Difference

Much of what I've read since I got here is about how different things are. Not just between China and everywhere else. But even within China. Now to some extent I'm sure that's true. But perhaps that confuses our role with that of an academic, for we are not academics, we live in the commercial world and commercial demands are our master.
Difference can be served by commercial interests but only a certain amount of difference. Difference, within commerce, is the territory of sales. When companies were smaller, they could rely on their sales people or proxy sales people like stall holders and shop keepers to influence end buyers. But companies can not stop there: they must push on, get bigger, convert more people into buyers. So they have to spread their wings, they have to increase their footprint. So much so that they can no longer talk to each and every end buyer. As they do this, the competition becomes fiercer as other strong companies seek to both defend their existing territory and grow it elsewhere. Sales alone can not deal with this challenge but marketing can. Marketing becomes much more important. Marketing finds the common threads, building on the similarities. But then marketing, driven especially by research departments and agency planners, with their over excitement in data and not seeing the wood from the trees, begins to obsess about difference. Marketing budget can barely struggle to do their job when everything is similar. They will fail completely if they seek to address all of this difference. Perhaps there's something dangerous about a discipline forgetting about what made it so special in the first place? Our job is to find clarity and seek opportunity. If we can't afford it, it isn't our opportunity, it's someone elses.