The Lift Test: Outthinking Consumerism

Posted by Mike O'Brien on October 31, 2025 in Postcards from the digital frontier | Leave a comment

Every industry has its metaphors, but few fit marketing better than a lift. Sometimes it rises fast, full of confidence, metrics and momentum. Sometimes it stalls, suspended between floors, humming with noise but going nowhere.

Inside this imagined lift are four familiar figures: Gary Vaynerchuk, Mark Ritson, Scott Galloway and Simon Sinek. Each believes they know how to get it moving again. And deep in the building’s basement, Yanis Varoufakis, the engineer, is diagnosing the real cause of the breakdown.

Gary Vaynerchuk is pacing, phone in hand, already narrating the moment.

“This isn’t failure,” he says. “It’s content. Action beats anxiety. Just do something. Momentum creates opportunity.” To Gary, energy is the cure. The lift isn’t broken; it’s bored. If attention is currency, the trick is to keep the economy flowing. He’s partly right. In an age of infinite scroll, movement matters. But when every action is designed to feed a platform, not a person, motion becomes illusion – activity mistaken for progress.

Mark Ritson doesn’t move; he measures.

“Before we start hammering buttons,” he says, “let’s decide which floor we were aiming for.” To him, the problem isn’t the machine; it’s the plan. He sketches a model on the mirrored wall: segmentation, targeting, positioning. “Strategy,” he says, “is what separates a journey from a panic.” He’s right, of course, but even great plans get stuck when the lift itself has been rewired for someone else’s destination.

Scott Galloway crosses his arms. He’s not looking at the buttons; he’s looking at the walls.

“It’s not the passengers,” he says. “It’s the landlord.” The shaft, the cables, the power supply – all owned by the platforms. “The digital landlords control the infrastructure,” he adds. “We’ve become tenants, renting reach from the very systems that profit from our dependence.” His voice is heavy with truth, but truth alone doesn’t fix the fault. It just exposes the rent we’ve been paying to stay visible.

Simon Sinek breaks the silence.

“Maybe,” he says, “the lift didn’t stop to fail. Maybe it stopped to remind us why we built it.” He looks at Gary. “Action matters.” At Mark. “Structure matters.” At Scott. “Truth matters.” Then adds softly, “But purpose powers it all. Without a reason to rise, movement becomes meaningless.” It’s a moment of stillness that reminds everyone marketing isn’t just machinery; it’s meaning.

Meanwhile, in the basement, Yanis Varoufakis listens through the intercom, tools spread across a flickering workbench. He’s not just fixing a fault; he’s diagnosing the design. The problem, he realises, isn’t the lift – it’s the entire building. The system has been rewired into what he calls technofeudalism, a world where platforms own the roads between brands and people. Every click, every ad, every “engagement” passes through a toll gate. Human beings have been downgraded from citizens to inventory, attention-addicted consumers feeding a machine that never sleeps.

Yanis speaks into the intercom, his voice calm and steady.

“You don’t need a faster lift,” he says. “You need your own stairs. Stop renting audiences from platforms that feed on your dependence. Build direct relationships again – brand to human, not brand to algorithm.”

Up in the lift, the others fall silent. The lights flicker once more. Then, slowly, the machinery hums back to life. On the control panel, a new framework begins to glow – six buttons labelled Investigate, Customers, Opportunities, Numbers, Implementation and Contribution. The ICONIC sequence. It’s not a new set of slogans; it’s a system for outthinking consumerism.

Context – Seeing the System

The first step is Investigate. It demands marketers pause long enough to see the full context – the forces shaping behaviour, the incentives shaping platforms, and the systems shaping society. It’s where outthinking begins: by recognising that what looks like a broken lift is really a building built for someone else’s benefit.

Culture – Restoring the Human Connection

The second button, Customers, brings culture back into the conversation. It reminds us that audiences aren’t data points but people with desires, doubts and dignity. To outthink consumerism, brands must stop feeding the cycle of empty engagement and start designing for shared meaning. The goal is no longer to drive consumption – it’s to create connection.

Creativity – Redefining the Brief

Opportunities and Implementation follow – the creativity stage. Here, imagination becomes the mechanism for change. Creativity isn’t about selling more stuff; it’s about designing better reasons to care. It’s where innovation meets integrity – a discipline of thoughtful invention that balances commercial ambition with cultural value.

Contribution – The Measure That Matters

Finally, Numbers and Contribution define what impact really means. Metrics matter, but meaning matters more. The marketer’s new challenge isn’t growth at all costs, but growth that counts – measured not only in profit, but in progress. True contribution restores dignity to the exchange between brand and human.

Marketing today feels exactly like that lift: restless, noisy and stuck – caught between creative ambition and systemic dependence. Gary wants movement. Ritson wants structure. Galloway wants honesty. Sinek wants purpose. But Varoufakis wants liberation: for brands to reclaim their direct line to people and to stop feeding intermediaries who turn connection into currency.

ICONIC gives them the route map to do it. It turns noise into navigation, purpose into performance, and insight into impact. It helps marketers not only outthink the competition, but outthink consumerism itself – to rise beyond the cycle of attention addiction toward a more conscious exchange between business and humanity.

When the lift finally opens, they all step out changed. They haven’t fixed the fault; they’ve recognised the system. The next era of marketing will not be about faster algorithms, bigger budgets or smarter dashboards. It will be about restoring integrity to the exchange between brands and people, one honest connection at a time.

The lift was never broken. It was just waiting for better engineers – and a clearer framework – to show it how to rise with purpose again.