“What's foreign to you may be native to someone else. So it begs the question, how objective are things really? If our idea of things being foreign is only based upon our purview, then what is native to me may be foreign to someone else, which says, to me at least, and what the literature continues to support, is that everything around us is just totally subjective. We think that things are absolute, but they are not. We are constantly imbuing things with meaning. Things are inherently meaningless, but we're giving them meaning. And if that be the case, if we want to better understand people, especially as marketers, managers, leaders, entrepreneurs, anyone with the vestiges of getting people to move, then understanding that your truth isn’t the objective truth, I think, is the first step.”
Marketer extraordinaire, Marcus Collins is a clinical professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. A former advertising executive who worked on iTunes + Nike sport music initiatives at Apple, Marcus contends that what we wear, what we eat, where we work, who we date, and just about every facet of our social living is informed by our underlying culture. And the primary goal of all industries is to “get people to move”, whether it is to buy, to click, to watch, vote, or subscribe.
In this intriguing conversation with Steve Goldbach of Deloitte and Stuart Crainer of Thinkers50, Marcus discusses his latest book, For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, And Who We Want To Be, and explains that his work is really just about connections - “connecting things that are normally disparate, so they come together and create new and novel things.”
He also describes how he came to lead digital strategy for Beyoncé, the influence of Émile Durkheim on his ideas, and the power of collective effervescence.
Marcus is the recipient of the Thinkers50 2023 Radar Award and his book, For the Culture, features on Thinkers50 2023 Best New Management Booklist.
This episode will be available on 27 March 2024.
#TheProvocateurs
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