I have spent most of my life trying to figure out the holy grail of business, namely, how do you open a marketing channel wide enough to get everyone that’s anyone (ie. interested) to flow down it.
Six years ago I started writing a book on the topic. I got quite far in terms of ideas and philosophy, but never completed it (I’ll go into the idea in another post).
Stephen Hawking spent a good part of his life trying to figure out something even grander – a Theory of Everything [TOE] (in the form of a universal equation). He never got there, but what’s more important is that he changed his mind towards the end of his life (if you’re interested, you can read his conclusion here: https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/events/strings02/dirac/hawking.html).
The problem is, if there was a TOE, then it’s also (more or less) a proof of fate. And if that existed, there would be no point in anything a free human race believes in (no choice, no free will, everything is known).
Why? Because of one little (and very obvious) assumption. We survive and thrive through hope (and hope alone). With no hope, there’s no point. It’s all just drudgery.
But regardless, people DO form groups (and often exceedingly large ones) and flow along those channels gathering momentum until the market reaches its limits. The point being that there are secrets to unlock.
At this point, there are two things to consider:
1. We know that there can be NO (human knowable) TOE (for the reason stated above) – it kills hope.
2. We could ignore the truth and carry on digging. This restores and increases hope.
The canniest (and often most dishonest) marketers (and by inference, copywriters) choose route 2 The problem I have with this is that the often overhyped promises end in dissatisfied customers, and short term business.
So my question becomes: is there a way of going down route 1 without killing hope? And the answer is yes. More on this in the coming weeks.