Being direct... AdVantage Feb 2005
Who's really in charge - Man or Nature?
We really do need to get a better balance between people and their environment, as well as between people and people!!
Last month I wrote about the principle of concurrence - looking for points of consensus or agreement between individuals wishing to maintain some form of continuous communication over time - and I posed the question raised by US consultants Yankelovich in a recently launched new book, whether people in marketing (and marketing communication specifically) need to become more acutely aware of changing attitudes towards marketing - on the part of many of the people being targeted by marketing? So-called targets are ignoring messages in ever-increasing numbers. If ever there was a need for understanding the principle of concurrence, this is it!
One of the biggest enemies of concurrence is arrogance, and we human beings continue to have this superior attitude of being in control of our (and the world's) limited resources. We are supposed to have the intellectual capacity to reason, yet to a large extent, such reason inevitably becomes infected by self-interest and greed. It is the belief that we are in control of all things that encourages us to feel all-powerful!
This past month, for the first time in my nearly sixty years on the planet, I had the opportunity to do something that has made my understanding of the phenomenon of perceived 'control' just a little clearer. While my experience was not actually associated with marketing and advertising itself, I believe that it may have contributed to a better understanding of how concurrence can never be achieved while problems with 'perceived control' remain. Let me try and explain…
A good friend of ours is a birding fanatic who has literally traversed the planet to seek out different bird species - and I include the Russian Steppes, Peru and the Amazon River basin to name a few places she's been. Lesley told us recently that she was going on a walking trail in the greater Kruger Park (the game reserve Klaserie, to be exact - next door to Timbavati). "Why don't you come along", she asked. Well, my wife has never been a 'happy camper' - not since I had inflicted on her: a five week trip to Europe (in a Purple Ford Escort and 2-man tent during a wintry March, sometime in the mid- 70's)!
Anyway, to cut a long story short - we both enjoy game reserves, so we decided to do this 5 day walking tour of Klaserie, instead of our usual method of seeking animals by peering out of the window of a car. What an absolute eye-opener for both of us. Fortunately too, our trails officer was extremely knowledgeable and in the 5 days of walking in the bush for about 7 hours a day, I learnt things about the soil; the insects; the grasses; the trees; the birds; and also the animals - that brought home the absolute fallacy that we - the only so-called intelligent life on the planet - are in control of anything!
We seem so obsessed with our 'rights'; we think that we are entitled to consume and leave behind any by-products of that consumption - without any concern at all for the environment that we occupy. When one stands under the magnificence of a Jackal-berry (Diospyros Mespiliformis) tree for example, and realise that the tree is around 750 years old - it is humbling in the extreme.
As another example: on the way to Klaserie it was pointed out that men had bought great tracts of this natural bushveld, destroying it all by ploughing, and probably because the project was ill-conceived in the first place: they ultimately lost the farm. We were told that the time which nature has to spend in order to try and restore the natural habitat, is somewhere between 100 to 1000 times the length of time which man took to destroy it!
What's also fascinating listening to the expert - is learning that there are individual plant species whose sole 'job' - is to restore the equilibrium required by any ecosystem. When one grasps the variability and complexity of these cell-systems, then you also begin to grasp, that no way is humanity in control. Indeed, man's greed destroys what nature is increasingly finding difficult to repair.
Am I suggesting that we all need to join Greenpiece and go hug a tree? No, not unless you personally feel strongly enough about doing so. What I am again suggesting is that we ALL need to continuously strive for this idea of concurrence. There must be equilibrium between the needs of our environment and the needs of the humans that populate that environment. The one cannot prosper at the expense of the other. The same is true of marketing communication. Advertising cannot only promote the advertiser's interest without accepting that it also has an obligation to not only talk, but also to listen to the very people it is trying to influence.
At a time when advertising was primarily channelled through the mass media, and when there were fewer media (and perhaps less advertising), advertising seemed to 'invite' its targets to buy into the promise in a tone of voice - that to me anyway, showed a greater degree of respect for such targets.
These days, as the cacophony has become louder and louder - and the attention of the fragmented audiences harder and harder to attract, advertising has simply raised its voice, and seems to 'shout' louder and louder in order to get noticed. This 'shouting' has a parallel in the way in which people drive today - compared to the way that we used to. Simple courtesy has been replaced by rampant self-focused arrogance.
As I started off by saying, empirical evidence is emerging to show that advertising audiences all over the world are ignoring advertisers in ever-increasing numbers. Is it perhaps because nobody really enjoys being shouted at! (Or for that matter, finding themselves flashed at to 'get out of the way' when travelling on the highway?)
Perhaps it's time to spend time seeking concurrence by appreciating nature, and maybe even getting back down to earth?