How to create meaning in people's lives
Marketing has become blatantly intrusive, bombarding the retinae of consumers with a salvo of mixed messages that leave little or no impact. Instead of staying true to the old credo of offering a meaningful solution to an everyday problem, marketing now offers hundreds of negligent solutions that add no meaning to people's lives.
How naïve were we to think that more choice = more happy consumers? In reality, the excess of choice has become a poison, or as Barry Schwartz, our keynote speaker on Friday, puts it: "choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures." High time then that we genuinely add meaning to people's lives.
But how? Oh, we've tried to do this in recent years. Social media and new technologies have forged new paths of communication, sure. New ways of saying the same old thing. But the thing about marketing is: it's what we say, not how or where we say it. We've forgotten that consumers are living, breathing human beings, and not just creatures that consume. To address this issue, we need a new strategy.
Yes indeed. But that's easier said than done. Adding value is more than just a matter of adding new products to shopping shelves. It's about understanding how people think and finding out what's meaningful and relevant to them. We need to be let in to the personal spaces to see exactly what they need, so that we can create brands that they are passionate about. To quote Bob Gilbreath, our keynote speaker on Saturday: "We must create marketing that adds value to people's lives."
Curious? Of course you are.
Find out more at 'Return on Relevance', the 29th International Marketing Congress in Ghent, on the 3th and 4th of December 2010, where Barry Schwarz and Bob Gilbreath, as well as other first-rate speakers, will address these issues and provide answers to your burning questions.
Be sure to check out the full programme here. And don't miss out on the congress of the year.