A few days ago I read a short post on boingboing about the medicine behind pot. Since then cannabis keeps my mind busy . In somehow I had this vague feeling that biestmilch and cannabis have got something in common. I started a quick search, I googled along thousands of different sites that were talking about this wonderful, dangerous and diverse substance. Cannabis was outlined as medication, as legal conflict, as good for sex, for pain, as psychoactive drug, as a plant that interested humans since ancient times, in China, in India, in Egypt etc. They knew already about the many useful effects of cannabis in the most different situations.

I gave in after a few hours of searching. I knew now that it was impossible to tackle this subject in a days time. But anyhow, I read a few articles and my notion got supported that cannabis and biestmilch got something in common.

Biestmilch is no psychoactive drug. I have to stress this here in the beginning, not harm our wonderful biestmilch. But both of them, biestmilch and cannabis work on the body as a whole, the cannabinoid system is spread throughout the body, similar to the immune system and the nervous system. Science discovered receptors – they call them cannabinoid receptors (CB1, CB2) that are expressed by all body cells in varying densities. Thus cannabis is interacting with all body systems.
Of course, cannabis actions are not as complex as the ones of biestmilch. Biestmilch contains an uncountable amount of different molecules interacting with the immune, the nervous system and the hormones.
As different as they may seem, both of them act on our body as a whole, and their effects vary depending on the condition of the body, on the amount of receptors expressed in this moment of time.
Both substances unfold their effects on the central and the peripheral nervous system and on the immune system. Cannabis and biestmilch communicate with the body’s most intergrative systems.

Cannabis has one advantage. It is not as complex as biestmilch, therefore there is more scientific data available. It has a major handicap it is famous for being a psychoactive drug and is stigmatized for that. Biestmilch does not face this conflict. It faces another one which is as far-reaching as well, it so complex that science has produced little hard evidence until now.
For many of us experience is too soft an evidence. Perhaps we should reconsider our esteem of experience, give it a more precious, more influential position in our lives, trust it more!

Be it as it may, both substances can help a lot in chronic diseases and fatal conditions, in cases when no other treatment gives relief anymore. We therefore should reconsider the position of both and their use. Perhaps they have synergetic effects.

So sahen sie aus die armen Soldaten des ersten Weltkrieges, das Fussvolk, das zu Hundertausenden auf den Schlachtfeldern dieses Krieges zurückblieb, Püppchen ca. 1918

Christmas time has always been the time of story-telling. Therefore it seems obvious to brood over advertising, slogans, stories, and their relations to marketing and the ultimate intention to communicate content around this time of the year.
Since several decades advertising is the domain of slogans*, the slogan as the condensed essence of complexity and diversity, be it commodities or knowledge, know-how that is brewed into the mystery of a  slogan…. neglecting the particular in favor of the general, mystery instead of transparency.

In the 50ies – from my viewpoint the dawn of advertising – stories have been simple, the world of commodities has been sparse and far less complex, slogans could easily emerge without raising the costumer’s suspicion of concealing depth underneath the surface.
Today the picture changed, slogans simplify complexity in a way that make customers suspicious. People today are longing for in depth information, they are in need of trust.
To cut a long story short, this one reason why story-telling develops more and more into a marketing tool again. Since I decided to change Biestmilch’s marketing and use the advantages of web 0.2, I became more and more aware of the fact what it means to tell stories instead of using exchangeable phrases. Stories have the at least the potential to convey authenticity and build relations with people, they can but they don’t do so necessarily. It is tightropewalk not to tip into superfluous gossiping, remaining precise and honest..

It happened that since several months I passed by the brains on fire blog. They gave me the inspiration to raise this issue today which I consider a very crucial one for marketing people. I have to admit that it is very difficult to make a so-called marketing experts understand what it means to shift from slogan creation to story-telling. This year I made many efforts to explain my approach of story-telling in advertising. I have to admit, I only rarely succeeded to do so.

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