For those who spend more than a half hour with me, you’ll find that I’m a massive sci fi geek and tech nerd.
So when Elon Musk showed up with a bold plan to put a man on Mars in his lifetime, I was hooked.
And then when he created a line of mind-blowing products that have disrupted status quos, I fell in love.
But I take one ‘issue’ with his dream.
Our future is not on Mars.
He’s so alarmed at how we’ve treated our world, that he sees no option but to get us out into space to take pressure off the world.
I don’t dispute the research, or the science. I just can’t get behind sending the same mentalities to settle other places. Heck, we haven’t learned to take care of the sandbox we started in!
Our future must be here. On Earth.
In a moment, I’ll tell you what I think the real answer is.
Humanity’s future must be in Maine, and Madagascar, and Mongolia.
On Main Street. Over meatballs. And in fixing our mentalities.
We must rediscover our connection to each other as humans. We must fight for the freedom to dream of a better world, and build it with our choices today.
Our future is here, with food, family and friendships.
Our last century has been painted as one of the bleakest we’ve ever seen. But then, when you cross the aisle, we find it’s also painted as the brightest we’ve ever known.
The human spirit, imagination, and collaboration can solve anything. We’re proving it every single day.
We must stop dreading our future. We must dream again. Or else we’ll trash Mars too.
That’s why I’m nerding out about the real answer. It’s… marketing.
Marketing is the ability to communicate an idea.
Not just sell a product. Not just promote stuff. Not just paper walls with ads. All of those are byproducts of marketing.
Marketing is like evangelizing. It’s standing for something you believe in that makes the world a better place, and then telling people about it.
Sure, we’ve abused the idea to heck.
We’ve been ludicrously short sighted about the impact we could be having on ourselves, our world, and our future.
But that’s changing.
And it’s changing fast. So fast, in fact, that businesses are going out of business, or exploding into success by the hour, depending on how clearly they can communicate their value.
Today, we finally returned to living in a word-of-mouth world. A world made up of communities, both online and offline. And when a community is given a story powerful enough, they can change the world.
But it starts with changing ourselves. Social media is a magic mirror that can show us anything, anywhere, at any time.
And I believe we’re learning our lessons fast.
So there we have it. We are rediscovering how real marketing is a powerful answer.
Marketing is the ability to share and connect around an idea.
That’s how we’ll fix things. By marketing.
Not by running away to Mars.
Now, sign me up for one of the SpaceX return flight trips.
I totally want to live-stream my takeoff reaction pulling 5Gs.
