Ageless Marketing

How the Influence of Conatus Varies by Season of Life

The 17th Century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza regarded conatus – the tendency of an organism to self-develop and pursue its continued existence – as the fundamental animating principle of life.

Nothing I know of indicates Spinoza was wrong. However, he never examined the principle of conatus in the context of differences in season-of-life needs in human behavior. I do so in this and subsequent posts with a marketing twist.

Anyone who examines the self-preservation functions of conatus in the context of today’s older markets can gain crucial insights into consumer behavior that had little marketing value when people under 40 ruled the marketplace. These insights can spell the difference between marketing success and marketing failure in the much-changed landscape of today’s marketplace.

Most marketers best understand youth and young adult markets because those markets have been the primary marketing focus for nearly a half a century. Knowing that social survival and standing is a hugely important issue for young people, marketers have learned to play to the narcissistic values that underlie the common desire among young consumers to make social statements in what they buy.

People who criticize marketers for their contribution to the ethos of materialism that pervades popular culture overlook the fact that the young, ever concerned about forging and maintaining an advantageous social image, depend on material objects to metaphorically represent them in the external world. Fashion choices in apparel, jewelry, cars, home décor and so on can instantly convey important information about a person.

The pursuit of progressive improvement in social standing is an important part of human beingness in the first half of life grounded in a materialistic ethos. But this changes for most people with the approach of midlife, which is typically accompanied by declining influence of narcissistic and materialistic values on behavior. This is a fall out from changes in aspects of conatus that emerge in midlife.

Next: The End of Power Marketing

Conatus: The Most Influential Force in Consumer Behavior

The topic of conatus deserves far more attention than I gave it in The Libidinous Later Years inasmuch as nothing exerts more influence on consumer behavior. Thus, it only makes sense for people in marketing to gain deeper insight into the role of conatus in shaping the needs and behavior of consumers.

Conatus (con-na-tus), which stands for the natural tendency inherent in an organism to develop itself and pursue its continuity, is the ultimate source of all self-preservation behavior. We don’t so much “choose” to preserve our individual existence as we respond to deep-seated primal urges that originate outside of our conscious minds to do so. Free choice comes in how we answer those urges.

Conatus like gravity is an ever-present force. It influences us in what we perceive, think, do and are, all in service of personal development and self-preservation.

Self-preservation is not just about physical existence. Its compass includes our standing in society, career, and personal relationships. It is at the core of our efforts to secure and preserve resources we need to fulfill our objectives.

Self-preservation is also about belief systems, because beliefs are integral to a person’s self-image, a personal aspect of humanness that people sometimes defend to the death.

Self-preservation behavior also extends to relationships people have with their country, political party, religion – and yes, even companies and brands they patronize. Consumer outrage over the introduction of New Coke vividly illustrates how people’s self-image can become so tightly connected with a brand that changes to the brand’s image may be received as a personal assault.

And, of course, the self-preservation imperative is the source of sexual desire in which the end game is genetic immortality even though free choice allows us to circumvent that outcome.

Over the next week or so, this space will be mostly devoted to the principle of conatus in the context of marketing.

Next: How the Influence of Conatus Varies by Season of Life

Dead But Not Gone

Gary Solomonson, a good friend and marketer extraordinaire in the senior housing space tells a story that reflects the power of legacy on people’s behavior in the second half of life.

Late one night Gary arrived at a guest apartment in a nonprofit senior housing community he was consulting with. Taped to the door was a message: Gary see me when you get in regardless of the time. Miriam.

It was around midnight when Gary tapped on 102-year-old Miriam Petersen’s door. She welcomed him in and left the room for a moment, then came shuffling back waving a booklet in her hands.

“You did this, and it’s brilliant.”

Miriam was referring to a report Gary had done claiming that staff turnover in the senior community could be reduced and quality of new hires improved by instituting a “Build Your Resume” program whereby management would cover educational costs for lower wage staff.

“Gary, you probably don’t know it, but I was an HR director at the Pentagon. Worked there over 35 years. I know all about this stuff, but I really like how you’ve put this educational program together for folks who don’t get this kind of benefit in most organizations.

“So here’s a check for $25,000 to help the program along.”

Miriam donated an additional $25,000 each of the next three years.

In the fourth year following her first check, she called Gary into her apartment and reviewed the Build Your Resume program with him. Then she said, “Here is another check. It’s a little bigger than the other ones."

The check was for $1.25 million. As she handed it to Gary, Miriam said, “After I’m dead I don’t want to be gone.”

Two days later, Miriam Petersen died at the age of 106. But she was not gone.
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Miriam’s story gives deeper meaning to the recent post about Patek Philippe’s legacy campaign and to the idea that legacy has a more powerful influence on consumer behavior than the marketing community generally recognizes. Legacy values, which can be invoked in ads for any product, arise from conatus, the topic of the next post.

Quote of the Day From the Demand Side:

Actress Susan Sarandon, 58: I’m almost 60, and I don’t want to be 60 years old and look 20. There’s something to be said for looking good, but looking your age.
(See the Oct. 2004 issue of More for Sarandon’s take on being her real self in her later years.)

The Libidinous Later Years

The pursuit of legacy is a libidinous quest.

Sigmund Freud with his sex-drenched view of the human libido may not have seen it that way, but Carl Jung essentially did.

Jung regarded the libido as the fountainhead of our ceaseless desires to recreate ourselves in countless ways. Artists recreate themselves on canvas, musicians in their music, lawyers in courtrooms, surgeons in operating rooms, CEOs in their executive functions – and we might say, marketers in their efforts to influence others to do the marketer's bidding.

The libido is as much a part of our work lives as our erotic lives. Its influence on behavior in the first half of life favors objects and activities that support the physical recreation of self. How we recreate ourselves in our work – especially in our earlier adult years – plays a critical role in developing opportunities for our participation in sensual pleasures associated with Nature's urgings to recreate the physical self through offspring.

Long before Jung contemplated the libido, 17th Century philosopher Thomas Hobbes examined it under the concept of conatus, a Latin noun encompassing the principle of self-development and self-preservation that underlies our will to live and actions we take to preserve our life and resist forces that threaten it.

As we move toward and into the second half of life, the influence of conatus on our behavior sharpens awareness of our mortalit. Urgings to recreate the self in a physical form that continuosly flow through the soul of youth begin to wane as new urgings to recreate athe self in metaphysical form emerge fro the libido.

This is what consciously formed legacies are about –intentional responses to the call of conatus to fight against our extinction. We cannot succeed indefinitely at tat in a physical sens, but we can through a legacy that extends our beingness beyond the time of the flesh.

In the next post, I will tell you a story that makes that point in a particularly poignant way.

In the meantime, here is a short but interesting philosophic musing on the conatus self-preservation principle.

Patek Phillippe: An Exemplar in Brand Resonance

Recent posts have talked about brand resonance, a term I use in describing a brand whose voice projects in rich harmony with the voice of the consumer to foster a tight, lasting bond between brand and customer.

No better example of brand resonance can be found than in an advert campaign, “Begin your own tradition”, launched by the famous Swiss watchmaker Patek Philippe in Fall, 2003. The campaign poetically acknowledges the importance of legacy in the second half of life.

Actually, this campaign caps a journey back to the future begun in 1996 under the direction of London based advertising agency Leagas Delaney. The inaugural ad appears here. Click on it to enlarge it.

“Begin your own tradition” is an archetypal picture story that seizes the mind and warms the heart – reason and feeling blended in elegant harmony between brand and customer.

The signature tagline, “Begin your own tradition,” acknowledges a powerful influence on consumer behavior that few marketers seem to be aware of as existing: one’s legacy.

The closing line in the original “begin your own tradition ad” is most lovely. In the newer iterations of the theme, a more transcendent thought has emerged: “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.”

That shift in voice marks an important new dimension of the mind of the market that I discuss in the next post.

Next: Why legacy has become an mportant marketing theme.

See new Patek Phillippe adverts.

Why Coke is a Troubled Brand

New Coke CEO Neville Isdell stunned Wall Street last week when he announced a drop in earnings per share of up to 24% I the third quarter and 11% for the second half. He blamed cool weather in Europe, unfavorable packaging deposit laws in Germany and Coke’s to volume declines in North America.

Let’s talk about volume declines in North America.

While Isdell candidly admits that Coke marketing is underperforming, he seems to not understand that even great marketing won’t do much because the carbonated category has virtually no prospects for growth in North America, but also in most of Coke’s markets worldwide.

Mr. Isdell disagrees, of course, saying, “"We have to continue growth led by carbonated soft drinks, regardless of what the skeptics might think. I know the category can grow,"

Snail-paced population growth in some age groups and population shrinkage in other under-45 age groups have eliminated population growth as a foundation for sales growth.

Growing concerns about health issues associated with sweetened carbonated drinks makes it likely that per capita consumption is headed south.

Then there is the fact that per capita consumption of carbonated beverages begins falling among adults in the 30s. That has always been and likely always be. As the adult median age continues rising, adult consumption of carbonated beverages will continue to fall.

Isdell, like the vast majority of Fortune 500 CEOs, has yet to fully realize that the aging marketplace is radically changing the calculus of supply and demand. That creates new challenges that cannot be solved by following the old rules of marketing.

Whether its about fizz drinks or motor vehicles, toothpaste or fashions, marketing is a whole new ball game involving new rules that require new tools to win.

The Latest in Advertising Ubiquity

From the Chicago Tribune, September 13:

Under a proposal being studied by Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration, the state could sell the rights to its name to a yet-unchosen beverage company, which would then market a nonalcoholic drink as the official state beverage.

Ahem. Don’t you think, Gov, that we might be carrying naming rights a bit too far? About the only thing further out would be churches selling naming rights like The Church of the Holy Spirit becoming The Jack Daniels Church of the Holy Spirit or The Riverside Baptist Church becoming The Jacuzzi First Baptist Church.

Katherine, over there at Decent Marketing, how does this idea hit you? Or Michele from WonderBlog, what are your thoughts? Any comments from you, Dave Young at BrandingBlog or you, Paul Williams and John Moore at Brand Autopsy?

I already know what Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba think about this dumb idea. I learned about it from their Customer Evangelism blog, a first rate river of the thinking that I just added to my favorite blog list to the right. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, they offer a few suggestions like The Chrysler Department of Motor Vehicles.

This craziness kept me awake last night, so I had to get it off my chest this morning so I could be productive today. Thanks for listening.

The Mindset the Networks Must Enter to Survive

This is a short posting because what it will take to save the television networks is not complicated. All it takes is shifting into a mindset that leads to the solutions they need.

Recall the often cited Einsteinian wisdom that a problem can not be solved in the same consciousness in which it arose. Network leadership needs to abandon its traditional consciousness which is dominated by a narrow "numbers-based” picture of viewers derived from Nielsen ratings.

The networks are quite in line with their recent criticisms of the inadequacies of Nielsen, but err in failing to take responsibility for their own contribution to the Nielsen view of life in television audiences.

The erosion of network audiences is an outcome of behavior, not of data sets. So the networks need to study viewer behavior more than they study the representations of 0’s and 1’s in processed data. Television viewers are not eyeballs to be counted, but flesh and blood organisms with beating hearts to be connected with.

They need to stop looking externally and blaming good weather, computer games, errors in viewer ratings systems, etc for disappointing audience counts and start looking internally to what they've done to lose relevance to viewers thereby driving them into cable television.

In other words, they need to enter an introspective mindset that acknowledges both their own humanness and that of viewers to have any hope of plotting a plan to be around as the next decade begins.

The End of Network Television?

NBC Universal Television president Jeff Zucker predicted in the Sunday Sep. 19 edition pf the New York Times a turn-around rise in network viewing as it enters the first season ever with fewer viewers than cable television.

CBS chairman Les Moonves also predicted a reversal of network televisions’ shrinking audience:

More people will be watching network television. That’s a great story for network television.

Gentlemen, it just ain’t going to happen. Your predictions have nothing going for them. They are drawn from illusions of groundless hope and betray a dearth of understanding of today’s viewer markets.

Unprecedented changes in demography and in the cultural profile of society make it impossible for network television to ever again have a viewer majority:

• The graying of viewer audiences has introduced a spectrum of individuated preferences and behavior that work against the coalescence of large segments of viewers as large as in the past around individual shows on a regular basis, much less around an entire network on a consistent basis.

• Cultural diversity has spread too deeply and too broadly throughout the fabric of American society for networks to be able to manage all the touch points it now would take to establish and maintain relevance to viewers the scale that was possible in the more homogeneous viewer markets of the past.

The networks need to get past the fantasy that they will once again command the viewer majority and instead turn attention toward two problems that if not solved could spell the end of network television by the end of this decade:

• Stemming the hemorrhaging of network audiences to retain confidence among advertisers, a number of whom have already shifted more money into cable advertising than in network advertising.

• Adapting to cultural diversity which has spread too deeply and too broadly throughout the fabric of American society for networks to be able to manage all the touch points it now would take to establish and maintain relevance to viewers the scale possible in the more homogeneous viewer markets of the past.

Next: The Mindset that is Essential to the Survival of the Networks