This idea came to me because of a business class assignment, a marketing map designed to choose and strategize my position in the marketplace. But I want to step aside from making things work in the current marketplace, and consider a different path, creating a new marketplace. I call it my marketing manifesto.
Denise’s Marketing Manifesto
I don’t believe in the dualistic thinking of marketing based on competition and scarcity.
I believe there are enough customers for everyone, and there is enough work for everyone. I believe there are enough ideas to overcome any roadblocks. If you lived in Ireland a few hundred years ago, peat moss was the top of your technology for heating, and it was finite. In other times and places it has been wood, now oil, now wind and solar. Even if we can’t get by with those, we may learn to harness the power of wave motion in oceans and lakes, or something better will be discovered. So I release the concept of scarcity, and the competition which it justifies.
I don’t care how many people disagree with me, or who disagrees with me. I don’t even care if I’m wrong, and competition is the only way to survive and thrive in the marketplace.
I walk my path in this life intending to contribute not just to the world I do live in, but intending to contribute to the kind of world I want to live in. I am not going to waste my time trying to support a system whose time is past.
Do you want to know why we have wars on this planet? It might be because our entire infrastructure of making a living is based on a war metaphor, dualism, and scarcity.
Competition = I win, you lose.
Maybe it is time for us to look beyond this. I believe we have been in a very long era where it did not matter how much ethics we had, if we did not have power. I believe we are now moving into an era where it will not matter how much power we have if we do not have ethics.
If you question this, consider the worst difficulties of both Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. In both difficulties, their lack of ethics overcomes their enormous power.
The one part of the business class marketing map which ideally serves a new paradigm, one based on alliance and cooperation, is “My Market Niche”. We can use our unique features and benefits not only to attract customers to ourselves, but to refer customers to others, in their unique niches, creating a powerful network of allies in business.
Consider this: did you ever go into a store and they referred you to a ‘competitor’ if they could not serve you? How did that make you feel? “The customer is #1,” (not the bottom line). Did it make you look forward to doing business with them in the future?
Take it one step further. When you went to their competitor, did you tell them who referred you? This encourages the network of business allies, rather than suffering in the dog-eat-dog marketplace.
Competition will not disappear, but cooperation could begin to come forward. This is not foolishness or weakness. It is the beginning of a much stronger, more sustainable economy, marketplace, and lifestyle, one which I want to bring forth.
How about you?
© Denise Schultz 2006 – 2009
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