How to Become a Marketing Superhero: Giuseppe Stigliano (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Giuseppe Stigliano’s talk titled “How to Become a Marketing Superhero” at TEDxRoma 2023 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Prevalence of Mobile Phones

A few weeks ago, I read this: there are 6 billion people in the world who have access to mobile phones and only 4.5 billion people who have access to toilets. In other words, it means that we have more smartphones than toilets. It is such great news.

It means that there are plenty of telecommunications companies who are making great deals, phone makers and consumer electronics stores that are selling plenty of products. And marketers like me who are creating clever campaigns for these brands, for these companies to support their sales.

The Role of Marketing

And don’t look at me like that. I know what you’re thinking. Here is another hidden persuader trying to manipulate us to convince us to buy useless products and services.

But the reality is that we are all marketers. Marketing is helping the world. Look at this image: thanks to technology, now marketers can reach out to 6.5 billion people regardless of what they are. And we can interact with them. We can exchange thoughts. We can recommend products. It is amazing. It wasn’t possible only a few years ago.

And frankly, you should also think that you do marketing every day. Yes, you too. You are marketers. Every time that you take a selfie, you post it online and you try to build your personal brand. I do exactly the same. Professional marketers do exactly the same on behalf of their clients. And you’re marketers when you put on makeup, when you decide what to wear, when you decide where to go for dinner.

We are all marketers. And it’s fine. We see marketing even in nature. And it’s fine. Look at this male peacock: he’s trying to sell the product himself, trying to attract as many customers as possible, female peacocks, in order to maximize his return on investment. And look at this female bear, carefully choosing the right channel, the river, to maximize her return on investment: salmons.

And coming back to humans, how could we possibly choose among so many different but very similar alternative products, if marketers hadn’t carefully designed a catchy packaging, and find a memorable brand name, and pay attention to the product positioning on the shelf? It’d be impossible.

The Need for Marketing

The reality is that we need marketing. In this part of the world, we need marketing to make sense of our own existence, to communicate with others, to build our identity, and our image, other than, of course, to choose the right products and services. And if we go back to the roots of marketing, this is a definition given by Philip Kotler, who is unanimously considered the father of marketing.

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If you look at this definition, marketing is not only useful, but even ethical. So what is the problem? What is wrong with that? This is wrong.

The Problem with Marketing

We acted as if the resources on this planet were infinite. We acted as if the only compass to follow was growth. And this is wrong. This is wrong. They told us the business of business is business. And if there are collateral damages, well, they are technically negative externalities. They are part of the equation. It’s fine. This is wrong.

We created an unequal society, prioritizing the vested interests of the few at the expenses of the many. This is wrong.

The Potential of Globalization

This is wrong because globalization can be something very good. But if we don’t care about the consequences, then the planet will remind us of the consequences. And we created a toxic cocktail of marketing, globalization, capitalism, and consumerism. And this is the result. This is wrong.

We abused globalization and thought that we could just delocalize production without paying too much attention to the details. So now the point is, how can we reconcile these contradictions? This is the real question today. How can we leverage the unbelievable computational power at our disposal, that of virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, blockchain, 3D printing?

And what is the role of marketing in this effort to reconcile contradictions? As you can imagine, given what I do for a living, these questions have been keeping me awake for quite some time. And then I had my epiphany.

The Goddess of Harmony

I traveled back in time to the south of Italy, to a region called Calabria, to a little city, a little town called Castrovillari, where I was born. The Romans gave to that part of the world the name of Magna Gratia, or Greater Greece, because of the many Greek settlements.

Well, I was lucky enough to grow up there. And one day, 25 years ago, more or less, at school, one of my professors told us an amazing story. It was the story, from the ancient Greek mythology, of the daughter of two gods. Ares, the god of war, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Can you see the power of this idea? Two opposite, incredibly opposite contradictions, love and war, united to give birth to a baby, to a baby girl, to a child.

And what is even more impressive is the name that they decided to give to the child. Harmonia, or Harmonia in English. She was the goddess of harmony, concord, and synthesis. To me, the very existence of Harmonia is the proof that 20 centuries ago, ancient Greeks, among other Western and Eastern civilizations, understood that the world is not linear. It is actually full of contradictions. And it’s been like this since the dawn of civilization.

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Think about it: male, female. Day, night. Odd, even. Circle, square. Light, darkness. Good, evil. And wise men and women, in order to be successful in life, had to reconcile these contradictions. They had to deal with them.

They had to find a compromise. They had to find a solution. Whether in their private life, in society, in politics, in science, in art, even in their own body.

The Epiphany

So here is my epiphany: Harmonia can fix our broken world. Harmonia can help us find a compromise between the contradictions that I showed you before, between the legitimate interest of companies to make profit, and the consequences, the inequalities that this generated.

But it will be quite hard. Because we spent the last few centuries trying to kill our own ability to deal with these opposites. We decided that it wasn’t very efficient to have nuances. We decided that it was way easier to have black or white, and to double down on one of the two. We decided to sacrifice harmonia in the name of efficiency, effectiveness, predictability, calculability, control, effectiveness, planning, if you want.

And we did that because the only way to achieve economies of scale, of scope, economies of learning, efficiency, is to have a very stable, predictable environment. You can’t deal with this chaos. You need stability if you want to maximize the return on investment, if you want to maximize your profit, if you want to maximize the competitive advantage, to exploit your competitive advantage as long as possible. You need stability.

The Complexity of Today’s World

So do you see how complicated it is today? We need to relearn something that we used to know, that we forgot, and that we now need. Because today’s world is full of contradictions. It’s all about volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity.

So let’s have a look at today’s contradictions: humility and ambition. We need to find a way to blend the two. We need to admit that we don’t have all the answers, but we also need the ambition to write the rules of the game. Art and science. Assuming that they are two opposites, if you think of Leonardo da Vinci, was he a scientist or an artist? Hard to say. Probably useless to decide.

Short-term and long-term. You can have short-term returns, you also need to have long-term sustainability. If we don’t find a way to reconcile these two contradictions, or these two opposites, we’re lost. Ethics and profit. Finance and ESG. Local and global. Human and tech. And while this list is by no means exhaustive, I could have added virtual and real, physical and digital, it gives you a very clear sense of the complexity we have to deal with.

The Need for Heroes

So, we need to go back. It would be hard, it won’t be linear, it would be very difficult, but maybe there is a solution. And of course, now you know me enough to know that to find the solution, I had to go back to the ancient Greece.

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Among many other very interesting things, besides harmonia, they also invented heroes. Think of Ulysses, Achilles, Iphigenia, Atalanta. Women and men with superior abilities. Women and men with superpowers, as we would call them today. They were the predecessors of Superman, Batman, Batwoman, Wonder Woman. Human and men with superior capabilities, with superpowers. This is what we need today. We need to go beyond our limits. We need to unlearn and relearn something.

And so, here is my eureka moment, here is my epiphany.

Relearning Harmonia

We need to, when I say we, I mean marketers, the business community at large, everyone. We need to relearn to accept ambiguity and ambivalence as inevitable variables of the status quo. We need to start making products that are harmonic by design. We need to consider harmonia our new modus operandi. And if we are successful, if marketers are successful, then we will lead the way.

We will be seen as a source of value creation. We will honor the very first definition of Philip Kotler. We will help and inspire companies to make products that are good for the company, good for the customer, good for the planet.

This is possible. I’m thinking of shoes that are fashionable, good for performance, but at the same time are made of recycled materials. I’m thinking of expensive devices that generate profit for the phone makers and at the same time they can be part of the circular economy at the end of their life cycle. I’m thinking of expensive luxury products that are absolutely cruelty free and child labor free, even though they generate huge margins for the companies. It is fine if we can reconcile.

A Dream for the Future

And so here’s my final dream. I dream of a world where marketers and the business community at large can relearn to deal with these contradictions. I dream of a world where harmonia becomes our superpower. I dream of a world where marketing can inspire the next generation of products and services. And I dream of a world where marketers can become the superheroes that this world desperately needs and deserves. Grazie mille. Thank you.