M’s the Word: Marketing’s reality check
Have we marketers pitched the promised land just too far out of reach?
By on Nov 6, 2011It has been a long time since I sat in a proper plane, a 747, for example, waiting for the pull back before it flings itself into the skies and lunges toward somewhere more than six hours from London. But here I am, bound for Hong Kong and Seoul. I have already soothed my throat with the first glass of champagne and savored the cashews.
I find this flight unusual, as I listen to what Angela calls Elfish, some blend of Scandiwegian accents. Usually, British Airways is filled with English. Perhaps it is the destination, though it is hard to imagine that Hong Kong is suddenly a Mecca for visitors from the land of the midnight sun.
The stewardess, who appears to be fluent in Elfish, brings my speculation to an end with a sharp bump. They are Flemish, as though that makes it all OK. They are just tour groups, escaping the cold of Northern Europe.
The champagne kicks in, and I am suffused with the most delicious of warm glows and a feeling of well-being that forces me into a confident frenzy of typing, as though I have only seconds to capture on paper this ephemeral harmony. In truth, I have only an hour before the battery runs out. Have forgotten to pack the adaptor.
In life, most of our actions are imperfect. We seldom manage the complete 180 on the dartboard, the perfect 10 on the dance floor. I dimly recall a definition of life in the Middle Ages as being short and brutal. A lot of the time, life feels brutal. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why things happen. We make imperfect decisions based on incomplete information, and over time we tolerate this imperfection. We smile, in our British (or I guess German?) way, and struggle onward.
When we think about it, we assume life is better for other people. We accept this, generously, most of the time. We seldom rage against the dawn; it is not in our nature. Just sometimes, we notice the gap between our existence and the perfection delivered to our eyes in advertising, in the lives of the rich and famous, those blessed with a precocious skill. And for a moment our eyes fill with resentment.
For most of us, this passes. But for some, the regulator of acceptance is missing. There is no reversion to normal, and this gulf triggers shocking behavior, such as rioting, looting, burning, desperate activities that the rest of us cannot condone.
As a marketer, I wonder, guiltily, whether it is our fault that we have pitched the promised land just too far from reach, exaggerated the difference from this short and brutal world, such that the gap breeds envy and despair rather than the desire to strive to better. And it leaves me wondering how and if we should use the ‘Big Brother House’ lens a bit more in our marketing. I recall Cinema Verite and I recall the Oxo family as powerful examples of a more honest representation of life.
Somehow the altitude, combined with the alcohol and the nuts perhaps, drives me to write. I hope that when I drift off this happy and confident state, I have remembered to save this. And I hope I will use a reality lens a little when I am next called upon to market.
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