My friend and hairdresser Crissie  set me up with a cut and color last week.  Meantime we exchanged various cultural observations, some inspired by my recent trip to London and Paris.

Travel is always personally expansive. Yet leaving the U.S. to visit western Europe this time was like going to Mars to see the Earth clearly. For me, this trip crystallized things I've been pondering for a while now about American culture: our too-often thoughtless development of open and residential space; a general lack of innovative public transportation adoption; wastefulness; and relentless consumerism.

Case in point: Crissie mentioned a new product she had discovered that seemed emblematic of mindless consumption: charms for CROCS.

Suddenly, Crissie stepped back from me in her chair. Her scissors dropped to her side, and exclaimed, "My God! We're a country at war...and we're decorating our CROCS!"

There's nothing inherently wrong with CROC charms. They must make a lot of little kids really happy. And I'll bet you can collect a whole bunch, too, like the ingenious Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh! or Webkins infinite franchises. (Our only out seems to be waiting until our kids graduate to the next age-appropropriate collectible scheme. I digress.)

Our conversation helped gel this overly simplistic equation. As pedantic as it may seem, we need some framework to help reinvent the long overdue American industrial-consumer complex.

Bottom up, this means helping each other make mindful consumer choices. (Do we really need Croc charms?)

Top down, this means coaching businesses and brands to think beyond primarily advancing their self-serving needs, toward better serving their constituents and, when possible, the greater good too. It's doable. As marketers, few of us have really challenged ourselves to think in this way. What if we did?

Business can bridge gaps -- never more efficiently and easier to do than now, thanks to the Internet. Business can fuel its own growth and simultaneously address social needs. As the old SNL skit goes, business today can be "a floor wax and an ice cream topping!"

It's beginning to happen. GE's introduction of a new credit card last week helps consumers offset greenhouse gas emissions via purchase of carbon offsets with reward points. This program understandably has been met with mixed reviews.

We've got public-private partnerships. Isn't it time to think about public-private-consumer partnerships for positive change?

Last year, Mentos reconfigured marketing plans when this video by two unknowns circled the globe online.  This June they even set a world record of Diet Coke / Mentos geysers.

Perhaps Starbucks has an opportunity to do something similar -- except with social gravitas -- with Sudan and frappucino lovers everywhere, now that this video is making the rounds: