The Mating Mind: A Different Perspective on Marketing

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>]

Since many people on the Techwr-l list are involved with marketing, I 
thought I'd mention a unique perspective on marketing that I've stumbled 
across. It takes a few paragraphs to explains, but it might make you 
think a little differently about marketing <vbg>

I'm just finishing Geoffrey Miller's "The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice 
Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature." Miller points out that natural 
selection, which is usually considered the main mechanism of evolution, 
has trouble explaining many aspects of human behavior, such as art or 
wit or joke-telling, because they don't seem to contribute to survival 
(that is, to the passing on of your genetic material). Miller's response 
is to suggest that many aspects of human behavior originated in sexual 
selection, another evolutionary mechanism suggested by Darwin but 
largely ignored until the last two decades. In other words,just as a 
male elk's horns encourages female elks to mate with it, for both human 
sexes, art or wit originated as mechanisms to encourage others to mate.

Unlike natural selection, which requires a large payback, sexual 
selection is wasteful. According to Miller, the whole point of having 
huge antlers, or a large brain that requires most of the body's 
resources, or spending time on non-survival activities like art is to 
suggest that you are such a healthy member of your species and sex that 
you can afford to waste your energy on non-essentials. All these things 
are what is known as "fitness indicators."

In the tradition of Darwin - one of history's great analogy makers - 
Miller suggests that fitness indicators can be compared to advertising 
(they certainly are a form of self-promotion).

I'm not sure whether I agree with Miller's theories. But it occurs to me 
that people who do advertising can take some comfort from his ideas.

If you reverse his analogy, then advertising is a fitness indicator of 
your company's attractiveness to potential business partners. And, far 
from being a sleazy bottom-feeder, you're engaged in the oldest human 
behavior of them all - the behavior that is the source of everything 
else that makes us human. :-)

--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

"At poolside picnics they chant for Ferraris and furs
Their muscle tone sharpens but their hold on reality blurs
You can have your cake and eat it, & never have to puke up a thing,
Jerusalem on the jukebox, little angels beat your wings."
-Richard Thompson, "Jerusalem on the Jukebox"


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