January 2, 2005
all the “good stuff”
I said in The Hughtrain that people are becoming more spiritually demanding. And they want products that better reflect this.
Which means your brand will have to do a much more clever job of articulating all the “good stuff”: Values. Purpose. Belief. Integrity. Compassion etc.
Sadly for the typical Madison Avenue ad agency, this stuff is not the preferred currency. They prefer to go with what they know best: Vanity. Greed. Fear. Lust. Paranoia etc.
Which is why I also wrote in The Hughtrain: “The future of advertising is clients increasingly asking their agencies to help re-invent not just their brands, but their actual companies. The future is agencies being increasingly unable to deliver on this.
Out of this wreckage a new industry will emerge…”
[UPDATE:] This is wonderful: “An Alchemical Table of Business Elelments”. From Fouroboros.
Hope or Fear?
Joy or Jealousy?
Making the former requires humans, philosophers. The latter, robots and technicians. Robots are easier to calibrate, hence their appeal but also easier to copy, hence their weakness. Yes indeed, a clash of Ideals and of measurement systems. Buckle up.
Geez, I’ve been clearing brush for the Hughtrain all this time? Clang, clang, clang went the trolley…
http://www.alchemysite.com/blog/au_screen_2.jpg
I agree that people are becoming spiritually more demanding — and not just of their communications from companies. Question. How spiritually demanding are people becoming of what these companies actually sell them? I’d like to know what the views are. If (as I hope, but don’t necessarily expect!) that’s also a growing trend, then there’s some fall-out to come.
Are companies that actually only sell unecessary or overpriced crap (products or services) going down?
If, for example, the power of bloggers’ genuine passion for their company and love of its products/services is the next big thing in the relationship between companies and their customers, there must be many companies that have less than a cat’s chance in hell of surviving. We must all know companies that are going to have a tough time tapping into the non-existent passion and interest of their people.
So are these companies going down? Are we heading for a post Growth Fetish world? Or are the millions to be made from selling crap going to find a way of communicating that works for them? What is going to be the corporate trash world’s response to blogs over the next 5 – 10 years?
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
I think it’s very elitist and arrogant to think that bloggers alone will make or break companies. How much of the buying public is going to google blogs for somebody else’s opinion of Hormel Chile?
I’d like to hear some practical, explicit examples of this “product spirituality” stuff…it’s starting to hit my ear like so much hot air.
Erm.… Rose, I never said blogs will replace marketing, especially mass-marketing.
But they have their uses.
If you need examples, read the Hughtrain again, if you haven’t already– the “Expressive Capital” bit.
I believe Apple and Harley Davidson are mentioned.
My two cents: Making or selling a product is like anything else– cooking a meal, gardening, drawing a picture.
i.e. it’s as spiritual as you say it is
A thought just struck me… are we becoming more spiritual in our consumption and less in our religion? Would that imply that there is a certain need for spirituality deeply rooted in the human mind?
Interesting idea, Mark. I do think we’re getting more “spiritual” in a non-religious way. Yep. D’accord.
Howdy, Hugh.
Thanks for the kind mention. Yah, the table was something we found a real need for in evolving clients past the “Okay, smart guy(s), how do we adopt your ’ Metaphysics of Brand’ thing”? Useful new conversations needed to reclaim old language, not create a new, cute one.
It fills the gap of “WTF is values? And why should we care?” Companies and their brands are willed into existence, saved from death (Harley, anyone?), or chucked into the abyss by people. Now, how do we understand “will” and self-image so we get loved instead of chucked? Ergo, the pretty table as a common language of meaning and building blocks to get there. This is where Lovemarks fails for me and Johnnie Moore and, it seems, you too. Kevin Roberts doesn’t go far enough in asking: Why do people matter? Where does love come from? Or he asks those basic questions too far-gone in the cycle. Why? Because he’s still animatronic, thanks to that big-ass Saatchi and it’s legacy-philosophy he’s shackled to.
You’re too right, Brand is far more spiritual than spreadsheet. But where are the Chapels to Company Connection? The Directors of Compassion Delivery instead of Customer Service Managers? They’re coming, some are already here. Welcome to the tip of the spear – an industry that does not yet exist. Meet the Metaphysics of Work.
Rock on.
[ p.s.: Can you change the mailto on your link to fouro@alchemysite.com or just to the main blog: http://www.alchemysite.com/blog/fouroboros.html ]
Yeah, I was responding to Huw about the blogging thing, not what you wrote Hugh.
As for getting more spiritual in a non-religious way, that probably is indeed a trend, but I don’t believe that any company could satisfy man’s thirst for God for very long, so expect consumers to be very fickle as they jump around looking for something that fills the God-sized hole in each of us.
That drawing rocks.
This is great — and I love the new “metaphysics of work” idea, but there’s a nagging, and perhaps exciting thought that’s been bugging me about this.
And that is that I think most companies themselves do not HAVE any such values, purpose, beliefs or integrity, as companies — so what happens when their brilliant ad agency puts together a series of ads saying they’re a company who values their customers (and by the same token THEIR EMPLOYEES), and what they believe in, and that they do so with integrity. Then the next day or two, bloggers and other folks who work for the company who’ve seen the new ad campaign start talking about what a bunch of shit that is and what the “company” REALLY thinks of it’s consumers and it’s employees…
I don’t know — maybe at the end of the day it would end up being the ultimate in accountability for a company, in a way forcing them to A) care about their customer, and B) care about their employees.
Ah, fuck, I’m talking about Utopia… it’ll never happen;) — but what a ride it’s gonna be (or IS).
Jon, thanks very kindly, and I’d say bingo, for the following…
Rose, you may know this but the Shakers have a phrase: Hands to work, hearts to God. It’s a nice way to approach the duality of life. Companies don’t have to replace God or pretend to – and who’d want that benchmark anyway? But companies can get out of our way or stop asking us to check our ideals at the door in the morning. Even better, they can and will – and some already are – allow and encourage our search for self-actualization, in whatever excellent form suits us, as Hugh notes. The concept of profit and purpose are not mutually exclusive — those Shakers see their furniture craft and farming methods as affirmation of *their* view of an ideal. For them, a beautiful chair proves their particular divine order. For somebody viewing Pollock or van Gogh, similar thoughts often accrue at exceptionalism from plain old humans. “Am I a sack of skin or something more magical?” More, many more, choose the latter, even if they’re not into giving title to some guy with a beard up in the clouds. Not a problem. Science is spiritual too. I know this because many scientists will tell me so, all I had to do was ask.
Although their language may be slightly different, Stephen Spielberg or Joe Machinist, when allowed to exert, view their pursuits as ones with deeply held meaning and benefits. Spielberg has control over his means, Joe, probably not so. Adam Smith even warned against this people-truth in Wealth of Nations, but B-schools ignore his 200 year old warning.
Communicating, bonding, creating, doing, all as well as we can, these things drive people’s self-image off the charts and in the opposite direction of entropy. But you gotta think different as they say. Along with some others, Google gets this with their 4 days for us, 1 for you employee culture. It’s very simple: 80% = 120%. But “100%” as a mandated requirement, faux commitment and borrowed interest, is really 50%, even averaging in those who self-motivate. You get 120 for 80 by aligning yourself and your company and brand with how people self-align and self-imagine. Bend the company, not the people, otherwise they will fight you to distraction. Call it Emotional Ergonomics. I do.
Well Rose I didn’t expect my comment to be taken as a blanket prediction for all companies and all products. Maybe there are thresholds of importance for people looking for meaning or recommendations, whether from company or customer bloggers, or even the people they actually talk to! But where are those thresholds? How important is coffee? (Fair Trade) soap (Body Shop)? compared with presidential elections? People are looking for meaning, honesty, values in a massive range of products, because consumer power is vested in every purchase … Blogs didn’t start that search but they are adding huge visibility to companies and other organisations that makes it hard to hide the values they have.
Anyway, moving on…
People getting spiritual in a non-religious way sounds right. Not everyone votes; fewer people go to church; more people buy. If people look for meaning in their everyday lives, then it’s likely to be non-religious. Can buying stuff supply that meaning? It doesn’t seem likely to me; and the evidence presented in Growth Fetish (Clive Hamilton — http://www.plutobooks.com) asks some awkward questions about that very idea.
But hey Jon, here we are in a time when people are looking for and judging the values of the companies they deal with, and companies are having some fun dealing with that. The ride IS happening, and if some employees and customers get treated better as a result, then that’s OK with me. But I get the feeling that the way this plays out is not some linear thing about more of the same …
Business Elements
An alchemical table of business elements.…..