March 25th, 2008
Insight 2.0: I’m a Marketer First, Then a Human Being
Welcome to The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption! Subscribe to my combined feed in a feed reader or by e-mail and you'll never miss a single post. Thanks for visiting!
For those who came in late: I have gone off consumption, not because of the absence of money or an overdose of ideology, but because I’m tired of buying things; and if my year-long experiment results in a multi-million dollar book deal, what a bonus that would be!
But, as I said, that’s only part of the story.
For a while now, I have been trying to deal with a dichotomy in my life (tweet).
As an individual, I don’t read the newspaper, watch TV, or listen to the radio, I haven’t “shopped” for six months, and I try not to travel beyond a 10 km radius (tweet).
As a marketer, however, I love the art and science of marketing, I adore brands, and I’m hardwired into the idea of capitalist free markets driven by consumerism.
So, when I observe people wanting to spend less, swap instead of spend, go local, go organic, stop buying things, or generally say no to brands, I’m torn into two halves.
One part of me (me-as-a-person) knows exactly what they are talking about, because I feel equally overwhelmed by the brands + media + retail triumvirate.
The other part of me (me-as-a-marketer) wonders what will happen to our economies when more people go “off consumption” because they are tired of consuming, tired of things (tweet).
But, I’m a marketer first, then a human being.
Therefore, even more than I want to go off-consumption myself, I want to find out what makes people want to go off-consumption.
My quest (as an individual) to find the formula to turn consumerism-caused ennui into happiness, is also my quest (as a marketer) to learn how to apply that formula to convert our collective ennui from consumption into a yelp of enthusiasm for consuming even more.
Therefore, at its core, my year-long book-as-a-blog experiment is first-hand consumer research, an inquiry into why we choose to consume, or not.
