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..

Easier way to spot insights

Perhaps I should not have used the word easier, because not everyone has the capacity to see this type of insights. But it is fun. Give it a shot. It comes from seeing the similarities in different systems. The word “system” here, refers to complicated relationships between many variables in a given situation, discipline or organization. There is a way all elements are arranged, sometimes visible to the naked eye but most often not.

If you look at world politics, you can clearly see a pattern. Today, most of the powerful countries and emerging superpowers are focusing on terrorism, because terrorism is the latest way of controlling everything that affects governance, starting from the people who voted the party in to power. It has complex relationships between culture, economics and world trade. Besides, focusing on terrorism also becomes a vehicle of communicating the superiority of the state. That would explain why some countries with out any terrorist threat would still focus on the subject.

What is the easiest way to prove Russia’s superiority to the rest of the world? I am sure there are many ways to do it including stats on economic and social welfare. But they chose the most effective way - engage in a cold war 11 with the US. That’s exactly what they started a couple of years ago and yes it is working well.

Let’s move on from world politics to something a bit simpler. In Sri Lanka, we have narrow roads and lots of bad drivers. A radio research conducted, revealed who these real bad drivers are. The second runner up in this notorious list, went to the Diplomatic community, for abusing power - hit and run was perfectly legal for them. Tuk tuk drivers earned the first runner up for trying to creep thru every possible nook & cranny. The list was topped by drivers of privately owned buses, who would not hesitate even to overtake a competing bus driver at a narrow bend. If you find one of those monsters head’on don’t start praying – it doesn’t work. Try something new.

I noticed, they have boardroom meetings too – just like corporate offices do. The only difference being that, they do it right in the middle of the road, instead of in a fully air conditioned boardroom and without the usual bullshit. These drivers would have a quick chat, exchange information about where the traffic cops and the passengers are and the distance between the bus ahead of them, and clear their course. Instead of learning from corporate boardrooms, what if we reverse our learning process to make all our meeting brisk, 100% contextualized?

But how did I spot this similarity between bus drivers and corporate employees? It is simple. Driving a bus has many similarities to a corporate job. Only the context changes. Why they do it, how they do it, and where they do it may be different, but most of the other things are very similar in nature.