Niche is wrong (??)

I had a meeting with a very important man yesterday. He is the one who built Romania's first and, to date, the largest media empire. His company owns TV stations, radio stations, newspapers, production companies, you name it.

I was there to sell a positioning for one of his products. Mid introduction he stopped me saying "this is great but you are thinking about this the wrong way. I don't want you to focus the target of my magazine through a positioning that will wedge it into a niche. Your job is to make money, how will you do that if you virtually reduce your available target through a differentiating positioning. I do not want you to avoid targeting our competition's consumers. I want you to make a positioning that will target our consumers, their's and everyone else's. I want you to sell more not be different from everyone else. Be different but be FOR everyone"

I said "Sir, this is impossible. Targeting means segmenting, going for specific needs to be satisfied."

To which he replied "No. Needs need to be realized before they are satisfied. Your positioning needs to make everyone realize this is what they were needing."

And somehow this made sense.