Marketing has always been very good at one thing: creating demand.
We make products desirable. We turn features into benefits, products into brands and brands into cultural symbols. We create aspiration, shape habits and influence what people believe is worth having.
But what happens when the system we are helping to grow is no longer working for us?
For decades, marketing has largely operated within a business-as-usual economy built around growth, consumption and profit maximisation. Success is measured through sales, market share, reach, engagement, ROI and increasingly sophisticated ways of turning attention into commercial value.
And there is nothing inherently wrong with commercial success. Businesses need to be financially viable.
The problem starts when financial value becomes the only value that counts.
Marketing sits at the centre of the system
One of the most interesting ideas from my recent Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership studies is that marketing is not simply an end-of-pipe sales function.
It sits at the intersection between production and consumption — between what businesses make and what people want.
That gives marketing, media and creative professionals considerably more influence than we sometimes acknowledge.
We don’t just communicate existing demand. We help shape it.
We influence what people aspire to. We normalise behaviours. We create cultural meaning. We can make something feel outdated, unnecessary, desirable, progressive or essential.
Which means that the question isn’t simply:
“How can marketing sell this better?”
It could also be:
“What are we helping people want in the first place?”
From selling more to creating more value
This doesn’t mean abandoning brands, creativity or commercial thinking.
It means expanding our definition of value.
The Cambridge framework distinguishes between financial, social and natural value — and argues that financial value should ultimately depend on the creation of greater social and natural value, rather than the other way around.
That is a significant shift in mindset.
It asks marketers to look beyond the immediate transaction and consider the wider system around it:
How is something produced?
What resources does it depend on?
How is it used?
What happens when it is no longer wanted?
What behaviours does the brand encourage?
And perhaps most importantly: does the value we create today contribute to long-term wellbeing, or does it simply extract more value from the system?
The opportunity for marketing
This is where I think the conversation becomes much more interesting.
Marketing has many of the tools required for change already.
We know how to understand people.
We know how to identify motivations.
We know how to create desire.
We know how to change perceptions.
We know how to make new behaviours culturally relevant.
We know how to turn complex ideas into simple stories.
The challenge is deciding what we use those skills for.
The future of marketing may not be about making people consume less of everything. It may be about helping people consume differently, adopt better solutions, value longevity over disposability, and see wellbeing as something bigger than what we can buy.
The course describes this as moving from an economy focused on financial growth towards one focused on long-term wellbeing.
For marketing, that means moving from simply creating demand to helping create the conditions for better demand.
So, what should marketing optimise for?
Not just attention.
Not just conversion.
Not just growth.
But value — in a broader sense.
Because if marketing has the power to shape what society wants, perhaps our biggest opportunity isn’t to become better at selling the existing system.
Perhaps it is to become better at imagining — and making desirable — what comes next.
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