August 29, 2004

the hughtrain has been rewritten

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(Read the whole thing here)
The (Upda­ted) Hugh­train Mani­festo: “The mar­ket for something to believe in is infinite.”

This car­toon directly above explains exactly why I said, “For­get the fancy buzz­words. The future of busi­ness is spi­ri­tual…”
This goes with what I said pre­viously:“It’s this utter belief in huma­nity and human poten­tial that exci­tes us. We humans want to believe in our own spe­cies. And we want peo­ple, com­pa­nies and pro­ducts in our lives that make it easier to do so. That is human nature.“

Think less about what your pro­duct does, and think more about human poten­tial. What sta­te­ment about huma­nity does your pro­duct make?

The big­ger the sta­te­ment, the big­ger the idea, the big­ger your brand will become.
I know, I know, spi­ri­tua­lity and mar­ke­ting don’t mix, right?
You sure about that?

(Read the whole thing here)
I deci­ded that “Smar­ter Con­ver­sa­tions” wasn’t cut­ting it, somehow. Any fool can be smar­ter.
But to borrow from Paul’s Let­ter to The Corinthians, without Love, you have nothing.
When some­body like me or Evelyn Rodri­guez or John Strande talks about ente­ring “The Crea­tive Age”, we’re not saying the world will one day be run by graphic desig­ners. We’re tal­king about “pur­pose and belief” i.e. human, spi­ri­tual values dri­ving the brand to ever inc­rea­sing degrees, rather than just what it does or how much it costs.
That means brands, busi­nes­ses and peo­ple will have to become more spi­ri­tually sophis­ti­ca­ted. And that means mar­ke­ting folk will have to start beha­ving less like priests, more like monks.

4 Responses to “the hughtrain has been rewritten”

  1. Miguel says:

    If only our poli­ti­cians could grasp this fact, the world would be very dif­fe­rent. Peo­ple do not yearn to live in a fear based society or in one that thinks that just by twea­king the deux machina a little bit we will all be in uto­pia. They really want someone who can touch their hearts. Ins­pi­ra­tion touches the sprit and the Spirit.

  2. Ron says:

    Hugh
    could you explain the dif­fe­rence bet­ween a priest and a monk?

  3. hugh macleod says:

    The monk’s job is to have the vision.
    The priest’s job is to explain the vision in terms unders­tan­da­ble to the flock.

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