Appraising where Mbeki went wrong

A recent Ipsos-Markinor poll showed that in just three years, perceived performance ratings by government dropped almost 16% and those of the president by almost 20%. And that was before the ANC's Polokwane Conference.

Fundamental mistake

The most fundamental mistake that Mbeki and his Cabinet made was to complete ignore the very foundation of marketing communication. And that is they persistently kept telling South Africans what they, the Government wanted to say, and never ever what the citizens of this country what they wanted to hear.

The second big mistake made by cabinet misters, with the exception of seasoned marketers such as Trevor Manuel and a few others, was to assume that human beings are naturally endowed with the ability to communicate. Not realising and often demonstrating that human beings are the most inefficient of Mother Nature's communicators.

Many of the ministers chose to talk down to their audiences, be they small rural communities or the nation through the mass media. They would try and be jocular without having any idea of how to crack a joke. They very likely never ever undertook any sort of media training or communications mentoring and I suspect that their deputy ministers and directors general were just too darned scared to insist that they do. With a result that they were often misquoted and generally came across as arrogant and unthinking. And often unintelligent.

Human interaction

Another mammoth mistake was to ignore the fact that when it comes any form of human interaction, relationships are the key to successful discourse. Whether this involves husbands and wives, friends, work colleagues, companies and their customers or politicians and their constituents.

As any junior salesman will attest, if one does not have a personal relationship with a customer, selling something to that customer is extremely difficult, if not impossible.

To refer to a recent insightful comment by Independent Newspapers' Peter Sullivan, if President Mbeki has chosen to meet with editors regularly instead of just once every few years, then the drubbing he received at Polokewane might well have been avoided.

The importance of relationship building is critical to business and even more important in politics. Because trying to communicate with strangers, let alone doing business with them or asking them for support, is difficult and often extremely dangerous.

Analogy

To illustrate the impact of relationships or lack thereof, take this road rage analogy. When another motorist does something silly, how often do we wish for a traffic officer to be nearby so that we can report the guilty party and see him get his just desserts? How often do we wave our fists and mouth expletives?

But, when we suddenly find out that the culprit is not some insensitive stranger but a friend or even mild acquaintance, how often does our anger dissipate and our fury turn to embarrassment ? So, we quickly wave and smile and make light of it. In short, problems and misunderstanding can always be far more easily overcome between people who know each other than by total strangers.

Equally, when it comes to getting across a point of view, people you know listen to you far more intently and sympathetically than a complete stranger.

From a marketing point of view President Mbeki and his cabinet lost the confidence of the majority of South Africans by not making any effort to get to know them; not knowing what to say to them and being seen to be arrogant and aloof. And making the most dangerous of all marketing mistakes – branding themselves as masters and not the servants they were voted in to be.

Obsessive service

Marketing is an obsession with customer service. Which, on the part of companies and brands, means taking chips off shoulders and displaying a modicum humility and subservience.

President Mbeki and the bulk of his cabinet have never understood that simple definition but opted instead for marketing themselves with an obsession for control and superiority.

If Government were a company, its corporate slogan would probably be something like: "We might make mistakes, but we are never wrong."