The Marketing Maginot Line
Thursday, September 14th, 2006 by Mark | Posted in Management, Marketing, Million $$ Marketing Mistakes, Public Relations, Unconventional Thinking | Comments- Can all the marketing skill in the world, successfully market abject losers?
- Can we make losers be perceived as objects of worship?
- Or as technological marvels.
- Could David Olgilvy have convinced the world that the Maginot Line was really a masterpiece of war?
Of course not. Ridiculous worthless junk is always ridiculous worthless junk. Bill Ford used Madison Avenue and a war chest of shareholder dollars to tell Americans his third-rate cars and forth-rate management was going to use innovation as the power to drive Ford’s renaissance. But you can’t turn losers into heroes when there’s no beef in the bun.
Now Tony Snow faces another impossible task. Selling a war we refuse to win. We actually refuse to win. Ford got fired for refusing to make cars that sell. No one, even Nonsense (Madison) Avenue, has ever tried to portray the Maginot Line as a reason we should all sing The French National Anthem.
Listen, Ford, you still own a big chunk of the company so now that you had your grossly over-paid star turn, fix the cars.
And Tony Snow, tell your boss he can end the war with victory, but he can’t sell it to the American people. And that’s a shame because we deserve to be safe.
The rule is you can advertise all-fat burgers and $1,200.00 shoes because people like them and that’s their prerogative, but you can’t market losers people abhor. Well you can, but they won’t sell. And good marketing should always lead to sales.
Mark Stevens
CEO
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