The Comfort Is Stalling

The comfort is stalling.

When I page through the house & home magazines and watch many of the nets, life is painted as high-end 24/7 comfort and fun. 

Buying a half million-dollar house is nothing.  Shoot, the first time home buyers are eager to take on the monthly payments. 

Traveling at a whim and taking off for an experiential adventure is easy with high-tech and work-from-home.

The ads for the latest and greatest $40K+ cars fill the airways. They race against one another or speed off at record-breaking speed.

Spending $6+ on that small cup of organic, drip, environmentally green coffee that supports the sub-culture of some remote farming town is like nothing. 

The comfort is stalling.

I have written recently in blogs about the observations I make of corporate marketing teams.  Hiring in folk from outside their self-anointed, vertical product and service categories is totally unheard of and conveys a sense of engagement with the unwashed.

Shoot, for many, the Internet is where everyone shops.  Self-driving cars will overtake the highways in just a few years and rolling out another App is what will escalate sales. 

What?  You are asking us to step back and dig deeper? 

What?  You are asking us to roll-back under our sense of comfort and order to a degree that just might mess up our landscape?

The comfort is stalling.

Every day I wake up and read the Wall Street Journal.  Everyday once I get past the headline coming out of Washington or Wall Street… there’s interesting headlines I see.

And as I scan down to the bottom of the first page.  Turn over to pages 2, 3, 4 and 10.  Read the latest news coming out of New York.  Move over to the editorial section.  Go on to the next section, “Section B.”

“Starbucks sales have flattened out and the coffee houses have reached market maturity”.

“Netflix missed its forecast… shares fell”

“Nissan sales miss the mark” … and so have Ford, Fiat/Chrysler, BMW and Audi.

“Apple iPhone sales have leveled out.”

“McDonald’s is trimming back its corporate staff due to stalling sales.”

“Smucker is pressed to raise prices.”

“Lowes sales continue to slip even with its new CEO from JC Penney”

And the marketing firms, are they too experiencing challenge?

Another headline… “At WPP (global holding company of ad agencies), chairman advocates an overhaul.”

The comfort is stalling.

Technology has produced a sense of false security and a sense of “what I say is what will be answered, accomplished and resolved.” 

I can hear readers now… “Isn’t that right, Alexa?”

No need for me to encounter challenge… my car self-brakes, Alexa finds the answers and my iPhone Apps are there to do as I instruct.

Business… in its truest of sense… is not comfortable. 

There are highs… but there are also rude awakenings. 

Categories have matured and the calling is for departure from the masses and the norm. 

If you are seeking a comfort consultant that marches to the beat of the masses… and, by the way, digital firms right now serve as the band leaders … continue on until that bank account runs out.

The comfort is stalling.

If you are seeking to disrupt, re-start, re-focus and re-ignite… call us.

EXPERIENCE.

404.245.9378.  Ask for Mark.