Orbital symmetry and marketing truths

Our solar system has one star, four rock-based inner planets, an asteroid belt, and four gas giant outer planets. Sorry Pluto.

The solar system is a beautiful apparatus. It's movements are predictable and constant and its unique characteristics can be compared against other solar systems we see in our galaxy.


However the structure of our solar system is not unique. It's a pattern that is found in other parts of the galaxy too:

- Rocky planets close to the star
- Gas planets far away from the star

It's believed that as celestial bodies formed from pressure and gas, their gravitational fields expanded and pulled particulae in. Heavier particulae (metals such as iron) eventually gathered to form rocky planets. Since these elements had a heavier atomic weight, they were drawn in closer to the star. Lighter elements stayed further away from the star and formed gas giants, like Saturn, pictured below.

(BTW, another theory is that planets formed based on the distance from the sun and the temperature of where the properties of basic elements could remain stable).


Obviously I don't know my physics too well. It's one of the high school science subjects I really wished I had taken.

But consider how mechanical this all seems. The solar system is beautiful. It's a complex architectural masterpiece crafted at the atomic level. Our understanding of this masterpiece is based on what we can observe. We know that iron is heavier than helium. We know that plutonium is more unstable than gold.

Our foundation of modern physics is based on indusputable atomic properties. Truths.


So what is our foundation of modern marketing based on? What are the unshakable marketing truths which we formulate our campaign hypotheses and customer segmentations on?

1. Consumers look for enhanced well-being through the tangible or intangible value derived from consumption of a product or service. RIGHT.

2. Complete information is impossible. Consumers will never know all the product specifications, possible prices, and availabilities. It is also impossible to perfectly rationalize the information from other consumers of the product or service. RIGHT.

Are those the only ones?

I really think so. Consider the classical marketing assumptions are being broken down and invalidated:

1. Consumers trust the messages they read in marketing communications. WRONG.

2. Consumers can easily be convinced to purchase on price and emotional benefits alone. WRONG.

3. Marketing is meant to be one way: consumers receive information, consumers receive the product. WRONG.


You know the assumption being challenged that really makes life scary for marketers?

That consumers need to consume.

Our economy is based on production and consumption. For a while, it was a lot like the solar system. It was an architectural masterpiece in perfect orbital symmetry and cosmic balance.

Consumers behaved.

But consumers aren't behaving anymore.


The death of our solar system is predicted to occur in 6 billion years. The sun will burn out and become a white dwarf, losing mass and energy. Planets, including Earth, will no longer feel the gravitational pull to the sun and might be ripped out of orbit by the pull of stronger, larger astronomical bodies.

Sound familiar, marketers? It's hardly a Nostradamian prediction, we can already see our consumers walking away. Forget about consumers not listening, consider the impacts of consumers not buying.

(All pictures were taken from the Hubble space telescope. Check out the full album here)

What customers are really valuable?

At the request of Dave P, I’m trying to include internal links and use more pictures when I post. Rather than make a quip about how he needs pictures to learn or how the sheer text in this blog is actually good for our search engine results, I decided to go with it. Whatever, I like pictures too and as we remember, there was a blog post I wrote a while back that was entirely made of pictures.


I’d like to explore the real meaning of customer value. Yesterday I had a heated argument with a group about the valuation of intangible qualities like spinoff learnings, thinking efficiencies, or creativity. I really maintain that these can’t be quantified. They have value, perhaps it’s shown in the higher price that can be charged for services where intangible value is present, but it cannot necessarily be measured.


For example, how do you measure the value of 'Wal-Mart Chicken', shown above. Seriously this is Dali-inspired!

How do you measure the relevance of a campaign or a message that really inspires the audience? How do you measure the value of consumer engagement, when that engagement is among consumers themselves, and not between consumers and the brand? A good analogy here might be Apple – how can one possibly accurately value the positive discussions and culture that consumers create on their own surrounding the Apple brand?

In my tense group meeting, I made the mistake of rhetorically asking, “how do you bottle starlight?” – I realize how dumb that now sounds, but that’s the intangibility of value that I’m trying to get at.

Your customers are the people who buy your products, but they’re not necessarily the ones to consume the product, speak about it, or brand it themselves. This expanded description includes ‘engagers’ – the people who form engagements with the brand but are not necessarily the buyers.

Let's take rabbits as an example:

You have your average, normal rabbits.


Then you have your exceptional rabbits who operate outside of conventional reality.


If the large rabbits don't buy anything, but they draw attention to the species and generally act as a focal point for marketers, then don't they have some form of intangible value?


So who's driving the people who drive sales? Who is catalyzing forms of interest in a brand that the brand itself could never achieve? It's consumers that are producing real value these days, not marketers, it's just tricky to determine who exactly creates the most value - that is if you can't wrap your mindgrapes around the idea that not all value can be measured.

Admit it Gen Y, you love Atlas Shrugged

In between trips to the sensory deprivation tank and group meetings for 601 that I’ll have during the few short weeks this holiday season, I’d like to get back into regular reading.

During school semesters, I find myself mostly reading blogs, online news, the Economist, and a few random magazines like AdBusters, Vanity Fair, Wine Spectator, and Travel & Leisure. I love reading, but can’t really find time to devote to sitting down, turning off the laptop, and reading a book. But that’s one of the great things about the holidays – you finally have no excuse for procrastination.

I’m going to finish reading ‘Atlas Shrugged’, Ayn Rand’s seminal tome of objectivism and free-market capitalism. And it’s a bizarre time to be reading about laissez-faire economics given the economic crisis that somehow necessitates government nationalization of key industries, bailouts, and a general rejection of the idea that individuals acting in their own self-interest will create an optimal economic outcome.

I’m at page 593 of Atlas Shrugged. The book is 1063 pages and has a font size of 8. It’s ridiculous. But still I persevere. The story is interesting, if not a bit pithy and needlessly arcing.

But what really makes me keep flipping the page is the survivalist philosophy espoused by the protagonists. Ideas like fairness is irrelevant in an argument (because who is to say what’s really fair?) or that individuals have no obligation but to themselves. As a book it is a testament to self-interest and competition. It wholly defends rationality and discredits the concept of intrinsic value or subjective interpretation. This is known as objectivism.

For example, an apple is an apple. Reality is exactly what things are, not some perceptual cloak that society has elaborately created to shape our understanding of the world.

Things are what they are, therefore what grounds do we have to question reality? If all we know of reality is what we can see, sense, and experience, then there is no rational basis upon which we can claim that it's manufactured or false.

The plot of Atlas Shrugged is set in the context of a decaying industrialist society whose government and leaders believe that nothing is absolute and refuse to believe that labour productivity actually contributes to personal well-being. Citizens become pessimistic and willfully commit themselves to a collectivist mentality, believing that society’s best interests supercede their own.

In a utopia (or Marxist state) this philosophy might work, however with no one accepting individual responsibility, the world collapses. Trains stop running, electricity shuts off, people go hungry.

Now I’m hardly suggesting that this will happen with an Obama administration – but it’s interesting to study Atlas Shrugged as an analogy to what’s happening now. The same sense of free-market individualism that Ayn Rand supports can be thought to have catalyzed the overleverage that crashed our economy.

I think for Gen Ys, Atlas Shrugged really is the perfect literary guilty pleasure. We’re not willing to accept Rand’s hard-as-nails rationality about charity or welfare, but we’re salivating over the affirmation that individuals must have personal ownership and accountability to contribute to a healthy and functioning society.


The film adaptation is scheduled for a 2009 release, and if you needed another reason to hate Angelina Jolie (although I actually love her) she’s apparently going to be the lead.