Devangshu Datta: People's marketeers

VIEWPOINT

In a Dilbert cartoon, the boss explains, "We can't compete on price, features, service, or quality. That leaves fraud "" which we'll call marketing!" After you've stopped laughing (or going red if you have an MBA), you might wonder what exactly is wrong with the street perception of marketing.

Marketing: Communication about a product or service that creates positive awareness and encourages people to buy and use that product or service. That definition encompasses image-building, pricing, distribution, promotion, blah-blah. There is nothing there inherently evil or risible.

Marketing is a necessary activity and often one with positive externalities. Much of the time it involves drawing the attention of consumers to products or services that do in fact improve their quality of life and create jobs in the bargain.

Yes, the tools of marketing include lying and misrepresentation "" but a marketer lies less often than a lawyer or a diplomat. Like every other profession which involves misrepresentation, it has its own jargon. Big deal.

The reason why people find it a funny profession has more to do with a basic kink in the human psyche. As a species, we tend to think we are independent individuals who make purchase and lifestyle decisions, after filtering out undue influences. This is rubbish; most consumers are mainstream in their tastes because homo sapiens is a herd animal.

The other thing is that the man in the street buys into a successful marketing campaign without noticing that it is, in fact, a marketing campaign. We only notice the snake-oil campaigns that go ludicrously wrong. We buy into the successful ones and giggle only about the bad ones.

As an extension to this, the very best campaigns are totally outside the box and masterminded by people who are not conventionally rated marketing mavens. For example, Mahatma Gandhi sold the idea of Swaraj through Satyagraha to an entire nation. Yet, everybody, from his followers to serious historians, will shudder at the thought of the man being described as a marketing genius.

Satyagraha doesn't feature in MBA courses. It should, because it had all the hallmarks of a great campaign. It was brilliantly branded; it was disseminated virally, spreading at warp speed through all channels. It did not create a financial payoff for the genius who dreamt it up or those who bought into it. But it helped them live their lives in ways that enhanced their happiness. It inspired me-too campaigns "" Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela are two off-the-cuff examples.

Communism and fascism are two other ideologies that owe a lot to good marketing by people who never considered themselves marketers. If you're into logo design, think of the Swastika. Hitler and his boys took a religious symbol, reversed the armature, added some mumbo-jumbo and worked up enough traction to get 40 million-odd people bumped off in short order. Even 60 years later, a Jain travelling through Germany and displaying his faith by wearing a swastika is liable to arouse hysterics.

Then again, think of the hammer, the sickle and, above all, the red star. If that isn't an iconic brand and logo, what is it? The underlying ideology has deeply influenced the last 150 years. Somehow though, Lenin, Marx, Engels and Mao, etc. don't make it into MBA courses!

Is Osama bin Laden in the same league? The Al Qaeda and its ideology are marketed very carefully through targeted means with due thought to channels and branding. It's an open question whether the message is close enough to mainstream tastes to gain majority acceptance. But it is effective enough to attract a fair minority.

Along with anti-terror initiatives led by security and military personnel, it might make sense to get B-Schools into the act. If AQ's methods were studied from the marketing aspect, with an eye to developing "anti-AQ" campaigns, that may work better than random changes in troop commitments. It's worth trying at the least because it could offer insights into "anti-marketing" "" an area that is woefully under-researched.