The BusinessPundit.com blog writes on Marketing Myopia (via Carnival of the Capitalists round-up at the Startup Skills blog) a closely associated affliction to social network myopia (one instance), multi-cultural myopia (watch for posts on these forms in a day or two) and other strains of myopia.
Whether "myopia" is the exact analogy is besides the point. It's close enough.
Definitely is a matter of perception.
The remedy? A good dose of empathy. You remove the lens of your own identity (your Ego, if you will) for a moment and you see clearly through the other person's eyes without filtering through your own lens first. This "skill" is not in your MBA curriculum.
The importance of this empathic worldview for marketers is related in Seth Godin's book, Purple Cow:
...the art of projecting. Of getting inside the heads of the people who do care deeply about this product and making them something they'll love and want to share. Marketers and designers who do it can put themselves into other people's shoes and imagine what they'd want. In the long run, learning this knack is actually much more profitable than being able to make stuff for only yourself. Learning this knack gives you more flexibility. There are marketers who can create Purple Cows [remarkable products] for only a tiny audience -- an audience just like the marketers themselves. They make decisions based on gut instinct, and (for a while) this works. If you follow this path, though, sooner or later your gut will let you down. If you haven't developed the humility that comes from being able to project to multiple audiences, you're likely to panic when you can't connect to your chosen group any longer.
I don't think I was always so good at deep empathy myself. Although I've been told I am good at holding multiple perspectives and seeing things from other people's points of views, it wasn't all clicking. I still felt some inperceptible gap separating me from people that weren't in my immediate trusted "circle". In the more glaring examples, I might get frustrated and blame "them" for not getting it.
Through the help of an integral coach and simultaneously reading Ken Wilbur's No Boundary I took steps to complement my strong "It" orientation (the world of the abstract, the material, concepts and ideas) and develop the weaker parts of myself, especially the "We" (relationships, empathy) orientation (see this post on using Wilbur's integral model for leadership).
Empathy is a mindset, an attitude, a worldview more than merely a 'skill'. And it's certainly one that has had the biggest impact on the entirety of my life and all my relationships. It would be difficult (beyond No Boundary) to recommend a specific resource without knowing more about you individually, but I have yet to find a business book that effectively covers this topic. I suppose we now enter the touchy arena of emotional intelligence, psychological and spiritual matters.
Essentially sustaining the feeling of connectedness that enables clear perception (again, without our own filters and special lens) rather than feelings of separatedness distinguishes the empathic marketer.
For a look at empathic perception in a different context (but not so different as you may think), here's a quote from the movie, Don Juan DeMarco (if you haven't seen it, don't spoil it by looking it up). Marlon Brando is asking Johnny Depp how he attracts so many women. Depp, playing the role of Don Juan, replies (in your best Castillan accent):
By seeing beyond what is visible to the eye. Now there are those, of course, who do not share my perceptions, it is true. When I say that all my woman are dazzling beauties, they object. The nose of this one is too large; the hips of another, they are too wide; perhaps the breasts of a third, they are too small. But I see these women for how they truly are... glorious, radiant, spectacular, and perfect... because I am not limited by my eyesight. Women react to me in the way they do, Don Octavio, because they sense that I search out the beauty that lies within until it overwhelms everything else. And then they cannot avoid their desire, to release that beauty and envelope me in it.
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