Inadequacy Marketing
Three simple steps to get rich:
- Create Anxiety: Build the feeling of a negative emotion inside of the person you are seeking to sell to.
- Choose from our deepest insecurities:
- Greed: "You are not in possession of what can make you happy."
- Fear: "You are not safe."
- Lust: “You are not attractive enough to be loved."
- Introduce the magic solution: Make people believe the story that they can aleviate their anxiety through buying your product.
These three steps have been the foundation since the birth of marketing. See: 1950. And: 1991. And: 2014.
These three steps have entrenched the idea that “your only path to happiness is through consumption."
The problem lies not in our consumption but in our belief that the only path to alleviating our deepest fears is through buying stuff we don’t need.
Each time we fall for this trap we discover that the product does not fix our insecurities. And then the we feel even more inadequate than before. And so the cycle continues.
I’m not going to change our culture of consumption. But I can redirect it.
I want to consume knowledge. I want to consume history to learn what’s possible.
