Greenland is the world’s largest island and also one of the least populated places. Still, its strategic importance is now much greater than its current situation suggests.
Greenland is positioned where future shipping routes, new energy systems, resource access, and security plans may all meet. These possibilities are not fully developed, and some may never happen as expected. Even so, there is already real pressure surrounding the island.
That dynamic should feel familiar to marketers.
For marketers, Greenland is not just a unique case in geopolitics. Instead, it shows how narrative power can operate even when no consumers are involved.
Greenland’s value comes not from what it produces now, but from what it could make possible in the future. The way its future is described is already influencing negotiations, alliances, and leverage, well before any decisions about ownership or use are made.
This is even more striking because Greenland’s current situation is still very limited. Most of the island is covered by ice. The economy depends mostly on fishing, which made up about 23 percent of GDP in 2023. Although reliance on Danish grants has fallen from 30 percent of GDP in 2003 to 19 percent in 2021, the economic base remains small.
The value does not come from output. It comes from optionality.
This logic now extends far beyond geopolitics.
Brands are now often valued not for what they sell today, but for how well they present themselves for a future that is still coming. Simply having options has become a kind of value.
Marketing was once focused on persuasion. The aim was to shape choices in a working market, where products were available, and demand could be measured.
Greenland shows a different approach. There are no consumers to convince and no demand curves to study. Still, people are already valuing, defending, and negotiating over the asset.
The work is no longer persuasion.
It is inevitable.
When something is seen as essential for the future, any resistance to it usually does not last. This idea now shapes how brands are valued based on belief, how long-term platform stories are built, and how investments in artificial intelligence happen.
Storytelling control has become more potent than for brands that work in a similar way. Most companies do not completely own the systems they rely on. Instead, they control a story that makes them seem essential. When this story takes hold, partners, regulators, and markets adjust to it. Markets adapt.
Marketing, in this context, no longer exists only to support sales. It increasingly functions as a tool for strategic leverage.
This is marketing without consumers.
There are no buyers to persuade. No engagement metrics to optimize. And yet, value continues to accumulate.
Many marketers find this uncomfortable because it runs counter to the belief that marketing should always focus on customers. In fact, much of the strongest marketing today is directed at investors, institutions, regulators, and systems, not just customers.
The audience is no longer the market.
It is the environment in which the market will eventually exist.
This also explains a quieter tension. Building value before there is demand is now a key way that power is used. However, this type of value is rarely given to marketing teams. It is usually handled by strategy, finance, and long-term risk groups. and long-term risk.
CEOs still see growth as a main goal. However, marketing leaders are often not trusted to lead growth when it involves shaping the future rather than just selling products.
Marketing has become fluent in storytelling.
CEOs are focused on leverage.
This difference is why marketing is often asked to help define the future, but is rarely trusted to take charge of it.
Value based on belief can be strong, but it is also fragile. It relies on always putting off the need for proof.
At some point, Greenland’s future will run into real physical, economic, and political limits. When that happens, the story will either become reality or fall apart.
The same will happen to brands.
Having options is valuable until the future becomes real infrastructure. Then, value moves away from controlling the story and toward how well things are done, their cost, and their reliability.
Most brands are not preparing for that moment.
Greenland is not a warning about geopolitics.
It is a warning about how value is now created.
Marketing has moved from selling products to selling futures. From persuasion to positioning. From demand to inevitability.
The question is not whether this works.
It clearly does.
The question is what happens when the future that was sold finally arrives.
