It might sound provocative, but to do marketing effectively, it’s necessary to stop doing marketing, at least in the way we’ve imagined it until now. Indeed, new needs and challenges, especially for digital professionals, are increasingly evident, and the responses can’t be the same.

When I tidy up the folder in the archive, I find relics of digital communication archaeology. Courses designed just a few years ago show signs of premature aging, and social media marketing plans from 2016 fade compared to today’s multifaceted reality. Few fields have experienced such exponential acceleration. Billions of dollars, billions of users, millions of brands to empower, educate, expand, and constantly renew a global system that has forever changed our lives.

Business models, business plans, funnels, buyer personas, touchpoints, the messy middle, TikTokization, AI, the semantic web, and metaverses. Subjects of daily discussions, endless video calls, training courses, and festivals. We’ve been adept at navigating this ocean and surviving financial crises, new algorithms, and vertical formats. We’ve learned to analyze needs, capture trends, define measurable objectives, plan ad campaigns, and write the best reports.

But there’s a “but.”

And it’s not just any “but.” It’s not so much about optimizing time, budget, resources, or updating the website for GDPR compliance, but rather about radically changing our point of view.

I can bring the best marketing plan in the world to the table, packaged with logos, graphics, and the brightest development prospects. If the owner doesn’t communicate with employees, the new resource takes on roles for which they have no experience, or the colleague in the next office doesn’t copy me in correspondence with the supplier, this plan is unlikely to succeed.

The most worrying element is that we won’t even understand the reasons that hinder achieving our goals (after all, the report was perfect, and we were all aligned at the last meeting), and we’ll come up with bizarre hypotheses to explain the failure, perhaps even doubting the goodness of the people we work with.

Fortunately, over time I’ve had the opportunity to meet mentors who have helped me grow, to whom I am very grateful. People with very different experiences, opinions, and lifestyles, seemingly irreconcilable, but united by the same idea of individual and social responsibility. Some practice meditation, others pray, some curse, and others study Nietzsche, but I believe they all experience human life with the same spirit.

We Create Our Reality

It’s not about a clumsy New Age theory, falling into a self-centered solipsistic vision garnished with delusions of omnipotence, and even less about a new Humanism. It’s about understanding how every phenomenon we observe is primarily a phenomenon we observe. Thousands of authors have explained this concept more exhaustively and convincingly than I could, so I won’t dwell on it.

What interests me here is to explain how, from Heraclitus to Buddha, it is said that character is our destiny, ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων, and the intention we put into our actions, words, and thoughts participates in the creation of our experience. In all this, the ego can play nasty tricks because, whether something called “I” exists or not, it’s unquestionably overvalued in the West. Our annoyances vanish into nothingness against the immensity of the Universe, and our life, however long it may be, is a fart, as a dear friend of mine says.

How does all this relate to marketing and business development?

Imagine a scenario where company dynamics are discussed and clarified in time, where grievances and misunderstandings can emerge and be articulated without fueling cold wars and internal feuds, where toxicity is removed at the source. What would we achieve? It’s hard to present a balance sheet with numbers and tables, but likely we could focus more on what’s really important for us and our business, seize unexpected opportunities, and above all not waste time and energy. What results could the implementation of an ego-eccentric vision lead to?

We know how easy it is to fall into the temptation of an inappropriate comment, a hasty judgment, resentment over criticism. It’s easy, just a moment to slide towards the lower realms of complaints, envy, subterfuge, and pride. It takes little to sow misunderstandings, grudges, competition, discomfort. A frost can destroy a crop.

If we think we are good marketers because we make stunning presentations and believe we have everything under control thanks to new management software, we’re on the wrong path. People and relational dynamics must be at the center of our attention because the real difference is made by caring for our emotions, listening not only to the words said but also to the nuances in the tone of voice, in the gaze. Only in an authentically harmonious environment can we germinate wonderful projects and row together when the waves rise.

Otherwise, we’ll always be on alert and uncooperative.

If we fear a stab in the back, how can we be genuinely cordial and helpful? How can we achieve satisfactory results for everyone if we secretly harbor career ambitions, even at the expense of the organization we operate in?

It’s necessary to change perspective, overturn an old framework, and truly start talking about People.

That’s why I’m looking for new lines of work where I can put a different, subtler, even more respectful quality, where the ultimate goal is in harmony with the forces and conditions available. A marketing that can bring benefits to everyone.

After researching digital balance, cognitive processes, strategic marketing, and corporate well-being, I’m now delving into other aspects increasingly concerning how we interact and communicate within companies, convinced that it’s utterly useless to communicate externally if we don’t know who we are and if internal relationships are tainted.

Let’s start cleaning up, with a good diagnosis, investigating the causes of the malaise afflicting our office days, and then finding effective remedies. It’s a constant process that doesn’t end with an hour of mindfulness or a team-building weekend (as useful as these tools may be), a gentle yet determined effort capable of generating the real change that businesses, made up first and foremost of people, need.

Effective marketing cannot ignore aspects that go far beyond lead generation, benchmark analysis, and GA4.