Mr. Samir A Nerurkar, the founder of Samira Habitats

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MUMBAI, 29 JULY, 2022 (GPN): That discussion about a family vacation, inevitably cued in on Goa, Kerala, or the exhilarating escapes of North India. If it was a short, weekend getaway, or reunion, or even that quick vacation, Lonavala, Mulshi or Karjat made the list.

Two years of the pandemic and lockdowns, have changed how we look at life! The getaway vibe has changed, and how ! A quick whisk of the coffee evoked pure happiness as we sat at our balconies taking in the sounds of birds chirping in Mumbai devoid of the raucous traffic. We learnt to reconnect with the most natural joys, around us. We unlearnt pace, and embraced slow living.And, not so quietly, a new wind of change was playing up in Alibag.

The Alibag Phenomenon, born during the pandemic, is now taking the world by storm. Samira Habitats, the visionary land asset people, took charge and rewrote this new chapter, in a changing world.

So, how did this bayside clutch of hamlets, across the Mumbai Bay, evolve into one of the biggest real estate benchmarks ?

A generation ago, the beautiful beaches or the historical significance of this place, was not given a second thought. Alibag was snooze-ville all along, until it became the repose of a select, whos who of Mumbais crme de la crme.

Still, only the almost secret, privilege to a few !

Mr. Samir A Nerurkar, the founder of Samira Habitats

2020 changed all that. Accessibility to Mumbai, a spattering of beautiful hotels and boutique destinations, started luring people to retreats and the intimate destination weddings.

This giant leap in tourist inflow, was further catapulted by two significant and overlapping events the pandemic, coinciding with the the flagging off of the Mumbai-Mandwa RoRo (Roll-On, Roll-Off) Ferry Service .

At a time when interstate travel was a dream, the private villas at Alibag, the freedom to move around mask-free in the company of your loved ones, and the blink-and-reach speed of the RoRo made it easier for people from South Mumbai to reach this beach town.

Everybody, across city demographics and sociographic, was thronging to Alibag. And half of them began to look at home options and second homes in Alibag.

Transformations seldom come easy. And, The Alibag Phenomenon too, wasnt built in a day. It took several developers and visionaries to make it the buzz we see, today.

Mr. Samir A Nerurkar, the founder of Samira Habitats

Undoubtedly, one such visionary, who believed and invested his belief, dreams and passion, even before the money, into Alibag, is Mr. Samir A Nerurkar, the founder of Samira Habitats. When others were busy constructing bungalows in Lonavala, he sat patiently at the Samira by the Bay lounge at Mandwa Jetty watching the dream unfold. One of the largest land aggregators in Alibag, the company has continued its unshaken voyage and is #NowTrending on the real estate map.

GPN (Global Prime News) Media Network in a candid interview with Samir encapsulated the evolution of Alibag from a sleepy town to the bayside, boho-chic vibe it now has

Q. Tell us about you and your beginning in Alibag?

I started with as less as Rs. 25000 which was borrowed from my mother and an old Maruti 800, when I put foot in Alibag for the first time. Starting with as less as half acre to today being the largest land aggregator of Alibag region.

In this journey have met various people who have been instrumental in building up Samira Habitats. We share a very close bond with the locals in Alibag and have always ensured the best for them and that the local farmers always got their dues. Thats the prime reason that this land has accepted and embraced us with open arms. We shared a common dream & love for the land.

Q: Tell us about the Alibag of the early days, when you first saw this dream ?

A:For that we need to rewindall the way to 1995 ! Then Alibag was a distant thought, on any realty mind. No one, at that time could visualise or calculate, by any conventional projections, the way its popularity would rise over the years. We began by working extremely hard on Alibags lifestyle infrastructure to draw attention to it and bring out the lively energy that Alibag had at its heart.

Back in the days, even the Trans-Harbour line and sea commute between Mumbai and Alibag seemed like such a far-fetched dream.

Q: Tell us about your interaction with the place?

A:I had conviction in this land, and worked intuitively to understand the place in and out. In turn, the town unraveled new grounds and opportunities for us. We faced plenty of challenges along the way but it made us what we are today.

I knew, that Mumbai would eventually saturate its vertical expansion; and would have to expand horizontally. That expansion would have to be towards the mainland, across the sea. Alibag.

Q: How has Alibag changed over the last couple of years?

A:Todays Alibag embodies multiple facets of a slower, more meaningful life, sprinkled with a good drizzle of excitement and haute culture! People come here to spend a day or two away; yet so close to home. Its become so simple! Hop on to the RoRo, with your car, and retinue if you please! Indulge in a hearty, gourmet, or local meal, bask under the clear sky, cavort at one of the many beautiful beaches, and come back to Mumbai by late evening!

Most Alibag Second Home owners spent months at their private reposes, during the lockdown. Its now an alternative to Goa and people spend days or even weeks at the chain of hotels, villas and homes here. Since the last couple of years, it has developed a cult of its own. Its a quiet, pretty place sitting still with the sway of coconut trees, the salty air and a subtle sense of surrendering to be one with the wind Thanks to the quick commute, South Mumbaikars would rather visit Alibag than go to any other part of Mumbai.

Q: Can you share briefly about your contribution to the town?

A:Our vision is synonymous with Alibag; to work in collaboration with the land and her people. Samira ensures that anybody looking for land is hand-held with our full support right from the start to end. We have nurtured and built our relationship through 25+ years of symbiotic presence in Alibag.

This land is extremely resourceful for investors. We have chaperoned thousands of satisfied customers into embracing the Alibag Life.

We hold a sweet pride, in stating that investing in Alibag is really an invitation to #investinyourself in an expanded life!

Our list of proud Samiras Alibagkars spans the globe and includes many prestigious institutions. Were the one-stop-shop for anyone looking at acquiring land, and building that dream home, here.

But, beyond the land, we are deeply invested in creating the infrastructure to support a life here. There is a lot brewing on the hospitality, healthcare, marine infra et al! So, watch this space!

Q: What role did the pandemic play in this shift?

A:The whos who of Mumbai, all from different walks of life were taken in by the Alibag Phenomenon during the pandemic. For those who wanted the best of both worlds be in Alibag; yet close enough to Mumbai made this dream come to life. It finally got the acknowledgement that was long overdue !

Q: What are your future plans?

A:We want to develop the region by partnering and facilitating the setting up of healthcare / criticare and trauma facilities, the best bistros, and restaurant brands,

, retail communities and shopping villages, sporting facilities and utility services. The whole community that feels deeply for its town is working in tandem to collaborate with this changing avataar of Alibag.

Our gated communities of ready to build plots, Bespoke land holds and bungalows, Villa Communities and more, are spread across the scenic landscape of Alibag. Beyond the beaches, we are offering you, scintillating hillsides, greens, thickets and premium cul de sacs close to Mandwa.

Something for every discerning taste.

I see the Alibag of my dreams, as a lively, throbbing, organic, conscious and warm community of like minded people, who have finally come home!

The Alibag Id dreamt of is finally here!-Ends.

For Exclusive Interviews and Authored Article Contact Mr. Sachin Murdeshwar at GPN- NEWS DESK (Editorial) on +91 8369388645 or +91 9768497333 (Mumbai)

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The Alibag I dreamt of is finally here! : Samir A Nerurkar in an exclusive interview with GPN - Global Prime News

My Chemical Romance is touring again, Paramore and Jimmy Eat World are headlining a major festival this fall, and theres a skinny, tattooed white dude with a guitar dominating the charts. In case you havent heard, emo is back, baby! In honor of its return to prominenceplus the 20th anniversary of the first MCR albumThe Ringer is following Emo Wendys lead and tapping into that nostalgia. Welcome to Emo Week, where well explore the scenes roots, its evolution to the modern-day Fifth Wave, and some of the ephemera around the genre. Grab your Telecasters and Manic Panic and join us in the Black Parade.

At the corner of Hollywood and Highland, a Hot Topic is tucked away on the second floor of the Ovation Hollywood shopping center. You wouldnt even realize it was there if you didnt know exactly where to look. But once you ascend a few escalators and wind your way around some ongoing construction, there it is: The alternative music and culture retail outlet that once hosted in-store visits from pop-punk and emo icons like Paramore and that now boasts an elaborate display pyramid of Funko Pop dolls, anime-themed swim trunks, Obi-Wan Kenobi tokens, and various Squishmallows collectibles. The stores sign is white, hard-edged, and simple. It used to be blood red and written in heavy metal font.

Hot Topic in 2022 seems to cover every possible interest related to gaming and pop culture.Theres still plenty of music merch for sale as well, though the selection is different now, too: Instead of the once-famous band tee wall, the stores perimeter is blocked out with cubic shelves containing music tees of every popular genre, from Top 40 to death metal. Blink-182, Green Day, My Chemical Romance, Slipknot, and Cannibal Corpse take up decent real estate, but so do the Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Selena, Machine Gun Kelly, Lana Del Rey, Wu-Tang Clan, and Snoop Dogg. Likewise, blasting from the speakers is a decade-spanning mishmash of popular music: Tina Turners Simply the Best segues into Alice Coopers Schools Out, which transitions to Evanescences 00s goth-metal classic Bring Me to Life, which morphs into the All-American Rejects Dirty Little Secret.

You can still visit the store today and walk out with elements of the Hot Topic uniforma dark, dramatic personal aesthetic that became popularized during emos third wave in the 2000s. But its clear that in the years since side swept bangs and studded belts, the retailer has become all things for all fansan ethos that may appear to be a far cry from Hot Topics roots, but is ultimately how it secured its survival when the rise of e-commerce closed the doors of so many storefronts.

By the early aughts, Hot Topic had already been supplying suburban alternative music fans with band tees, edgy accessories, and a curated supply of punk/metal/rave CDs for years, dependably evolving its merchandise around whatever subgenre was playing on MTV or headlining Warped Tour. In the early 2000s, nu-metal fashion (chains, wide-leg UFO pants, spikes, and studs) receded and gave way to the glam-goth aesthetic popularized by third-wave emo acts like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, whose frontman, Gerard Way, famously worked at his local Hot Topic in New Jersey.

These emo kids were aesthetically louder than their predecessors, preferring to express themselves and their tastes with dark, distressed skinny jeans, Converse sneakers, an emo band tee, and big hair with shocks of neon color spliced throughout. Other uniform pieces for sale could include tartan miniskirts, fingerless gloves, hair bows, striped scarves, fishnets, black hoodies, buttons, and perhaps some skull imagery. If you lived hours away from the city, chances are your local Hot Topic carried any and all of these things.

For suburban or rural-based emo fans in the 90s or 2000s, the local Hot Topic was the only place they could gooutside of a concertto find the music they liked, buy merch to match their music tastes, and convene with like-minded fans. Think of Hot Topic like the anti-Abercrombie: Instead of pushing an aspirationaland blatantly exclusionarylifestyle, Hot Topic went out of its way to be inclusive and welcoming, no matter your tastes. The same alternative kids who were being shunned by A&F were being welcomed by Hot Topic. They were the first store that had anything to do with what I still considered, and probably was still considered, an underground scene, says Dashboard Confessional lead singer Chris Carrabba. It was on the leading edge of popularizing the scene in a way that was very American mall.

Growing up in Tucson, Arizona, Emo Nite Los Angeles cofounder Morgan Freed was one of the many who found his community among other music fans at Hot Topic. I was playing in bands in high school, and I remember I went to the Hot Topic. The cashier recognized me from my band, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever, Freed says. Because that person working there was in the same scene as me. I felt welcomed. It felt familiar.

Meanwhile, Emo Nite cofounder T.J. Petracca started shopping at his local Hot Topic in 2004, which, for him, was the summer between middle school and high school. Back then, you really had to pick your label. You had to pick what type of person you wereyou were either an Abercrombie person or you were a PacSun person or you were a Hot Topic person, he says. I remember I literally made a conscious decision: Im going to come back [to school] as a new person. Im going to be an emo kid. And I went to Hot Topic and got a bunch of band T-shirts and track jackets and hoodies. And I got my girl pants at Hollister because [Hot Topic] did not sell skinny jeans for guys at the time. I went to high school fully fitted out as an emo kid.

Petracca and Freed both eventually landed in Los Angeles and founded Emo Nite alongside Barbara Szabo in 2014. But not all Hot Topic shoppers relocated to big citiessome, like Sammit Zanelotti, Brittney Moran, and Autumn Moe, still live in the suburbs and connect with other former emo kids via the internet. Zanelotti and Moran, who grew up together in Maryland (Zanelotti has since relocated to North Carolina), launched the Elder Emo Hours podcast this past year. Soon, via TikTok, they met a Pennsylvania-based listener, Moe, and invited her to help host.

All three hosts can recall in detail what their Hot Topic uniforms were when bands like My Chemical Romance, Further Seems Forever, Brand New, and Taking Back Sunday ruled the charts. Back then we called them bondage pants or tripp pants, Moran says, adding, I had band tees out the wazoo, platform Mary Janes, fishnet stockings, and arm warmers.

I had a pair of black-and-red Chuck Taylors, says Zanelotti, who graduated from high school in 2009 and grew up in Waldorf, Maryland. I wore them with fishnets or skinny jeans or tripp pants. I also had the sweatband bracelets that had band names on them, the clip-in hair colors. I got the black-rimmed glasses. I had the rubber-band bracelets, six or seven on one arm, the oversized hoodie, the tie, the band shirts. I was kind of like your emo-meetsAvril Lavigne but very confused between all of them. If it looked cute, and I could pull it off, I was gonna do it. Regardless of if it matched.

Back then, the only thing we had that was music-related was FYE or Sam Goody, Zanelotti continues. But Hot Topic was the only store that had an expressive, dark aesthetic I always wanted to stick out, to be the kid that identified with the music that I listened to. I remember the first thing I ever bought from Hot Topic was one of those little purses that you could never fit anything in. It looked like a skirt. It was black and hot pink and it had a skull on the corner. That purse was my entire aesthetic, the skull with a bow on it. Thats what I wanted my whole identity to be.

Despite its dark exterior, Hot Topics original ethos was, above all else, to seem approachable. Founded by Los Angeles retail veteran Orv Madden, whod previously been a high-level executive at The Childrens Place, the first two Hot Topic locations opened in Montclair and Westminster, California, in late 1989. Hoping to emulate the punk, goth, and fetish fashion storefronts lining Melrose Avenue in the 80s and 90s such as Lip Service and Kill City, Maddens original objective with Hot Topic was to bring Melrose to the mall. To realize this vision, Madden had help from Hot Topics first-ever buyer, Cindy Levitt, who rose through the ranks and eventually became senior vice president of licensing before leaving in 2018.

I had lived in London in 1979 and fell in love with the whole punk and alternative scene, Levitt says. I came back to Southern California and was like, theres nothing like this here. When building out the first Hot Topic stores, Levitt made sure to stock her section with leather wristbands with spikes and crucifixes and lots of skulls. While the majority of the first Hot Topics were filled with more mainstream accessories, Levitts section became a major selling point for customers, simply because no one had ever seen these alternative items in any mall before. Our first store manager said, People are asking if we carry band tees, Levitt recalls. You couldnt find a band tee at a Walmart or anywhere; it was only at concerts or head shops. So I was like, Im gonna figure out how to buy band tees. The first T-shirts I bought were Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Depeche Mode, and Metallica. And that kept blowing up.

Levitt and Madden began opening more store locations in California, and soon expanded to the rest of the country. But not every mall owner was so open-minded about bringing in retail hocking alternative paraphernalia. Malls didnt want us. A lot of rumors were happening about what was going on in our stores: bloodletting, body piercing. There were stories about store managers [getting hit by] Bibles thrown in the stores, Levitt continues. And we had to go meet with the mall developers to calm them down. Satan bothered everybody, especially in the Midwest. So Hot Topic was able to grow because we didnt carry any of thatupside-down crosses, foul language, anything overtly satanic. Album covers were fine. But we were in the mall, so we had to follow mall rules.

We made sure that we were so friendly to everybody, Levitt says. Thats the thing, you go into Hot Topic, you probably know everyone is friendly. That was one of our guidelines: Be friendly to everybody. This is the home for misfits and weirdos and everybody, but its a home for the parents, its a home for anyone that comes in. This is the sanctuary for everybody. Everybodys welcome.

Hot Topics inclusive ideology is not only what got the brand into malls around Americaits what made so many teenagers and 20-somethings want to work there. I felt like I was working at Empire Records, says Zeena Koda, a former music publicist who managed multiple Hot Topic locations from 2000 to 2006. It became a place for alt kidspeople who were interested in musicto go and work and meet other people who were interested in the same shit.

It was a motley crew of lovable weirdos, says Marie Lodi, a freelance beauty and fashion writer and editor who worked at the stores Ventura location in 1999. Except [it was] more diverse in terms of styles and interests. Everyone there was into music, whether it was going to Warped Tour or playing in a local punk band, or part of the rave scene or goth. Or a mix, like me. I think I was listening to Saves the Day and Alkaline Trio as much as I was listening to Atari Teenage Riot and my happy hardcore tapes.

In addition to cultivating a welcoming atmosphere where employees could dress as they pleased with all manner of body art and gauged earlobes on display, Hot Topic encouraged retail associates to tell the higher-ups what they thought was cool, what they thought the store should be selling, and numerous store employees were eventually hired at the corporate office in Californias City of Industry. One of those employees was former music buyer Jay Adelberg, who started out on the floor in 1997 and worked at HQ through 2013. Because Adelberg had been a well-known show booker in his home state of Connecticut, it felt like a natural fit that hed be recommending which CDs to stock at Hot Topic. It was an open-door policyyou did not need to go through your boss, Adelberg says. You were free to get on the computer and see who the music buyer was, email them, and say, Hey, I saw this band last night, and theyre really great. I think they should be on your radar. Because I was booking shows, and because I was on the East Coast, I was really at the forefront of a lot of those East Coast bands as they were really first coming up. I was the first person to tell anyone at headquarters about Thursday and Boy Sets Fire and Saves the Day and Brand New, because I was booking all of those bands. I was the East Coast guy booking shows and sending emails every week going, Hey, guys, I just booked this band called Brand New. Theyre totally unknown. They might be worth keeping your eyes on.

When Adelberg started working at Hot Topic in the late 90s, he was pleasantly surprised by how much the store diverged from your average mall brand. At the time, Hot Topic was a company that very much prided itself on being on the cutting edge, Adelberg adds. What is the newest, freshest, coolest thing? I mean, that was the birth of the Warped Tour during that time. Alternative culture was suddenly becoming a viable economic model. All of a sudden, all of that stuff was really big and selling lots of records and selling lots of T-shirts.

Hot Topic even had a set of Management Principles that they shared among the corporate employees, which Adelberg still has in a note on his phone. As opposed to the highly problematic and racist 47-page rulebook that Abercrombie & Fitch infamously distributed to their corporate staffas uncovered in a damning Netflix documentary in April of this yearHot Topic had only five bits of advice:

Instead of a trickle-down culture, where corporate tells sales floor workers what to sell, Hot Topic had more of a trickle up approach to the music and merchandise they stocked, paying attention to what customers requested. Store employees were treated more as a street team, entrusted with telling higher-ups what alternative kids wanted to buymusic-related or not. This also extended to pop culture: Levitt recalls how, even as far back as 1999, customers were asking for Homey D. Clown from In Living Color, Twin Peaks, and SpongeBob T-shirts. We had heard that colleges were playing drinking games [themed around] Squidward or Patrick or SpongeBob, Levitt says. Everybody wanted SpongeBob shirts for these parties. So we went to Nickelodeon. They were like, What? You want SpongeBob? And so they let us break the product, and it blew up. Then the world changed. Everybody wanted us to carry their product. It was really a tipping point of something that did not look like it belonged in a Hot Topic. And that was because customers were requesting it, so we just went and found it.

Mike Escott, who is the manager of merchandising for the music marketing company Bravado and worked at a series of Hot Topic stores from 2000 to 2007, remembers very well how Hot Topic mirrored whatever the trends were. He says: You always wonder, is life imitating art, or is art imitating life? Hot Topic really had the finger on the pulse of what was going on with fans of bands. It wasnt like Hot Topic had their own agenda of Im going to push this band. Doing [in-store] promos with Paramore, Panic! at the Disco, My Chem, and Rise AgainstI dont think bands like that would be where they were if they didnt have the support of Hot Topic. But it wasnt so much one agenda pushing the otherit was an echo of what was hot and what the fans wanted.

As second-wave emo (Sunny Day Real Estate, American Football) gave way to third-wave emo (Hawthorne Heights, Fall Out Boy, My Chem), the emo kid aesthetic underwent a tectonic shift. Instead of understated grandpa cardigans purchased from Goodwill, emo fans were dressing louder, darker, and spikier. The driver of this aesthetic sea change was almost entirely thanks to the rise of My Chemical Romance, who wore dramatic, glam costumes, making them appear like members of a vampiric marching band. The thing about My Chem that makes them unique from basically any other emo band was that they had way more influence in the fashion world, Adelberg says. They were goth-influenced and a bit on the dark side of things that really pioneered what transformed into the emo look as we all knew it. Before that, emo was girls in cardigans with maroon glasses and saddle shoes, boys in sweaters with terrible muted colors like mustard yellow and olive green and in Spock haircuts. And that kind of stuff was not as marketable to the Hot Topic crowd.

In addition to influencing Hot Topics clothes and accessories, 00s emo bands would frequently stop by for fan meet-and-greets. Adelberg remembers how Hayley Williams was always really cool but Panic! at the Disco apparently were not. But while popular 00s emo and punk acts loved making their merch more widely available to fans, they also were conflicted about what working with a corporation would do to their reputations. After all, the concept of your favorite underground band selling out was still considered the ultimate sin around this time. Carrabba admits his own mixed emotions around selling Dashboard Confessional shirts at Hot Topic in the aughts: It was strange to me on a few levels. Part of the scene ethos at the timeit wasnt anti-capitalism because there were many small businesses that kept the whole scene running. But there was a feeling that things had to be befitting of the ethos that was shared within the scene. And until that moment, I wouldnt have considered anything at the mall. [Selling merch] was relegated to the domain of the indie record store. Or being at shows where you could get merch, or somebody would have a pool table covered with records they were selling. That was considered distribution.

So I found it a little odd when Hot Topic reached out to me about buying our shirts in bulk, Carrabba continues. I will admit to never quite committing to it in a way that, if Im honest, I sort of wish I had. Because it really did feel fun. Every now and again to walk into a mall and see one of your T-shirts. It was undeniably fun to walk into a mall and see a wall that was dedicated to your friends bands. Bands that werent necessarily on the radio or MTV yet.

Working as a stock boy at Sears in the 1990s, Carrabba recalls feeling unable to identify with any of the other retail outlets his peers would frequent, Abercrombie included. It was just a place I went to work, he says, adding that if he had been able to visit a Hot Topic, such a space might have provided a refuge for him. Or maybe I would have hated it, he laughs. After Dashboard took off, however, Carrabba would find himself visiting Hot Topics around the country while on tour. Hed gaze at the famous T-shirt wall and marvel at the selection featuring his friends bands. I still cant get over it. I still cant get over the fact that my friends have had these careers.

Carrabba wasnt the only musician conflicted about what Hot Topic stood for. Gabe Saporta, best known for fronting 00s bands Midtown and Cobra Starship, got a job at his local outlet in New Jersey but was fired after expressing his anti-corporate views. I was very, like, fuck-the-system punk rock when I was a kid, Saporta says. I worked there for maybe a week or something. And I would talk to the manager and kind of express my internal conflict about working [at Hot Topic]. I felt Hot Topic was like a corporation. I wasnt specifically trying [to be against] Hot Topic, just corporations in general that put mom-and-pops out of business. The next thing I knew, she was like, Yeah, youre fired.

However, Saporta soon formed Midtown with drummer Rob Hitt, and eventually Hot Topic reached out wanting to sell their bands T-shirts, which, like most of their peers, they obliged. But Saporta remains a skeptic. I definitely still have fuck the system in my soul, he says. I generally tend to think that big corporations, when theyre too centralized, have a tendency toward a lot of the things that happen when power becomes centralized. The interest of the big corporation is to get bigger, and independent people get hurt along the way.

Come 2008, emo had arguably reached its pop-culture saturation point. Suddenly, emo was an embarrassing, faddish concept, with bands opting to be called alternative and fans rejecting the label en masse. (Even Say Anything winkingly named their 2007 album In Defense of the Genre.) Fad or not, you couldnt deny that the tide was turning. 2008 was the year that Gossip Girl took over the CW, and lots of emo-clad fans had switched over to the (now indie-sleaze) American Apparel aesthetic. MTVs Total Request Live had been canceled. Hawthorne Heights gave way to Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend.

Things werent going so well for Hot Topic corporate, either. When the great recession hit in 2008at the same time that consumers shopping and music-listening habits were changingthe store was forced to reinvent its business model, licensing a wider array of pop-culture franchises and even buying Top 40 music merchandise. My dream job turned into a real nightmare, Adelberg remembers. In a panic move, they ended up hiring two very corporate people to come into headquarters. One, [Amy Kocourek], took over merchandising and another, [John Kirkpatrick], took over the music department. It was inexplicable to me, some of the things that started to happen.

No doubt both Kirkpatrick and Kocourek had experience; from 2004 to 2007, Kirkpatrick had been the SVP of music and creative affairs at Paramount Pictures, and today hes the SVP of brand marketing at Epic Records. Kocourek, meanwhile, had come over from American Eagle, where shed been the vice president/GM of merchandising for womens and accessories from 2007 to 2009. But the culture at Hot Topic had, until that point, been all about hiring from the ground floor. To now be taking orders from corporate types like Kirkpatrick and Kocourek could not have been easy. (Kocourek declined to comment for this piece.)

One jarring shift: Kirkpatrick started suggesting bands to Adelberg that just didnt make any sense. He comes to me and says, So, hey, theres a new Nickelback record. And I was like, Yeah, thats a hard pass on that one. But Aelbergs input no longer seemed to matter; his new boss decided they were going to stock the new Nickelback record. Im telling you right now that I dont think that that is a good idea at all, Adelberg continues. And he said, Why? Its a rock band.

Adelberg tried to impress upon his new boss the curatorial nuance involved in selecting albums to stock in Hot Topic. I said, heres the deal: Whatever decisions we make as a company, at the end of the day, before you pull the trigger, the last question you need to ask yourself is, Is this cool? And Nickelback are literally the punch line to a joke about uncool. If we say yes to this today, its a slippery slope. Within six months, I was buying Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.

But Kirkpatrick didnt view Hot Topics music evolution as being a battle of cool vs. uncool. His job, as he describes it, was to test new markets that reflected the changing music ecosystem. I was brought in at a time when Hot Topic had had six straight negative [comparable sales] years in a row, he says. The premise from then-CEO Betsy McLaughlin was to bring someone in to really help evolve musicto really reflect the culture around music [with] other components, whether it be film, TV, or pop culture as a whole.

There was never a conversation to change to pop music, Kirkpatrick continues. Bieber was brought into the store, but it was brought into the store specifically from customer requests. It was extraordinarily successful in the store. Other artists that we might have experimented with would have varying degrees of success. But we never continued to lean into something that wasnt actually showing success in the actual store itself.

Specifically, Kirkpatrick says he has no recollection of suggesting Nickelback be sold in Hot Topic. Nickelback in particular was not a band that I would have thought at that time was leading a cultural edge on anything, he says. Maybe there was Nickelback in the stores at that point in time, but it wouldnt have been my lead.

In all, the panic pivot lasted for about three years. I watched a lot of really great people leave the company, people who were super passionate, Adelberg says, noting how the brands longtime CEO, Betsy McLaughlin, was forced out in 2011. It was a really dark time. There was a lot of pressure to say yes to bad ideas. Because it was that, or look for a new job.

From Adelbergs perspective, the backlash was tremendous. By that point, hed become an admin on the brands Facebook page, and under the moniker Hot Topic Guy, he would sign on and try to engage with the shoppers. I would put up a post that said, Hey, guys, Hot Topic Guy here. What do you want to talk about? I got an earful about a lot of the things people perceived to be wrong with the company, he says. People would say, You sold out Fans didnt like seeing Justin Bieber T-shirts in the store. It wasnt really capturing a significant amount of new business.

In one regard, theyre not wrong, Adelberg reasons. We did say, Hey, these are the things we stand for, and these are the things were against. The truth is, its easy to stick by principles when times are good. And now all of a sudden, theres a blurring of that. The minute times got tough, Hot Topic was willing to throw the principals right out the window.

After a lot of trial and error, Hot Topic stabilized and found a way backat least monetarily. They figured out that the key to staying afloat was not broadening of the music assortment, but rather the broadening of the licensing assortment, Adelberg says. Thats when the company really leaned into stuff that was hot at the time. Doctor Who, Funko Pops, Harry Potter, Marvel. Dial back the music part a little bit and really go into fantasy and sci-fi properties that are mainstream [but also] edgy and fun. In my opinion, thats what saved them from going off the deep end.

The magic key is still fandombut instead of investing in niche music trends, Hot Topic has leaned into geek fandom, which, ironically, is mainstream now. In 2015, Hot Topic launched BoxLunch, a gift and novelty retail store, and in 2017, it acquired Her Universe, a womens geek apparel and accessory company.

Hot Topic may never sell physical albums again, but I was pleasantly surprised at the wide selection of band tees for sale at the Hollywood and Highland location. I hadnt been to a Hot Topic since 2017, when Id stopped in the Glendale Galleria location and walked out with an Alien-themed T-shirt: on sale, two for $15. Five years ago, Hot Topic seemed to be barely selling music merch; now the ratio has evened out. On its website, an algorithm lists some T-shirts I might like: Paramore is next to Death Cab for Cutie, which is next to Green Day, Blink-182, Fleetwood Mac, My Chemical Romance (naturally), and a Hellfire Club shirt from Stranger Things.

Emo might be popular again, thanks to the 20-year nostalgia cycle (My Chemical Romance announced their reunion in 2019 and will kick off a U.S. tour in August). But todays emo is not the same as it was two decades ago, when it was already on its third wave. Emo in 2022 involves a flurry of micro-genresemo rap, the math-rock-influenced Midwest emo, emo pop, screamo, emocore. Meanwhile, Gen Z shoppers are not bound to one scene the way that millennials were, and Hot Topics merchandise reflects that. (Hot Topic declined to participate in this article.) We all used to label ourselves and put ourselves into sub-categories, like the jocks, a.k.a. the Abercrombie people; the goth or the emo person; or the person that was super into hip-hop, says Petracca, the Emo Nite cofounder. Now, everybody likes everything. Its OK to like everything, and you dont have to define yourself by the music you listen to. You can love emo and pop punk. And you can love rap. You dont have to put your whole personality behind that.

Generations and cultures change, adds Freed, the other Emo Nite cofounder. I think Gen Z is much more accepting. Theyve got the internet Everything is online. [I grew up when] kids still didnt have cellphones, and so your viewpoints were pretty much of everybody that was around you, and your friends in your friend group. Now, you get to look at the viewpoints of everybody around the world as soon as you wake up. You get to discover things much quicker. I think that that really helped mold this sense of togetherness.

Sammit Zanelotti, one of the Elder Emo Hours cohosts, also notes how perspectives have shifted around what it means to be emo at all. When I was in high school, I was also an emo kid and a theater kid. Im also very stout as a person. I got bullied a lot for being that person because I was weird. I was into all these weird things that people didnt understand. I stopped wearing the styles because I didnt want to be bullied anymore. Now, with the way social media is, and a lot of the bands we grew up with are coming backlike My Chemical Romance, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, and Simple Planits bringing a new perspective to the emo scene. The way that our generation is right now, were the parent emos that are like, Hey, its OK to be yourself. We went through that so you dont have to.

Now living in Houston, Adelberg will occasionally find himself in a mall, which will inevitably house a Hot Topic. But the former music buyer isnt upset at the brands evolution from Bring Melrose to the Mall to pop-culture collectibles. I have been able to keep tabs on quite a few folks over there, Adelberg says. The licensing guy put up an Insta Story where he was clearly in a limo going to the AEW Dynamite pay-per-view [event] last night, and I was like, Thats awesome. Hes clearly getting the VIP treatment, and theyre clearly selling that stuff. Good for them. I wish nothing but success for all those folks.

An earlier version of this piece misspelled tripp pants.

Rachel Brodsky is a music and pop culture writer, critic, and reporter living in Los Angeles.

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How Hot Topic Defined a Generation of Emo Kids - The Ringer

Time was, you could binge every entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a single marathon session. That was a simpler era now, youd need to set aside days to digest the 29 movies, 19 TV shows, and eight short films that currently make up the franchise. Fortunately, theres a quicker and easier way to relive the entire history of the MCU: You could just rewatch the stand-alone Thor movies.

Not only can you knock over these four flicks in less than eight hours, youll also enjoy a Bifrost-quick journey through the evolution of Marvel Studios shared universe itself. Its not just that each movie including the latest, Thor: Love and Thunder lays vital narrative groundwork for the wider franchise. Its that these Chris Hemsworth-headlined blockbusters perfectly embody the creative milestones and missteps that characterized the MCUs four major story groupings, or Phases, to date. This is no accident each of the Odinsons four solo outings was released in a different phase of the MCU, so its only natural that they reflect their respective eras.

To paraphrase the first chapter heading in Batman: Year One, Thors story is the story of the MCU what it is and how it came to be.

Revisited today, 2011s Thor is emblematic of the ways Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and those around him worked to nail down the MCU template through Phase One. Theres a lot here thats instantly, recognizably in line with what later became the franchises distinctive brand of storytelling, but theres plenty missing, too.

Most obviously, with Thor, Marvel Studios seems a little uncertain about exactly what kind of tone its trying to strike. Director Kenneth Branagh handles the fantasy adventure and fish-out-of-water comedy elements equally well, but the movie crunches gears whenever its forced to shift between the two. The way Branagh and Marvel manage Thors obligatory foreshadowing of future MCU projects (shoutout to Jeremy Renners Hawkeye cameo!) is about as clumsy as it gets, too. Then theres the underwhelming third act, which like most of the Phase One movies asks us to invest in the God of Thunders efforts to foil an evil scheme that doesnt actually threaten any of our friends on Earth or Asgard.

Yet for all these shortcomings, Thor is a hugely influential addition to this first and most experimental phase of the MCU. Although its approach seems restrained compared to a Spandex-fest like Avengers: Endgame, Thor nevertheless represents Marvel Studios drawing a line in the sand in terms of how unapologetically it wanted to tackle its source material. Magic hammers, rainbow bridges, flowing capes, and horned helmets were declared to be acceptable in the universe Marvel was building. The self-conscious faux-science and all-leather jumpsuits of 20th Century Foxs X-Men franchise were not.

Thor also delivers the MCUs first truly great villain in the form of Tom Hiddlestons Loki. Thors adopted sibling is a complex creation who looms large over Phase One, and he sets a standard the studio has rarely equaled, much less surpassed. Hiddleston brings a Shakespearean edge to Lokis antics, something no doubt encouraged by Branagh, who built his career performing and staging celebrated screen adaptations of the Bards plays. His work on Thor epitomizes what the MCU was and is capable of when the person hired to call the shots is actually calling the shots. For all Thors superhero sheen, it still feels like something only Branagh couldve made, while still being very much keyed into the overarching formation of the Avengers subplot that defines Phase One.

Ultimately, though, Hemsworth is the one who makes Thor work and who further validated Marvel Studios risky approach to casting throughout Phase One. Hiring a relative unknown like Hemsworth to headline a $150 million picture was a big gamble that paid off. The Aussie actor instantly won over audiences with his uncommon gifts for comedy and action, proving he was the right guy for the job the moment he appeared on screen. Just as with Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man and Chris Evans in Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel casting Hemsworth was a validation of the studios commitment to hiring the right people for the role, no matter how well-known they were in Hollywood at the time.

Thor isnt perfect, but like the phase it belongs to, it proved that the formula for the perfect MCU movie was within Marvels reach.

Unfortunately, Thor: The Dark World was not that movie. On the contrary, this 2013 follow-up is widely considered not just the worst Thor film, but also the worst release of Phase Two.

The Dark World is the poster child for the studios short-lived push to go, well, darker. In certain instances, the graver, higher-stakes approach worked most notably in 2014, when the Russo brothers injected a gritty espionage-thriller vibe into Captain America: The Winter Soldier. But the same approach just condemns Thor to an overwrought, tonally muddled sophomore adventure predominantly set in dreary locations, which director Alan Taylor seemingly borrowed from his previous gig on Game of Thrones.

It also doesnt help that The Dark World is saddled with a truly forgettable villain, another MCU Phase Two mistake that not even certified bangers like Guardians of the Galaxy avoided. This time, its poor Christopher Eccleston who takes the fall as dark elf Malekith, the victim of too many reshoots and not enough screen time. As with his fellow Phase Two antagonists Ronan the Accuser, Ultron, and Yellowjacket, the audience knows what Malekith wants; we just arent given any reason to care.

Yet The Dark Worlds murky tone and nonentity villain are really just symptoms of arguably the biggest problem with the MCUs Phase Two: the studios approach to directors. Taylor wasnt the first choice to helm the movie he only landed the gig after Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins left, offering the usual creative differences excuse. This was the first instance of Marvel clashing with a high-profile auteur over their vision for an MCU film. It wouldnt be the last, either Edgar Wright later bowed out of Ant-Man, while Taylor and Age of Ultron director Joss Whedon butted heads with studio executives during post-production on their movies, too.

In spite of a few bright spots, the MCU was, like Thor, in a dark place in Phase Two. And then, just like that, everything changed.

It was as if someone flipped a switch at Marvel Studios just as the MCUs third phase began and no film reflects this reversal of fortune more acutely than Thor: Ragnarok.

Where Thor: The Dark World is the product of a studio stumbling over itself, Ragnarok is Marvel at its most assured. The third (and arguably best) Thor movie marked the moment when Marvel finally understood exactly what kind of movies it wanted to make, and who it wanted to make them with. The story-group mandates of the previous phase ended, replaced by greater trust in individual talent.

Sure, Feige and company still favored more of a showrunner approach to the franchise, and there was certainly a sense from films like Captain America: Civil War that Marvel Studios had a default narrative and visual house style. But more than any other Phase Three movie, Ragnarok proved the studio was willing to compromise with filmmakers who wanted to work outside this box. When director Taika Waititi asked to scrap the sequels original setup, teased in Age of Ultron, Marvel didnt bat an eye. Nor did they do so when the New Zealand filmmaker started pulling together a glitter-bomb blockbuster to make even Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn blush.

Yet for all that Ragnarok was unmistakably the product of Waititis unique filmmaking sensibilities, it also represented the MCU template refined across the last three phases at last achieving its final form. Now, there was a measured approach to the franchise meta-narrative a newfound openness to bend space rock-related plot points to suit the story at hand and not the other way around. There was a well-realized villain, Cate Blanchetts camp icon Hela. Most importantly of all, for better or worse, everybody involved finally accepted that the MCU was an action-comedy franchise, forever ending its frankly exhausting identity crisis.

Phase Three was the Golden Age of the MCU and nowhere did that gold shine brighter (or in a wider array of colors) than in Thor: Ragnarok.

All of which brings us to Thor: Love and Thunder and the MCUs Phase Four, which is scheduled to conclude in November with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Certain trends have started to crystallize as this phase draws to a close and as expected, all of them are present to some extent in the fourth Thor film.

The biggest complaint you can lob at both Love and Thunder and Phase Four is that they feel a bit aimless. For fans, theres plenty of enjoyment to be found in both, but not enough to fully shake the sense that the people at the top dont entirely know where theyre heading or why. Its as if Marvel Studios 14-year quest to crack the MCU code has, ironically, left them equipped to make exactly the kind of movie theyre no longer interested in making. And so Feige and his team continue to crank out new films that halfheartedly adhere to the old formula not to mention TV shows barely capable of following it while they figure out how to mobilize the overarching Multiverse Saga narrative meant to unite Phases Four to Six in the same way the Infinity Saga brought vague coherence to Phases One to Three.

Sure, occasionally they strike it big with this approach. Spider-Man: No Way Home made a fortune, as did Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, in spite of its divisive, horror-lite approach. But theres a sense that the MCU is in crisis forced to recycle its greatest hits in projects like Love and Thunder, while being keenly aware that fans are growing tired of superhero-movie cover songs. Marvel is clearly experimenting with change by embracing elements of other genres. But its starting to discover there are limits to even the flexibility learned in Phase Three. After all, how do you retrain a studio and a fan base to accept a new kind of MCU movie after weaning both on the same recipe for more than a decade?

Its a tough question, and well have to wait until Phase Five for answers and possibly Thor 5 along with it.

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The history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in four Thor movies - Polygon

The term ESG, or Environmental, Social, and Governance, has been getting rather hot lately. As one of the latest focuses of investors and stakeholders, its gotten plenty of coverage, with publications like The Edge even introducing a monthly pull-out for it alongside The Edge ESG Awards.

ESG refers to a set of non-financial factors that investors are using to evaluate a corporations social and environmental goals. Basically, it checks how socially-conscious a company is.

Beyond ethics, investors are directly incentivised to invest in green tech. For instance, under Malaysias Green Income Tax Exemption (GITE), taxes are exempted for income earned from green technology and certain green assets.

However, while the focus on sustainability is commendable, there are those who dont exactly have the purest intentions.

Instead, theyre taking advantage of the situation, and are promoting their own brands as sustainable, but wrongfully so.

According to Investopedia, greenwashing is the process of conveying a false impression or providing misleading information about how a companys products are more environmentally sound.

This is typically done to deceive investors and consumers into believing a companys product is more eco-friendly than it actually is.

An example of greenwashing is when a business claims their products are very eco-friendly, but they actually buy from unethical and unsustainable sources.

Or, perhaps, a business harps about its eco-friendly approaches, but ends up sending you a product wrapped in layers upon layers of plastic packaging.

Though this might all sound like a small issue to some, it can have very detrimental impacts. In an article, The Edge posited in its title: Greenwashing: The next big scandal?

In this article, the publication discussed whether ESG could be allowing for opportunities for greenwashing, mainly focusing on how big corporations perpetrate it.

However, its not just Fortune 500 or big companies who are greenwashing. While its true that big companies have a greater impact on the environment (back in 2017, just 100 companies were responsible for 71% of global emissions), small businesses riding the eco-friendly wave dont get a pass either.

These days, Ive been coming across a lot of small, local businesses that claim to be eco-conscious and sustainable. This is especially prevalent in the beauty and personal care industry, Ive observed.

However, because these businesses arent obligated to be transparent about their production processes, theres really no way to tell if theyre being honest about their claims.

To add, many times, SMEs seem to be given a free pass for the sake of shopping local or supporting small businesses.

But its gotten to a point where businesses are intentionally fooling the public into thinking they are a sustainable brand when they arent.

Although smaller brands dont have the same capacity to fool investors and the masses, they are still able to trick consumers.

And unfortunately, many modern consumers do fall for them, not because we genuinely want to do better for the environment, but because were looking for an easy way out to save the Earth while continuing our hyper-consumption. (This could be a whole article on its own though, and it isnt the focus of this one.)

In 2007, TerraChoice, an environmental consultancy in Canada, launched a study and subsequently published about the Seven Sins of Greenwashing. The seven sins are:

The hidden trade-off occurs when a business suggests its product is green based on one single environmental attribute or an unreasonably narrow set of attributes. These claims arent necessarily false, but it basically hides the larger environmental picture.

Its pretty straightforward for the sin of no proof and the sin of vagueness. The sin of worshipping false labels though refers to when a product uses words or images to give the impression of a third-party endorsement.

The sin of irrelevance occurs when an unimportant or unhelpful claim is made to make it seem like the business is putting in extra effort to make the product eco-friendly when they arent.

A business commits the sin of the lesser of two evils when it makes a claim that might be true within the product category, yet is made to distract the consumer from the true environmental impact of the category as a whole.

For example, this happens when organic cigarettes are promoted as better for the environment but are actually still a pollutant.

The final sin of fibbing is just straight-up lying about the product.

In my experience, there are quite a lot of businesses that commit these sins, whether consciously or not. Dont get me wrong; its great that weve come to place such emphasis on eco-friendliness.

But we have to ask ourselves, be we brands or consumers: Are we doing it for the right, genuine reasons?

On the flip side, though, overly strict expectations on sustainability might have an adverse effect.

Last year, The Institute of Marketing in the UK reported that out of over 200 marketing professionals in the UK, around half were wary of working on sustainability campaigns for fear of being accused of greenwashing.

The institute also published research that showed that out of 2K UK consumers, 63% believe many brands only get involved with sustainability for commercial reasons rather than ethical ones.

Of course, this might be different in Malaysia, but the theory is there. If consumers are overly sceptical of brands eco-friendliness, brands might feel more hesitant to even try promoting green practices.

Instead of feeling wary, though, brands should be finding ways to avoid greenwashing by using facts and figures to back up their claims and by being transparent with their customers.

When it comes to justifying a brands claims in materials or impact, it is pretty easy to tell a shallow answer from one with in-depth work and research, shared Najmia Zulkarnain, the co-founder of Unplug, a sustainable business that deals with other eco-friendly brands.

She continued, Most times, based on our experience, we feel that greenwashing from smaller brands comes from limited knowledge or resources, not with bad intent.

Its okay for a small brand to not be 100% eco-friendly as long as theyre honest about it, and the majority of consumers probably dont even expect or require them to be.

Swapping out regular practices for eco-friendly ones can be more expensive and tougher, particularly in industries where theres no clear blueprint for how to go about it yet.

So, understandably, profitability has to come before sustainability for many smaller brands, but having a clear roadmap of a businesss eco-friendly evolution while keeping consumers in the loop would be good.

Its clear that small businesses may sometimes be complicit in the culture of greenwashing. At the end of the day though, perhaps they dont deserve the same level of scrutiny as big companies, who should have the resources and capabilities to do better.

On top of that, many small businesses still do present better options than big companies, even if they arent the most sustainable product in the world.

Small businesses do have more room to scale down and break away from a rigid operating system that may need to be re-assessed more easily than larger corporations, Najmia added.

Plus, shopping locally does technically help cut your carbon emissions, but of course, that doesnt mean the brand itself isnt unnecessarily shipping its materials from abroad.

In this day and age where we know to do better, its only right that we actually do. This applies not just to us as consumers, but also to entrepreneurs and corporations.

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Yes, big corps need to cut the greenwashing, but Msian SMEs dont get a free pass either - Vulcan Post

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In the fast-moving ESG landscape, corporate leaders are constantly bombarded with new and expanded reporting requirements, investor expectations and endless expert platitudes about the importance of ESG factors to business success. What is often missing from this conversation is a clear sense of what this can mean in practice.

George Bandy, Jr. is a global leader of sustainability, ESG and circularity. He is the Chief Sustainability Officer at Fiber Industries LLC, the former head of circular economy at Amazon. George has a long history in the sustainability field, including extensive work with leading design manufacturers and as a board member of the International Interior Design Association (IIDA), making an impact in one of the industries under the most scrutiny for environmental impact.

I spoke with George to tap into his vast experience in orchestrating strategic change to better understand how additional responsibility that companies take on when tackling ESG issues needs to be accepted, operationalized and addressed.

Related: ESG Is the Next Frontier a Conversation With Buro Happold's Mike Stopka

Speaking as a practitioner, what's the best way to add a strategic lens to approaching ESG?

One of the things about the whole stakeholder capitalism conversation is how things have moved, how frameworks and ratings are changing the way people look at things. You're moving from knowns to unknowns. You know what steel extraction and concrete making are, but the unknown is the environmental impacts that result, and that becomes a problem for your company. This means systematically looking at it and asking, "When we do this, what are the outputs? How do we address that? How do we begin to think about that ahead of time and have a strategy for it?" Smart ESG-based organizations are doing that, and it's a power shift. Investors used to have the power, but now the stakeholders have it.

Manufacturers, organizations and corporations have functioned in a very linear way for a long time, without taking a systematic approach that looks at values or at what could happen to their business when resources run out. It's what I call hitting the wall. If you continue to extract the Earth's resources because of increases in population and affluences, there's going to be a decline. Companies have to adjust. ESG gives you the ability to look at these things and strategically align yourself.

Are you seeing good examples of that actually happening?

Bandy:

I don't think anyone's gotten it perfectly right. It has to be addressed based on your business. Let's say we make circles. What do we need to make them? Where do the materials come from? Can we access those materials for a long time? Are we looking for alternatives? What's the impact to the community where we're taking these materials from? What kind of relationship do we have with them? How about the people we bring in to work? Have we thought about designing this for end-of-life disposition on the front end? Have we thought about whether we can get raw materials back at the end of the circle's life, so we create a circular economy that brings materials back? Can we partner with someone to bring materials back to us?

Think about this: There's a company that sells you something that almost everyone has. They charge you for the service, and they partner with someone else for the infrastructure, and eventually you bring it back to get a new one. They decomposition the old one because they're connected to the manufacturing facility. I think 85% of raw materials go back. You're giving them the raw materials to make you a new item, and they're charging you for it, and you're paying willingly.

You're talking about an iPhone or cell phone.

The automotive industry is the same way. You lease a vehicle and use it for 8 to 10 years, then they lease it to somebody else. They extend their product's life, and they get the materials back, and 85% of the materials goes into a new vehicle. What better model of controlling your supply chain and having access to raw materials? You continue making money while not having to worry about your supply chain ever running out. Those are the kinds of mindsets we need to start having.

If you're selling services and people are a big component of what you do, how are you investing in them so they're healthy, well and in an environment conducive to success so that you create innovation and opportunities for them to flourish and be great?

How do you communicate your purpose-driven message as an organization, so it becomes contagious to multiple people? Greg Norris from MIT asks, "How do you get beyond looking just at our environmental footprint and start thinking about our restorative handprint?" Handprints over footprints not just measuring how we fix what we've done.

Related: ESG Is the Next Frontier a Conversation With The Conference Board's Paul Washington

Twenty years ago, we had to build a business case for ESG sustainability. Now it feels like a lot of people are on board. They see intrinsic value and companies are introducing policies with the assumption that they have to do it. Is there still a place where a business case is required, or is it just marginally helpful? Is it helpful for certain decision makers?

The companies that do really well are the ones that are able to figure out how to navigate within the changes that come downstream so that they still remain a primary supplier.

If a supplier is extremely valuable to you, you look to strategically align what you're already doing at a large scale to encompass some of these visions and create pathways for success. That's where the people who take a systematic approach to thinking about ESG do really well, really fast.

Value comes when you're able to position yourself as a true strategic partner and other people and third parties speak about what you're capable of doing better than you do. Anytime I've done a program looking to add value to a community and value to our company's ESG strategy, I always had a third party or an academic institution connected to it. Because they don't have a vested interest their voice gives you a little bit more credibility. A branding-smart organization gets it because they know that the audiences that are suspicious about buying their material are the ones they don't have a good relationship with, and this gives them access to that audience.

If I tell you about a great restaurant and you go and try it and like it, you're going to tell other people. But if I tell you about a great restaurant, and it's not so good, you're going to tell people that as well. We underestimate the impact. Today's word-of-mouth is a tweet, or IG, or the word of Metaverse. It moves and it touches people so fast, and that's both good and bad because its power is beginning to control the way to the customer.

Is decision-making really shifting to stakeholders, or is it that investors are paying more attention to them or getting more pushback from them?

I think that's the shift. An investor's customer is the stakeholder. They know that the more information they provide that leads stakeholders to believe in investing, the more they win. The smart phone provides information on everything in a moment. This whole evolution of having immediate access to information, good and bad, and allowing people to make decisions, represents a power shift. You can see when a company hits the wall, how their stock prices fall. Think about the whole situation with Colin Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter. The situation with the war between Ukraine. Different things happen and impact how people respond with their dollars. That is shareholder power shifting.

The reporting based ESG culture has so many metrics and potential data points. How do you change that?

I don't know if you should. An ESG professional's responsibility is to evaluate their company's mission, vision and values and to use the metrics that align best. What may be good for a manufacturer may not be good for a tech company. It's your job to evaluate and ask, "What works best for my company?"

My grandfather used to say, "Don't always buy what people are selling. Ask for what you really want." That's why companies are trying to create their own. It's because everything doesn't fit. A round peg doesn't fit in a square hole.

You should evaluate the rating systems for what works for you, and the rankings that you're looking for. Are you looking to be in a Fortune 100? Are you looking to be in climate leaders? There are standards, ratings, ranking, and then there's information like Bloomberg, Morning Star, Thomson Reuters. And then there are your investors. You put up a full scope and you evaluate, "How does this work for me? Who do I partner with? Where do I make it?"

What you're talking about is a complete shift.

It's necessary. Why would MSCI be randomly sending you your score? Because they think your score is low because they don't have all the data. They're the people who are going to help you get the data, so they're going to sell you a service.

I think people are going to figure out the best way to communicate their narrative around their purpose as an organization. You're going to be criticized anyway, so try to create a narrative that communicates what you're doing. You already know where your weaknesses are. It's not that companies don't know they don't have minorities on their board, or that they don't have women on their board. They know, and it's not going to happen. They're not going to say, "We're going to put four women on our board tomorrow." Instead, they create a strategy that says, "We're going to start intentionally looking for" Customers respect that, because you've already identified where you're weak.

It takes power away from the reporting agencies and gives it back to the ESG officer or sustainability officer. It's a series of choices around how to tell the story. It creates a more conscious approach to strategy.

Related: A Conversation With Bridgette McAdoo: Sustainability as a Matter of Corporate Strategy

Do you see a point where we won't need an ESG officer or sustainability officer? Where it's so ingrained into company operations that it's just there?

You have to evaluate that in timeframes. We didn't get here in a short period of time. Climate issues took a long time to evolve and become what they are, and some of the systematic approaches to how we've looked at privatizing wealth and socializing risk didn't happen overnight either. The whole model around looking at stakeholder capitalism started back in the sixties. It's just reemerging because of what we see happening. People need to be educated to raise the bar of intelligence, globally and collectively first, before you can move to a place where it's normalized.

The challenge now is that companies are focused on specific risks to their supply chain, to their financial acuity, to their stock price, to their employees or their need for employees. Risk to their union or their leadership team. Risk to their source of energy, their source of water, their natural gas source. There are systematic risks like Covid, war, geopolitical impact, environmental justice claims. Focusing on specific risks is how you set goals, move and improve. You try to create strategies that allow you to be risk averse. But today's consumers are looking at you differently because of what you're doing or what you're saying.

When I started in sustainability back in 1992, there were no degrees in sustainability. There wasn't one until 2008, 2010. The subject matter is only 12 years old. That's a very narrow period of time in terms of building a strategy around systems. We don't know what we don't know yet. There's so much information we still have to gather and get smart about. You need partnerships, relationships, NGOs, government. We haven't even started talking about policy movement, and how things are evolving and changing. There's still time to move in these different spaces in so many different ways.

I'm ultimately optimistic because of the ability to share, and to learn. Every experience I've had good, bad, or indifferent is a topic of discussion in places where it wasn't before. That's movement. That's what systems thinking is about.

It's one of the responsibilities of ESG leadership and the chief sustainability officer: to think about some of those impacts in a different way and try to strategically align them so that you're able to be successful over long periods of time rather than over short steps.

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ESG: The Next Frontier A Conversation with George Bandy, Jr. - Entrepreneur

The process of designing a flagship digital camera is a heavily guarded secret. But in a rare exception, some of the key individuals responsible for the development of the Nikon Z9 sat down and explained some of the defining aspects that brought the camera to life.

Nikon pulled together a group of engineers and individuals involved with the development of the camera and shared their insights with PetaPixel. Because there are so many involved with the development of a new camera, the statements below represent that whole group rather than any one individual.

In 2018, Nikon released the Z7 and Z6 full-frame mirrorless cameras. However, as the professional demand for a mirrorless flagship model increased, it was acknowledged that further improvements to function and performance were needed to meet all the demands of professional users.

That meant the pressure was on the development of a true flagship model was of great significance both internally and externally, Nikon says. Every single person involved in the Z9s design and development felt they had a mission to complete.

Nikon adds that one of the goals was to surpass the D6, a model that many felt represented the perfect DSLR.

Indeed, the scale of the challenge and the timings set to develop it resulted in cooperation between Nikon departments on a scale never seen before.

To develop a flagship model that would surpass not only the D6 but also all rival models, we knew we would have to start from the very beginning and not allow ourselves to be bound by the premises of conventional technologies, the company says.

To Nikon, the most difficult aspect of making the Z9 was the consideration of the core specifications that it needed to have.

Building a foundation for the camera took a great deal of time because we started right from the beginning, building even the basic construction from a completely fresh starting point. And the requirements of new image-processing engines and the flagship models are enormous, so we from day one had to make some very difficult decisions given the limited development time frame.

Nikon says that through this process, what remained constant was the belief that it needed to be designed from a users perspective, and all specifications and functions that they adopted would need to exceed the expectations of professional photographers expectations that had grown to considerable heights thanks to Nikons competitors.

To ensure we exceeded expectations of photographers, we needed them to test the product continuously and thoroughly throughout its development. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, major sporting events normally used to evaluate camera operations and performance and take test shots were cancelled one after another, making evaluation under real conditions difficult, Nikon says.

But Nikon did not let a global pandemic stop the development of the Z9, and the company made moves to recreate those lost professional shooting environments.

In response, we invited university athletes to serve as live models in gymnasiums, skating rinks, and other sports facilities. And we began loaning the camera to photographers at very early stages of product development, so that their feedback could be considered while there was still time for modification and improvement.

Nikon previously shared how professional photographers were tapped to help make the Z9 from very early on, including working directly with Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographers from very early abstract prototypes all the way through to the finished camera.

Even with this in place, achieving the detection of nine different subject types, and simultaneously detecting multiple subjects that require processing of CV, AF calculation and lens driver operation for each shot under the limited time in 20 FPS high-speed continuous shooting, was a struggle, Nikon reveals.

The company says that every design decision that went into the Z9 was made following extensive consideration for the effect it would have on the camera and how it would be received by photographers.

An important one was that an electronic viewfinder (EVF), which tracks the intended subject in real-time, would be an absolute must for a professional flagship model. We cooperated across departments to find a solution that achieved the most natural and pleasing viewfinder display, Nikon explains.

We surpassed the performance of optical viewfinders (OVF) by encompassing the best of both worlds; the level of performance that would enable the unrestricted display of OVFs, with all the advantages that an EVF presents. Just as we did with the D6, we placed great importance on the way people see, feel and experience the camera. We recognize that there are important factors in design and function that cant always be measured quantitatively.

Nikon says that another major point of consternation centered around the rear LCD.

Once we settled on the Z9 having an integrated vertical grip, we took the decision to equip the camera with a four-axis tilting monitor as we believed this offered users more flexibility when framing their shots. However, we were conscious that tilting monitors have a reputation for being unreliable, so we prioritized reliability from the very start of the development process to ensure ultimate satisfaction.

One of the biggest decisions we made was eliminating the mechanical shutter altogether. There was real hesitation about abandoning one of the strengths Nikon has achieved over its history of technological development, Nikon says.

But the mechanical shutter was removed from the Z 9 because we were determined to place a greater priority on other features for the user, and because we were ready to usher in a new era for ourselves.

As part of this, Nikon did equip the camera with a light-shielding curtain unit that enabled long-exposure noise reduction and reduced the risk of dust and foreign materials adhering to the sensor.

As for shutter sound, while we choose something appropriate for each model, we were extremely particular about the audio data used for the Z9. This is because, since the days of film cameras, weve regarded shutter sound as an important aspect of photography; something that makes the shooting experience more enjoyable, the company adds.

Yet, with the advent of digital cameras, the sound of film feed was eliminated and then with mirrorless cameras the sound of mirror operation was eliminated. By not equipping the Z 9 with a mechanical shutter, all sound-producing mechanical parts have disappeared.

Going with this solid state-like design left the Nikon engineers wondering what sound would be best for the flagship.

We tried a number of possibilities and decided that the sound data should reproduce the sound of mirror and shutter operations, but then fine-tuned as needed. With early Z9 prototypes, the speaker was positioned near the control panel on the top of the camera, Nikon explains.

With actual test shooting, however, we found that this position was not optimal because it was noticeably different from where sound is heard with conventional cameras. It seemed strange for the shutter sound to come from the top of the camera. So, despite being well into camera development, we suddenly moved the speaker to a position at the center of the camera body to better mimic the sound of a conventional mechanical shutter.

Nikon says that through the development of the camera, it knew that 8K resolution would be a must.

We knew that 8K resolution will be the next step in the evolution of video. Nikon had an excellent reputation in terms of photo imaging but we had our work cut out for us to develop a camera that would be the choice of videographers as well, the company says.

We believe that this camera, in how it enables the shooting of the highest quality video with the minimum number of people, is a true game changer for professional videographers. It responds to video needs with powerful specifications such as 8K30p in 23-degrees Celcius environments, long-time shooting of up to 125 minutes, 4K 120p that can be taken in full frame, internal recording of HLG and N-Log, and the worlds largest number of nine types of subject detection in video.

To get the camera to perform with those specifications, Nikon says it knew that heat would have to be managed and developing the way to do this was of primary importance and says that it conducted various various heat-dispersion simulations from the early stages of development.

We faced the difficulty of equipping the camera with both the image-stabilization (VR) mechanism and means of dispersing heat. For context, dedicated video equipment generally uses cooling fans to disperse heat. As a flagship model, however, the Z9 must offer excellent drip resistance. In consideration of this, we decided it would be impossible to equip the camera with a cooling fan that requires an opening that admits cooler air from the outside, the company explains.

This resulted in the Z9 being the only model equipped with an integrated vertical grip that offers heat-dispersion performance sufficient for video recording over extended periods of time without using a cooling fan.

Nikon says that what it has chosen to share here are just a few of the anecdotes from the development cycle of the Z9 and only scratch the surface of the challenges, opportunities, and solutions that were part of the cameras development. The company says that there were features that it wanted to include in the camera at launch that were considered initially but did not make the production deadline. But not to worry: it plans to add those in with firmware updates that allow the camera to improve over time.

The company has already done this once with a major firmware update that arguably could have constituted an entirely new camera.

Ultimately, this is only the beginning of the story, Nikon says.

The tremendous amount of feedback weve received encourages us to push further ahead still. Our mindset is to never be satisfied with things as they are at a particular moment, and our vision is to continue to offer products that exceed user expectations time and again.

Continue reading here:
Untold Stories of the Nikon Z9's Development - PetaPixel

25 Jul 2022 --- Premier Foods is acquiring 100% of The Spice Tailor shares. The Spice Tailor is an authentic Indian and South East Asian meal kit and accompaniment brand. On a cash and debt-free basis, the purchase price amounts to 43.8 million (US$52.5 million).

The Spice Tailor is expected to generate revenue of 17.3 million (US$20.7 million) in the 2022/2023 financial year.

The Spice Tailor is popular with consumers who like scratch cooking and value the strong authentic flavor profiles the products produce. Scratch recipes combine fresh ingredients with pre-prepped or pre-made ingredients.

The Spice Tailor is said to benefit from increased levels of marketing investment to drive product awareness and household penetration, additional new product development resources and access to Premier Foods commercial capabilities and strong retailer relationships.

The authenticity of The Spice Tailor collection is demonstrated in the fact that the great majority of its goods are created in India, via outsourcing to BRC recognized vendors, while operating an asset-light business strategy.

A great majority of The Spice Tailors collection of goods are created in India, making it authentic.Spicing up expansion

Alex Whitehouse, CEO of Premier Foods explains that the acquisition is well aligned with the companys growth strategy and the company sees a clear opportunity to build on the track record of The Spice Tailor.

Premier Foods intends on doing this by leveraging the elements of our branded growth model. He further explains that this acquisition represents a highly complementary geographical fit, and the company sees potential to expand The Spice Tailors distribution in all their target markets.

Adarsh and Anjum Sethia, the founders of The Spice Tailor elaborate on the acquisition and say that they are looking forward to unlocking further growth for the brand which they have nurtured since its inception.

We see Premier with their track record of brand investment and strong commercial relationships, as the perfect fit for The Spice Tailor, driving it onto the next stage of its evolution, they say.

Food industry kitted out

In other meal kit developments, Boskovich Fresh Food Groups subsidiary Fresh Prep launched its retail line Fair Earth Farms. Fair Earth Farms is the first in its category to package organic salad kits and salad blends in plant-based, fully-compostable bags.

The line offers two salad kit flavors and four salad greens blends. The two flavor-forward salad kits speak to the health and earth-conscious consumers looking for a meal with on-trend ingredients.

Each brightly colored package lists the kit ingredients and the fully compostable promise. The triple-washed greens varieties can be found in vitamin-rich options such as Baby Spinach, Baby Arugula, Spring Mix, and Power Greens.

Chef Andrew Hunter of Wolfgang Puck, Niman Ranch, and Kikkoman R&D creatively developed these flavors and recipes for Fair Earth Farms, delivering products that are unique with clean, fresh, and craveable ingredients.

Edited by Mieke Meintjes

To contact our editorial team please email us at editorial@cnsmedia.com

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Premier Foods acquires Indian meal kit brand The Spice Tailor for US$52.5M - Food Ingredients First

Marketers are obsessed with statistics. Over the last decade, customer data collection, usage, and regulation have evolved dramatically. Customer data appears to be a complete solution at first glance.

It allows marketers to personalize campaigns and communications to the individual customer. Benefits also include accurate attribution of marketing expenditure to outcomes. This is termed data-driven marketing, and it wont be possible without a wealth of data.

However, there is a negative side to data availability that marketers are increasingly being forced to confront: data privacy. Companies are changing how they gather and manage customer data as a result of new laws, regulations, and efforts designed to protect user data and adhere to local data laws.

Digital platforms including websites and even performance popular apps understand that consumer opinion is responsible for the heightened focus on data privacy and security. Consumers have become increasingly interested in how their personal information is used and how much of it they are willing to divulge.

As consumers become more aware of data collection methods, their concerns are becoming more pronounced. Anyone who surfs the digital space feels some level of anxiety about access to their personal information.

This growing trend in the users fear of data collection and use looks set to change the face of marketing.

Data privacy refers to the secure management and utilization of user data. There are three major data security issues that data privacy addresses: how entities collect and store user data; if they share user data with third parties; and regulatory privacy laws.

Privacy represents the users right to control data usage by the entities they interact with. Data collected could be:

While this is a basic list of the various elements contained in digital privacy, it gives you a decent understanding of the types of data that your organization is likely already using for marketing analytics.

All the latest reforms in data privacy have had a largely negative impact on marketing teams. Privacy compliance is a primary concern for marketers across all marketing channels.

Part of this process is ensuring that the proper procedures and protocols are observed to keep customers advised of how their sensitive data is managed.

Its easy to see why: a marketers capacity to collect and draw insights quickly is harmed by this heightened attention on privacy, which even makes some of their past marketing technology applications obsolete.

Analytics, on the other hand, is only half of the equation. Marketers are the trustees and caretakers of a companys brand image, and disregarding privacy concerns, whether by choice or circumstance, could harm the companys brand value.

Mishandling consumer data can have serious ramifications for businesses. Marketers have the unenviable job of trying to balance user opinions and data analytical efforts.

Although data privacy and data security are intricately related, they are not synonymous. While data security is concerned with preventing data breaches, data privacy is concerned with the collecting of data and the management of large datasets with data warehouse software such as Apache hive.

This should concern marketers not simply because it is unlawful to mishandle user data, but also because breaching user privacy is bad for business. Collecting more information than is required can undermine a companys reputation.

Data privacy is concerned with acquiring proper consent as well as fully expressing what data will be gathered and how it will be used.

Lets highlight the role of specific data privacy restrictions in todays marketing landscape.

As more consumers become concerned about the unlawful usage of personal information by digital marketers, laws and regulations governing usage are becoming more prevalent.

As a result, marketing professionals need to be conscious of their actions in terms of protecting personal information.

There are two important data privacy legislation that you must consider: the EUs GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), and the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act).

Both of these regulations govern how businesses acquire data and provide people the option to opt-out.

They were the first to provide guidelines for how site owners should treat users from specific geographic areas, such as the state of California or the European Union.

These regulations made it mandatory for everyone to comply with best practices in some way, which was a game-changer.

However, they arent the only regulations available. As more people become worried about how their data is used, local and international legislation is beginning to emerge.

This is why its critical to stay up to date on the latest developments in data privacy. Keep your finger on the pulse of the situation to adapt your methods within the law.

After discussing what digital privacy is and how its evolution is changing the face of marketing, its time to consider how advertisers should adapt.

While there are a variety of ways to accomplish this, including maximizing data, marketers must realize that the days of personal data abundance are long gone.

Unrestricted user data access and usage is gradually becoming obsolete and therefore, its essential to have a strategy for going forward.

Here are some ideas to help you cope with the new wave of data privacy concerns:

Raise advert and communication frequency for a more robust strategy rather than relying solely on a standalone message that gets to the core of your target audience instantly. Orchestration can help data teams easily handle complicated workflows and tasks.

Marketers main focus has been on matching content to certain KPIs up until now. This is where a shift to a greater emphasis on quality content becomes critical.

Instead of trying to appeal to a variety of smaller demographics, you need advertising and creative media that appeal to a large number of people at once.

Its critical to integrate openness and compliance in your data collection approach, as weve seen since the GDPRs implementation.

While you may not always have control over certain aspects of your website, such as Apple and Facebook adverts, you do have some control over others.

Make sure your privacy policies and other policies are easily available on your website. Another good step is to make it easy for people to opt-in or out of certain things, such as email campaigns.

The more transparent you are about these activities, the less your chances of facing user complaints or fines.

Digital advertising is evolving from what it was just a few years ago. New approaches like affiliate marketing without a website have altered the marketing landscape in recent years.

Its vital to keep in mind that consumer behavior hasnt changed drastically in general. People continue to purchase items to meet a need or engage with businesses they trust.

Instead of depending solely on analytics to make all of your marketing plans, its time to take a closer look at your target audience and figure out how to create the best experiences for them.

So, what could advertisers expect in terms of digital marketing and privacy in the future? Here are some expectations to watch out for:

This may seem self-evident, but when it comes to personal privacy, there will be a greater emphasis on giving consumers more choices.

This means that brands must be prepared to offer a variety of opt-in and opt-out options to ensure that users are happy with the entire data collection process.

Its also a good idea to plan for future legislation that makes all of this mandatory.

As additional jurisdictions begin to implement regulations such as GDPR, your website and marketing channels must be prepared to change as needed.

As more territories implement data privacy legislation, process transparency will become more important.

This means that marketers must be willing to give customers a behind-the-scenes look and clearly explain how particular sorts of data are used. This may be both a blessing and a curse for marketers in fiercely-competitive niches.

Consumers are aware of the need for personal data when theyre interacting with a certain brand, and they usually approve of that brands use of their data.

Their attitude changes when such information is shared with a third party.

As a result, marketers should expect less digital data to be sold to third parties in the future. There will likely be a specific opt-in approach that allows consumers to dictate their preferences.

The good news is that technology is advancing to keep up with demand. Hadoop and other similar tools make it easier to handle data processing and storage for large data applications.

As Google moves away from cookies, alternative solutions for giving marketers comparable data sets to operate with are emerging.

In reality, many of the latest data-driven marketing solutions integrate versions of AI (artificial intelligence) to analyze customer behavior more effectively.

This would mean better data analytics than we had in the past.

Establishing a transparent, permission-based connection with customers with a clear value proposition can help companies create trust. Companies who invest in these aspects of data relationship management have the chance to assume a leading position regarding data privacy, which could pay off in the long run.

Tune in to Martech Cube Podcast for visionary Martech Trends, Martech News, and quick updates by business experts and leaders!

Pohan Lin Senior Web Marketing and Localizations Manager, DatabricksPohan Lin is the Senior Web Marketing and Localizations Manager at Databricks, a global PySpark and AI provider connecting the features of data warehouses and data lakes to create lakehouse architecture. With over 18 years of experience in web marketing, online SaaS business, and ecommerce growth. Pohan is passionate about innovation and is dedicated to communicating the significant impact data has in marketing.

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Tackling The Issues of Data Privacy in The Marketing Landscape - Martechcube

1990s. Rural Tamil Nadu. A group of people sat under the shade of a generous leafy tree, with eyes closed. A while ago, they had been sitting in the open, parched and sweating, feeling all the torrid effects of the southern Indian sun. Now, in protective green shade, with a cool breeze blowing, they realized the essence, and the benediction of the big tree.

Sadhguru led them through an inner process, where they actually experienced the exchange of breath with the tree, breathing out carbon dioxide, which the tree inhaled, and breathing in oxygen that the tree exhaled. An experiential process where they clearly saw that one half of their breathing apparatus was hanging out there. These were the early days when Sadhguru had just begun planting trees in what he called the most difficult terrain the minds of people. This first-hand experience of oneness with all life galvanized the first set of ardent volunteers who pioneered this movement to restore our planet.

What began with a few thousand volunteers in the 1990s in the form of Vanashree, an eco-drive aimed at greening the Velliangiri Hills, soon grew into Project GreenHands, a large state-wide campaign with millions of volunteers across Tamil Nadu in the first decade of 2000s. In 2017, when Sadhguru led the incredible Rally for Rivers, it snowballed into the largest environmental movement on the planet supported by 162 million Indians, further leading to intense on-ground activity with the extremely hands-on, proof-of-concept project Cauvery Calling. Now, it will include billions of global citizens in an unprecedented movement to create a Conscious Planet and Save Soil. Sadhgurus mission to reach 4 billion people on Earth has been the product of three decades of work and evolution.

One of the crucial aspects in the evolution of this movement has no doubt been the sheer number of people it has inspired. However, equally important has been its growing levels of influence. From local communities, organizations, farmers, schools and state governments, to helping shape the National River Policy in India and now to working with some of the most environmentally-relevant international agencies, world leaders and governments the movement has been making quantum leaps in the past three decades.

The phenomenal endeavor of the Save Soil movement is to bring citizens of the entire democratic world together to speak in one voice and affirm our commitment to the health and future of Earth. When issues of ecology become electoral issues, when the peoples support empowers governments to adopt long-term policy changes to safeguard soil, when businesses, organizations, individuals and governments make soil health a primary priority that is when this sustained effort will find fruition.

This has been a journey from GreenHeads to GreenHands to GreenHearts. So who will save soil? Each and every one of us.

Let us make it happen!

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About Conscious Planet - Save Soil - Sadhguru

Consciousness is, for each of us, all there is: the world, the self, everything. But consciousness is also subjective and difficult to define. The closest we have to a consensus definition is that consciousness is something it is like to be. There is something it is like to be me or you but presumably there is nothing it is like to be a table or an iPhone.

How do our conscious experiences arise? Its a longstanding question, one that has perplexed scientists and philosophers for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The orthodox scientific view today is that consciousness is a property of physical matter, an idea we might call physicalism or materialism. But this is by no means a universally held view, and even within physicalism there is little agreement about how consciousness emerges from, or otherwise relates to, physical stuff.

Neuroscientists have found important clues by looking at the activity of the 86 billion neurons and trillions of neural connections inside the human brain. One of the first questions they asked was which parts of the brain of any brain are associated with consciousness. For instance, you might instinctively assume that conscious experiences are more likely if a brain or brain region contains a large number of neurons.

Surprisingly, though, the human cerebellum a sort of mini brain hanging off the back of your cortex contains about three-quarters of the neurons in your brain but seems to have almost nothing to do with consciousness. One reason we know this is because some people are born without a functioning cerebellum, and while they experience some problems, a lack of consciousness is not one of them.

There are, however, some bundles of neurons that do appear to be vital for consciousness. If damage occurs to specific parts of the thalamus, or to a particular region of the brain stem, the result can be permanent unconsciousness. But are these brain regions actually central to generating conscious experiences, or are they more like a power socket that simply allows whatever is plugged into it to work?

Work involving brain imaging techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) paints a more complex picture. Several decades ago, neuroscientists including Francis Crick and Christof Koch began to search for what they called the neural correlates of consciousness: particular patterns of brain activity that relate to given conscious states the experience of a painful toothache, for example.

As studies like this have progressed it has become clearer that consciousness depends on specific ways that different parts of the brain particularly the cortex communicate with one another. For example, by injecting a pulse of energy into the brain using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and using electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor the response, a team of neuroscientists led by Giulio Tononi and Marcello Massimini found that the electrical echo generated by the energy pulse will bounce all around a conscious brain, but stays very localised in an unconscious brain. In other words, the conscious brain is much more connected.

Do experiments like this bring us closer to understanding what consciousness is? Some might argue not. In the 1990s, the philosopher David Chalmers made an influential contribution to the consciousness debate by distinguishing between what he termed the easy problem, or problems, and the hard problem of consciousness.

The easy problems involve understanding how the brain and body gives rise to functions like perception, cognition, learning and behaviour. These problems are called easy not because they are trivial, but because there seems no reason why they cant be solved in terms of physical mechanisms albeit potentially very complex ones.

The hard problem is the enigma of why and how any of this should be accompanied by conscious experience at all: why do we each have an inner universe?

To address this hard problem, we need theories of consciousness that can bridge the gap from the world of physical processes to the world of conscious experiences: that can take us from correlation towards explanation.

There are now many theories of consciousness out there in the field of cognitive neuroscience: higher-order theories, global workspace theories, and integrated information theories, theories that in their strongest form imply that consciousness is spread widely throughout universe, and that even an electron may be conscious. There are even illusionist theories which attempt to persuade us that consciousness doesnt really exist at least not in the way we normally think about it.

The theory Ive been developing is a version of predictive processing theory. When I see a chair in front of me, its not that the eyes are transparent windows out onto the world and my brain just reads out chair. Instead there are noisy sensory signals impacting my retina and my brain has to use its prior expectations about what might be out there in order to interpret this ambiguous sensory data.

In a little more detail, the idea is that the brain is constantly calibrating its perceptual predictions using data from the senses. Predictive processing theory has it that perception involves two counterflowing streams of signals. There is an inside-out or top down stream that conveys predictions about the causes of sensory inputs.

Then there are outside-in or bottom up prediction errors the sensory signals which report the differences between what the brain expects and what it gets. By continually updating its predictions to minimise sensory prediction errors, the brain settles on an evolving best guess of its sensory causes, and this is what we consciously perceive. We dont passively perceive our worlds we actively generate them.

Predictive processing is well suited for explaining why a particular experience is the way it is and not some other way, because we can understand these differences in terms of the different kinds of perceptual predictions the brain is making. In my theory, these differences are particularly significant when it comes to the experience of being a self, which I argue is not an inner essence that does the perceiving, but rather a collection of perceptions itself. The self, in my view, is a special kind of controlled hallucination that has been shaped by evolution to regulate and control the living body.

Its not exactly a theory of consciousness, but you could call it a theory for consciousness. And its through ideas like this that I believe we will eventually come up with a satisfying scientific account of consciousness. Instead of solving the hard problem head on, we may end up dissolving it by developing and testing detailed explanations of how the properties of consciousness depend on their underlying mechanisms. In this way, we will have solved what I call the real problem of consciousness.

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What is consciousness? | New Scientist