Coöperative Marketing Manifesto

This idea came to me because of a busi­ness class assign­ment, a mar­ket­ing map designed to choose and strate­gize my posi­tion in the mar­ket­place. But I want to step aside from mak­ing things work in the cur­rent mar­ket­place, and con­sider a dif­fer­ent path, cre­at­ing a new mar­ket­place.  I call it my mar­ket­ing manifesto.

Denise’s Mar­ket­ing Manifesto

 I don’t believe in the dual­is­tic think­ing of mar­ket­ing based on com­pe­ti­tion and scarcity. 

 I believe there are enough cus­tomers for every­one, and there is enough work for every­one.  I believe there are enough ideas to over­come any road­blocks.  If you lived in Ire­land a few hun­dred years ago, peat moss was the top of your tech­nol­ogy for heat­ing, and it was finite.  In other times and places it has been wood, now oil, now wind and solar.  Even if we can’t get by with those, we may learn to har­ness the power of wave motion in oceans and lakes, or some­thing bet­ter will be dis­cov­ered.  So I release the con­cept of scarcity, and the com­pe­ti­tion which it justifies.

 I don’t care how many peo­ple dis­agree with me, or who dis­agrees with me.  I don’t even care if I’m wrong, and com­pe­ti­tion is the only way to sur­vive and thrive in the marketplace. 

 I walk my path in this life intend­ing to con­tribute not just to the world I do live in, but intend­ing to con­tribute to the kind of world I want to live in.  I am not going to waste my time try­ing to sup­port a sys­tem whose time is past. 

 Do you want to know why we have wars on this planet?  It might be because our entire infra­struc­ture of mak­ing a liv­ing is based on a war metaphor, dual­ism, and scarcity. 

Com­pe­ti­tion = I win, you lose. 

 Maybe it is time for us to look beyond this.  I believe we have been in a very long era where it did not mat­ter how much ethics we had, if we did not have power.  I believe we are now mov­ing into an era where it will not mat­ter how much power we have if we do not have ethics. If you ques­tion this, con­sider the worst dif­fi­cul­ties of both Pres­i­dents George W. Bush and Bill Clin­ton.  In both dif­fi­cul­ties, their lack of ethics over­comes their enor­mous power. 

 The one part of the busi­ness class mar­ket­ing map which ide­ally serves a new par­a­digm, one based on alliance and coöper­a­tion, is “My Mar­ket Niche”.  We can use our unique fea­tures and ben­e­fits not only to attract cus­tomers to our­selves, but to refer cus­tomers to oth­ers, in their unique niches, cre­at­ing a pow­er­ful net­work of allies in business. 

Con­sider this: did you ever go into a store and they referred you to a ‘com­peti­tor’ if they could not serve you?  How did that make you feel?  “The cus­tomer is #1,” (not the bot­tom line).  Did it make you look for­ward to doing busi­ness with them in the future?

 Take it one step fur­ther.  When you went to their com­peti­tor, did you tell them who referred you?  This encour­ages the net­work of busi­ness allies, rather than suf­fer­ing in the dog-​​eat-​​dog marketplace.  

 Com­pe­ti­tion will not dis­ap­pear, but coöper­a­tion could begin to come for­ward.  This is not fool­ish­ness or weak­ness.  It is the begin­ning of a much stronger, more sus­tain­able econ­omy, mar­ket­place, and lifestyle, one which I want to bring forth.

 How about you? 

© Denise Schultz 2006

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