7:45am
Saint Paul
Late last night I wrote about the divisions we see around us.
People are hurting, people are pointing fingers, people are acting and reacting and ratcheting up their responses.
My city, and others, are being destroyed because we’re being divided. Divided by labels, instilled through fear of Us vs Them.
Once you understand the most basic idea of successful marketing —agitate a problem and offer a solution— it becomes apparent how easily humans can be manipulated to accept things they would normally find to be insane.
When that problem is agitated with fear or anger, our thinking gets overridden by our lizard brain response: freeze, flight, or flight. We accept the solution offered because we just want the pain to end.
- Problem: There’s a virus killing people. We have very little information on it.
- Insane solution we all accept: Complete economic shutdown.
- Problem: Black Americans are being targeted by the police.
- Insane solution we all accept: Looting and riots; celebrated distruction of private property; possibly dismantling the Minneapolis police force (I kid you not, that’s being discussed today.)
The problem doesn’t even need to be real (as in, fully supported by data). We make almost every decision through emotions, and rationalize that decision with our understanding of the data, with a heaping dose of confirmation bias.
And it’s even easier to sway a group than an individual.
When in reality, individually, we all want peace and prosperity.
But peace and prosperity don’t sell in the same way that anger and fear do.
Peace and prosperity don’t divide people. Anger divides. Fear divides. Labels divide.
Love unites. Aspirations unite.
Jeffrey
PS. I’ve released a short book, Inside Marketing Secrets for Explosive Growth: Discover the 10 Best-Kept Secrets to Improve Your Business Marketing and Take Your Sales to New Heights. It’s on Amazon and it’s essentially the same as the marketing guide I sent out a few weeks ago. But if you want it in printed form, there you go!