Marketing For the 21st Century

Would you believe that I obtained the document quoted below from a whistle-blower within a major U.S. corporation?

Would you believe that I got it from the web site of a usually-unimpeachable source?

Would you believe it got it from my wife's son Jake's amusing e-mail service, Flotsam@botteronet.net?

Executive Summary:

Marketing to the traditional 'hot button' market bullets of efficiency and
ecological awareness is no longer effective in the marketplace. Recent
changes in marketplace mindset require an adjustment in marketing
philosophy that will allow for increased margins on traditional commodity
items. Initial trials of the new marketing concepts have proven very
effective, and an overall shift of marketing strategy is necessary for the
company to continue operations.

Problem:

Domestically produced commodity items are no longer cost competetive in
the marketplace. Increased competition from overseas manufacturing is
producing insurmountable pricing pressure on commodity items. Company is
approaching insolvency.

Solution:

Minor cosmetic changes to commodity product manufacturing process.
Re-write marketing material to reflect the change, emphasis on the
'terrorist' application. Increase sale price dramatically to reflect the
new 'terrorist' application.

Results:

Small increase in sales volume, substantial improvement of product
margins. Financial insolvency averted.

Conclusions:

Terrorist hysteria is an effective marketing tool. Properly exploited in
the marketing literature, the terrorist hysteria can breath new financial
life into any product that is no longer producing adaquate margins through
traditional channels.

Future Risk Analysis:

A fundamental shift in marketing strategy brings with it inherent market
risks. The major risk of this conceptual change is that the public mindset
will begin to discard the 'terrorist threat', rendering increased
marketing efforts in this area ineffective. This risk is deemed minimal at
this time, the majority of the expenditures required to maintain the
public mindset are being undertaken by the federal government, with a
virtually unlimited budget for this marketing effort. This paradigm shift
by our company is essentially parasite marketing where our relatively
small marketing budget is being used to leverage the expenditures of the
federal government. This strategy should remain effective for a minimum of
one election cycle, so we should see improvements in the bottom line for
at least the next 10 quarters. The primary risk moving forward is that the
federal government expenditures to promote terrorist hysteria are reduced,
with a resultant loss of marketplace mindset for this strategy. This is a
relatively small risk moving forward, and partially offset by hundreds of
companies such as our own, all focussed on re-working marketing strategies
to promote and extend the terrorist hysteria.

Recommendations: Marketing budget needs to be re-allocated. Television
advertising should only be purchased on networks whose news organizations
properly emphasize the terrorist threat. The same for print media
advertising. The marketing department needs to re-allocate human
resources, emphasis on 'product efficiency' needs to be lowered, with
appropriate staffing reductions. A new team needs to be established to
emphasize the 'security' aspect of the product. A 'threat analyst' should
be hired, and put in charge of this new team, who will be responsible for
producing white papers emphasizing the 'security' aspect of the product,
with particular detail on the 'terrorist' aspect.

//The Magic 8-Ball says, "Missed it by that much."\\