Ed. Note: This is the last in a series of blog posts that hitchhike off Seth Godin’s daily dose of marketing genius. Trust me, it is not easy to add anything to an idea presented by Seth, each of his posts is self-contained, complete and elegant. Things of beauty. This will be my last post re What Seth Just Said. Don’t want to turn into a blog stalker. I do reserve the right to bring the idea when the situation warrants it. Thanks Seth for your goodwill.
Beauty as a signaling strategy
What’s beauty? You know it when you see it, sure, but what is it? It turns out that beauty is an important evolutionary byproduct.
An organism needs to invest energy in being beautiful. You won’t see healthy skin on a sick animal, because maintaining a healthy coat is too ‘expensive’. A sick peacock isn’t as spectacular as a healthy one. Or a genetically damaged chimp isn’t going to have as symmetrical a face. As a result, most creatures evolved their definitions of beauty in a mate to match the displays of healthy creatures.
Human beings have adopted this signaling strategy with a vengeance. I know a woman who is going to spend more than $9,000 having her hair styled in 2009 (hey, that’s less than $200 a week). Entire industries are based on human beings spending time and money in order to manufacture temporary physical beauty.
Businesses build lobbies that they rarely use, giant atriums with big windows and lots of empty space. It’s a waste, it’s expensive and it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful because it’s expensive.
Stop for a minute and think about the relationship between expense and beauty.
Do you make something beautiful? It could be the way you write hand written letters or leave a little extra on the product, even if maybe it’s not so efficient. Sometimes efficiency is beautiful, but only when it took a lot of extra effort to get there. Ordinary products are almost never beautiful. Austere products might be, but only when real effort is expended to make them that way.
Even the most hard-hearted people are suckers for beauty. We treat people and products differently when we think they’re beautiful. The reason people and organizations have invested so much in beauty over the years is that beauty pays off.
A website that doesn’t cram ads into every single nook and cranny is more beautiful… it’s also more expensive to run in the short run. A salesperson who doesn’t squeeze you for every penny is more confident, earning more of your trust–that’s beautiful.
When everyone has it, it ceases to be beautiful. (Babies are beautiful because time takes their babyhood away so quickly… it’s a guaranteed temporary effect). Beauty is a signal, not just a physical state.
Just to clear things up a bit, beauty is not pretty. I’m betting you know the difference.
Some time back I wrote about the WalMarting of America. Used to be, that local retailers were the gate keepers of all that was beautiful. Your local men’s store was owned, for example, by the two brothers, winkwink, who knew fashion. More importantly knew what went together, they knew the manufacturers, they knew quality, and they made sure that whatever your budget, the clothes you bought at their store were right for you. It was a beautiful arrangement. Same with the local furniture store. The lady who owned that store was the best around at putting the right things with the right things, and in the right colors. In short, when you went home or out on the town, you felt good about your environment and yourself. Beautiful.
Somewhere along the way, we confused having nice things with having many things. Can’t afford the nice sofa? Well, step right up folks, here’s an entire room setting for only $999. Buy one pair of shoes, get another free. Now we know that the coffee table always wobbles and our two pair of shoes pinch and don’t make us feel as good as our old Allen Edmonds.
There is an expense to creating nice, elegant, classy, beautiful products. It goes into the product in the product development stage, and lingers clear through the sales channels to you. (Which is why I am confused about Steve Jobs’ decision to sell his IPhone through WalMart. But that is another story.)
What if you don’t have the money to buy the beautiful thing? Is it worth waiting? I think it is. Instead of the entire room of furniture buy one thing that will last. Save up for the expensive shirt or skirt. You know this the right thing to do.
Or, if you have no money, at all…make what you have more beautiful. Know the feeling after you clean your closet? Beautiful. Ever gone to a Christmas party at your boss’s house and opened the bathroom cupboard and noticed how their bath towels are perfectly folded and stacked? Why not treat yourself like that? It costs nothing to fold towels and stack them straight.
I agree, that beauty is a signal. Notice I didn’t comment on the monograms, plushness or the brand name of the towels? It was the stacking part that was the beautiful thing.
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Hmmm, so is opening your bosses bathroom cupboard at the Christmas Party (shock horror!)a clever analogy to ‘inner beauty versus outer’? And what about the Donald Trumps of this world? (someone really should tell him about the hair thing) unless of course, they are simply sneatly folded towels?
OK, J. Brain…not THE best analogy. Still, a thing of beauty. The towels, not the’s hair.
I saw a program on the evolutionary value of beauty. You are attracted to what you find beautiful because beauty represents the underlying health and viability of another. Same would seem to apply here! My clean closet is healthier all the way around.
It’s a wonder any bachelors get married and/or perpetuate the species, isn’t it?