What Universal Human Truths Can Marketers Tap Into?

David Rock's SCARF model says five drivers shape behavior from childhood onward — status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness — and Lynette maps each one onto the brands that built themselves on it. Shann thinks the framework is useful, and pushes for something more primal: our relationship to death, and what it quietly does to how we buy, travel, remember, and regret. They get there via a German supermarket Christmas ad, a Singapore government app nobody would download, school board fights over library books, and Bud Light.