In final week’s cartoon, I parodied a few of my favourite clichés in advertising and marketing presentation slides.

With simply six panels in that cartoon, I needed to depart rather a lot on the slicing room flooring. One in every of my different favourite used and abused slides is the ever-present framework, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Wants.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow first proposed this idea in a 1943 paper on “The Idea of Human Motivation,” the place he tried to categorise the common wants of society. Maslow’s framework is often proven as a pyramid with essentially the most primary wants on the backside and higher-level wants on the prime.

Little did he suspect, I think about, that this may finally encourage entrepreneurs like me to take a look at these wants and assume, hey, my model isn’t only a bathroom cleaner, it’s an aspirational badge model!

A lot of the job of selling is pondering of inventive methods for manufacturers to face for one thing better. However this could additionally result in exaggerate the roles our manufacturers play in folks’s lives.

BrandGym founder David Nichols as soon as described a associated phenomenon as “Model Ego Tripping” — “over-estimating the flexibility of a model to stretch into new markets.” My favourite historic instance of that is when the Colgate advertising and marketing staff as soon as tried to stretch the Colgate model from toothpaste to prepared meals with Colgate Beef Lasagna. Mmmm.

The utility of any framework, together with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Wants, depends upon the way it’s used. It may be nice for readability and to assist broaden our pondering, however we have now to watch out to not breathe our personal exhaust.

Listed below are just a few associated cartoons I’ve drawn over time: