DHARMA MARKETING

Dharma Marketing

This new concept aims to reach the deepest level of the human psyche, finding in the oriental example of enterprising spirit - which has a strong resource to spiritual values - the path to a new internal proximity Marketing.

For the Buddhists, Dharma is that which guides the mind. Dharma Marketing wishes to set the conditions for the necessary spiritual changes to occur, aiming to reach a sustainable proximity of all stakeholders. The best way to do it is assuring the organisations understand that, in order for this change to happen, they need to follow the example of the oriental management, where the enterprising spirit has an ascetic dimension, which has been stated for centuries, mostly recurring to spiritual values.

Reality can be understood as what each individual perceives it to be. For the marketers, this is one of the most important axioms, since marketing isn't a battle of products and services, but a battle of perceptions. Therefore, the most effective Marketing is that which reaches the consumer's mind more deeply.

In Dharma Marketing, your goal is to satisfy needs at a psychological level - subconscious -, so you act on the level of the psychological conflict which takes place before human will, focusing on what is previous to human will, i.e., on what precedes need and motivation. The importance of such a desired intervention regards the fact that this happens at the deepest level of the human psyche, making Dharma Marketing an essential tool for the correct relational characterisation and for the proximity amongst players. Attitude, a crucial aspect in organisational competence, does not depend on a set of rules exclusively, there being instead a large number of subconscious impulses which are constantly interfering with rational decisions. It is therefore necessary to act upon the spirituality, as a response to the behavioural variations arising from the mentioned conflict. This search for spirituality in organisational matters also aims to improve the transcendental principle, assuming that, for the organisations, this principle constitutes a non-spontaneous differential to be conquered and developed through the improvement of the holistic dimension.

ORGANISATIONAL SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Social and human matters have been the focus of a few of the most important organisations. However, human spirituality, understood as the search for ethical evolution, is being forgotten because it is wrongly associated with religiosity. This is leading to the progressive distancing from self-knowledge in the organisational sphere.

Organisations are large karmic stages, where people meet to learn with each other, trying to awaken their natural perceptive capabilities by taking advantage of the optimum conditions created there. Only this way is it possible to have more focused stakeholders as regards to how they feel, think and act, and the consequences thereof. In order for this to happen, those who run the organisations must have the ability to carry out changes in themselves, projecting these same changes in all their relational partners his concern, on the other hand, must be incorporated in the institutional mission of public and private organisations.

Getting this message through to the organisational sphere will constitute the most important test to the conscience of those who work in Marketing with a spirit of honesty, building trust, contributing to the activeness of market logic, contributing also to human, social and spiritual prosperity, to their complementarities and interdependence, in the search for organisational development as a mutually integrated movement.

RETHINKING ORGANISATIONAL RELATIONS

We need to adopt new ties, so as to allow the expression of intention and purpose of human existence. In order to achieve this, it might be necessary to let go of old values and expectations. And for those who put rationality before any organisational grounds, a special remark: Elster speaks about the place reserved for reason in today's western societies, in which so often men and women focus on the exercise of reason exclusively instead of accepting its limitations, and consequently mistaking rationality for human existence. In reality, contrary to this, the truth which sustains this rationality is many times questioned over the time, while human spirituality remains.

Assuming that people seek exclusivity in all relations, Dharma Marketing takes upon itself to increase transparency, remove obstacles, making the passage easy for those who look for meaning in the organisational work. In this case, the spiritual way will follow a path opposite to those organisations type,  based on self-motivation and self-esteem.

The overemphasis modern psychology puts on self-motivation, based on self-esteem indicators, reached its peak in the United States, during the 1980's, with the Me Generation and the Yuppies. Although this is indeed a desired state of mind, as it is satisfaction itself, this situation of self-centred individuals may never revert in favour of the organisations. This fictioning of  the self has even crossed organisational borders, sending messages like the one and the only or because you deserve it to the market. This praise is the utmost expression of an individualistic psychology, in which the vanity of those who believe to be entitled to everything they want throws a shadow onto human ascension as regards to the most conscious and sensible actions.

The changes proposed in this article aim to achieve an effective improvement of the sustainability of reciprocity conditions and acceptance of all publics. Contrary to individual motivation, people must be guided by the need to belong to a group of motivated agents united by a transparent and unifying institutional mission.

It's obvious that organisations need to focus on strategic results, and therefore depend on capable and creative negotiators with a spirit of enterprise and able to work under pressure. But is this really possible without self-conscious?

The search for transcendence can only exist as a result of a permanent and effective integrated action, complementary of economic, human and social evolution, if accompanied by the necessary spiritual changes. This way, the competitivity improvement results from the intelligence that comes from inner enlightenment.

For Dharma Marketing, the commitment between organisations and everyone they're connected to is an effect of their actual proximity. Through more spiritualised human resources, the objective of Dharma Marketing is to have a significant impact on business, or at least to give the organisation's relational competencies wider meaning as regards to empathy with oneself and with others.

This change is the distinctive element in the construction of a new way of looking at the organisations of the third millennium.

                                           DHARMA MARKETING PRACTICE                                                     

Dharma Marketing