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The Dynamics of Desire and the Attraction Economy.
Kevin Roberts, who writes for the Branding Strategy Insider blog predicts a shift into what he calls an attraction economy:
“This year will see the emergence of the Attraction Economy. Driven by the fundamental shift in control from manufacturers and retailers to consumers, the future belongs to those who make emotional connections with them.�
While I don’t disagree substantively with Roberts at all, I would go further. I would suggest that the engine of attraction — desire — has powerfully driven segments of the economy for decades.
Those who remember the excesses of the 80s remember how desire assumed gluttonous proportions. Consumerism moved beyond simple fulfillment of needs and wants, morphing into a form of emotional opiate. Acquiring things — especially luxurious things — was a strategy for self-actualization, for dulling pain and filling the void within.
Those excesses were so vulgar that they became repellent, even for those whose appetites fueled them. There was — as there almost always is — a compensating swing back towards anti-materialism and voluntary simplicity. Still, the dynamics of desire were in full force; their costume had changed and that which was desired assumed more spiritual and emotional dimensions, shedding luxury products for causes, experiences, treks, and retreats. A new dictum appeared: "Buy experiences not things."
I suspect that when Roberts writes about “making emotional connections� that he is imagining more than feeding an emotional need or dulling some insatiable hunger. I assume that Roberts is hinting at the need for marketers to formulate products, messages, and strategies that create opportunities for consumers to authentically use those products and services as means of self-expression or as tools that lower barriers toward those same ends. I am all too aware that this is just a hunch on my part. I have to guess at what Roberts means because he doesn’t really tell me what making emotional connections means. I think this is a real problem among marketers. Most of us - me included - don't always define and clarify what we mean by what we write or say.
I had an interesting conference call yesterday in preparation for a session at the upcoming May conference of the American Association of Museums. Moira Baylson at the City of Philadelphia has assembled a panel including Andrew Taylor (Bolz Center, University of Wisconsin), Charles Croce (Philadelphia Art Museum), and me. We were discussing the gap that exists in current museum marketing practices between what is known in arts marketing, and what is currently practiced.
Andrew Taylor observed that the truly sophisticated marketers working in the private sector are working to understand how consumers derive value and how they create meaning over the course of using products. As we talked, the conversation's orbit was inexhorably moved by meaning’s gravity. We were, as Roberts might describe, talking about how museums would benefit by learning to create emotional connections with their audiences.
Taylor further observed that while most arts marketing practitioners might come to the session looking for the tactical and the tangible, that effective marketing strategy is increasingly more conceptual. We struggled somewhat, trying to think about how we could make the strategic (what we believe is far more useful in the long term) seem practical, as opposed to conceptual (and ungrounded).
I have long maintained that tactical effectiveness is only randomly possible without a strategic framework. These frameworks are driven by conceptual thinking — by imagining and reimagining challenges, possibilities, and strategic scenarios.
Robert's prediction - that we are moving toward an attraction economy - requires that we rethink attraction dynamics. If we don’t, we risk becoming nothing more than re-varnishers of old desire-management strategies. We also risk inauthenticity; emotional manipulation produces cynical and distrusting consumers. Clearly this outcome is in nobody’s best interests.
Creating real emotional connections requires deep listening. It requires empathy, compassion and, above all, desire to understand consumers’ needs and their various paths towards meaning and fulfillment. As I think about how we get there, I imagine that we all will need to use the tools we have, create the tools we need, and become seriously interested in giving consumers what they desire as opposed to what we think they should desire.
This is a problem in most arts organizations. Artistic directors and curators — indeed programmers of all metals — have very strong opinions about what people should like and want. They should want what is 1) in the canon 2) a likely candidate for the canon or 3) what elucidates the previous two categories. In short: " Like what we like."
In many ways, our challenge differs little from other categories. Few sellers are in the position to completely customize products and services on a per-consumer basis. So, for most of us, to make that emotional connection that Roberts talks about requires beginning with a profound understanding — and perhaps even an affection for — the consumer. This understanding does not require abandonment of the product which is, in our case, the art.
Ours is not a dichotomous choice. It is not "one or the other." It is not art or audience. It is not elitism or populism. Harnessing the dynamics of desire and winning in the attraction economy requires, above all, an equal obsession with the art and the audience.
Posted on March 6, 2007 09:31 AM | Permalink
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