The New Marketing Paradigm is Based on Abundance

How would things be different in this world if people actually believed there was enough to go around? It’s a concept too profound – and unfortunately too far from our current state of anxiety – to imagine. So ingrained is the ‘psychology of lack’ in our consumerist culture that the idea we might just have enough now is heretical.

But we do. Have enough. Most of us.

Maybe not the woman profiled in the New York Times this morning who is currently raising her two daughters on nothing but food stamps; and maybe not the women in the DR Congo who have lost husbands and children to war and famine; and maybe not the man I saw on the subway yesterday who stood in a crowded car and started his tale of woe only to peter out in despair when he could see that no one was listening.

These people are exempt.

So, if we have enough already, why do so many of us feel so unsettled? The Taoists call the majority of our day-to-day whims “artificial desires.” They do not grow out of a need in the body or the soul, but from the ego. Artificial desires are the desires–big and small–that have the power to manipulate even the most rational people into raving lunatics. These are the desires that are confounding because they are not actually tied to any real need and when they are fed, they just get stronger. They’re like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors: at first they appear exotic and compelling, attention grabbing and seemingly unique (“This is MY desire!”). But as we feed them they grow into something bigger than our will, bigger than ourselves. As we go on feeding them, they threaten to consume us.

The reality of our consumerist culture today is that we are all swimming in a sea of messaging supporting a psychology of lack, artificial desires, and what Lao Tzu considered one of the worst of all sins: “incitement to envy.” My industry – advertising and marketing – has preyed on it for years and would continue to do so if it weren’t starting to wear thin.

No sin can exceed

Incitement to envy;

No calamity’s worse

Than to be discontented. –Lao Tzu

Discontented. It seems so mild a state to be considered the worst of all “calamities.” A starving person is not discontented. A dying person is not discontented. These people have bigger issues to contend with than contentment.

And yet, to someone who truly believes in abundance in the overarching, all-encompassing sense of the word, it IS the worst state a human can inhabit. It is the man or woman who has received the bounty of the universe and chosen not to recognize it, who is discontented. This person’s real needs have been met and yet he cannot feel it. He is either distracted or misguided.

Which is not meant to be a criticism, but a fact, and one that must be changed on a person-by-person basis if we’re going to make progress in this world.

One of the acknowledged blessings of the current economic downturn is that it has opened eyes. We’re finally receiving a new kind of mass media message: about people doing more with less, prizing experiences over material objects, and spending more time with friends and family. What is behind the current buzz around the concept of ‘sustainability’ if not the acknowledgement of abundance and an active appreciation of all we’ve been given, the raw materials that exist for making a system work and work and work. The key to abundance is sustainable action and the key to sustainable action is the belief in abundance.

Maybe it is the emergence of this new attitude towards our natural resources and human resources that is making the old game played by so many advertisers ring false. Advertisers who insist on using manufactured ‘need states’ as a crutch are setting themselves up for a backlash as people wake up to the fact that what they have already is plenty. What was once clever marketing is now – or will soon be – revealed for what it is: manipulation.

In the hey day of innovation, before the Great Recession took hold, before most of us even knew it was around the corner, there was a popular term used to describe the common formula employed by marketers with an imperative to grow: white space. White space indicated the area on the competitive matrix as-of-yet unfilled by a competitive product. We – and I say ‘we’ because I was in this movie, too – identified white space by talking to consumers, watching them, following them, probing them for unmet needs and “pain points.” Companies raced to get to the most compelling white spaces in their industry first. What we were doing was manufacturing a need and then manufacturing the product to fill it.

This formula worked in the recent past and will continue to work for some brands and some consumers well into the future. But, change is on the horizon and the old formula is already being replaced by a new set of rules.

Advertisers hold on to your hats! This is the moment we all love to harp on and hate on: the paradigm shift.

My conviction is growing that this old style of marketing – manufacturing a need only to fill it with a product – is not only damaging and destructive, but strongly tied to a period pre-Recession, in which abundance was defined not by intangibles and natural resources, but by commercial options.

So, what will replace the old way of advertising in a culture of true abundance? Why a “new and improved!” way, of course.

The old way served the artificial needs of the ego. The new way will fill the real needs of the body and soul.

The old way required a clear statement of the problem because it was largely a manufactured problem. In the new way, the problem doesn’t need restating because the need arises within the body and soul of the customer. They are clear on the need because it comes from their gut, and they know exactly what they want to fill it.

The old way assumed scarcity and played on anxieties. The new way assumes abundance and fosters generosity.

The Old Way:

Advertiser: Psst…hey, you. Aren’t you tired of those other sodas with their same old flavor?

Customer: Well, I never thought about it, but yeah. I guess I am tired of that old flavor.

Advertiser: Try the drink that has all the cool kids talking.

Customer: I’m a cool kid. I should be talking about this.

Advertiser: It’s different. Just like you.

Customer: Thanks for noticing. I always thought I had a little something special to offer. Now other people will know that, too, when they see me drinking your new soda.

The New Way:

Customer: I’m thirsty.

Advertiser: We sell a beverage.

Customer: I don’t like artificial ingredients and I am trying to cut out plastics.

Advertiser: This beverage is natural and comes in a glass bottle.

Customer: I need something convenient and low impact – on my wallet and the planet.

Advertiser: Here’s where you can find us, and once you’re done we can be recycled.

Customer: This seems like exactly the product to serve my need. I think I’ll tell my like-minded friends about you.

Advertiser: Likewise, you seem like just the type of customer we’re in business to serve. Glad we could help.

Perhaps the old way was better at swaying mass audiences; you didn’t need to know all that much about your actual customer because you dominated the “conversation” from the start. You told them what their need was and then you filled it. In the new way, you can see that the brand has already worked out who they are talking to and what that person wants. They have aligned themselves with the body and soul desires of a particular type of customer. When that customer’s need arises, they are clearly positioned to fill it, without too much hype or effort.

The scariest part – for marketers anyway – about the New Way is that it requires a deep understanding of what one has to offer, what the customer wants, and the natural intersections that exist. And while it seems more passive, it doesn’t have to be. It’s just more targeted.

The shift from a psychology of lack to a psychology of abundance won’t happen overnight, but it is happening. It hasn’t been talked about much, but the multi-tasking abilities and wide-open world the youngest generation of employees and entrepreneurs was born into is a precursor. They’re set up to believe that there’s plenty – of information, of ideas, of food, of money, of love and kindness, of toothpaste…whatever – to go around, and come around again, and again. Maybe it will be their ascension into the product developer’s seat, the marketing executive’s seat, and the CEO’s seat, that triggers the final push into a place where there’s room for everyone at the potluck as long as they bring something of value, something that feeds the gut, to the table.