From Consumerism to Audience-ism

Many of my marketing and advertising friends all over the world are actually very conscious beings.

While they have a carefully cultivated ‘Mad Men’ persona, they are also much more ‘consciously inclined’ than what meets the eye. Most of the creative types do yoga, smoke weed, go to burning man or similar festivals where ever they are in the world to expand their minds and come up with fresh ideas. For without fresh ideas, they soon become irrelevant in a notoriously competitive industry.

They also understand the power of the words that we use.

After all, they are the ones that give us tag lines that we remember and write the copy that makes us move and the needles too. 

I for one deeply believe in the power of words. I am sure dear reader, you do too. 

Given the great shifts in consciousness in commerce that is happening around us, marketing as such is also experiencing a forced shift towards the same.

Which brings me to the topic of how we see the ‘market’.

In his insightful essay in the Atlantic about ‘How humans became ‘Consumers’, Frank Trentmann clearly illustrates how consumption was hardly a thing before the 19th century. 

From Adam Smith’s 1776 proclamation of ‘Consumption is the sole purpose of all production’ to Robert Boyle’s question that asks..’Would God have created a world rich in minerals and exotic plants, if He had not wanted people to discover and exploit them? The divine had furnished man with a “multiplicity of desires” for a reason’  have all led to outdated ideas around ‘consumerism’ that still stubbornly persist today. 

The good news is, ever since the advent of sustainable commerce, this tide is turning towards more conscious ways of seeing the world and engaging the people who buy they things we so powerfully market.

In this context is why we must understand the reasoning behind letting go of old words that point to less conscious paradigms. 

‘Consume’ comes from the latin root ‘Consumere’ - which literally means to eat up, to waste. Which evolved into French and then to English in the late 14th Century to mean ‘to destroy’. 

So when see the world as a ginormous pool of ‘consumers’,  we might see them as folks who will buy from as but what we are actually, subconscious seeing them as are those who will also use it up to waste it away.

If I go one step further and let you into my conscious, spiritual closet, I do believe that such unconscious use of words have a profound implication in the reality we create and live in. 

Ever wonder why there is so much ‘waste’ created by ‘products’?

We have been super smart thus far at making them ‘consume’ and so it is a natural consequence that they end up creating billions of tons of waste. Which is good for no one, let alone the brand.

As a conscious, spiritually aligned marketer with a deep grounded in the reality of how ‘big-tech marketing’ actually works, I can see how powerful a small shift in consciousness in how we see the market will change the world for the better.

I posit that using the word ‘Audience’ makes for a more conscious way to engage the market than seeing them as just ‘Consumers’ 

Audience comes from the Latin root ‘audentia’ - which meant listening which evolved into something that meant ‘the opportunity of being heard / listened’. 

A switch to imagining the market as a set of audiences fundamentally shifts how we engage with it and there by how we drive our campaigns and commerce. 

Some, conscious frontier brands are already doing this. Thirdlove has a program that donates slightly used brands that are returned, thereby not wasting them. Other conscious brands are following suit, by seeing their audiences as part of the ‘collective whole’.  

Personally, I deliberately try NOT to use the word consumers or even customers (it comes from the latin word that means ‘being a toll collector’) and use the word audiences. 

It will also force us to make smarter business / media decisions because we know we don’t have to shout at everyone to consume but to speak to only those who appreciate our act.

“Raise your word, not your voice. It is the rain that grows flowers, not thunder” - said Rumi.

This is true for marketing today as much as it is true for our lives. 

Small, conscious shifts such as these can be greatly powerful levers to gain an unfairly high audience love. 

Words matter. Deliberate, conscious marketing engagements matter in the new economy. How we see the people who we want to be a part of our brand growth journey matters even more. 

If you are frontier, sustainable, conscious CMO, you will clearly understand how powerful such seemingly small shifts are. s

It is time to embrace Audience-ism. Well..I know it doesn’t rhyme…make up your own word for it. But my plea today is for you to be at least open to it.