October 21, 2025
Over the past twenty years, marketing has undergone a profound transformation — from the age of mass communication to the age of experience.
But today we are witnessing a further evolution — one that touches the deepest chords of human identity.
It’s no longer enough to make people feel something; brands must help them find meaning, a point of connection with what they are truly seeking in their life journey.
Welcome to the era of existential marketing.
Experiential marketing, conceptualized by Bernd Schmitt in the late 1990s, was based on the idea that consumers no longer sought mere functionality or status, but memorable, engaging, multisensory experiences.
Apple, Red Bull, Starbucks: brands became “places to live,” experiences to remember, symbols of identity.
Today, however — as scholars like Stefano Gnasso and Marco Minghetti (Nova100 – Il Sole 24 Ore) have observed — experience alone is no longer enough.
In a world saturated with stimuli, promises, and storytelling, people crave authenticity, coherence, and value.
They look for brands that not only make them feel something, but also help them understand who they are — to recognize themselves in concrete, consistent, and tangible values.
Thus arises the idea of existential marketing: an approach that doesn’t just evoke emotions, but invites reflection, care, and better living.
A form of marketing that, ultimately, doesn’t speak to the consumer, but to the person.
In recent years, we’ve witnessed a radical shift in sensibility.
New generations — and not only them — are redefining how they choose and relate to brands:
• Food: growing demand for transparency on origin, supply chain, and production ethics.
• Fashion: a shift toward sustainable materials, slow fashion, and traceability.
• Personal care: attention to natural, cruelty-free, biodegradable ingredients.
• Lifestyle: a return to the essentials — connection with nature, authentic wellbeing, simplicity.
This isn’t a nostalgic “flower child” comeback — it’s a return to substance.
People want to be better, not just feel better for a moment.
And they choose brands that demonstrate this vision through tangible actions.
That’s why sustainability — in its broadest sense: environmental, social, and cultural — has become the new cornerstone of authentic marketing.
In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino wrote:
“The hell of the living is not something that will be;
if there is one, it is what is already here,
the hell we live in every day, that we form by being together.
There are two ways to escape suffering it.
The first is easy for many: accept the hell and become part of it to the point of no longer seeing it.
The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and learning:
seek and recognize who and what, in the midst of the hell, are not hell,
and make them last, and give them space.”
Today, in an ecosystem overflowing with content, promises, and storytelling, Calvino’s words resonate more than ever.
Experiential marketing made the marketplace more vibrant — but also noisier.
Existential marketing, on the other hand, seeks — just like Calvino’s invitation — what is not hell: authentic gestures, coherence, small acts of truth that resist superficiality.
It’s a marketing that doesn’t shout — it listens.
That doesn’t show off — it reveals.
That doesn’t build masks — it makes space for substance.
That’s why existential marketing is not an image exercise — it’s a business philosophy.
It marks the shift from marketing that creates experiences to marketing that cultivates meaning.
It means communicating not just what the company does, but how and why it does it.
The new key principles are:
• Concreteness
• Consistency between message and action
• Ethics as strategy
• Meaning as a competitive value
In this vision, communication is no longer a megaphone — it’s a bridge between intention and impact.
Within this framework lies aDoormore, the platform that promotes the communication of doing things well.
The principle is simple yet revolutionary:
every business action can be a sustainable act, when carried out with awareness, respect, and transparency.
aDoormore helps brands to:
• Tell their story authentically and verifiably
• Transform values into concrete, recognizable actions
• Create dialogues based on trust, not slogans
• Share their positive impact — large or small
It’s a new communication paradigm: less “show,” more “sense.”
Existential marketing doesn’t replace experiential marketing — it completes and transcends it.
After years of emotional storytelling, audiences now demand truth, coherence, and concreteness.
They want to feel part of something that means something.
As Calvino wrote, we must learn to recognize what is not hell, and make it last.
And in this, aDoormore truly opens a new door — toward a future of marketing that is more human, sustainable, and existential.
The Marketing Team
