Daily Marketing Meditations

Our notion of communication really sucks! It’s purely because we have too many gurus teaching us numerous techniques and processes of ‘how to’ this and that. They use all the possible tools to manipulate us and under striving conditions, we easily fall into these traps. We only learn about communication through their eyes and end up seeing what they want us to see. If you want to master the art of communication, I have a suggestion. Run away from the gurus and just pay attention to the things around you, be it natural or artificial. Everything communicates! If practiced often, it could become your daily meditation, learning insightful stuff that could enhance your marketing effort.

Recently, while on my routine walk, instead of concentrating on my route, I walked straight in to a temple, for two reasons, the strong fragrance of the burning incense and the remark of a friend of mine. She had sworn that she would never enter the place as it was dirty, with all the trash lying around. Naturally, I was curious to find out what made the place so unholy. There was no dirt. There were about 25-30 people, calmly seated and listening to the ‘gaatas’ (stanzas). It had a soothing effect, so I sat down and started my all time favorite hobby - paying attention to the environment around me. Temples are usually frequented by old people, but a quick glance around the devotees, proved that was not the case there. Most of them were between the ages of 20-45, which was strange, given the fact that Buddhism does not bind you to patronize temples the way churches do.

From the people, I then switched my attention to the pots stuck full of incense sticks, and the coconut oil fuelled lamps. Observing these for a while was really soothing. The smoke of the incense freely yielded to the direction of the wind. The gentle breeze helped the fragrance of the incense to reach its full potential naturally, by carrying it in all directions, like a company that respects and recognizes the market forces, while it had a different impact on the lamps, by giving the flames more oxygen and helping them burn more efficiently. But too harsh a gust of wind, would put out the flames, and thereby, be destructive. The flames, too, were trying to tell us something. Too much of anything was bad. Right under my nose, two very trivial occurrences were screaming marketing lessons at me. I am sure you could easily interpret these in life lessons, as well. It is up to us to carve out any commonalities that they may share with our chosen sphere.

I am increasingly more convinced of one thing. The things around us teach us a great deal. And whatever you seek to fathom is just within your reach. Even observing a garbage dump is good enough to teach us how things around us function..