COMPLACENT MARKETING
Breaking Into New Ground
By Diana Obath
F
or all of us who have been to school,
marketing is about the number
of P’s in your strategy. Are they
4, are they 7, are they 5? Well, the ones
that make most sense to your business are
there. The most unchanged one however
remains the people. The target audience
of a product seldom changes, unless the
product changes. Common phrases in
marketing descriptions include primary
target, key audiences, which are all good
to have.
But here’s a scenario we should all think
about. We all want to break into new
territories and expand our boundaries,
in marketing terms increase our market
share. The fact is, as more competition
comes into any market, the market share
for one company will shrink, while that of
another company will grow because the
market remains the same. If your primary
target is men in Kenya who sum up to 25
million, any new competitor will affect
your piece of the pie. You have a better
chance targeting women who are 24
million, and can cause you to increase your
market share.
Audacious Technique
George Washington Hill, the president of
American Tobacco Company broke out of
his comfort zone in 1908, when smoking
was prohibited for women. Though he used
a radical approach, it was the beginning of
a revolution and probably the beginning
of the long journey of emancipation and
empowerment of women. “… A gold mine
right in our front yard,” is what George
termed American women. Hill was not
going to give up on the 50% population
of women who were not purchasing his
cigarettes.
Hill then begun advertising to women
and even held lectures on the ‘Art Of
Smoking.’ The classes included topics such
We must stop selling facts and start connecting
with customers feelings in more memorable and
persuasive ways. The market is also changing,
we can only grow if we work on making
our secondary market our primary target.
Persuasion is one tactic as we can learn from
Maya Angelou: People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did, but people will
never forget how you made them feel.
12 MAL23/18 ISSUE
as how to hold a cigarette, how to light it
up, how deep the puff should go among
other lessons. The lectures were delivered
by a brilliant war propagandist Edward
Bernays who had worked for the Wilson
administration to grow support of the
‘psychological warfare’ or the famous 1908
Cold Wa r between Britain and America.
Bernays came up with the term Public
Relations to flower his propaganda moves.
Bernays also wrote the book Propaganda.
He was so skilled in this field that he was
even able to persuade people that only
disposable cups were sanitary, and eggs
and bacon constitute the ultimate all-
American breakfast. He earned the title
Father of Public Relations, in life and still
after his death in 1995, he remains the
father of the profession.
In pure PR fashion, his advisory skills
around how to grow the market share for
George Hill had to be colorful. Bernays
understood the power of media and knew
for a fact that news stories were more
powerful than advertising. In 1929 he
staged the Easter Parade in New York.
He paid rich debutantes, what we now
call influencers, to join the parade with
cigarettes hidden under their clothes.
They would then dramatically light up
these cigarettes, on his signal ‘in protest.’
Bernays then went ahead to inform the
press that a group of ‘suffragettes’ intended
to protest at the event, by lighting their
‘torches of freedom.’
With this gesture, smoking was reframed
as a means of emancipation. Bernays
through media had linked women’s choice