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COLUMN

Marketing of politics

SARWAR AHMED
If you were to analyse the recent elections and outcome in Bangladesh from the perspective of marketing as a discipline, it is indeed not much of a surprise of what has happened. Of course there are several ways our pundits are interpreting the elections in their own kaleidoscopic view. My analysis of this election is from a marketing viewpoint. And 1 mean marketing as a discipline as we learn in business schools and not the typical "Let us go for marketing to NewMarket."
If I remember our marketing guru Kotler's definition, he says, marketing is a business philosophy by which an organisation or entity tries to satisfy its selected customer segments by providing an appropriate product or service, and better than its competitors. From a macro-economic view, there is not much difference of what our major two parties had to offer. The packaging was different as terms like a vision 2021 and digital Bangladesh have crept into the impossible to implement promises. We know for sure our politicians are prone to overstating soon to be forgotten promises. Even then, what was it that brought Awami League to power?
Marketing is all about segmentation. You cannot please everybody and therefore you segment your customers based on ease of using criteria. From this angle, we can segment our ballot stamping population by age, for instance the young, middle-aged and the old. As marketing goes, each segment has a more or less homogenous need profile. Sometimes of course, a basic need can transverse through all the segments, for example our need for food, clothes and shelter.
From what I hear, a hefty por tion of the electoral segment is the first time voters, meaning the young segment, who were born in the eighties. So these young voters have not seen the AL's inflicted and painful throes of the post-liberation early seventies. The damaged Al. brand of the seven ties has made a recovery. Harping
the Baksal story or the sad experiences of those times to a segment who has no experience with that past did not ring a bell. So this 'promotional' message was of no avail and fell on deaf ears.
Basic human needs like justice, fair play are important across all segments. The wanton and ruthless display of absolute power and corruption in BNP's last term has cut a deep mark in the psyche of the populace. This has literally destroyed the BNP brand. In my last column on how to destroy a brand, 1 mentioned that every time a customer interacts with anything related to your organisation, be it your people, your products or your advertisements, it will create an emotional experience. This experience will eventually translate into trust.
Five years of bitter experience has nearly destroyed the value of the BNP brand and the people's trust. To pick up the pieces and redo the brand, the BNP leadership has to raise phoenix like from the ashes of this debacle, with a clean image and clean people at the helm of their affairs. They have five years, enough time not to find fault with AL, but to rebuild themselves and be a formidable competitor in the next elections.
It is not that people voted AL to power because of the love of the brand. It was more as a choice between the lesser of two evils. In one of the BBC Sanglaps before the election, the message from the audience was quite clear: Hardly any one was interested in politics because of the negative image of our politicians. One of the more
amusing and cynical remarks that I heard was that AL too had ripped off the country in the past, like the slinking cat stealing a piece of fish from the kitchen. With this election, the cat seems to have landed with the whole fish and does not know what to do with such luck.
I hope wc learn our lessons and that luck can run out if we are not careful with how we nurture our brand. AL too has to improve its brand image. So far the going has been good and it seems Sheikh Hasina does have good advisers on her side.
What was also interesting in this election is the segment of the total population voting for Jamaat. It is the same 4 plus percent that Jamaat scored in the last two elections. This reflects that they belong to a niche, which by its own weight
does not mean much. Bangladeshis are religious by nature, not bigots. Playing the religious theme, especially to a young population, will not mean much anymore in future. Jamaat is a niche and will remain a niche.
Every moment of the five years to the next election is an experience that is making or breaking the political brands. If our political parties need to learn from the marketing of politics, they need to remember that their customers are the most fickle minded. Please your customers with honesty, fair play and justice to guarantee your future in the hearts, hands and minds of the simple Bangladeshis.
The writer is managing director of Syngenta Bangladesh Ltd.