All you need is love

A lot has been written about the needs and wants of humans and hence, from a business perspective, customers. One of the most common and earliest pieces of intellectual works was Maslows hierarchy of needs which he devolved in 1943. This is usually represented as a pyramid as follows

Of course Lennon and McCartney put it a lot simpler: 'All you need is Love'.

My question is whether in a digitally dominated age this historic approach is still relevant.  In his book 'Digital Disruption' James McQuivey proposes four fundamental human needs as follows.

1. COMFORT.  This covers things like reassurance, peace, security and safety. This is probably the most basic of the needs but is still used a lot in advertising.

2. CONNECTION. We are by nature gregarious people ( although my wife would dispute that about me when I am in one of my anti-social moods ) and we need to be connected. I guess this explains the phenomena that is Facebook which now has over one billion users.

3. VARIETY.  We all need to be stimulated and I have certainly relished the variety that my life and job has given me. The book gives another perspective. "Any parent who has listened to children complain that they are bored, bored, bored after only a week of summer vacation will recognise this need for stimuli that is native to the human animal."

4. UNIQUENESS.  Although we want to connect we also want to feel unique and different. Sometimes we actually forget how unique we all are in our circles of friends, characters and our combination of joband hobbies? Another  quote from Digital Disruption to illustrate this from a business angle. "The desire to distinguish oneself from the herd is strong enough that people will pay extra for it." We see this manifested in premium tickets, VIP passes, platinum cards and the like.

This is a good list and a useful guide for business but I do think it misses the universal truth expressed by Lennon and McCartney!