Creating value or part of the Zombieconomy?

Umair Haque, Director of Havas Media Lab has posted this interesting article on Harvard Business relating to his theory about the ‘Zombieconomy’. In essence it relates to the problem businesses, brands, advertisers and people have with creating real value.

Haque, accusing the ‘Beancounters of killing the incentives to create value’ said: “We don’t reward people for creating, growing, nurturing, or even remixing assets. We just reward them for allocating the same old assets”.

Using the music industry and MJ as an example Haque continues to highlight this self destructive concept: “If the world’s biggest pop star only made $12 million a year from his recordings, why would anyone make serious music? Where did the rest of the money go? Why, straight into record labels’ pockets. Did they make better music with it? Nope — they made Britney and Lady GaGa. And that’s how they killed themselves by underinvesting in quality, to rake in the take”.

From a marketing point of view, the Zombieconomy is rife with this kind of thinking. Marketing peeps, as a rule of thumb have to/want to deliver on the short term beans and not the long term value. As a result they spend money doing the same things or repurposing the same stuff, in the same way as everyone else.

Take this down to a people level and think about the slowdown of blogging. It’s easier for people to create less for more currency- in this instance, currency = popularity. Two cases in point, Twitter followers/retweets and more recently Tumblarity, that both to differing degrees reward people for allocating the same old assets.

The ‘currency’ cannot solely be about the numbers any more.

Tags: Brands, Business, Harvard Business, Retweets, Social Marketing, Tumblarity, Tumblr, Twitter, Umair Haque, Zombieconomy