Out of the Box

The Role of Marketing in World Affairs

By Menachem Lubinsky on January 19 2009

There was a time when marketing as we know it was mostly an American phenomenon, particularly when it revolved around world events. Americans were used to carefully orchestrated political campaigns long before the rest of the world learned that voters can be influenced by what they hear and see in the mass media. The debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy was a turning point in having the American consumer go shopping even for their president. Like a product, they were able to hold up both “items” and compare which of the two they would like to buy.

Even wars are now guided by many marketing principles. It sounds absurd but the recent war in Gaza was a perfect example. Hamas knew from the beginning that its best bet in influencing world public opinion was to play the human card. The more casualties that are seen being rushed into Gaza hospitals, the more the world would be sympathetic to them and eventually win them a cease fire that they could not possibly win in the battlefield. The Israelis, who are often accused of lagging in public relations, tried to out maneuver Hamas by declaring three-hour daily cease fires to allow humanitarian help to reach the Gazans. While it did create some positive PR, the images of the dead and wounded overshadowed even this.

Even dictators like Chavez in Venezuela and Ahmadinejad in Iran recognize that there is an audience for their perverted messages and more importantly that their rhetoric may be the key to staying in power. They use marketing to project their leadership by orchestrating well publicized visits to hospitals, factories, and universities.

Barack Obama may have fashioned a new page in the marketing of a president using catchy slogans like “Change” and “Yes we can” to mesmerize many young and disenfranchised voters. The marketing slogans did much for his fundraising as well, helping him raise a record amount of money for his campaign. The Obama team did not stop there as even the elaborate plans for the inauguration were also part of a marketing-driven fundraising effort.

Like all marketing, the key to a successful effort is the extent to which it influences the end user. In the case of President Obama, it was the voter. In the case of Gaza, it was world opinion, primarily seen through the lenses of the media. Israel in this war decided to bar the world media from the fighting arena to avoid some of the problems it faced with the media in Lebanon, including potentially feeding the enemy with information they might not otherwise be able to retrieve.

Crafting the marketing message means factoring in the end user. Nowadays with the economy in recession, many of the large American businesses like the credit card or even the beverage companies are tailor-making their messages to fit the lifestyle of the end user. Pepsi now features a new tagline, “Every generation refreshes the world,” while Coca-Cola, is poised to launch a campaign, “Open happiness,” that will replace its “Coke side of life”—which is, naturally, the bright side.

Imagine that most modern armies today have a military spokesman, a not just someone who sits in an office far away from the arena. Military spokesman are as much a part of an advancing army as are the infantry and medics. They are especially busy if the press is allowed to be embedded with the infantry. There have been casualties amongst military spokesmen who were caught in the crossfire of warring armies.

We are rapidly approaching an age where decisions that impact world affairs are not made by diplomats and soldiers alone. A key player at the table is the public relations professional because victory no longer means the reality in the battlefield. It is equally important to score a victory with public opinion.

I am always the one to draw some kind of analogy between the marketing of a cause or individual with the marketing of a business. There used to be a time when marketing meant going by your gut. A seasoned businessman used to have a sixth sense about the customer’s needs. When a new product was launched, it might have been because of what the end users were telling you about an existing product. Today, companies are much more intense about their need to understand the mood and attitudes of the end user.

Pepsi is trying to position itself as the one who is part of a young generation that will make a difference in the world, much like candidate Obama’s Change message. Coke is trying to put the upbeat of things into perspective. They are reading the end user as being apprehensive about the future and perhaps looking for the happiness that Coke hopes its products will offer.

As much as public relations professionals try to choreograph events, invariably events may overtake the best laid plans. Even the Israelis had their share of mishaps, including casualties from friendly fire and hitting some targets that may have been purely civilian. The test for marketing people is not how well they plan but how they deal with plans when they go awry.

Out of the Box is a collection of strategic marketing articles that Lubicom has published on various topics, trends and ideas in the marketing world. The articles have been published in the Hamodia weekly newspaper circulated on three continents to a readership of well over 100,000.

The name, "Out of the Box" is a term used frequently in business nowadays to describe creative thinking that is not the norm. It is meant to help a business pull away from the pack or separate oneself from the competition. It is to some extent fraught with risk, simply because it is not the run of the mill thinking, but it is at the same time the key to reaching the next opportunity.