The King is dead, long live the King!

Old-style mar­ket­ing has run its course; in­tox­i­cat­ed by pow­er and suc­cess, val­ues be­came in­creas­ing­ly in­signif­i­cant and con­sump­tion in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant. How can we re­build cred­i­bil­i­ty?

Old-style mar­ket­ing is dead. Gone are the days when com­pa­nies could dic­tate what their con­sumers should do. There’s no longer any need for con­sumers; the new mar­ket­ing has pro­sumers: the con­stant­ly dis­rupt­ed, nev­er achiev­able in­di­vid­u­al­ists of the mod­ern world, who can­not be as­signed to any tar­get group. And it is they who will de­ter­mine who will be suc­cess­ful in fu­ture. This new kind of mar­ket­ing is in ef­fect self-abol­ish­ing, fo­cus­es on cus­tomers’ ac­tu­al change re­quire­ments and no longer tar­gets any­one who isn’t re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed.

Mar­ket­ing be­came lazy

Why is that? In an ar­ti­cle about the End of mar­ket­ing (in Ger­man on­ly),  Math­ias Horx says that this prob­lem is due to a re­al de­cline in val­ues. Mar­ket­ing used to be a suc­cess­ful, fu­ture-ori­ent­ed sec­tor that set new stan­dards, stood for trust and con­ti­nu­ity and was even con­sid­ered an art form. It all be­came too much. In­tox­i­cat­ed by pow­er, it be­came ar­ro­gant and al­so a lit­tle lazy: this led to pseu­do-in­no­va­tions of prod­ucts that fu­elled the con­sumer cul­ture, while the ac­tu­al heart of the mat­ter fell by the way­side. Cou­pled with in­for­ma­tion over­load in which no-one knows what’s re­al­ly at stake and who’s re­spon­si­ble for what. To­day, every­one is some­how sus­tain­able, fair and nice. And if an en­er­gy com­pa­ny that han­dles nu­clear pow­er and coal al­ways acts in a green, sus­tain­able man­ner, then this does not seem cred­i­ble and re­sults in in­ter­nal dis­con­ti­nu­ity.

Hon­esty and beau­ty

If cred­i­bil­i­ty has been lost, it takes time to re­build. In­ter­nal dis­con­ti­nu­ity must be over­come and hon­esty, the spir­it of the com­pa­ny, must be patent­ly clear and sin­cere­ly em­braced. Ex­pe­ri­ences can there­fore be cre­at­ed that ac­tu­al­ly meet the needs of the pro­sumer. Cur­rent­ly, this is cer­tain­ly re­lat­ed to some­how sav­ing the world. It will be good if we can sat­is­fy these needs and ac­tu­al­ly de­vel­op what may be re­quired.

Image: Pixabay CC0