As I began writing this blog, Part 2 of 3 in the Architects, Inventors, and Collaborators blog series, the name Cindy Gallop was top of mind.
You could say she’s notorious (befitting, as her apartment was once the set of a late Christopher Wallace music video) for her radical approaches to marketing, technology and advertising.
A household name in the UK, she was central to advertising firm Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s expansion into the Asia Pacific region and the US, where she served as the Chair. In 2003, Advertising Women of New York named her Advertising Woman of the Year, and in 2006 she started her own consultancy, Cindy Gallop LLC. It is Cindy’s work in the last three years, however, which appears to fuel her now cultish following.
During a 2009 TED talk, Gallop launched the website MakeLoveNotPorn.com, a forum for discussion on sex. Just four months ago she launched MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, a site aimed at redefining the myths that pornography perpetuates by featuring “real people” engaging in sexual activities. As she explained in an interview with the New York Times this September, “The issue I’m tackling is not porn. It’s the complete lack of open, healthy dialogue around porn and sex.”
The following year, Cindy launched IfWeRanTheWorld.com, which the site describes as “a real-world experiment in tapping good intentions and turning them into tangible, do-able microactions that anyone and everyone can help you to do.” Participants include fashion behemoth Levi’s Jeans who partnered for a campaign aimed at revitalizing the manufacturing town of Braddock, Pennsylvania.
Social Media Week believes that technology can empower individuals to direct their own future through sparking change and pursuing creative endeavors. And for that to happen, we need disruptive, audacious inventors like Cindy Gallop to keep inventing transformational tools, blazing new trails and inspiring the masses.
(Or in her words: “I like to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business.”)
Join Cindy and our other inventors on Wednesday, February 20th, when we discuss new tools for taking the future into our own hands, and ask “what will your role will be in this changing world and how can we help you can get there?”