--- title: "Newsletter - \"Which Came First, Transportation Needs or Uber?\" by Tim McCarthy" description: "Newsletter - \"Which Came First, Transportation Needs or Uber?\" by Tim McCarthy" --- [![Main-Logo-01-1](https://blog.thebusinessofgood.org/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Main-Logo-01-1.png?width=250&height=43&name=Main-Logo-01-1.png "Main-Logo-01-1")](https://www.thebusinessofgood.org) # Tim McCarthy and the Business of Good ## [Newsletter - "Which Came First, Transportation Needs or Uber?" by Tim McCarthy](https://blog.thebusinessofgood.org/articles/newsletter-which-came-first-transportation-needs-or-uber-by-tim-mccarthy) ** Mar 30, 2016 5:33:00 PM / by [Tim McCarthy](https://blog.thebusinessofgood.org/author/tim-mccarthy) A friend recently asked me a couple of interesting questions: 1. "Is great marketing timeless or is great marketing contemporary like vernacular?" 2. "Have human needs changed over the centuries?"   The answer to the first question is that great marketing is a bit of both, timeless and contemporary. Marketing is contemporary since every product has a different audience and operates in a different time. Therefore, it is (also) always an advantage to operate "in the vernacular."     I consider myself an excellent marketer NOT because I have answers but because I ask for answers from those I wish to attract. Great marketers take cues from society and when they break through they add to the vernacular (i.e. Kleenex, Cheerios, Google, Legos, Velcro). An early and still best definition of marketing is “define the need, then fill it.”  It’s a business discipline, not an art.  The two timeless questions every business must answer are: 1. What do people want or need that they cannot now get? (research)  2. How could I fill that gap profitably? (product development, production, finance, sales etc.)    Great marketing is also timeless because it follows a few basic rules: 1. Well defined target  2. Irresistible offer  3. Attractive, attention grabbing, easy to understand creative   Often businesses and marketers mistakenly view fads as "creating needs," such as Beanie Babies, Pet Rocks and Snuggies. Such things pass because transformative, disruptive business ideas don’t create needs they instead take two or more existing needs or notions and connect them in a new way. For example, taxi cabs, under-employed consumers and the smartphones all existed individually before Uber put them together rather creatively to create a car service driven by fellow consumers, reachable and billable online.   The answer to your second question whether human needs change over time is also, regrettably… somewhat paradoxical.   Human needs are timeless (see [Maslow](http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html)) and therefore fundamentally unchanging. And yet I’ve noticed in my lifetime that as the lower needs of physiology and safety have become more ubiquitous, western society spends more resources and marketing on the higher planes of the pyramid.    The basics are addressed in new ways certainly - thirst: bottled water and energy drinks; sex: Viagra; shelter: tiny houses - but imagine our greatest generation needing or caring about online dating, self-help books and meditative retreats. They aren’t necessarily smarter than us; they were just a little busier handling the lower part of Maslow’s platform.        To visualize this thought more directly, visit any developing country. The marketing difference will be as stark to you as it was to me. As with our own society, a generation or two ago, they must first solve issues like sanitation, safe drinking water, enforceable laws, and basic housing before getting too far with things like advanced health and beauty aids.   In other words, once basic needs are fulfilled lesser needs can be addressed. Point to point individualized transportation has been a need since horses and perhaps mules, oxen, and camels (dinosaurs?) before that. Then automobiles became available and allowed for a product/service like Uber that can deliver a car to where you stand upon request from the palm of your hand within minutes.   In sum, good businesses use timeless, fundamental disciplines to define and fill existing needs. The greatest and most enduring businesses connect needs to existing notions in ways that change markets. 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