Patanjali & The Pursuit of Marketing Success - Part I

Yesterday, I discovered that a powerful piece of yogic wisdom also throws light on the fundamentals of Brand and Marketing. Some might find this unsurprising; some mind find it revelatory, while others might even find it controversial! I’m going to take a belief from the uplifting world of spiritual practice and apply it to the very tangible world of marketing and business.

Patanjali’s use of the word chitta, for consciousness, comprises both mind and body. Chitta includes all four sheaths of human experience – the physical body, the energy body, the mental body, and even the most subtle bliss body. Yogis have long understood that our chitta is constantly bombarded by inputs through the six sense doors – taste, touch, smell, sight, sound and thought. Through these doors come literally hundreds of thousands of different sensations, feelings and memories, often called “objects” in yogic tradition. Each object sets of its own complicated chain of events in the mind-body.   

1. First, our consciousness recognizes and appraises each input – every one of the hundreds of thousands we receive every day – determining it to be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. We see a rainbow – pleasant! We pass an overflowing garbage dump – unpleasant! We learn that Pluto isn’t a planet after all – neutral (well, I was)!
   
   

2. In the second critical function, our consciousness reacts to this appraisal with an impulse - attraction, aversion or neutrality. To a stimulus that is appraised as pleasant, consciousness reacts with attraction or craving, unpleasant with an aversion impulse and neutral with, well, neutrality.
   
   

3. The third and final link in the chain is action. If the first two links are Pleasant-Craving, then the action link could be that we reach out for the object. Unpleasant-Aversion would lead to pushing away the object and Neutral-Neutrality to no action.

The implications for brands and marketing are obvious. I’m fascinated by the relationship between objects and mind-body, through the Appraisal-Impulse-Action chain. The Appraisal-Impulse-Action chain was revealed to yogis thousands of years ago, and has been used by teachers past and present to break the hold that objects have on human consciousness. Yet this very chain also lies at the foundation of Marketing. The astute marketer can use the same knowledge to do the exact opposite – create positive outcomes in the interest of his brand and business.

To impatient modern-day marketers, my advice is to hold back from rushing into a too direct manipulation of consumers’ actions. Investing intelligence and diligence in a comprehensive understanding of what makes a brand pleasant and attractive will unearth untold marketing treasures.

I’ll share some more thoughts on this in the second and concluding part of this blog. To talk about Patanjali and modern marketing and/or all things brand and marketing related, write to me at bharat@bb-a.co.in 

(References and inspiration from Stephen Cope’s The Wisdom of Yoga, Bantam Books, 2007)