is way more dangerous, we don’t think we have to rebel to something because we don’t feel oppressed.
The market makes us do what it wants us to do without forcing us but instead by deluding us that we want it ourselves.

But how can it achieve this? While every dictator has his weapons, the weapon of the market is advertisement.
With the development of the mass media this weapon has become immensely powerful and the links between media and power, both political as well as economical, are getting stronger everywhere in the world.

The way politicians and marketers are mass communicating is changing in an extremly inquieting way, they are not targeting anymore our brains but our hearts, because they found out that if they conquer our hearts, our brains will follow and their spell will last much longer.

I want to cite some sentences from Kevin Roberts, CEO of the famous advertising agency SAATCHI & SAATCHI. He made up the theory of LOVEMARKS saying that emotional relations with brands are the future of commerce. Marketers must stop convincing the customers that what they sell is good but they have to seduce them by creating an emotional link between people and brands. I think his words are illuminating and scary at the same time:

IDEA 1: HAVE AN INSPIRATIONAL DREAM
People want to lead inspirational lives - a dream. An inspirational dream moves people so they want to belong. It’s not made to be measured. It’s about reaching for the stars, not counting them. Brands are not about the technology. They’re about inspiration. It’s about leading and it’s about dreaming big. Martin Luther King did not say “I have a mission statement”.
IDEA 2: EMBRACE EMOTION
People are 80% emotion, 20% reaso, “Reason leads to conclusions. Emotion leads to action.”And love is the strongest emotion. Growth is inspired by people’s hearts – not built on data about their age, gender, education, spending patterns.
IDEA 3: CREATE LOVEMARKS
The crunch question: Is it better to be respected, or to be loved and respected?
* Lovemarks connect beyond benefits, attributes, performance and function. Beyond brands.
* Brands are built on Respect. Lovemarks are built on Love and Respect.
* Brands create loyalty for a reason. Lovemarks create Loyalty Beyond Reason.
* Brands are owned by managers, marketers and shareholders. Lovemarks are owned by the customers who love them.
* Brands drive solid performance. Lovemarks accelerate preference, share, intention, margin and return.
· Great brands are Irreplaceable. Lovemarks are Irresistible.
IDEA 4: USE THE THREE SECRETS
Lovemarks are created by Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy, three elements not in the Harvard Business School curriculum. Mystery mixes dreams, icons and stories to create the attractions of the unknown. Sensuality is all five senses. Most brands invoke only two to three. Remember the original iMac ads? YUM! And Intimacy is the post powerful force in business today. Selling by yelling is fatal.
IDEA 5: IGNITE GROWTH INSPIRED BY SHOPPERS
Lovemarks can transform the whole way in which you approach marketing, from advertising and online to your whole service experience. Nowhere is Lovemarks more potent than in retail, where the first moment of truth – when she buys – happens.
Great retail is inspired by shoppers. People are seeking experiences when they shop. Worldwide retailers have spent $43 billion on computer transaction and inventory software since 2001. A fraction of this has been invested in improving the human dynamics of the shopping experience.
Lovemarks treat the store as a huge creative opportunity. Stores must become theaters of dreams. The store is the place to pour on the love so that shoppers become buyers.
Mystery creates intriguing spectacle on the street and an eclectic mix of seductions on the floor. Sensuality embraces unexpected treats of sight, sound, taste, scent and touch. And Intimacy is the heart of service.
We have built a worldwide shopper marketing agency Saatchi & Saatchi X precisely to create Lovemarks in store. To turn shoppers into buyers.

IDEA 6: CREATE A SISOMO PLAYGROUND
Television is the most potent combination of communication elements ever assembled. 2.5 billion households in the world have one.
Now at the crossroads of technology, marketing and creativity, television is a part of a bigger idea. I call this sisomo - the interactivity of Sight, Sound and Motion on screen. sisomo is shaping the future of advertising, of everything in marketing. New formats, stories, games and video are making it happen. Asia lives on the screen.

From the moment we leave our house in the morning till the moment we go to sleep, our emotional sphere is constantly violated by these seductive messages that leave their trace in our subconsciousness and condition our actions and choices without making us aware of this. They use visual effects, colors, sounds, impressive statements to appeal to our soft side, to excite our sex instincts, to please our ego, to make us laugh.
This attack on our emotions is precisely the way the market controls us – defending people from it became my mission, the meaning of my work and the value that I want to serve with my talent and my enthusiasm.

I want to show right away what I mean when I speak about choices.

These two buildings are the result of two different choices and they express different values; it’s always important to make the effort of seeing the values that lay behind things.

The first building is the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, designed by the worldwide famous American architect Frank O’Gehry; the second building is a small chapel on the university campus of Otaniemi in Helsinki, Finland, designed by the barely known Finnish architects Heikki and Kaija Siren.

The first building, being a museum, should be designed around the art that it contains in order to let us admire its content in the best possible way, but instead it was designed for the purpose of surprising and catching our emotions so as to strongly inculcate the name of the architect and the name of the city, in which the museum was built, in our minds. It’s a marketing operation to strengthen tourism in Bilbao and to celebrate the ego of the architect and provide him with fame and publicity.
In this case the values of hunger for fame and tourism business used the art to serve their purposes.
And it worked quite well. I am sure that most people know this building, its location and its architect but couldn’t name a single sculpture or painting you can see in there.

The second building impressed me very much, because it is designed around a single strong concept that makes this place weigh more spiritual than many churches I have seen.
Finland is an evangelic Lutheran country and the main difference between Catholicism and Luheranism is that the latter does not accept the church’s interpretation of the Holy Bible but leaves everyone free to read for themselves and develop their own interpretation so that religion remains a spiritual entity and does not turn into a tool for political power.
This chapel expresses this value very clearly. In a Catholic church you usually see paintings or sculptures behind the altars that represent the artist’s interpretation of God, instead in this chapel, by positioning a glass wall behind the altar and using furnitures that are extremely poor and simple, the architects created a space where nothing distracts you from direct contemplation of nature; nature being intended as a divine creation which the cross signifies stuck outside in the feral forest.
In this case, the architects made a different choice; they decided to be humble and that the direct contemplation of God’s creation was the value that this building had to serve.
In fact, when you enter this chapel, your emotions are caught by the divine spirit of nature and not by the building itself.

Of course these architects did not become famous nor did this building, but I can say that they understood the highest values of architecture and that the spiritual power of this place is still intact after 40 years, while the excitement produced by the museum in Bilbao lasted a few years because it could only speak to the surface of our souls but did not touch any deep universal chord.

My first post should be about why I decided to start a blog and why I called it like that.

Well, I am an Italian architect, and I started my worklife three years ago. I quickly realized how this world works and how easily it can hit you in the face and disgust you...and sometimes you really feel like giving up when you don't see any sense anymore in what you are doing and in how you or someone else is using your talent and your enthusiasm.
But during one of these moments I realized one single truth which filled me with new hope and new strength, growing day by day: we always have a choice.

We can choose how we want to live our lives. We can choose wether we want to accept the rules of this world and betray our dreams and our beliefs to have success, money, and power as a reward; or we can choose a harder way: the way of not betrayng what we believe in and use our work, our passion, and our talent in order to try and turn an idea into reality, showing that reality is not a matter of fact but can be different sometimes.