Feel like being told what to do? AND get a postcard?

Posted by Rob Walker on January 31, 2008
Posted Under: The Designed Life

Shawn Liu alerted me to an interesting project he and his wife Judy Lee have going on in association with their design studio, Five and a Half.

Recently they posted about “The Postcard Says” on their blog. Here’s how it works: Send them an email requesting a postcard, with your mailing address:

In a week or two, you’ll find a postcard from us in your mailbox, with a fun little task to do. When you’re done (and this is all we ask of you), take a photo of your completed activity and e-mail it back to us so we can post it online (anonymously if you wish).

What do we hope you’ll get from this? A cool postcard, a laugh when you see the task we thought up for you, and the act of doing a not-so-ordinary task that gets your mind thinking in a different way.

Precise details are here. They just unveiled this idea yesterday, but Mr. Liu tells Murketing: “lots of responses so far, and we’re looking forward to see what people do with the assignments we come up with!”

Further diversion may be found at MKTG Tumblr, and the Consumed Facebook page.

Reader Comments

Hi. I just found your blog and am liking it. I wanted to comment on a previous entry but the comments section is closed. But now that I’ve formulated my comment, I simply must have an outlet for it. So here it is, for what it’s worth. This is in response to the thing about the green practices in Sim City.

You write: “Is it good news that we may be on our way to tackling global warming in an imaginary world?”

I say: “Yes, because if greenness hasn’t penetrated something as popular as Sim City, then it hasn’t taken hold deeply enough in the real world to have any significant impact. This is a corollary of a principle that I think is true and interesting: ‘If they’re not buying it, it’s not happening.’ In other words, only things that have begun to achieve some level of commercialization will have any force in the world. Keep this in mind when people belittle the trendiness or frivolity of green fashions.”

#1 
Written By Warren Nevins on January 31st, 2008 @ 4:20 pm

Comment-reading public, here is the item he’s talking about:
http://murketing.com/?p=993

You’ll see why the comments got closed quickly on that one — feedback was, uh, not productive.

Warren, to respond, I like what you say. I’m not sure I would extend it to defend some of the more dubious “green” trend-mongering I’ve seen, which often strikes me more as “let’s pretend we’re solving the problem by buying stuff” than anything else. But still, the way you just framed it is better than previous framings I’ve heard.

#2 
Written By murketing on January 31st, 2008 @ 4:59 pm