Osama Bin Laden ? and the Role of Marketing
 

Marketing is Life. Life is Marketing.
?and what is marketing?
?Effective communication with a purpose?

I believe every aspect of our lives has a marketing corollary. We market our ideas, goals and aspirations in a relationship. We market ourselves at an interview or in sales. We market our products and companies in business. We market our nation to the world?

Every day I research, study, analyze and edit. I place myself, figuratively, in the place of everyone with whom I speak; everyone with whom I come in contact. Why? Because I do not believe you can successfully market without an innate understanding of your target. The key to successfully marketing anything is an appreciation of the desires of your intended audience, your customers?and as successful marketers, we either meet and satisfy those needs, or we create them for our specific purpose.

Since September 11, 2001 we have been searching for Osama Bin Laden ? dead or alive. Most believe we have not yet found him. For some time now I have questioned our methods, and related the dilemma to marketing. We have threatened, coerced, promised fabulous riches ? we the people are probably aware of only one tenth of the effort, munitions, and lives expended for his capture?and he eludes us. 25 million dollars, 50 million dollars?our government believes the message has not yet reached the right people, so we spend millions more launching television advertising campaigns targeting the poorest of people in the remotest regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. At the end of 2001 the average per capita income in Afghanistan was US$200. Will people scratching an existence from rock hear our call? If one is illiterate supporting a family on $200 each per year does 50 million dollars have meaning? Are the Pakistanis and Afghanis with satellite dishes and televisions the ones who know where he hides?

I?ve been thinking we should look to our own past; our own Wild Wild West?

Paper placards in the simplest of appropriate languages:

His famous countenance:

Wanted Dead or Alive

Reward:

Relocation of a family or families, each to twenty acres of level fertile farmland with a deep well, a good stone-built house, two oxen, two milk cows, twelve chickens and a rooster (a picture wouldn't hurt).

These, scattered by plane throughout the mountains, where only the Afghanis and Pakistanis of the regions know the ways in and out?

Know your customer. Target your message. Succeed.

good points


but what if he is in Boston?

If he is, I hope the marketers have sense enough to write the wanted posters in Bostonese.

Wahhhhhnted.

I can hear the accent, Colin. Now, THAT'S marketing the target!!!

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :thumbsup