The market no longer exists; what really matters is society. So as marketers, we should not be looking for a gap in the market, but the opportunities lie in a gap in society. Instead, today’s empowered consumers want companies and brands that advance society, not the market. This was the gist of what Kees Klomp, author, consultant and entrepreneur on Meaningful Entrepreneurship, told a room of top marketers on Dec. 12.
However, the picture Kees managed to paint presents a totally different horizon. One that every company is going to have to deal with. Companies are increasingly being judged by consumers and other stakeholders on their social added value, rather than their financial results. Not for nothing has the United Nations embraced Gross National Happiness, which Bhutan uses to measure the country’s standard of living, as a model for the future. Kees demonstrated the rise of the meaning economy in which Benefit is the new Profit and Impact is the new Success. The beauty is that companies that adopt such a mindset are already often doing better in the stock market.
The presentation was particularly inspiring and hopeful for the future as far as I was concerned. Kees described a future in which Marketing is moving towards Mattering with a tipping point in 2020. You can see that more and more marketers are serious about topics such as meaning and purpose. We therefore see a growing interest in the subject given the turnout at this session. Also among the candidates for whom WerfSelect mediates, we notice that it is increasingly important to work for a company that does “good”.
In recent years, sustainability has been a regular item on the agenda at Top Marketers Network. We will continue this with the broad perspective of meaning marketing. In Europe, the Netherlands is one of the worst of the class in terms of the number of companies with a meaning approach. Surely with so many top marketers we could have a positive influence on this. And we can do that especially with the big companies that want to make the turn towards a meaningful future. But also by supporting startups that start from meaning.
Who is participating? If there are suggestions on how we can work together to make this more hands on, we would love to hear them!
Annelies Ruis, also on behalf of the TMN team
