A few days ago I felt moved to bring my favorite book down from the shelf. There are some big changes going on in my life right now. I just left the marketing agency I helped co-found six years ago for a visual marketing startup called Tailwind.
In The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm doesn’t have a lot of good things to say about marketers and their contribution to what he saw as an overly-materialistic society (way back in 1956). The principles in his book aren’t meant to be leveraged for business success like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. This book is about the neglected art of actively loving ourselves and other people. By trying to adhere to its principles I believe we can stand out as leaders who care, do better work, connect more meaningfully with the brands we represent, and communicate more impactfully with people.
Fromm makes the case that we’re thinking about love all wrong. “Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.” He observes that to attract love we try to be desirable through some combination of physical attractiveness, success and being popular. Continue reading Love & Marketing – Inspired by Erich Fromm
In “The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey” (1984, Blanchard and Bowles), a monkey is simply “the next move” in any project. Whether it’s your subordinates or your kids passing their monkeys to your back, you probably need to stop letting them.
