3 Marketing Lessons from Museveni and Besigye’s Big Campaign Promises

Marketers and salesmen are daily faced with the jigsaw puzzle of how to help their organizations woe potential customers to pay attention and after make favorable purchasing decisions.

From full page Ads on dailies and magazines to massive discounts, one wonders if these companies remain with any monies and time to invest in production lines and service departments. In the political terrain however, the game seems more focused on one thing, 'discounts'.

The first week of campaigns has seen presidential candidates notably Yoweri Museveni of National Resistance Movement and his longtime opponent Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change shift the contest from the battle of crowds which the latter seemingly won already to a war of hefty promises.

Mr Museveni while in Lango promised that once re-elected, his government will start providing free sanitary pads to adolescent school girls. Dr. Besigye on the other hand while campaigning in Kamuli, Busoga promised that his government would provide ten iron sheets to every family currently sleeping in a grass thatched house. 

Many more promises were made by Mr Amama Mbabazi of Go-forward who said he would remove direct taxes, Museveni said he would increase NAADS budget by 400% to shillings 1 trillion per year and Besigye  pledged teachers a salary of 1 million shillings and 3.5 million for doctors.

As voters await the bulky promises to mature, those of us in business can pick a few lessons about doing business in highly competitive markets (like politics), notably one where competitor’s offers are made in the  open or published and improve on our chances of business success, here are three.

    
            1. Understand your particular clientele segments

One common weakness with most failed marketing campaigns is the attempt to generalize people and address them in such large groups: grouping campus girls, young corporate and their mothers as one and making a general offer with the hope that they will all respond in a positive way for example, is an indefinite act in futility.

 At a stop in Kireka, Kampala on 4^th October, Dr Besigye promised to return power to the people. On the same afternoon president Museveni held a televised press conference in which he castigated his opponents on major national issues including inability to fight corruption and lack of patriotism. Both men were communicating to the urban middle class that either live in Kampala or have access to television.

The promise of sanitary pads that the president made was in Lango (northern Uganda) where people are struggling to restore their lives after the 20 year old kony war while the promise of free iron sheets was made by Besigye in Busoga, another part of the country well documented for having some of the most poor of Ugandans.

Had any of the men made such promises in Kampala, they would have not been taken seriously because the urban voter’s understanding of freebies is quite different.

If we are to win in highly competitive markets, we should be able to classify our clientele into smaller segments and extend tailor-made-offers for each segment. Some clients’ understanding of cheap is poor quality so giving a discount might not work in appeasing them. Things like quick delivery, guarantees and warrantees then come in handy.

 

            2. Understand your competitor’s offer

As the famous saying goes, “In way no plan can be made independent of the enemy”. Out of naivety or sometimes a lack of choice, marketing and sales people tend to bring up blind offers and as you would expect, they lose out flat.

My experience with business especially in the service sector is that someone can always give a better offer and the one that can give a better offer is the guy best armed with up-to-date information about the competitors’’ offer. Sometimes a good offer using known standard market offers can also help in positioning oneself to beat the competition by offering just slightly more.

Had mr Museveni known that Besigye intended to promise teachers a salary of 1 million and iron sheets, he would have definitely pledged more than sanitary pads, pencils and text books. 

If we are to succeed in competitive bidding and environments generally, we ought to be aware of details about the other competitors such as; product quality, price, price flexibility, delivery time, delivery record, payment terms and yes, their overall capacity to deliver. The only thing worse than lacking the correct information is a over-assumption: do your research well.

      3. Promise what you can afford

For either simplistic, populist or selfish reasons companies that have aborted operations in Uganda in recent years such as Warid and Orange telecom both made offers they just couldn’t afford. Best known for being the king of data (internet), orange telecom is reported to have made year-in year-out net losses totaling to 500 billion shillings in the 5 years it was operational in Uganda. Warid telecom on the other hand started price wars and won them all gaining big numbers of subscribers until a time when it couldn’t bear the load; the result it succumbed and got married to Bhati Airtel.

The probable reason Mr. Museveni is hesitant on promising teachers good pay raises is because his government does not have the plans for or required sources of money to fulfill such promises. Being the one in office, should he make such ambitious offers, teachers would give him a chance and before long, things would fall apart when he fails to deliver.

It is better to turn down a job than to take it and fail to deliver, it is like burning the bridge.

In a nutshell business owners, developers, marketers and salespeople should be sure to study and understand every segment of their target clientele, understand their competitors’ plans and offers before designing their own offers and finally no one should promise what he or she cannot afford.

StephenObeli Someday

Twitter: @StephenObeli