I’m trying to find the source of Matt’s story. Maybe I could even find the ‘old-school New York marketing man’ now I’m in NYC…

For now, however it’s good to park it here.

An important lens.

A friend of mine told me about an old-school, New York marketing man he’d once met. He had claimed that there are four reasons people will buy your product: hope, fear, despair and greed.

Hope is when your meal out at the restaurant is because it’s going to be awesome. Fear is because you’ll get flu and lose your job unless you take the pills every day. Despair is needs not wants: buying a doormat, or toilet paper, or a ready-meal for one. Greed gets you more options to do any of the above, like investing.

We try to make all our work hopeful. (Also, beautiful, inventive and popular!) It would be lazy to fall back on a despair good – or, worse, to use a fear motivation.