More Spiritual Competition

What all leading brands share is a culture ahead of the curve. As we move into a more spiritual world, it is my firm belief that culture will become more and more the proving ground for profits. Brands are really a measure of goodwill—love. Goodwill fosters relationships and relationships bring money. Look at it this way: it’s all who you know. And who wants to know you.

A couple of examples: skateboarding. The sport is growing but sales of skateboard stuff is off. The culture is on the wane—there’s just little left to the cool-guy self-made outsider athlete. Too grunge and rebellious. Another way of looking at it: these companies have been fighting to differentiate themselves for so long and so hard that the only thing now that’s novel or interesting is sameness: the shared values that they have defined themselves as being against. This is most of youth and counter-culture.

Whole Foods: another favorite (ps: I only critique the brands I love), and where I shop. They are almost all culture. They certainly don’t have any silver bullet.

The USA: whoa! Never has the world been more in our court. Yesterday’s Palestinian elections shows that even in the middle east the world is going our way. But our culture and arrogance has never been more in focus. Some even doubt our motives when we provide aid. As well they should. We’ve got a bit of work to do on the spiritual front. Plenty of opportunity for growth. Maybe a little guts and faith on the left or some relaxation of integrity on the right. Or maybe just a rejection of us and them and a finding of our true middle. Where all us folks are.

White People: Doing pretty well with Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Eminem and Spike Jonez. A bit of love for G. Bush promoting Condi and Colin Powell but everyone knows that the Rumsfelds and Cheneys are still calling the shots. There’s that integrity issue. That’s going to hurt us in the long run. A bit hyper too.

The beautiful thing about corporations (everything?) run on spiritual values is that no one can fake the funk. In fact the funk is all there is. With all the ISO 9000 heads around it’ll be a while before things get relaxed enough that quality is an issue. By then there will be people who do relaxed ISO 9000(?).

Now let's talk dollars and sense. If in the material world competition is based on management culture and economics smarts. If a corporation or a government has a blind spot and sets a poor fiscal policy, a competitor or hedge fund can come along and bet on the more true course. This is how competition has been working for years. And to very successful results.

But the emerging world, in my opinion is only based on the material world. It’s emphasis being spiritual. Another way of saying this is that it would be hard to find a carmaker still in existence that still made lemons. So the material foundation of the economy has primarily found its center—it’s accepted practices and standards. The competition now moves to the qualitative aspect of goods, services and content (of being?).

The lovely thing about this, I believe, is that now corporations will begin to compete over essentially who can be the most enlightened. Who can do their work with the least negative impact on our material resources and greatest positive impact on people’s lives, the planet, etc., etc. If a Whole Foods refuses to sell Ivory soap because they don’t like the company (or any other reason besides the customer doesn’t want it) then the market will correct this cultural blind spot.

With governments and countries it will be the same. If a country (or county) is culturally hard for women, or smart people, or hard workers, that country will find itself at a disadvantage economically. With an increasingly diverse economy dependant on diverse skills and strengths, those without a diverse population will be at a disadvantage. The system will strive toward balance instead of exclusion.

Corporations will act as hedge funds—sitting back and generating spiritual knowledge until it finds itself ahead of the curve. The with so much capital looking for ideas and cultural knowledge, it won’t be hard for these generators to turn their ideas into gold. Ruthless spiritual competition (a few of its methods being relaxation, meditation, and play).

The winner is everyone who can generate inspiration and enjoyment—360°. No, 360° is played out, this is 3-D, baby! In real time. This is real life. And most corporation aren’t even relaxed enough to feel it. There’s no way they can compete. They don’t have any faith.