Everything Is Marketing
Talk of marketing may not sound at all Zen; in fact it sounds like the definition of Anti-Zen, Eastern counterpart to the Anti-Christ. But everything is Zen and marketing is Zen. No matter how great an idea, it won’t help anybody if it isn’t marketed successfully. Marketing isn’t about deceptive sales practices to profit from the transfer of goods and services. It can be, but that’s just bad marketing. A market is where people meet, it’s a connection. And the connection is the fundamental unit of the universe, of life.
We are moving, every year, every month, every day, every moment, toward an increasingly business-run world. This process is creating increasing pressures on people’s lives and so there’s a feeling of needing something more than just survival. The idea is that we’re entering a sort of event-horizon which will pull us into strings of linguine, into a vacuum of ever-accelerating gravity, and in order to thrive one has to already be ahead of the curve. It’s easy, then, to conclude that business, and the marketing that’s involved with every step, is an evil, a wrong way.
But Zen is all about business. Specifically, it’s about the business of mindfulness. Mindful sitting. Mindful eating. Mindful breathing. Mindful stepping. Every step is a connection. What we call mindfulness is really a connection with another stream of interconnections. The mind is a market and anytime it does what it does best it’s marketing. It’s a natural-born marketer. Not to market is not to live.
So as we ramp up the curve in the early part of the twenty-first century, we have an incredible opportunity to sync what our minds do effortlessly (market) with the direction that the world seems to be taking (marketing). The changes will be painful, will be demanding, will be challenging, will be dangerous. In other words they will be life. It’s the best opportunity for the practice of Zen in a long time.
If you want to ride a dragon, you’ll just have to climb up its long tail. And it’s a long tail we are facing. Climbing up will take discipline, collaboration, competition, mindfulness, inter-connection, networking. All the things available in our increasingly technology-prone life. The best tool we have is the same tool that is behind all of natural selection: marketing.
Without marketing there would be no me, no you, no us, no they. The peacock feather is brilliant copy for the species, and the species is the vital market for the next generation. Without that market, life has nowhere to flow. Everything is marketing. Practice Zen the natural way. Practice marketing. You’ll wake up to a better world.
