ADVERTISING
IS A VIOLATION OF BOUNDARIES:
Marketing
without Advertising
By Joshua
Myrvaagnes
Inspiringwebcopy.com
Nearly every
time you advertise, you are using "wrong
speech"--you are crossing a boundary. If the advertising is not
consensual, then the person viewing it is being invaded upon. If you
put an ad
in a magazine, the person reading an article is interrupted without
her/his
consent by a distraction, and his/her attention has been hijacked.
Actually, if
you put an ad in a magazine, 10,000 people are being interrupted--the
entire
readership. That's
10,000 times
the "bad karma" if you just interrupted one person walking down the
street. No wonder
holistic healers don't like
marketing! And who
really wants
the stress of having 10,000 people bearing a mild grudge against you?
In American
culture, this experience of having your attention
hijacked is so commonplace that we take it for granted--but that
doesn't make
it ethical. Imagine
a world in
which people never put signs up in your way to sell you things, but
instead
only put beautiful things up that were meant to inspire, to bring
higher
spiritual forces into a form where they could energize and revitalize
you! Life
could be an art gallery! That's a vision every holistic healer, every
human
being, can get happy about. In a truly win-win world, all advertising
would be
a) beautiful and b) desired by the person viewing it.
That is why
there is a great invention: the community bulletin
board (and the phone book, classifieds, and on-line community board
such as
Craigslist.org). Here is a place where it is ethical to post something,
and
it's more effective too. It's ethical because people expect to see
information
about businesses there, and even want to see them. For this reason, it
is also
more effective. If someone is already looking for an ad, maybe even
looking for
an acupuncturist even, then he/she is far more predisposed to respond
favorably
to an acupuncturist adÑor even to read the thing all the way
through.
Before going
further, let's look at what, in the best possible
scenario, is inside the advertisement that has interrupted or not
interrupted
the passerby.
If people
don't know about your gift, your product, they won't buy
it. So you need to teach them, or "educate" them, about its non-obvious
benefits. We're not talking about "educating them about how your
product is
better than others," which is just self-aggrandizement, or pressuring
them into
a belief. Instead, we're talking about offering them information,
non-coercively, about what qualities to look for in making a purchasing
decision _in general_, so they can make a more informed decision about
what's
best for themselves.
For example,
let's say you're creating an ad for your acupuncture
business. Most Americans don't know what to look for in an
acupuncturist. You
might create an ad that lists five things everyone should expect of
their
acupuncture treatment, so that it won't merely give them a good feeling
for
three days and then leave them feeling pretty much the same as before.
For
example, they should ask if the practitioner monitors your progress and
makes
meaningful records, if the acupuncturist listens carefully to your
whole
medical situation and history without jumping to conclusions, that the
acupuncturist is healthy herself and has benefited and continues to
benefit
from acupuncture rather than selling you something she does not
actually
believe in herself, etc. Now maybe every acupuncturist already does
these
thingsÑbut not every healer does, if you count allopathic
medicine (M.D.'s
almost never have the time to take a comprehensive intake interview and
history)Ñso by telling people they should expect this of a
healer, you're
elevating their expectations of healing they receive in general.
Now, you may
or may not need to advertise to market. There is a
crucial distinction here: to market is to facilitate the purchasing of
your
service or product in general, and can include simply explaining it to
people
who happen to run into you and who express an interest. To advertise
means to
put announcements about your product out into the world. Some people
can work
solely through word-of-mouth marketing, through referrals. My
nutritionist is
one example. He's so good I and others still refer people to him even
though I
haven't myself been in for a consultation in over a year. He has never
run an
ad, as far as I know, and yet he always has his pick of which clients
to work
with (he picks the ones whose cases for which his tools are most able
to be
helpful--;for example, one time he declined to work with a
severe diabetic since
that's out of his range, and referred him to an M.D. he regards
highly). Some
plants reproduce without pollinating, by sending out root structures
from one
set of roots. You can "market" in this way, without any advertising.
And this
is where strategic marketing (perfecting the words you use) helps you
the
most--since it allows you to get clear for yourself about
what's valuable in
your product or service, and this clarity itself can alone boost your
sales and
increase your effectiveness in serving the world.
But most
businesses will need to spread the word. Some plants
reproduce by pollinating and then broadcasting seeds, and as long as
your
marketing is "non-toxic," non-intrusive, non-pressuring, and adds value
wherever it goes, you may well be justified in "pollinating." If you
package
your message in a nutritious fruit then it's perfectly ethical to
spread seeds
this way. (This is where my personal mission comes into play, to bring
poetry
into marketing and advertisement: to encourage unique and living
language in
advertisements, words that nourish people's psyches). And if you're
going to
advertise anyway, certainly it's better to do it in an informative way
than in
a desperate, platitudinous, vague, "we're the best so buy us," or
pressuring
way.
The "education" vision, described above, in and of itself doesn't necessarily imply advertising, and doesn't mean there is an ethical imperative to advertise. However, there is another school of thought: de-escalating.
Think about it
this way: your clients are in
need of healing and happen to be reading
through a
magazine during their day. There they see several mediocre ads for
uninspired
healers (hypothetically) who, anxious about making a living, are seeing
clients
that aren't optimally in alignment with their potential gifts. They see ads for health insurance
companies. And
meanwhile you just happen to have
the exact solution for these clients' particular problem. Wouldn't you
want to
run your ad there next to your more-toxic competitor?
If
you say yes, then consider this: even if your goal is not to
advertise at all, wouldn't you start out by running slightly fewer ads
than your "non-holistic" or "non-green" competition, and then as
holistic or green comes
to dominate the marketplace you can begin to phase out advertising, to
do it
less and less until you don't need to do any at all? The important
thing is not
to escalate the advertising war. (And again, if you want to advertise less,
then it
makes sense to optimize each ad, and strategic marketing--perfecting
your
words--is the way to do this.)
You
Don't Have to Let Fear Stop You from Giving Your Gifts
What I also
find in my experience with clients is the idea that
some people may be refraining from marketing, or from advertising,
because of
fear, self-doubt, an inaccurate perception of the world, an
under-perception of
their own gifts' value, or other emotional hang-ups, rather than the
real
ethical reluctance. It
may be
tricky to distinguish between the two in the hurry of our
stress-filled,
Darwinian- market lives. I myself have been in many of these fear-based
categories. If misperception is the case, consider the paradigm that
says, "Valuing the gifts Spirit has given you is what Spirit wants for
you and it is
wholly permitted," and that when there are competitors advertising,
your using
advertising is ethically more than justified as a way to give
alternatives to
people who will then have saner options to choose from. It's best for
the
people who are not cutting corners to be the ones selling more.
However, what
is stopping you may be the real resistance to
violating others' space. In
that
case, try this: value
your gifts
more--simply have all the confidence in your own work that your work
merits. For this,
writing
advertisements to show only to yourself (or a consenting friend) is a
very
powerful exercise. You
can try it
out right now: write an ad for yourself and then read it back to
yourself--or
if you have a tape recorder, tape it and then listen to your own voice
speaking
it back to you. It
is even worth
having a professional collaborate with you to create an advertisement
that
shows to yourself the full value of what you offer.
Seeing yourself in print like that can put things in
perspective and help you know what your value looks like as compared
with
someone else out there who is running advertisements.
Spend 5" each day reading your ad to yourself--it's
worth the time. You
will gradually
begin to have an increase in word-of-mouth sales since each time your
friends
or acquaintances ask you, 'What are you doing these days?" your answer
can
truthfully and with inspiration educate them about the gift you
offer, and give them a wider view of what this world's possibilities.
Our deepest
fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear
is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our
darkness that
most frightens us.
We ask
ourselves -- Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented,
fabulous?
Actually, who
are we not to be?
You are a
child of God. Your playing small does not serve the
world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people do not
feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the Glory of God
that is
within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone.
And as we let
our light shine, we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our
presence
automatically liberates others.
--Marianne
Williamson, A Return to Love (Often wrongly attributed to Nelson
Mandela, who
made the quotation famous.)
Joshua
Myrvaagnes
This article may be freely reproduced as long as it is not altered and attribution is kept. Thank you.