Stop Listening to the Customer

chapter 10 embracing the negative

If you work in marketing and brand building, here's a warning. There's some challenging material ahead. I want you to come to the dark side and embrace the negative. I realise most people avoid facing the negative aspects of life. They don't want to be depressed or to observe sad, bad or mad things in the world. Life is hard enough as it is and there's rarely a yearning for more negativity. It doesn't mean you shouldn't go there. In fact, embrace the dark side and you'll be a lot happier.

The yin yang symbol is not just a cool tattoo

The yin yang symbol is a tattoo classic, especially if you grew up in the nuevo hippie, ‘no logo' era: the 1990s. If you haven't seen it, it's a circle with an S down the middle with black on one half of the circle and white on the other half. A white dot and black dot sit within their colour opposite, mirroring each other along the middle of the circle. My ex-girlfriend had one and thanks to her, I discovered its meaning. She told me, very earnestly, that it reminded her to find balance in life. Even though we broke up, we're still friends and she now happily lives at a small hippie commune in the hinterland.

The yin yang symbol encapsulates the idea that two oppositional forces can come together to form a complementary whole. There's light and dark, night and day, fire and water, masculine and feminine. When you look at a tree, you can see its trunk, resplendent branches and leaves, but beneath the ground is ...