A Life Less Obvious

Image courtesy

I've been thinking a bit about authenticity recently through a small project I'm involved with via the IPA. Paul recently made a great point about how the nexus of advertising and social media will increasingly be about finding the center of what makes companies interesting and different - their culture, their soul and the humanizing elements that makes them what they are: "It’s that soul that can help us find the motivating message, that focused positioning that moves people to get beyond just liking us and get to liking to buy from us."

Richard built on this, creating the visual above, and talking about the idea that "the new sense of value that consumers have created since the beginning of the recession requires brands to be of value not just good value for money."

I've written before about how important I think it is for us to focus on the value we create for others, not just ourselves. It is a model that has the potential to be transformational:

It is a model that at times can be counter-intuitive:

“Apple’s goal isn’t to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products…We trust as a consequence of that, people will like them, and as another consequence we’ll make some money. But we’re really clear about what our goals are.” Jonathan Ive

But it is now the only way.

Comments

[Niko]

"We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. Our obligation is to make money.To make money, it may be important to win the Academy Award, for it might mean another ten million dollars at the box office."

Don Simpson.

Just liked the way he is saying the same thing as Apple from a slightly different angle...

on different note, it is also good to keep in perspective the relative powers companies have in getting people to buy stuff, and remember that it is not just our story that is important, it is how it resonates in behaviour people are already doing.

To like us in order to buy from us, it helps if we help you (in some way) get liked by those you like.

social behaviour is in essence based around selfishness and ego, counter intuitive as it may sound.

[Holycow]

Great post as always Neil. I disagree with Jonathan Ive's comment - his role is to design and develop and bring to market good products and Apple's as a company is to make money.

They don't do it for the love of it as much as we would would like to believe it. Just see how they are treating their financial relationships with Google and moving into other areas that have nothing to do with products but owning more of the social graph territory etc.

It is and always will be about the money really despite the small club/brand friendly/we're all in it together hippy sentiments.