New Marketing Mindsets

It amazes me how marketing concepts evolve over time. I tried to gather new concepts as the graph below shows. If we probe in all of them we find that they center around tension. Creating tension that would push the customer to one extreme end to act.

Tension Sources

Tension has many sources.

Tension of Selection is one example. As more varieties are offered to customers they get bewildered by the number of choices available. This leads the customers not to act.

Tension of Knowledge- the more we educate the customer, the less the customers think they know. We stretch knowledge with the simultaneity of extending ignorance. This creates the tension of knowledge.

Sensory Tension- overload of using our senses to collect information

Paradox Tension- and the list goes on.

We live in paradoxes more than we can imagine. They all lead to tension.

The more we stretch the spring, the more tension we create. If we create intention purposefully we may then use it to change behaviors. For example, when my daughter Sara was at a very young age she told me “daddy, because I love you so much I stopped loving you”. Going to the extreme may cause a reverse effect. Using same approach, we may try to change behaviors. For example, telling somebody who enjoys backbiting he is behaving like somebody easting the flesh of a dead person and therefore he shall be abandoned might feel the tension and change behavior accordingly. I remember reading a story about a female school that fits well in explaining what I mean. In that school students had a conflict with the cleaners because they doubted they were reporting what they do the school. To revenge, the students kept kissing the mirrors in the wash rooms so that their lipstick would stick to the mirrors. The cleaners had to do the cleaning many times a day. They complained to the headmaster. The head master asked all students to meet in the wash rooms. She wanted the students how the cleaners were doing their job. The cleaners used a brush that they first put in the toilets. They used the water to clean the mirrors. Never again cosmetic prints were seen again staining the mirror.

Eagles do it too. The mother eagle would stop cleaning the nest so that it becomes horribly smelly. The baby eagle has one choice- to leave the nest and fly out. The mother eagle knows if her baby bird doesn’t fly its muscles shall weaken and the baby eagle shall never be able to fly. To force it out of the comfort of its nest it deliberately stops cleaning it. We change the same way. When the pain of not changing is less than the pain of the current situation we may change.

To succeed in marketing today we need to use tension high enough for the customer to change and accept a new product or service. Sensory marketing in my opinion is another facet tension. Our senses give us so much information that we feel the overload and tensed as we grow the feelings that we know less and less.

Changing habits and behaviors may be best done through tension build-up to be ready to release it with the dream product or service.