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I make my living by knowing about digital communications. Specifically by understanding how organisations – usually companies – should use new technology to communicate with their customers. By digital I mean the things people usually mean: the Internet, digital TV, mobile phones (even though not all of these are always strictly digital). Until recently I found this enormously exciting. It seemed to me to be a reasonably “grown-up” way of earning a crust and beyond that I enjoyed the sense of being at the edge of something unformed and nascent.

I’m not so sure any more.

The first edition of Authentic Life is out now. The lovely people at New Consumer magazine (www.newconsumer.org) are incubating it, giving it some love so it stands a chance out there in the big wide world of media. Authentic Life is ushering in a whole lot of new positive energy for Kat Byles. Maybe it will for you too?

Meet The Culture Creators Behind “The Authentic Generation”

The authentic movement has been recognised by magazine Be Unlimited who have run a survey to discover a little more about the authentic generation.

·        Sales of organic food are over £1bn

·        Fair trade UK sales rise by 46% to a value of £100 million

·        Consumer boycotting of big brands for ethical reasons cost firms £2.6 billion

·        Ethical investment soars to an estimated £bn ethically screened funds in the UK with around 500,000 private individuals seeking ethical investments

Communication is pivotal to life. Perhaps communication could even form part of a definition of life, because things that do not communicate do not live either.

In our "developed" society the methods, tools and techniques of communication have developed too. We now have an astonishing array of specialised communication, which support our way of life.

Sadly the biggest users of communication are also often the biggest abusers of communication. Governments and big business have sponsored the development of communications thinking through the employment of advertising, PR and other communications agencies. These agencies have developed techniques for helping their paymasters conceal or invert the unacceptable to persuade us the buying and voting public to accept and even support things that poison us and disempower us.

Speech by Mark Barden of Barden & Jelly:

Advertising and the transition to sustainable capitalism

Mark has written and delivered a sublime invitation to the global advertising industry. Mark is inviting advertising agencies to find a new sense of relevance for their creativity in helping their clients to work for sustainability. It is a quite brilliant balance of good business sense with idealism. It was originally written and delivered as a speech to an advertising industry conference in San Francisco. Mike described the response he got as “overwhelming”, he will be writing more about that response in the next issue.