Attachment Theory.  Understanding needs!

Attachment Theory. Understanding needs!

So last time we looked at the hierarchy of needs by Maslow, and how the basic needs are the same for everybody, but how we arrive at those needs differs between people.  Now we are going to look at how using basic needs allows us to create relationships that last a lifetime and to which we are fundamentally bonded.  attachment theory is something that has been being developed since the UN wanted to create awareness of the impacts on children being left orphans after the Second World War.  It has largely supplanted Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as the dominant approach in understanding people through Psychoanalysis.

“Okay Aaron, you’re babbling…what’s your point?”

Pay attention, the whole world revolves around this theory now and it explains why social media works and why you should care!

Today people are in an ocean of media marketing crap.  We are constantly bombarded by people telling us how much we should give them our money because they make the biggest, fastest, hottest, sexiest, most ecological thermonuclear widget in the world.  But what actually attracts people is calling to their attachments.  And those attachments may be parental, relational, emotional, sexual, political, and even brand.  But how do we attach ourselves to a brand??

Easy, values!

People live in a theoretical future.  People don’t spend there time in the present, they live in some hoped for future that calls them to do things today.  If our society didn’t completely fail us we feel part of some group.  And those groups are what link us together;  us and them.  Social media, and even brands are about creating links between culture and product.  Their product has to make my life a representation of what I want.

When it comes down to it, I could care less about the difference in flavour between coke a Pepsi!  I want to drink Coke because it’s the real thing. I don’t want to be part of the new generation I want to be solidly planted in the historical number one.  I see myself as the solid winner not the substitute number two.  So I see Coke as my drink and Pepsi as the replacement.

Now ask yourself to what subset of humanity do you want to attach yourself?  What need do you want to fulfil as a brand?  That is the group who will become your tribe and the people who you will want to market to.

Have fun!

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