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Sales & Marketing Home: "by Tim Manners
The Happiness Factor

Today's most successful brands promise to help in our pursuit of happiness. But too often, marketers fail to understand what brings us joy.

'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'

That line, penned by Thomas Jefferson for the Declaration of Independence, is perhaps the most 'American' sentence ever written. Sure, he snitched most of it from an Englishman, John Locke. But Jefferson tweaked it, more or less changing the last word from 'Property' to 'Happiness.' And it's that last word -- Happiness (with a capital 'H') -- that so perfectly captures the most American of ideals.

Jefferson is remembered for many things, but marketing is not one of them. It should be. Not only was the Declaration of Independence a 'killer' positioning statement, it all but hung an incredibly complicated and extraordinarily dangerous proposition (a new nation based on an experimental model) on a single word."

Note: What makes you happy? What gives you a sense of satisfaction in your life? What makes your customers happy and what do you sell that might help in this pursuit.

Bob