WRITTEN by SARMAD ASHRAF
Just in the middle of the news, views, opinions and polls, I thought
what would happen if Imran Khan writes a book on marketing. One honest act
should be to replace Kotler's books by his. The reason for such a statement is
that he has successfully applied major and newer marketing steps in his 17
years long political campaign. In 1996, when he made the party, it was very
clear that would never be able to succeed. But his strategies worked out as his
plans. He used the environment in his favor. He was always up with a strategy,
kept on analysis the situations, kept on adjusting his plans, kept on knowing
his audience, made the his market segments tactfully and selected the best
suitable target audience. He approached them beautifully and know he enjoys the
status of third major party in Pakistan. Tomorrow, he may even be able to move
up his party's rank. However, his book would not be able to compete with
Kotler's if he cannot identify the mistakes on the way. At this point I am
wondering why all the polls are not declaring him able to get a simple
majority. For this we will have to analyze his target market. He targeted at
different levels but the major segment that he targeted was youth. Another
target was the KPK region. However, if he analyze it further, his major target
was the PML-N supporter and the segment that was going to leave ANP. Yet
another segment was of the people that were going to leave PML-Q and PPP and
join PML-N. Here comes the mistake made by Mr. Khan. Though, he was able to
attract much of the urban youth, and the people leaving their old parties, but
Imran Khan could have done better with the PML-N supporter. Instead of
targeting mainly on PPP and through them targeting PML-N, Imran's main target
of criticism was PML-N. He got so over excited with this, that he criticized
the good acts, or at least the perceived good acts, of PML-N. This made a
retaliation among the PML-N supporters, especially from the rural areas who had
strong affiliation for PML-N. Had he been able to tackle the PML-N more
tactfully, he would surely have won by a simple majority. But if he writes the
accounts of his 17 years' political career, I think it will be one of the best
selling marketing books ever.
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