I see NEED MAPS

Togetherness was obvious from the start.

That’s why so many brands’ responses are lessons in undistinctiveness.

It was always going to be Safety too.

And ‘sometimes our fears do us more harm than the things we’re afraid of’, to paraphrase Marcus Aurelius.

I’m not sure but I think there could possibly be more empathy about. More compassion. Nurturance.

Freedom is starting to break out too. The Great Escape.

You see it in the over-optimistic webinars pretending not to be sales pitches. You hear it in the line “when it’s all over”.

And that’s just one side of it.

I also see a whole heap of Discernment. So many marketing experts studying for their degrees in Epidemiology, using Twitter as a textbook.

And all those desperately trying to retain Control in these times of ‘unprecedented uncertainty’.

As Otto von Bismarck said: ‘no one can control the current of events. All you can do is float on them and steer’.

I can even spot surreptitious acts of Independence. Sliding out for a sneaky second walk to accidentally-on-purpose bump into friends.

And all the time there’s the unshakeable optimism.

This is the opportunity to change your life, change the world. Progress, starting tomorrow, straight after Joe Wicks.

And round we go again.

It’s a Need Map. It always is.

Our heads may be spinning, our moods swinging, our emotions magnified.

But this upside-down world we’re now all living in still has a Need Map beneath it.

And what’s at its centre?

What is it that everyone wants to feel at the moment?

Alive?