Spirituality in Marketing
I’m working with some other people on a publication called “Spirituality in Marketing”. We have a lot of material and it will take a while to sort it out. In the meantime, here’s some thoughts.
Why Spirituality?
Who is the booklet for? One possibility is the “spiritually aware or religious person”. That’s reasonable, although I have some reservations. Does it impose unnecessary restrictions on our readership?
A few years ago Father Christopher Jamieson, Abbot of Worth Abbey, introduced a couple of television series in the UK, The Monastery and a few years later The Big Silence. Both series were about ordinary people living in a monastery for a month or on a 9 day retreat.
Father Jamieson says after both programmes his religious communities experienced increased interest from people, not associated with the church. After the first series a number of business people made contact and so he published, “Finding Sanctuary”, under a secular imprint about the benefits of Benedictine spirituality for the modern secular person.
Spirituality is something all experience even if we don’t label ourselves as spiritual or religious. So, how can spirituality support the business person whatever their formal religious affiliation.
Why Marketing?
Spirituality is about identity; how to become the person we are meant to be. This is particularly important for the entrepreneur, who can easily lose sight of their purpose. Business people make money and the question is, why? They sometimes see their role as local benefactor. In Sheffield, UK where I live you can’t walk very far without encountering names such as Graves, Firth, Ward and Osborn; all industrialists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their names are still current because the city recognises their contributions. Every city has them. Whatever the detail of their business, they cherished their role as public benefactor. This is more than we can say for present day hedge fund managers, who salt away their fortunes in offshore tax havens.
But public benefactor was not the only role. Real entrepreneurial value resides in the hundreds of unsung men and women behind the co-operative movement. At one time co-operative business underpinned most of the civic infrastructure we take for granted today, eg insurance, building societies, banks, department stores, wholesale and retail networks, friendly societies and various educational institutions and libraries.
Contrary to what our current crop of politicians would have us believe, mutuals make a vibrant and creative contribution to the economy; both entrepreneurial and committed to social justice.
Mutuality is not confined to one form of business and its spirit was perhaps shared by some public benefactors. Sadly in our modern economy it seems business is solely for personal benefit. We need to refresh our spirits by understanding mutuality and reclaiming it for our broken communities today.
How do you understand the purpose of economic activity? Do you think spirituality can help entrepreneurs understand their role?