ChasNote

Last Friday at Butler Shine’s Influx Ideas conference, Jonah Bloom presented his take on the future of advertising. One point in particular resonated for me (among many, many interesting points): A generation ago, there was no such thing as an industry serving our personal storage needs. In 2006, storing the stuff we don’t use is a $23 billion business in the US alone.

There are two ways to make sense of this development. One, an extrapolation of Barbara Ehrenreich’s argument in Nickel and Dimed, would be that housing costs have inflated more quickly than the rest of the stuff that goes in the house — so we all have more stuff than house to keep it in. Or two, Bloom’s perspective, is that our material needs in this country are more than fulfilled, we literally have more goods than we need or use. (I’m guessing both would agree that the non-material needs of the US population — say affordable health care or good public schools — are yet a long way from fulfillment for most.)

To an audience of marketers and agency folks, Bloom’s message was pointed. Successful brands need to move beyond pitching their products and services as goods to fulfill existing customer needs — the rational, direct-response side of marketing. They need to move into the emotional arena of creating “wants” that their brands fulfill. The desire, say, to be seen as hip or fashionable or smart or innovative. In West Coast media circles, this demand-creation concept is often dismissed as irrational, and the people who encourage it (brand marketing departments, agency execs, publishers and, of course, New Yorkers) as the “friction” that technology should eliminate.

I wonder what Starbucks, with their $4 lattes, and Porsche, with VW parts hiding beneath a premium brand and price tag, would say to a future of advertising based on rational thinking?