You Are Immortal 12/15/2009
 
“You are immortal. The result of everything you do today will last forever.” - Piers Fawkes from an e-book entitled, “What Matters Now,” complied by Seth Godin.

You are about to get bombarded by year end lists, “best of…,” “worst of..., “things to watch,” and so on.  My suggestion is to ignore all of those and spend some time with What Matters Now.  This collection will help you in your marketing efforts by helping you understand people and our time a little better.  It may even help you understand yourself.  I promise it will make you think.   

Passing this along is my holiday gift to you.  Please return the favor by passing it on to others.  

Be well.
 
 
This is normally the sort of thing that I’d just re-tweet, but I want to have a record of this so you know where to find the link when you need it.  Thanks to Mark Flavin for this post.

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If you are interested in hearing me speak about Out of Control Marketing (a.k.a. Marketing Public  Relations) you can listen to WDIY (88.1 FM in Bethlehem, PA) from 6:00-7:00 pm EST on December 17, 2009.  If you can’t tune in you can click here to listen on the web.

I’ll be giving a national webinar for the American Advertising Federation as a part of their “From the Source” series.  This will be held at 2 pm EST on January 27, 2010.  You can find out more or register by clicking here.

On Saint Patrick’s Day I will be the main speaker at Kutztown University's “Seeking Solutions” series.  The event runs from noon until 4:00PM EST.  Click here for details or here for a brochure.

I hope you can join me at one of these venues.

I've also posted my November 30th interview on internet radio KBZNZ's Sparks to Flame show below.
 
 
If South Park had an evolutionary psychologist as a character it would be Geoffrey Miller, professor at the University of New Mexico, and author of Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior.  Miller uses his irreverent writing style to explain global consumer culture through the application of the science of human nature.  This is a particularly good book for marketers as it uses up-to-date science to explain why we, as humans, buy, and why we are often trapped by the allure of consumerism.  He bases his argument on the notion that our needs and wants are driven by a psychological (or perhaps biological) predisposition to behave in a manner that signals our physical and mental fitness, and thereby, increases our likelihood of finding mating opportunities and receiving social support from friends and family.

Marketers will find this approach satisfying as Miller points out that we have been relying on an outdated model for understanding what drives consumers to want and buy things-namely Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need.  Spent’s model suggests that humans display conspicuous waste, conspicuous precision, and conspicuous reputation to signal mating and social fitness. (You’ll have to read the book for specifics.) Fitness indicators manifest themselves through general intelligence and five personality factors.  (If you are familiar with the NEO Personality Inventory, you’ll recognize these factors.)   When applied to market segmentation, message creation, and media selection, it is my belief that marketers will find this approach more profitable and more socially responsible than the conventional “marketing as a business process” method.

From a literary point of view, most will find this book an easy read.  Miller’s writing is in the pop-intellectual style made fashionable by Gladwell, but the academician occasionally bleeds through.  He offers a fair amount of social commentary which is often arguable, but always well thought out and provocative.

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