Brand Eudaimonia
The U.S. is a consumer-driven economy. Due to many factors, we've grown to be the largest economic machine the world has ever seen. Not in itself a bad thing. I'm a free market capitalism kind of guy. However, along with producing many wonders we can be grateful for, our economy has also developed an addiction to debt, easy money, and cheap crap. As I type this, we're going through ANOTHER economic hangover after years of "hair of the dog" bailouts, stimulus, and Fed monopoly money printing. This is going to continue to happen as long as corporate business models depend on shopaholic Americans falling off the wagon. If brands want to keep making money, they're going to have to evolve beyond selling cheap and shallow crap.We're waking up to the fact that buying a bunch of mediocre stuff doesn't make us happy.The status quo has a serious void when it comes to helping people live more meaningful lives. It's time for a change in the products, services, and brands that our economy creates. In a recent blog, the always excellent Umair Haque talks about the classical concept of Eudaimonia - a meaningfully well-lived life. He writes:
Ultimately, the pursuit of eudaimonia is a personal decision. It's not something that can be bought. But can products, services, and brands evolve to meet the demand of people living more meaningfully? They can, and they must. Your brand can, too. Umair says:
Umair Haque offers five examples of what eudaimonia means to our lives. I'm going to list them, and discuss briefly what they have to do with your branding:
Does your brand really help people live, work, and play better? Like, honestly and demonstratably? Good. Communicate that fact to people in your advertising, your design, and your behavior as a company.
We may not be able to measure eudaimonia. But we can absolutely communicate how a worthwhile brand helps people become "better, wholer, grittier, wiser, fundamentally more accomplished selves." Speak the truth, be compelling, be respectful to your audience, and don't try to be all things to all people. And then measure your increased consumer satisfaction.
Does your brand help people create and build "stuff of deep significance, beauty, and meaning?" Awesome. Tell your audience about it. Or if you don't offer that right now, could you? It may not be that huge of an undertaking. It could have been in your corporate DNA all along, hiding in plain sight.
People are starving for deep and meaningful products and services. If you create a product or offer a service with depth, people will value it more. They'll spend more time with it. They'll tell their friends about it. Best of all, they'll be willing to pay more for it. Umair Haque goes on to say:
One could dismiss this as pie-in-the-sky hippie talk. Some might say "Business isn't about being meaningful, it's about seeing my stock price go up." But let's face it. There's not much more future in offering shallow crap. If people don't value your brand, they're going to demand more and more discounts. Brands that fail to offer meaning will come to depend on schemes like Groupon, craving that next fix of a ringing cash register. Brand eudaimonia - that is, brands that offer meaning and higher value will differentiate themselves from the competition. They'll be less dependent on promotions. They'll convert skeptical customers into believers who will spread the good word. They'll make people proud to open their pocketbooks. Best of all, they'll help people genuinely live a better life. For Further Reading:
I've written about Umair Haque's ideas several times. This blog post complements the above concepts nicely. I've also reviewed his most recent book here.
Shameless Self-Promotion:
I'm an advertising creative. I'm passionate about helping exceptional brands become more valuable and meaningful. I'd love to work with talented folks who share this vision.
The economy we have today will let you chow down on a supersize McBurger, check derivative prices on your latest smartphone, and drive your giant SUV down the block to buy a McMansion on hypercredit...And it's a conception built in and for the industrial age: about having more.
Now consider a different vision: maybe crafting a fine meal, to be accompanied by local, award-winning microbrewed beer your friends have brought over, and then walking back to the studio where you're designing a building whose goal is nothing less than rivaling the Sagrada Familia. That's an alternate vision, one I call eudaimonic prosperity, and it's about living meaningfully well. Its purpose is not merely passive, slack-jawed "consuming" but living: doing, achieving, fulfilling, becoming, inspiring, transcending, creating, accomplishing — all the stuff that matters the most.
Ultimately, the pursuit of eudaimonia is a personal decision. It's not something that can be bought. But can products, services, and brands evolve to meet the demand of people living more meaningfully? They can, and they must. Your brand can, too. Umair says:
Eudaimonia isn't asceticism, a world where we're all monks, and the Stuff Police jails you if you buy that 3D TV: plenty of stuff can be eudaimonic...eudaimonia's about stuff that's loved, treasured, adored — because it adds up to living well.
Umair Haque offers five examples of what eudaimonia means to our lives. I'm going to list them, and discuss briefly what they have to do with your branding:
Living, (working, and playing) not just having. ...eudaimonia is a more nuanced, complex conception of a good life: it's about whether or not the pursuit of mere stuff actually translates into living, working, and playing meaningfully better in human terms.
Better, not just more. eudaimonia asks, "Did any of that stuff make you meaningfully better — smarter, fitter, grittier, more empathic, wiser?
Does your brand really help people live, work, and play better? Like, honestly and demonstratably? Good. Communicate that fact to people in your advertising, your design, and your behavior as a company.
Becoming, not just being. If eudaimonia's about living, working, and playing better, not just having more, well, Houston, we have a problem. Economic "growth" as you and I know it is probably fundamentally inadequate to tell us much about it, because how we measure growth is just about stuff...The multiplication of eudaimonia can be gauged neither by "GDP," then, nor by tracking self-reported happiness, nor by basic, simple measures of basic human development, like the HDI — but rather, by understanding whether or not people are becoming their better, wholer, grittier, wiser, fundamentally more accomplished selves.
We may not be able to measure eudaimonia. But we can absolutely communicate how a worthwhile brand helps people become "better, wholer, grittier, wiser, fundamentally more accomplished selves." Speak the truth, be compelling, be respectful to your audience, and don't try to be all things to all people. And then measure your increased consumer satisfaction.
Creating and building, not just trading and raiding. The pursuit of eudaimonia most definitely can't amount to much in economies where those who trade accomplishment and raid societies earn thousands, millions, or billions of times as much as the creators and the builders of those societies — because the result must be an enduring undersupply of the stuff of deep significance, beauty, and meaning. Eudaimonia is constructive in the sense that it's ignited by those creators and builders — and it always has been.
Does your brand help people create and build "stuff of deep significance, beauty, and meaning?" Awesome. Tell your audience about it. Or if you don't offer that right now, could you? It may not be that huge of an undertaking. It could have been in your corporate DNA all along, hiding in plain sight.
Depth, not just immediacy. The pursuit of eudaimonia demands depth like Trump needs a better haircut: that is to say, seriously...the pursuit of eudaimonia itself demands time, space, and room to reflect on questions of gravity and depth, preferably together: deliberatively, associatively, consensually.
People are starving for deep and meaningful products and services. If you create a product or offer a service with depth, people will value it more. They'll spend more time with it. They'll tell their friends about it. Best of all, they'll be willing to pay more for it. Umair Haque goes on to say:
...eudaimonia is going to be the biggest, most significant economic shift of the next decade, and perhaps beyond: of our lifetimes. We're not just on the cusp of, but smack in the middle of nothing less than a series of revolutions, aimed squarely at the trembling status quo (financial, political, social): new values, mindsets, and behaviors, fundamentally redesigned political, social, economic, and financial institutions; nothing less than reweaving the warp and weft of not just the way we live--but why we live, work, and play.
One could dismiss this as pie-in-the-sky hippie talk. Some might say "Business isn't about being meaningful, it's about seeing my stock price go up." But let's face it. There's not much more future in offering shallow crap. If people don't value your brand, they're going to demand more and more discounts. Brands that fail to offer meaning will come to depend on schemes like Groupon, craving that next fix of a ringing cash register. Brand eudaimonia - that is, brands that offer meaning and higher value will differentiate themselves from the competition. They'll be less dependent on promotions. They'll convert skeptical customers into believers who will spread the good word. They'll make people proud to open their pocketbooks. Best of all, they'll help people genuinely live a better life. For Further Reading:
I've written about Umair Haque's ideas several times. This blog post complements the above concepts nicely. I've also reviewed his most recent book here.
Shameless Self-Promotion:
I'm an advertising creative. I'm passionate about helping exceptional brands become more valuable and meaningful. I'd love to work with talented folks who share this vision.
Update:
Umair Haque just posted a video about Eudaimonia:
