Marketing and SA’s culture of crime

After all, marketing has managed very successfully to persuade huge numbers of intelligent consumers in this country to spend between R5.00 and R25.00 on a half litre of bottled water when they can actually get better quality and taste from their taps or in restaurants, free, gratis and for nothing.

That same thing called marketing also persuades hordes of consumers to spend between twice and 10 times as much on clothing, cosmetics and heaven knows how many other consumables, just because they carry a must-have brand name.

Poorest of the poor

And that same marketing is what makes people spend hundreds of thousands of rands more just to own a brand called BMW or Mercedes and which, at the other end of the socio-economic scale, persuades the poorest of the poor to do without clothing and food just to own that latest and most widespread of all status symbols - the cellphone.

Which suggests that the very hub of brand marketing must be peer pressure upon which marketers rely heavily when it comes to consumer aspiration. It is all about status, keeping up with the Joneses and if you are young enough - being seen to be cool.

So, why can’t this same process be applied to ridding South Africa of what appears to be fast becoming a socially acceptable or at least socially tolerable culture of crime?

Not yet tried

Well, the point is it hasn’t been applied first of all because no one has thought of involving marketing in combating crime except for half-hearted advertisements exhorting the public not to do crime which, like those aimed at road safety, are all hopeless failures. And secondly because applying marketing to crime is not going to be easy nor will it be a short-term solution.

Because in essence it will mean changing a nation’s mind set.

And the trouble, right now, is that the nation’s mind set seems to be fixed on simply blaming President Mbeki, the minister of justice and the entire police force for not doing enough.

If one applies marketing to the problem, the first thing to emerge is that, like road safety, the majority of South Africans quite firmly believe that only other people have accidents or that only other people do crime.

Are we all guilty?

So, from a marketing perspective the first step would probably be to publicise the fact that crime will not be significantly diminished in SA until 99% of the population stop being criminals.

When you think about it, there are probably very, very few South Africans who can stand up today and claim they have not committed a crime in the past month.

For example, how many of us use our cellphones while driving, exceed the speed limit, overtake on white lines, take liberties with tax returns, let our dogs roam the streets, exaggerate company expense claims, diddle our medical aids and so forth?
Admittedly, these are petty crimes but they are crimes nonetheless. Although one could argue that driving recklessly is potentially as violent a crime as murder and armed robbery. Even driving an unroadworthy bus might well be a petty crime until it crashes and kills 30 passengers.

Industry too

And even our captains of industry can’t exactly claim to be pure as the driven snow. Particularly in South Africa where more and more companies are allowing crooked executives to get away with fraud and theft, because they don’t want controversy to damage their corporate image. So, the crooks get a golden handshake and everyone agrees to keep things quiet for the sake of the company. All those people are criminals.

But, it goes further. The World Trade Organisation recently released report showing that last year businesses the world over spent R21 TRILLION ( that’s R21 000 000 000 000) on backhanders, graft, corruption and bribery. No mention is made of misleading advertising and failed service promises which would probably add a few trillion more to this shameful bill.

When one thinks about it, one cannot help but have enormous admiration for President Mbeki and his restraint in listening to the people or SA and businessmen badgering away at him to do something about crime.

Would he be wrong to suggest right now that SA society in general and business in particular should actually stop laying the crime problem at his doorstep until such time as society in general and business in particular stopped being criminals themselves?

Let him who is without sin

If one had to apply that biblical maxim about whoever is without sin to cast the first stone in SA right now, very, very few people would be able to throw anything.

It would be interesting indeed for some marketers to sit down and seriously looking at correlating the vast number of marketing successes in recent history and seeing how that can be applied to changing the mind-set of a nation to make crime some more than just wrong but rather something that is socially unacceptable at all levels of society.

It’s worth a shot

Somewhere in the solution to the growing culture of crime, marketing has a role to play. It is not an obvious role, nor is it a simple role. But, if marketing is so darn clever in getting so many people to do things that completely beggar rational human behaviour, maybe it can be used to combat the biggest challenge of our time.