PlusOne – Marketing Musings

The swift political dispatch of Kevin Rudd this week is a sobering example of what happens when the message being communicated is either not done correctly or even at all.

And like Kevin Rudd, in the commercial world heads do also roll if this is done very poorly.

Kevin Rudd’s mistake was he stopped communicating. This was especially so in regards to the mining super profits tax. Instead he took on a paternalistic approach and expected the Australian community to accept that what he wanted to do was good for us, but failed to properly explain the how or why.

Instead it was more just a promise of money.

Indeed we could have taken to the internet and searched, but this is not how a complex and important message should be marketed. Instead the mining super profits tax should have been explained by the then prime minister in a way that all Australians could understand.

Instead, all we had was a simplistic message telling us that the resources belong to all Australians and that the miners were going to be taxed in a way that allowed a different (better) sharing of the wealth to all Australians. The debate and explaining could not be left to the media or the miners, because as we saw, the real detail was never disseminated.

To quote another ginger politician of day gone by “please explain!” Give us the details, in an easily comprehended way.

It was this great unknown of these details that provided the final straw that broke the camel’s back in an escalating groundswell of dissatisfaction in Kevin Rudd’s communication style.

Indeed his manner of addressing the Australian public became increasingly evident as shallow pollie speak, a sort of diplomatic waffle that engendered no confidence in an electorate that expects sincerity.

The new prime minister has only a few months to do better. Lets hope the new tax method is explained better.

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