By Bjarne O., co-founder and chief visionary officer at Baroque Worldwide

We are fortunate to be experiencing a significant paradigm shift, not only in the business world, but also in the entire world. A fundamental change in our view of how we have to think, feel and work in order for our soul and businesses to succeed and survive… A shift in mindset similar in magnitude to the discovery that the world wasn’t flat but round. The time has come for the dinosaurs to leave the building.

Finally, we can stop making commercials.

Change the fundamental idea and motivation behind commercials and dump this dirty word. Remove everything that has the slightest chance of being perceived as a vehicle to sell me something I probably don’t want and need, and don’t mind, allegedly, being interrupted for. We can and should change commercials into something positive. Something people want; something they’ll love and be eager to become part of.

The world, of course, is already there. Now we need to catch up.

We need to establish a bond of trust between us and them – our fellow human beings – and to stop calling and thinking of them as ‘consumers’ (another dirty word). They are – and have always been – our fellow human beings… Our friends with who we share this life and planet. People we should always only want the best for. To help in any way we can to improve their lives. Which means we have to stop pushing snake oil and start being dead honest about whatever we communicate. Consistently.

But even that’s not enough.

To really bond and succeed we need to actively involve people in the communication process. They know best what they like and need and how they like to be communicated to. Why guess or use time and money on statistics and surveys to find this out? Ask them. Find out by involving them in the entire process. Smart and false narratives won’t cut it anymore.

People want to know the truth as much as they want clean water and clean air.

The more slick and smart things look and sound, the more suspicious it seems. The new generations that we need to communicate with don’t trust the established media and corporations anymore – and with good reason. The people we need to bond with, in order to ensure successful communication, get their information from the Internet and their peers – not from luxurious TV news studios with picture-perfect, white-teethed, $30,000-a-day anchor people who make too much money communicating too little truth. The established media era is over. The dinosaurs are leaving the building.

Empowered by the Internet, people have taken charge of their own lives by controlling the ways they get information.

They are now controlling the communication process, pushing it and demanding it to be more driven by empathy and committed to the highest quality of truth and integrity instead of the usual false narratives concocted by greed. It’s not sexy anymore. It kills our planet and us.

We are in a new era of human-to-human communication. A world where the creation of commercials is placed in the hands of the people, and where a new breed of car commercials can place those people in the driver’s seat.

We call this Holistic Consumer Involved Communication (HCIC).

A way of communicating about products, services, and messages that look at the bigger picture of humanity. Communication driven by empathy and truth. A mindset and concept that can be used for all kinds of communication purposes. A way of communicating that is based on the simple fact that, without trust, there’s no integrity. Without integrity, there’s no connection. Without connection, there’s no communication. Without communication, there’s no relationship. Without relationship, the earth is flat.

That’s STILL not enough.

I hope and believe that this way of communicating will eventually start giving people a direct influence on the products that are made. Which is awesome. Imagine how motivated and engaged people will be in the communication process when they know they can directly influence and help Coca-Cola make a soft drink that tastes good and doesn’t turn us all into diabetics.

Advertising is much bigger than simply selling stuff.

It’s a way to make a better world for all of us. Because we don’t want the world to be determined by experts or a powerful few who are too often driven by greed and ruin it for us all.

This is the paradigm shift in mindset that everybody who wants to sell something today needs to understand and adopt. The spirit of the world is evolving from the flat motive of greed to the round embrace of empathy. Finally, it’s cool to be human. And that’s very important in these robotic times that are fast approaching.