There are many ways of describing marketing. Some would describe it as selling a product. Some might describe it as all that fuels your revenue. But I would describe it as more than that. For me marketing is about selling an idea, selling a dream, selling something that would change our lives.
So, I shall not be writing about a marketing example that talks about selling a product, but about a mass movement.
If you have even a single friend on facebook who’s from India, I’m sure you must have noticed two things in the past 1 month.
1) Massive Chest-thomping because India won the Cricket World Cup
2) Messages that spoke about India’s Fight against corruption
While the first one is pretty universal ,(we can expect the second thing even if the Lakers win), the second is an excellent example of the power of marketing an idea and marketing a dream.
India as a country has had a problem with corruption for quite a while. It went to the extent of an implicit reaction that said “If there are too many people doing it, it isn’t a crime”. The scale at which corruption was rampant, especially among people in office and politicians, was unacceptable.
Here’s this gentleman by the name of Anna Hazaare. He was a freedom Fighter who contributed to India’s Struggle for Independence in the 1940’s and then went on to jon the army. He pledged that he would spend the rest of his life in serving the country.
Mr. Hazaare has been fighting corruption for the last many decades. Until recently, he was a lone warrior against a cause. But things suddenly changed.
Marketing is all about timing.
India won the Cricket World Cup on the 2nd of April 2011. There’s nothing that lifts a country’s spirits like sports. When India’s GDP goes up by 4% , you dont see people dancing, you really don’t see people coming together. But when the World Cup came home, this is what happened:
Suddenly, we had a situation where people from all over came on the streets. My whole life I’ve lived in India, I’ve never seen something of this sort happening. Random people were going on the streets and hi-fi-ing each other. When the traffic police tried to bring some order to the chaos, they were roped in and people in the crowds started hugging them. There was energy, all around. Excess energy, waiting to find more outlets.
And within two days, Anna Hazaare announces that he shall be fasting to death against corruption. And that he shall break his fast only if the Government agrees to pass a bill, where an outside committee can hold politicians accountable for swindling public money, and can be imprisoned if caught.
Try and understand group psychology here. 1 Billion rebels, ecstatic with joy and victory, have found a cause. Months of newspaper reports of political scams members of parliament, years of accepting corruption as a way of life, an excess influx of esctatic energy because of an event unprecedented for 28 years, a social networking site where you see what your friends are thinking, a world where videos of protests are broadcast with a push of a button, 1 man willing to give his life for a cause that everyone believes in. Mix all of that together, and you have the recipe for a revolution.
All over the world, Indians joined in this war against corruption. People took to the streets, organizing protests. There were fasts and protests all around the country. Indians all over the world right from London, to New York, to California, organized fasts and marches. There were peace protests that you could see, as an Indian, your friends going to. The more you saw them going to it, the more you felt an urge to contribute to it.
Log into facebook and look at this to get a taste of the action
http://www.facebook.com/#!/IndiACor
Suddenly, the government found itself under tremendous pressure. Not agreeing to the demands for a just cause would have meant risking civil disturbance. If anna Hazaare would have died because of the fast, all hell would have broken lose. The lull threatens with the storm. This was an example of that happening.
The bill was passed and Anna Hazaare broke his fast. All of this happened in the last 15 days.
There’s a newfound confidence in the young of India now. There’s a great urge of making a difference. Everyone has bought into this dream.
The last time something of this scale happened, was some time in the mid-40’s, when there was a fast by a certain Mr. Mahatma Gandhi.
Now, let’s analyze this situation from the lens of a Marketing major:
1) The timing was perfect. Right after the world cup win. People were high, really high. Everybody unanimously felt a sense of achievement, and a power to do anything. There was a mood that was set in, of relentless energy. People were looking for outlets of all that energy.
2) There was the My-friend-is-into-it factor. It is the golden grail of marketing. You saw your friends talk about it. You saw news channels talk about it. You saw everybody talk about it.
3) There was a facebook community. Once you joined it, you got continuous updates. Since it’s constantly grabbing your attention, there’s more thought into this. Good marketing campaigns always stay in the public eye.
4) Every piece of news has a short life-span, after which it fizzles. This life-span is generally two-weeks. So if any action has to be taken it must be taken in those two weeks. Timing Timing.
5) There’s a story. Every successful marketing campaign always always has to have a story. There has to be a hero and there has to be a villain. Apple always showcased a villain, either IBM or Microsoft. Good quality goods show their villains in the bad quality ones. Cheaper products show their villains in the mighty-expensive ones. You always always, must create a villain. We had here the hero Anna Hazaare vs. the villain in the politicians of India. The best Marketing campaigns have always manufactured Villains.
6) Thye hero has to make the general mass his team in fighting against this common enemy. Steve Jobs told us that we have to join him against Big Brother, against IBM, against Microsoft. We bought into that vision. Anna Hazaare and the facebook community told us that we have to fight against a common enemy. We bought into that vision. How can you make people feel like heroes without generating villains, right?
7) There was a sense of identification that people felt. You saw a strong movement happening. You wanted to be a part of a movement. So, you got into it. You tried to make as much of a contributuion as you could. The rebel within you found its cause. The factor was ‘Identification’.
These are some lessons of marketing that one can learn from a revolution and a mass movement.
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