I don’t like peanuts. To coin a phrase, I eschew them. I have seen no quantitative taste tests, but watching people nibbling in bars suggests most people do like peanuts. So disliking them is just a personal quirk. It isn’t important – to anyone but me. Still, strange though it may seem, I feel my nutty quirk is relevant to this salty issue of Market Leader.
Antagonists of marketing frequently claim we make people buy things they don’t truly need. But one of the most basic, defining characteristics of human beings is their fondness for things they don’t truly need. From their earliest days on earth humans throughout the world wanted things they didn’t truly need. The taught themselves to bake bread, and to cook increasingly delicious nosh. They started to wear ever more glorious garb, to paint their faces and to navigate the mysterious oceans, often dying in the process. What drove our worldwide ancestors to do such things? Who knows? But whatever it was, it sure wasn’t marketing. You may think they were driven by God, or think they were driven by Darwin – the survival of the fittest. Or whatever. But did the early humans truly need gourmet grub, fab finery, colour cosmetics and holidays abroad? No way. Did they want them? Not half. Otherwise they would not have spent so much time and taken so many risks to get them.
Which roundabout dissertation takes me back onto the peanut path. Humans can live without nuts. Yes, most of us enjoy nuts – even if I myself am a bit picky. Nuts are nice, fairly healthy provender. But above all, nuts add variety to our diet, and variety is something humans do seem to need (as well as want) – and not just in foods and fashions. Like our predecessors we want variety everywhere. As the old adage said: variety is the spice of life. In any sport no two games are ever identical: that’s what makes sports so fascinating. In the visual arts, think cave paintings. In narratives, think oral histories. In music, think bamboo instruments.
Few other animals like variety at all, none like it much. They eat almost the same things every day. They seldom change their appearance, and then only in pre-ordained ways. Some like to travel: many birds and fishes wander vast distances - but again only along pre-ordained routes. Humans are different. Variety provides us with ways to express our differences, our personal quirks. Like my dislike of peanuts.
Today, marketing provides each of us with more and more ways to express our personal quirks. This may sound unnecessary, and deriders may carp at the wastefulness of affluence. Nuts to them all. Let them eat vapid sliced white bread.
One of our most distinguished members, Winston Fletcher, has died suddenly at the age of 75. Our Chief Executive, Hugh Burkitt offers his tribute to Winston.