Why March 14 needs a new Marketing Campaign

March 14, in its simplest distilled form, is a coalition of already existent political "parties" formed due to certain events in the past two years, and empowered by various strategic relationships. However, with the various initiatives March 14 has used to attempt to change the political face of Lebanon, it has remained a nascent political venture, set to fail unless it radically changes its political short-term and long-term strategy. This is all under the assumption that March 14 has Lebanon's best interest at heart, an assumption that will not be questioned in this post.

Over the past year, actions taken by March 14 indicate an internal belief that because it consists of major political players and names, which have already proven themselves, it should not view itself as an organization selling something "new" to the public. On the contrary, the "product" March 14 currently sells to the Lebanese public is marketed with pre-March 14 techniques. Therein lies the flaw, and although this may have worked in the first month of its existence, March 14 requires a marketing overhaul.

The faulty premise lies in the notion that repeating the same ideas, which may have worked with its current supporters, will attract people from other political bases - let's call them customers if you will. Unfortunately for March 14, it hasn't modified its marketing strategy to target these different segments of the market - the early majority (their supporters), and the late majority (everyone else). Entering the "late majority" market requires crossing a mental chasm which entails a revamping of strategy, as well as making use of several fundamental inflection points, such as competitive advantage and organizational leadership, two traits (among others) that March 14 has not handled too well.

It order to lock in a larger proportion of the Lebanese population, March 14 could have followed already tried strategies that have been applied over the past several decades with regards to novel private enterprises. March 14 is stuck in a similar situation that many of these "startups" find themselves in - they haven't defined nor created a "whole product" and they didn't initialize their "market" invasion with a product aimed at a niche market. On the contrary, March 14 mainly insisted on two things - the presidency and Hezbollah's arms. Although respectable goals, these are not "niche", and are certainly not achievable within the necessary time-frame. A decent marketing committee would have created a more realistic strategy, taking into consideration which market segment was being targeted, and modifying their strategy accordingly; this would have consisted of various stepping stones that deal with at least one of the myriad political and social issues currently plaguing Lebanon, thus giving March 14 much needed credibility. Dealing with a more thorough strategy would have allowed March 14 to morph from a "product"-based coalition - in which they sell "democracy" and a "state" - to a "market"-driven coalition - in which the "product" gets targeted directly to the relevant segment, as opposed to dealing with it in the currently abstract terms. By doing so, March 14 could have defined the battleground it is currently fighting on, giving it a much higher probability of winning. However, assuming that March 14 did all this, it still requires a long-term "plan" in order to ensure a realistic viability, as opposed to it just dragging around.

Unfortunately, March 14 did nothing of the sort. They can still revamp their approach, but that needs some fresh input. March 14 should either pray to all the gods for luck, or for a new marketing campaign. Me being who I am, I'd go for the latter. But who knows what they'll go for.

posted by Lazarus, 11:48 PM