What if someone said to an embryo in the womb: “Outside of your world of black nothing is a miraculously ordered universe; a vast Earth covered with tasty food; mountains, oceans, and plains, fragrant orchards and fields full of crops; a luminous sky beyond your reach, with a sun, moonbeams, and uncountable stars; and there are winds from south, north, and west, and gardens replete with sweet flowers like a banquet at a wedding fest.
“The wonders of this world are beyond description. What are you doing living in a dark prison, drinking blood through that narrow tube?
“But, the womb-world is all an embryo knows and it would not be particularly impressed by such amazing tales, saying dismissively: You’re crazy. That is all a deluded fantasy.”
In his quest to shed light on the existence of a higher power, Rumi has brilliantly (and unintentionally) shared a relevant message for us.
Let’s not just look outside the box. Let’s look outside the industry. Because somebody, somewhere, has already solved our problem!
In the book Jugaad Innovation, we see how we can innovate, be flexible and do more with less, with examples of innovative entrepreneurs in emerging markets such as Africa, India, China and Brazil.
Ideas created with low budgets and endless limitations, except those of one’s imagination and resilience. Ideas that drive breakthrough growth in complex and resource-scarce worlds.
Fiction influences reality. As does imagination. Using children’s storybooks as inspiration helps craft effective stories and experiences too. There’s so much to learn via the imagination portrayed in children’s books such as The Magic School Bus, that could’ve easily been the inspiration behind The Field Trip to Mars!
From comic books and superheroes, we learn how to make the villain (the problem) strong. Superhero stories give heroes purpose by giving that villain a sense of twisted morality and a purpose.
If you were tasked with promoting The Batman, a symbol of justice and order, what would you do to kick it off? You’d create The Joker as the agent of anarchy and chaos. Thanos and Avengers. Darkseid and Superman. Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.Voldemort and Harry Potter.
A strong villain makes the hero stronger.
The power of building ‘belief’and creating a belief infrastructure is far more effective than the overused ‘purpose’. From brand ambassadors to influencers to powerful activations to branded content to print, belief systems provide provides an example too of how to build a brand and enable it to get sustained success.
Let’s learn from toys too. LEGO nailed its marketing strategy with LEGO movies, treating adults and children as one and the same. The brand message has been much more than, ‘buy our stuff’. It persuades adults to be indoctrinated with LEGO’s spirit of adventure, driving them to buy more LEGO for their kids.
And from movies, we can get inspired from examples such as Deadpool, Star Wars and even, Barbie, about effective content marketing and connections planning – about making an unknown brand successful and making known brands more hyped up.
When we sit down to think about marketing our product and brand, let’s learn a bit from how movies do it too.
So, to quote Rumi, “What are you doing living in a dark prison?”
By: Tahaab Rais, Chief Strategy Officer, Publicis Groupe MENAT
