Political marketing taken to new heights

Dec 18, 2019 Editorial

It is well known and now widely accepted, that the media machinery of the opposition is without compare. As if to furnish more evidence of how comprehensive and unrelenting is that operation, there is no resting on laurels in smug satisfaction with the output of local minds and hands only.
For now, there is engaging of a foreign voiceprint -an American one. When the best at this marketing-propaganda game is desired, none from other places will do; it must be the incomparable Americans.
There is bypassing traditional protests about meddling and focus on what should become apparent to the Guyanese electorate, thought of as unthinking and unmoving, while served up these morsels of nuanced titillations.
There was an earlier one involving some poll, for which nobody claimed ownership. The latest is this flapping of the gums (and political flap) about ‘likely’ opposition elections success. Though official, America has denied involvement. This should bring home to citizens what is at work here.
It is not about politicians envisioning and preparing to offer the nation something different, something enhancing through the constructive. No! It is about probing for any angle, no matter how minute, to deliver a subtly honed sales pitch: ‘likely’ victory has a smooth, influential ring about it.
No wonder the government took offense, given its own sensitivities. For here is the opposition benefiting from a foreign voice playing with the minds of local voters.
The offending party is an American, but that is brushed aside, and this is tendered for local consumption: whenever American energies are brought to bear, marketing of the product is the paramount component.
The programme is simple: Release a crafty sound byte (not necessarily unrealistic), dangle the bait, and reel in the floating. In a razor-wired political atmosphere, and a razor thin electoral environment, ‘likely’ winner seems to provide confirmation for the peripheral (people), through intentionally helping along a once uncertain pathway.
That fluid marketing message settles the conflicts and hesitations in their emotional spheres, and boils down to these questions: what are other people thinking and doing that I am not doing? Why would I want to be left on the outside or behind? What benefit is there for me to be where I am, when things are heading in such a direction?
This has worked well in advertising for the decades-long winners of tobacco products and alcoholic spirits and look how beneficial those have been for the addicted and unwary bystanders. The problem facing Guyanese is that it is not a destructive habit being smoothed over and marketed. It is about how degraded local politics has become, where any means justify the single end of winning.
Not about governing well, not about leading right, those nuisances will be dealt with later to some minimal degree, whenever the interest could be found, if it ever would.
At the crux, it is about winning, which facilitates the perpetuation of any manner of governance perversities, as have been experienced for ages.
Thus, if the sales pitch requires giving a manifesto, then give them a good one. It has been one that usually sells the nation down the drain and up the creek. Overload it with promises that can’t be kept, on which there are no intentions to deliver.
Who is going to hold accountable later? Who is even going to care to remember when things fall apart? Certainly not the Guyanese electorate?
What just occurred from an American mind was the equivalent of Lee Atwater in 1988 on behalf of George H. W. Bush. There was the aroma of Willie Horton and Michael Dukakis swooned to defeat. That, too, worked for Richard Nixon with his law and order campaign. This plays with the minds of the gullible, the fearful, the timid.
In other words, look what could happen, if voters sit on the fence, stay away, think too much. And to really ram home the power of marketing and its force on the psyche, the National Rifle Association (in America) had a serious interest back in the 1970s on the issue of gun control.
It was all for gun control when the Black Panthers were accumulating guns. Today, that same NRA markets and touts the sacred and inviolable constitutional right to bear arms. Just goes to show what a well-rehearsed marketing campaign can whip up and deliver.

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Political marketing taken to new heights

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