Not less persuasion. Better things to persuade people towards.
Marketing has always understood desire.
We know how to make people want the new phone, the new car, the new collection, the next upgrade.
We know how to turn a product into an aspiration and an aspiration into a purchase.
That is part of what makes marketing so powerful.
But it also raises an uncomfortable question:
What if the problem isn’t that marketing creates desire — but what we choose to make desirable?
Desire is not the same as need
One of the ideas from my Cambridge studies that stayed with me is the distinction between needs and desires.
Human needs are fundamental: connection, protection, identity, freedom, participation, understanding, leisure, creation and subsistence.
Desires are different. They are the urges we experience when something feels missing.
And marketing can become very good at connecting the two.
A need for identity can become a desire for a particular brand.
A need for belonging can become a desire for a particular lifestyle.
A need for recognition can become a desire for a particular product.
The purchase might satisfy the desire for a moment.
But the underlying need is still there.
So we create another desire.
And another product.
And another reason to buy.
Advertising doesn’t just sell products
This is where I think our industry deserves a more interesting conversation.
Advertising doesn’t simply communicate what already exists.
It helps shape culture.
It tells us what success looks like. What beauty looks like. What progress looks like. What a good life looks like.
For decades, many of those narratives have been closely connected to consumption: newer, bigger, faster, more exclusive, more convenient.
And because marketing is so good at making things desirable, it has also helped normalise behaviours that are not necessarily aligned with long-term wellbeing.
But that same creative power can work in another direction.
What if we made different things desirable?
What if longevity was more aspirational than constant replacement?
What if repair felt smarter than buying new?
What if sharing felt more progressive than owning?
What if refill became a sign of good design rather than a compromise?
What if products designed to last became more desirable than products designed to be replaced?
And what if the brands that helped people live better were the brands that became culturally relevant?
This isn’t about making advertising less persuasive.
It is about becoming more intentional about what we persuade people towards.
From selling desire to designing aspiration
The interesting opportunity for brands is not simply to communicate their sustainability credentials.
It’s to change the aspiration itself.
The Cambridge material describes this as moving beyond a purely consumerist narrative and using marketing’s skills in insight, strategy, creativity and storytelling to create new meanings around wellbeing. It also points towards ideas such as reconnecting people with each other and nature, and shifting from “buying” towards “being”.
That is fundamentally a creative challenge.
Because people don’t change behaviour simply because they are given more information.
They change when something new feels possible, relevant and desirable.
And that’s something our industry knows how to do extremely well.
The opportunity isn’t less desire
It’s better desire.
We don’t need to remove aspiration from marketing.
We need to broaden what people can aspire to.
A successful life doesn’t have to mean owning more.
Progress doesn’t have to mean upgrading.
Convenience doesn’t have to mean disposability.
And innovation doesn’t always have to mean creating something new.
Sometimes innovation can mean creating a better way of using what already exists.
The role of marketing could be to help make those ideas culturally attractive.
To turn responsible choices into desirable choices.
To turn better behaviours into normal behaviours.
To make the future feel not only necessary, but exciting.
So, perhaps the question for marketers isn’t:
“How do we create more demand?”
But:
“What kind of world are we creating demand for?”
Because if marketing has the power to shape what people want, then it also has the power to shape what becomes possible.
And that may be one of the most interesting creative briefs of all.
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