I thought about this podcast invitation for a long time. So not about whether I should accept it or not. When two proven marketing professionals like Max & Michael lure me into their #marketinginsights podcast studio, there's no stopping them. I'm already sitting in front of their microphone before it's even set up. By the way, you can listen to it herewhat we talked about. (Spoiler alert: about marketing.)
But then, afterwards. After this conversation, I was still thinking about all the things that people mean when they say marketing. And about content marketing, of which I am a fervent advocate, assuming ... Yes: assuming what?
TOO LAZY TO READ ON? THEN LISTEN TO ME:
In the blogcast, I read this recent blog article to you. With emphasis, of course!
Admittedly, I've had these post-podcast question marks swirling around in my head for some time now. If only because it has a lot to do with my own biography, with my hero's journey (in the mythological sense) and with what once felt like heroic deeds. But isn't it the case that heroic deeds feel like heroic deeds above all for the heroic perpetrators themselves, just as the person who pees their pants is the only one who enjoys the all-too-transient feeling of warmth?
Some time ago, I met a person I didn't know, but he knew me. He announced this with the exclamation: "Oh, an advertising legend!". Maybe he just mistook me for someone else. (If so, hopefully with Howard L. Gossage.) There was a time when I would have been proud of being called that. But this time I cringed inwardly. Because with increasing frequency, when I see commercials, I ask myself the following:
(1) Did I also blow such lukewarm vapors out of my cheeks back then, deeply convinced that reasonably sane people would therefore rather buy my clients' products than their competitors'?
(2) Isn't it the same pathetic meta-story over and over again that is pumped into the nimble target group via the advertising channels? You're not enough if you don't have this here or that there! You have to drive this car, wear this diaper, you have to smell like this, you have to wipe away your dust with this, your furniture should be just as nice, here are the right clothes for you ... no: sorry - but not, here are the right ones ... this is how you wash, cook, buy, and if not, then you're missing something. Then your life isn't complete and is just that: your life, so it's wrong. You can't want that, please: the wrong life.
This meta-story is what most campaigns use over and over again to cut a swathe through the credit cards of potential customers, isn't it? It's the story that's most profitable.
It's true that nobody is perfect, but in the light of these thoughts, there's not much left for a former advertising zampano to proudly proclaim himself a hero in front of his great-grandchildren.
Seduce - what for?
Suddenly, a standard statement from my lecture on storytelling in marketing came to mind: "Advertising must seduce with intelligence, charm and elegance." Somehow I still see it that way today, but then again I don't. Not quite.
The first question that immediately comes to mind is: Seduce - why?
Question number two is: Seduce - why?
We quickly tumble down the rabbit hole into the economic-prosperity-growth wonderland, above whose front door "What are we here for?" flashes enticingly in bright neon letters. Flashing enticingly thanks to green electricity, of course.
So this kind of thing swirled around in me after I drove to one of my keynote appearances by car, with the podcast date behind me, thanks to the weather-related suspension of rail services, to Nuremberg this time, now past Munich, along a column of trucks, bumper to bumper, in an almost endless row and each of them loaded to the top. Spare parts? Food? Stuff? - Who knows.
I suspect it mainly contained things that would eventually end up with someone who wants something they don't need. Should want. To make him (or her) want what they don't need, you need marketing and advertising, whether you like it or not.
This also applies to products and services that everyone needs but nobody knows about yet. Especially so. After all, who would be interested in green electricity if they didn't know it existed? Exactly. Skilful marketing first listens, gains insights, helps useful products into the world and finally tells people through communication: this is for you. The maxim: "Look for a problem, not a product" applies without restriction.
However, the problems that are commonly found are as follows:
"How do we utilize our production capacities?"
"How do we outperform/defeat/destroy the competition?"
"How do we make more profit in the next quarter than in the last?"
You ask yourself such things and then look for a product that, spurred on by the seductive power of marketing and advertising, answers all questions at the same time and leads to an endless ringtone in the cash register. Could it be that this is how tinnitus became a widespread disease?
It's about growth and dominance. That - but above all the hope for it - is stuffed into trucks, which then pile up along Munich, among other places, while I whizz past them.
Is this really the last word in wisdom, even though everyone knows what this is doing to us and our planet?
Is there no other way? Better in fact?
How: better? And what needs to change?
The way things are, the fundamental story on which all this is built must first change, because only then will anything change. We are where we are because we are who we are. And we are like the stories we tell ourselves and each other. That's the way it is with us humans, called homo narrans or storytelling animals for good reason: Stories are our inner operating system that drives us, thinks within us and guides us on the outside.
Have fun!
"When people cannot find deep meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure," said the wise Viktor E. Frankl. What this looks like can soon be seen in the Black Friday clamour, in the gearbox on the shopping Saturdays before Christmas and in the fact that in our so-called civilization, shopping has long since taken first place in the hit parade of the most popular leisure activities.
We watch open-mouthed in amazement as prosperity (still) rises and life satisfaction falls, while the number of mentally ill people explodes all around us. Especially among young people.
And more and more people are talking about a loneliness epidemic, quite loudly in the USA, the country that committed itself to unlimited possibilities in its founding dream, which is often and probably not coincidentally formulated as "from rags to riches".
I just read that Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is one of the "fastest growing sports", whatever that means. I assume it means that when two guys in a cage beat each other with everything possible until one cries, the viewership goes through the roof. Or dies. Lots of viewership in turn means heaps of advertising exposure, opportunities to show people stuff they should buy to make them feel complete as they stumble through lives they feel are incomplete.
Have you noticed anything?
I notice that something is obviously not quite right here. Something is missing. Yes, that's right: the meaning. In fact, it's not missing, but most people can't find it, so ... see above. When you're dizzy, you hold on to the outside - when you're unsure of yourself on the inside, you look for support in external things. On a nice pair of new shoes, on a tank, on the throat of one of the others.
What would we be there for? What would companies, the economy, products and services be for in the best case scenario? Profitable business with integrity has the benevolent, long-term effect of action as its first KPI, instead of the illusion of eternal growth as its basis. Because no one needs more, but everyone needs better: more beautiful, simpler, healthier ... This is how we grow beyond ourselves without limits and free ourselves from the poison of an unlived life. Purpose is the new profit could be the title of a new core story about the economy.
This includes a second part, namely the realization that inner longing is never satisfied by matter accumulated on the outside, but with experienced meaning. Thus, what is lamented all around as renunciation would in truth be an escape from over-indulgenceand a break into freedom. Then we are not obsessed with the things we want to possess, but which possess us in experienced practice. As soon as being is the new having , we are not seducible.
Economy is good - good for something.
Is that anti-business? Is it naively socially romantic? Is it neo-communism or even New Age drivel? Not at all, because all of this is based on the truism that resources are finite. This has nothing to do with ideology. The fact that this fact is structurally ignored, however, has a lot to do with idiocy. A humanistic, i.e. radically new concept of the economy is profoundly and explicitly pro-business, pragmatic to the core and long overdue. Because, in a nutshell: If we humans no longer exist, or we've all gone completely mad, there's no more money to be made, not even with cryptocurrency.
Can a new concept of economy succeed? I am firmly convinced of this, even if I don't really know how. But the ideas of the post-growth economy (with the emphasis on economy) are beacons of hope at this point. Just like the many new entrepreneurs with a values-based perspective on what they do, but above all the growing number of intrapreneurs who are initiating, driving and leading a substantial, sustainable transformation in traditional companies from within. Explicitly for their companies, not against them. For companies that are not just good, but good for something.
This is where the keywords Meaning and Purpose come into play, which - although I can call myself their evangelist - are accompanied by the utmost skepticism on my part. Because when I hear Purpose, I can already hear the imbalance of the spin cycle of the highly active Markedingsda washing machine, which applies a few green stains to the unfortunately not quite so white vests: Green-, Mean-, Woke- ... you wash it. I haven't misheard myself too often yet.
That's the thing - Markedingsda: everything and everyone becomes a product, advertising becomes adverstalking.
"He who tells the stories rules the world", Plato already knew. The defining narratives are the ultimate authority of a society. This is how we explain how life is. How it should be. How we are. There is no exception to this mechanism, one way or another. I wonder when market suitability as a defining value took over the narratives of our societies.
"People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason the world is in chaos is because things are loved and people are used," said the reigning Dalai Lama. When did that change? Since when has the success of an education system been understood to mean the production of a marketable workforce?
When did our conversations and thus our societies turn into markets? When did people turn into credit card holders, into human resources, into a node in the advantage network from which you can extract something that can be used for your own benefit?
When was the soundtrack of our lives tuned to the triad of purposeful rationalism, instrumental reason and self-optimization, as a peilton for many who pant after the "follow your dream" and "find your destiny" offers, but with which they are only seduced by the nose around themselves and behind the light that does not and will not open up to them?
But as I said: the well-intentioned, the benevolent, who are lavish with the precious elixir of benevolence, are on the increase. Even in companies where - prejudiced as we are - we wouldn't think it possible.
Are you living your values?
When I'm called in for advice on company story assignments, I first do the values exercise together with those responsible. If you want, you can do this for yourself, your team and your company. Ask yourself the following complementary questions.
- What are your cause values? This doesn't mean the important how-values(i.e. team spirit and so on), but the fundamental why-values.
- What should change positively as a result of your work, i.e. what will improve?
- What other positive thing would you give up in return?
- Are your goals based on the values, or (alert!) the other way around?
And finally: - What are you already doing today to strengthen your core value if we imagine your products and services?
At the latest at 5. it usually crunches, because you can tell whether a request is serious by the fact that you do something about it. If not, it is not a concern, but a possibility and the supposed value behind it is an opinion.
This is where the real work starts. The values are heavily scrutinized, examined and possibly found (not discovered)! This is intense, exciting and insightful. Only when you know your central value can you build your story. In every(!) real story - be it fictional or for brands - there is a central value or a value narrative that is expressed in some form in everything a person or a company does.
Anyone who answers these questions skillfully understands what business the company is really in.
The New York Timesare not in the news business, they are in the truth (finding) business.
Apple doesn't sell PCs and smartphones, it sells self-efficacy.
Hornbach does not sell tools and building materials, but also self-efficacy.
Cinderella tells the story of self-worth.
Avatar tells the story of connection.
Oppenheimer tells the story of personal responsibility.
As soon as - but only when - you have cracked this miraculous hard nut, you are ready for your story, your new story, for transformation towards a resilient company whose internal(!) and external relationships thrive on the rich breeding ground of its benevolent meaning. Resilience thanks to orientation - isn't that the great longing in all of us, in our teams, companies, in our society - in the prevailing times of manifold disturbing upheavals to which the labels VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) and BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear incomprehensible) are attached?
What holds and guides us.
Resilience thanks to orientation generates orientation through resilience. For this, we humans need an inner support, a task, a sense of purpose. This is the lighthouse whose light draws us out of our inner desolation. As soon as we see and accept it, we can no longer be seduced by consumerism and radical groups that pretend to offer us stability, belonging and therefore security instead of fear.
Do you feel the same way? Are you searching for the decisive questions about your task, your new story, your NEW STORY and are you, like many, many others, about to set off, ready for transformation?
For this, you probably want supportive guidance from a mentor who uses a glowing question mark as a pointer. And if you have the feeling that I could be that mentor for you, I would be honoured to accompany you with my NEW STORY programs. You can find everything here, here or here.
This is how companies get off to a good start in this new era that is pregnant with us. Many of us still have to turn from the breech position to be born as the future. To do this, we need to rethink ourselves, i.e. share a new story about why we are here. By "there", I don't mean "at the front of the queue in front of the Apple Store when the new iPhone is handed out", but in reality. Erich Fromm gave us a crucial clue long ago: "For the first time in history, the physical survival of humanity depends on a radical change of heart." A salto vitale, in other words, back to the basics, back to the human as the measure of all things. Seen in this light, the New Story is the oldest history of mankind and the beginning of a new age all rolled into one. Welcome to the Humanocene!
I have written down a few more of these thoughts. They have recently been published in the form of an instigator booklet entitled THE NEW STORY MANIFEST. More on this soon. If you want it now: please click here.
The wonderland of great opportunities is opening up for smart companies, excellent brands and clever founders. The magic word there is benevolence: goodwill, goodwill. Those who live this core value will experience its magical effect.
Marketing can and should inspire, but never seduce, because people who know and understand their own inner story, perhaps even their new story, can no longer be seduced. And Erich Fromm again: "If I am who I am and not what I have, no one can rob me or threaten my security and my sense of identity. My center is within myself." Once again, the law of supply and demand comes into its own with such force that some people lose their sight and hearing, while others open their eyes and ears. And perhaps even the heart.
So we're sitting around the campfire again, sharing marketing insights with a special focus on content marketing. The central laws of content marketing are constitutional:
- Content marketing is topic marketing. Topic marketing is concern marketing. Concern means value. Only where a value lives, a story is created.
- Values are the basis of our goals, not the other way around.
- First of all, content marketing means generosity: giving something useful.
- The first and most important audience groups for the concerns of content marketing are the managers and the people in the company.
- A little less conversation, a little more action. (© Elvis Presley)
- Storysharing is the new storytelling: we share a common cause.
- KPIs for content marketing are the positive impact of the cause and time with purpose (= time that my audience spends with my brand's cause thanks to the impetus provided by the brand).
- Success is the result of excellent work.
- Work is love made visible. (© Khalil Gibran)
Either way, if we share our inner story - as people, as a company, as a society - we will understand and accept ourselves and each other better. Then we would all be happier and more loving with ourselves than we are now, and with our fellow human beings too. Our world would be a more peaceful place than it is today.
So our new story begins best with the words "It will one day ...", and it only remains for me to share the central marketing insight of my grandmother, the old Story Dudette, once babysitter to little Philip Kotler: "New Story. New Glory."