Some of us work in organizations, others own SMEs and we always ask ourselves, would I do better somewhere else?
Is the ocean bluer on the other side?
Dissatisfaction with a job, status, or the way we make a living is becoming more palpable, especially when new business routes are being created and economical fabrics are evolving.
Before the 2008 crisis, investing in stocks or real estate and buying bonds was the real deal, after the collapse of the financial system, economical advantage started taking new forms and shapes of success and these forms evolved further beyond Covid. Cryptocurrencies emerged, social media influencers became a big thing, traditional mobile markets demolished after Nokia’s empire collapsed, where no smartphone meant no content. And the era of content creation, arbitrage, e-commerce and touchless pay became more prominent and there understanding is the new recipe for success.
Any marketing book would talk about Blue oceans strategies or the 4Ps that evoluted to 12Ps now and the variables that would form the basics of a marketing strategy are still growing exponentially.
It was easy and simple, if you want to launch a business, choose something that doesn’t have a lot of competition, monitor supply and demand, avoid red oceans and go to blue ones.
With the expansion of content… the timeframes of consuming it are increasing respectively.
Let us do some math, if we sleep 8 hours a day, we consume content 16 hours a day, the less we sleep the more we consume, content is everywhere around us and we don’t know where is the blue ocean anymore because there is no specific orientation of the products that are currently needed and no indication as to what will be needed in the long run.
We used to work on long term strategies, now with the uncertainty of the world around us, we don’t even know what next year carries for us from emerging customer needs to new innovation launches in the globe, it is becoming harder to develop long term strategies.
Who knew that Amazon arbitrage will become THE thing, who knew that cryptocurrency will fall after it boomed and who knew the SM and normal people with simple posts will rule the scene of social influence?
No one? Or maybe very few!
Retrogression in a business plan happens when we regard change threatening and allow it to control the plans for our businesses ahead, and lately deterioration becomes fast paced when we stand still in front of collapsing economies and rising immigration rates.
So, what we can understand is that the notion of blue ocean and red ocean is now changing, when it comes to products and business. Oceans are becoming red because there is a bit of everything everywhere around us, however the way we conduct business and overcome our competition has never been bluer.
Content, environment, and then approach.
Content in all aspects of creation from users to business owners, any content now is a blue ocean, any fresh approach is a blue ocean. This what makes the day to day results positively variable and yields consistent returns on the long run.
And when we talk about approach, what’s prevailing now for all brands is the race for the approach of kindness by competing for a social purpose in a world full of suffering and increased poverty, let us show kindness. Qatar is housing thousands of Afghan refugees, Airbnb just promised free housing for 20,000 Afghan refugees, Emirates just added 10 KG extra weight for all passengers flying to Lebanon and the list goes on. The approach of kindness is making all the difference and governments and brands are standing out.
Tapping on the environment we can all agree that the earth is suffering. It is in our faces everywhere, but we can also realize that brands are taking baby steps towards a better future and hopefully and just maybe our Gen Alpha will witness it, after we adapt slowly. Banks and schools are going paperless. Renewable energy sources are estimated to completely substitute the extraction of fossil fuels draining our earth by 2035. Electric cars are now the new hot thing! We are evolving to understand the importance of nature and the environment.
In this sense comes the theory that all oceans are blue, because there is always space for content and there is always space for creativity and there will always be a need for kindness.
It is in our DNA. We are born, we create, we renew, and we be kind. what is acquired from our social surrounding and the hardship of life but deep in the core of every human is an essence of kindness.
For the brands, businesses, and governments this ocean is completely blue. There will never be saturate markets with kindness, content, or social purpose.
And we are going in the right direction, away from the product benefits itself (because all products provides advantage) and more into the ethical value it is providing, and this is something we should embrace and enjoy everyday we wake up, as it becomes the baseline of any business strategy and core for brands’ sustainability.
