Burns - The Market is Chaos The Tao of Marketing

Copyright 2012 Steve Burns

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1470013266

ISBN 13: 9781470013264

eBook ISBN: 978-1-62110-736-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012902224
CreateSpace, North Charleston, SC

Over the past two decades, the proliferation of personal computers has overwhelmed marketers with tools intended to make their jobs easier and more productive. Marketing has moved into the scientific realm with statistics, demographics, complex spreadsheets, forecasting models, checklists, and processes. Intuition, creativity, and innovation have been lost amid endless meetings and countless hours spent populating reports and spreadsheets.

I dont want to diminish the importance or value of these tools, but I believe marketing is more than demographics, statistics, and processes. Im convinced that in any successful marketing campaign there is still a place for a more intuitive approachmaybe even a metaphysical approachto defining and positioning products and identifying new markets. In this book, you wont find the 5 Ps of marketing, SWOT or TOWS analyses, or forecasting techniques. I avoid what I think are boring formalities and memorizations. Instead, I guide you through a story set in ancient China in which the Taoist sage, Lao Tzu and The Art of War author, Sun Tzu, use their combined wisdom to explain how to use the chaos of the market to help find customers, identify market segments, and define successful products.

The book beginswell, at the beginning. That may sound strange, but people tend to prefer starting at the end of a story, where the answers are hidden and ignore the beginning, where the questions are. How will you find an answer if you dont know the question? Lao Tzu forces his student, Hong-meng, to start at the beginning where the question is and then follow the path through the chaos to find the answer. He teaches him that success begins with the first step, telling him, The voyage of a thousand leagues begins with the first step.

According to Lao Tzu, a market is not defined by statistics and demographics but is a form without form. The image without image. It is fleeting and elusive. It is chaos.

Lao Tzu and Sun Tzu demonstrate that finding a products competitive advantage is not a process of simply checking off a list of features. Features describe the product; you must look beyond the features to define its real value. According to Lao Tzu one fashions the clay to make a vase, but its the emptiness inside that makes it useful. Customers are also more than a statistic or an entry in a forecast. They are complex, dynamic, and multidimensional. The more one speaks of it the less one can hold it. When you look in a mirror, you only see a reflection of reality. If you dont understand your customer, then just like what you see in the mirror, youll never see the real customer, but only his or her reflection.

According to the Tao, the world came from chaos. It was the Tao that brought form and direction. Lao Tzu explains that the Tao is fleeting and unholdableit presents an image that is fleeting and unholdable, it is however something. The market is like the Taoit also begins in chaos: It is however something. It needs intuition and a creative and innovative marketing plan to bring form, direction, and, ultimately, success.

Throughout the text the quotes of wisdom from Lao Tzu and Sun Tzu are shown in italics . A list of references can also be found at the end of the book.

By imagination and reason we turn experience into foresight;
we become the creators of our future,
and cease to be the slaves of our past.

Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

CONTENTS

Chapter

LAO TZU

The Zhou dynasty
China, 500 BC

Nothing. There was nothing as far as he could see. Kunlun Mountain was the highest peak in the area, and he shouldve been able to see something - but there was only an endless view of nothing. Leaning against a boulder, he stared into the distance, searching for anything buried in this unending nothingness. He sighed and waited patiently. He didnt know exactly what he was waiting for, but he wasnt going to leave until he found it.

Kunlun was a magical mountain. It was home to the eight immortals of Tao and was thought to be the source of answers to impossible questions. Hong-meng had come to the magical mountain in search of answers. How long had he been staring into the distant nothingness? He didnt know. Time didnt exist on the magical mountain, but he felt as though hed been sitting there forever.

He remembered the look on his wifes face when hed told her of his plans. She didnt understand his need for answers. Shed never understood. But his daughter didor, at least, she pretended to. She was young enough to believe that her father always knew what he was doing. Hong-mengs son was just the opposite. He was at the age where he had all the answers.

Hong-meng had left early the next morning. His wife stood in front of their house, crying quietly, swearing that he was deserting his family. His daughter waved happily as he walked slowly down the path, and then, seeing her mother cry, decided to cry too. He glimpsed his son peeking out from behind the door, pretending he didnt care if his father left or not.

The journey to Kunlun Mountain had been long and hard. Hed been tired and very lonely. Every morning hed awoken with doubt clawing at his stomach. Was he doing the right thing? Would he find the answers he sought? He was certain only that he couldnt quit.

He had chosen a spot on the summit above everything, a spot from which he could see to forever and beyondbut forever seemed to be full of nothing. Nothing! He was beginning to hate that word! Tie Gai hadnt warned him about the nothingness.

Tie Gai was probably his best friend, although Hong-meng never knew when he was being serious or just telling a story. Tie Gai had arrived in Qufu, the capital city of Lu Province in the southern region of the Zhou Empire, several years ago. Hong-meng remembered the first time he saw him. It was an early summer morning, and Tie Gai was walking through the small alleyway leading from the open market just outside the walls of the inner city. He nodded at Hong-meng and smiled in greeting as he passed and then, without asking permission, set up his stall next to Hong-mengs small shop. Tie Gai was a miracle worker with wood. He could make anything you wanted. He loved to talk and had an opinion about everything, although he never discussed himself or where he came from. The two men spent hours together, talking about every subject imaginableor, more accurately, Tie Gai talked while Hong-meng listened.

It was during one of these one-sided conversations that hed told Hong-meng about Kunlun Mountain. He claimed it was a magical place where one could find answers to anything. No question was too difficult. Hong-meng suspected that this was Tie Gais way of trying to help solve Hong-mens problems. That same night, Hong-meng decided he must go to Kunlun Mountain. He needed answers.

But Tie Gai hadnt told him about the nothingness!

Hong-meng took a deep breath, trying to relax, and looked for a more comfortable place to sit on the rocky ground. He stared harder into the endless nothingness. It didnt help. Frustrated, he stared even harder, until his eyes began to hurt. He knew that in nothing there was always something. It was impossible for nothing to exist without something. It was like yin and yangone couldnt exist without the other. Would he really find what he was looking for? He stared intently, trying to rip apart the nothingness. He knew something was buried in there. He just had to find it.