FrankenMarketing

Management. Man if there was ever a science that dealt with pure common sense it would be management. I mean you go for years of classes and slave through exams only to come up with what a five year old would say is the the most obviously logical solution to a problem and three years down the line you don't really feel like you've learned anything. You just feel like a coconut. Husk removed, oil extracted, and distributed across several locations ranging from five star hotels to slums to the Everest of garbage that is sitting in Maligawatte; the same coconut, but 'diversified'.

Ok that analogy looks and sounds a bit off doesnt it? No matter. The blunders that big firms make is what actually brought me to write this random one. The story of McDonalds entering India with a beefburgher is probably a folk tale by now to any person who sat through a marketing or management course at any point in their lives over the last fifteen years. I mean here you have a global firm, very experienced, entering a massive market famed for their reverence of cows and how do they go about making their entry? by making a big hullaballoo about how great their beefburgher is. im sick of it.

Im sick of hearing about this chicken entrepreneur who translated their slogan 'it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken' into spanish and ended up with 'it takes a virile man to make a chicken affectionate' or something along those lines. im sick of hearing of this airline who went into Hong Kong and decided to be all innovative and give out free flowers to first time passengers. Great idea right? Wrong. They chose carnations and guess what, Hong Kongese or however you may call them associate carnations with death; the big D word, the one that everyone tries to ignore. How would you feel if someone handed you a miniature coffin or a free voucher to a funeral parlour when you board a plane? Dumbasses.

So what management students and lecturers all over the world do is, they look at these chaps who made these blunders and they snigger at them in a superior manner. They laugh over them during drinks. They use them as examples to describe common everyday events, leaving those not in the loop contemplating dialing the sanatorium. it makes these chaps feel good to think that even global corporate giants can make stupid mistakes like these. it helps counter the constant sense of inferiority that drives them to take up jobs in the world of corporate bum slavery. for evey guy who climbs the corporate ladder, there is another one fumbling and falling down to the endless depths of no return, or simply retiring.

And then we have countries like China that are driving the rest of them up the wall. How can you beat a place where there is enough labor to fill several factories that costs you only about 2 dollars a month to maintain? and that is per-factory. Salaries all over the world are being cut because of the inexhaustible rate at which people seem to be crawling out to work out of the nooks and crannies of China. I think they've got some kinda people producing plant hidden in there somewhere. Either that or they've been planning this for centuries. And perfecting their own brand of top secret Kama Sutra, with modifications designed to focus on the end result and not the actual process of the thing. So if Bill Gates starts driving a Toyota and that hotshot fast rising executive at your Rotaract club pulls into the next meeting on a BMX, you know who to blame. Or thank.

And its all about money. Oh no, don't be fooled by the altruistic overtones. Even CSR is simply alturism furnished with a pair of binoculars (to modify a Helvetius quote). Its all about driving profit. I was initially disillusioned with the whole concept of marketing because i simply saw it as a way of bullshitting, tricking, manipulating and convincing some poor chap to forego six months of his mortgage payments to buy a pair of Pradas to finally feel like a man. Now i know that if that chap was stupid enough to actually gobble it up, he deserves the cardboard box he is living in and he deserved to be tricked and bullshitted and brainwashed. You're just dealing out justice. 'No worries mate, it's all good down under' says the eskimo who just bought the latest LG 'ice machine' three door 'super door cooling' Made in Australia freezer cum kitchenette, and who sold his father's only whaling boat to afford it; plunging his family into a doomed state of polar bear fodder.

It teaches you dog eat dog ness. It teaches you to kill or be killed. If the corporate world is the jungle, then management is the art of survival. Quick on your feet, running before you even leap out of bed, running in your sleep. Stalking your prey day and night. You call him a customer and claim he's always right. But when it comes to the most important things in life, he's only right if he agrees with you. You can hear the thunder before the storm but you can't hear the marketer as he stalks you while you innocently watch Prison Break, or foolishly read hit-ad while sitting on an empty wallet and a soon to be declined credit card.

Its sick, its disgusting, yet i am almost triple qualified in it. Im a disgrace. But im out to get your money, I won't warn you again. Or i will if you buy these Pradas, go on treat yourself, you're a man that needs them. Your family deserves them. Your career depends on them. Your daughter's marriage prospects depend on them. Buy them! You're feeling sleepy, when i snap my fingers you will wake up and pay me and go home and ignore the repossessors and love the cardboard box that you end up in because you're a loser and im the king and the world is a moneymaking jungle. I'm too classy for an evil laugh.