In this new phase, society is changing, humanity is changing, and marketing must also adapt; An online marketing approach is increasingly needed with the zeitgeist, a German word borrowed from philosophy, indicating “the spirit of the times.” In its broadest sense, it defines the forms, contents, mechanisms and effects of mass culture in a given historical period.
What should companies do in this phase? How will the consumer react to this scenario?
The idea -which I hear repeated like a mantra- is to “return to man” and to his essence, to understand what the logics are that move him and to be able to give an answer as company directors, managers or entrepreneurs. However, it is not easy to focus attention on the consumer, with a humanistic and non-economic approach, as has been done in the last two decades at least.
It is essential to find a new marketing-mix of humanistic-mathematical disciplines that helps to read the present: individual, mass and group psychology, behavioral economics, classical statistics and Big Data, sociology, ethology, empiricism, logic, history.
The numerical component has little value at this stage. Mark Cuban, an American millionaire and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, said in a television interview: “10 years from now, a philosophy degree will be worth much more than a computer science degree.” Silicon Valley executives have understood the importance of putting people at the center of business development.
So when making business decisions, we have to deeply empathize with the emotions and feelings of our consumers and we have to do so as managers with a new and more open approach: this is the essence of zeitgeist marketing. This analysis is the most complex part of everything we do, for managers who are not used to thinking like this.