Mirror, Mirror Tell me!

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who in the land is fairest of all?" to which the mirror always replies "You, my queen, are fairest of all." ....sure everybody remembers these infamous lines by the Queen in Snow White Fairy Tale...

Mirror is and has been playing a very crucial role in human existence! Why do we LOVE mirrors? Why do we need to have mirrors in the gyms???

Sure there is a functional benefit/ explanation/ justification of why we want to live with mirrors, i.e., we want to 'monitor' / 'control' our physical appearance and make necessary adjustments if needed...is that it? just a monitoring tool for us??? not really...mirror has a far further significance than its bare functional value add in our society....which is linked to 'transformation' concept we discussed in our previous blogs...

Mirrors are tools enabling us to re-assure ourselves that we are or in the course of be-coming power-full! They project our image in our mind and helps us to continously prove to ourselves that we are power-full living beings...Mirrors 'tell us' (like in the case of Snow White) that we are the person we want to be or be-come!

Did you ever wonder why we have so many mirrors in the gyms??? Because as important as music, the mirrors help us to get / stay motivated...Mirrors show the movie of how we transform from 'weak' beings to 'stronger' beings by using various tools we exercise with to pump up our muscles, confidence to survive and reach our dreams in this world!!!

How far can we flex the 'mirror symbol' in our civilization?

The reason why the concept of the mirror exists, is because we want to continously feel stronger by reassuring ourselves that we do exist indeed:) We, the human beings need to feel secure at all times, at all cost! Yes, fear is ruling us...unless we begin to embrace love to save ourselves from the chains of fear...

What are the instances, i.e., concrete manifestations of 'mirror' symbol in our lives? For instance:

- Facebook: we use it because we want to talk to friends abroad:) Come on...whether we are aware or not, we love Facebook, because it makes us 'feel secure' by enabling us 'connections', i.e., group of people / our tribe we can survive in....yet more importantly it reassures us of ourselves...our existence....we want to exist...we do not want to die...we are afraid of dying...so we need to express and prove our existence over, over, over, over, over, over and over again...

so we talk about ourselves all the TIME...Descartes claimed ' I think, therefore I am'...In our new technologically advanced world, we became ' I FACEBOOK, therefore I am'....exactly we are what we claim ourselves to be on facebook...we are THE STATUS UPDATES, we are the FRIENDS we 'claim' to be connected with some-how....

We want to use all the means available to re-assure ourselves...so what else???

We consume:)

Not only 'I facebook, therefore I am'....'I CONSUME, therefore I am'...Great for the product marketers...they market objects to people to reassure who they are or who in their minds, they already are...and just want to see a mirror image in this physical world...

Completing the story circle:

Let's reiterate : WHY do we facebook or consume in the first place?

We do facebook or consume, because we feel weak! That's it! Fear, fear, fear!

What do we FEAR?

DEATH!

It is sarcastic, that even if we fear, we still die...So why do we fear?

Simple! Because we POSTPONE death...yet we still die...Fear does not end the situation...it only postpones to a later date, giving us more time in this World...How do we use this time? To enjoy the world??? Very rarely...we keep fearing death...in this time we gained...what a human drama?

So how do we POST-PONE death?

We continously EM-POWER ourselves by creating ourselves through communication, linking to other individuals and acquiring symbols of power...which are actually only ways to motivate ourselves...i.e., our will power to live...Most of the things we do during the day are just ways to motivate our individual beings to 'continue' to live...

we WANT to LIVE....WE want to live...WE WANT TO LIVE!

Why do we want to LIVE?

This is a mysterious question, being attempted to be answered by various philosophers to date...Not a clear answer to date...significant ones being, we live, because:

1 - we want to survive

2 - we want to reproduce

3 - we have a goal to accomplish in this Life, which includes creating a connection with the Divine, loving and caring for a person, completing an objective

No matter which human question we tackle within the realm of marketing philosophy, they all direct us towards the 'will to live'....this is the simple basic motivator of humanity..Independent of 'why we live'...there is an observable fact over generations that 'we want to live'!!!

Can the answer be? 'We want to LIVE, because "WE" wants to live'...??? [grammar is correct:)]

HE-MAN: "I have the POWER!!!"

What is the main commonality between beauty, pharmaceutical, sports, education, fashion industries and He-man cartoon?

The fact is that they are all in TRANS-FORMATION business! They sell transformation to their customers.

What is Transformation?
According to Beolingus Online dictionary[http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/dings.cgi?lang=en;service=dict-en], transformation means in genetics modification of a cell or bacterium by the uptake and incorporation of exogenous DNA or in outside world the act of changing in form or shape or appearance...The main criteria for something/ someone to transform is the fact that its physical shape has to CHANGE.

So what KIND of change?
Usually it is connoted with positive change in state, i.e., going from weak state to a more powerful state.

WHY is there a Change?
Because the transformed organization has a NEW MISSION and execution of this mission requires a NEW Body:)

HOW does Transformation occur?
The organism needs tools to go forward in a new body towards the new mission. These tools can be internal tools (like reflection, change in assumptions) or external tools like He-man's sword:) A caring environment is also key to support you as you go through transformation [not a prerequisite, a nice to have criteria]

Pharma, beautification, education, sports, fashion industries, they are all promising the customers transformation, ...i.e., customers we want to be trans-formed...Let's go back to He-man to understand the transformation concept better [Firstly i believe that if we cannot understand a concept simply, we cannot understand its application in complex matters, which only dilutes the core concept]

He-Man ("The Most Powerful Man in the Universe!"[1]) (IPA: /ˈhiː.mæn/[2]) is a heroic fictional character in the Masters of the Universe franchise. He is the alter ego of Prince Adam and also the twin brother of She-Ra. The character's name comes from the word he-man, which was once used to describe a strong, masculine and virile male. He-Man and his friends defend Eternia and the secrets of Castle Grayskull from the evil forces of Skeletor.

The planet's inhabitants are dealing with the aftermath of the Great Wars, which devastated the civilizations that once ruled supreme over all lesser beings. The Wars left behind advanced machinery and weaponry known [He-man's sword] only to select people. An early incarnation of the Sorceress of Castle Grayskull gives He-Man some of these weapons, and he sets out to defend the secrets of Castle Grayskull from the evil villain Skeletor

[Source: http://www.wikipedia.org/]

So the storyline is clear:
1 - Prince Adam has a mission: He wants to defend Castle Grayskull from the evil villain Skeletor
2 - Prince Adam has a tool: He has the sword that em-POWERs him to BE-COME He-man. He becomes " The most powerfull man in the Universe"
3 - Prince Adam has a loving/ caring environment, with our famous Orko:), Sorceress, etc, which only helps him to flourish

So, how is He-man linked to the industries mentioned before? Simply through transformation...All these industries em-POWER people with tools to BE-COME some-BODY else:)

a - Pharma industry: If you feel weak, you just need to drink vitamins, magic pills, there you go:)
b- Beauty industry: If you want to have power over men simply, just look pretty;)
c - Sports industry: If you want to be respected as a strong person, literally become strong physically
d - Education industry: If you want to BE-COME useful and earn money/ accomplish any other goal in life, you need the tools education supplies you with (e.g., information, perspective, connections, etc)
e - Fashion industry: If you want to become a powerful man, you need a Rolex:) and wear expensive suits

and many more industries are built on marketing transformation to their customers:) For instance Edward Bernays (we owe him the the honor of creating public relations/ marketing) leveraged feminism movement to market cigarettes to women...so if women wanted to become powerful, they had to do what their male peers were doing, i.e., smoke a cigarette:) Did you know that initially men used to wear high heels to avoid mud on the streets...once men stopped wearing high heels (subject to research, potentially because streets got better infrastructure), the industry leveraged women's desire to be on the same level as men and marketed high heels to them, which in time become even more connoted with elegance and femininity.

What other underlying common concepts are there beyond 'transformation' with which humans relate to the world? According to Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman [http://www.marketingmetaphoria.com/deepmetaphor.html], there are 7 main deep metaphors which marketers need to leverage, i.e.,
1 - Balance
2 - Transformation
3 - Connection
4 - Container
5 - Journey
6 - Resource
7 - Control

I also do agree with this list of deep metaphors at first glance. These are basically the SIMPLE activities early homo saphiens did to survive and more importantly to reproduce, i.e., these are the ways in which humans used their environment to survive/ reproduce.

Marketings' main input is homo saphiens...hence we must master these concepts if we want to have a place in the history of marketing and contribute to our civilization. Bonne chance!