Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colourful, and more mysterious than the bland and timid masses.
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.
48 Laws of Power,
Robert Greene
There is much to learn from the insights of award winning author Robert Greene who specialized in Classical Studies but managed to apply them in the dog-eats-dog environment of the business world. How many companies have failed because of the lack of understanding of marketing or worse the perceived knowledge that is contributes least to growth and sustainability? The marketing business units of any organization after classified as “cost centres” unlike the cash cow business units of front of house operations and sales. Too many perceive marketing to refer to sales, advertising and promotion. But what is marketing? The following excerpt are inspired by Robert Greene in his book The 48 Laws of Power.
In 1905, rumours began to circulate throughout Paris of a young Oriental girl who danced in a private home, wrapped in veils that she gradually discarded. A local journalist who had seen her dancing reported that “a woman from the Far East had come to Europe laden with perfumed and jewels, to introduce some of the richness of the Oriental colour and life into the satiated society of European cities.” Soon everyone knew the dancer’s name: Mata Hari.
Early that year, well within the winter season, small and select audiences would gather in a salon filled with Indian statues and other relics while an orchestra played music inspired by Hindu and Javanese melodies. After keeping the audience waiting and wondering, Mata Hari would suddenly appear, in a startling costume: a white cotton brassiere covered with Indian-type jewels, jewelled bands at the waist supporting a sarong that revealed as much as it concealed; bracelets up the arms. Then Mata Hari would dance, in a style no one in France had seen before, her whole body swaying as if she were in a trance. She told her excited and curious audience that her dances told stories from Indian mythology and Javanese folktales. Soon the cream of Paris and ambassadors from far-off lands, were competing for invitations to the salon, where it was rumoured that Mata Hari was actually performing sacred dances in the nude.
The public wanted to know more about her. She told journalists that she was actually Dutch in origin, but had grown up on the island of Java. She would also talk about time spend in India, how she had learned sacred Hindu dances there and how Indian women “can shoot straight, ride horseback and are capable of doing logarithms and talk philosophy”. By the summer of 1905, although few Parisians had actually seen Mata Hari dance, her name was on everyone’s lips.
As Mata Hari gave more interviews, the story of her origins kept changing. She had grown up in India, her grandmother was the daughter of a Javanese princess and she had lived on the island of Sumatra where she had spent her time “horseback riding, gun in hand and risking her life”. No one knew anything certain about her but journalists did not mind these changes in her biography. They compared her to an Indian goddess, a creature from the pages of Baudelaire – whatever their imagination wanted to see in this mysterious woman from the East.
In August of 1905, Mata Hari performed for the first time in public. Crowds thronging to see her on opening night caused a riot. She had now become a cult figure and spawning limitations. One reviewer wrote, “Mata Hari personifies all the poetry of India, its mysticism, its voluptuous-ness, its hypnotizing charm.” Another noted, “If India possesses such unexpected treasures, then all Frenchmen will immigrate to the shores of the Ganges.”
Soon the fame of Mata Hari and her sacred Indian dances spread beyond Paris. She was invited to Berlin, Vienna, Milan. Over the next few years she performed throughout Europe, mixed with the highest social circles and earned an income that gave her independence rarely enjoyed by a woman of the period. Then near the end of World War I, she was arrested in France, tried, convicted and finally executed as a German spy. Only during the trial did the truth come out: Mata Hari was not from Java or India. She did not grow up in the Orient nor did not have a drop of Easter blood in her veins. Her name was Margaretha Zelle, and she came from the stolid norther province of Friesland, Holland.
In 1997, the British Empire was coming to an end with the surrender of its last remaining crown colony of Hong Kong. The prosperous city had been never been a legitimate British possession but rather a lease from China. What the British actually owned was the tiny island of Hong Kong through a splendid little conflict known as the Opium War. However, the island of Hong Kong was too tiny to develop anything. As a result, the British leased the area of Kowloon across Hong Kong Island from the Chinese government for a period of 100 years. Kowloon became known as what is now the city of Hong Kong.
And now the lease has passed and the new world order prohibited the British from starting another splendid little war. But most appalling for the free world and businessmen at the time was that China was still very much a communist dictatorship. Businesses established in Hong Kong began to panic and pack their bags, among the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. After careful marketing and numerous sleepless night over coffee and corporate planning and next steps for the giant banking institution, they finally renamed and reinvented themselves as HSBC.
Today, not so many remember the original name of HSBC. In fact, it wasn’t even known as Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation but rather “Hong Kong Bank” perhaps as a result of the same marketing strategy at the dawn of the Cold War after a communist scare as they took over the mainland including city of “Shanghai”.
In 1997, the fear of communism was still well within mainstream thought as anti-business and destructive to the free market system. China did not have the same perception of a giant capitalist state that it is now. Back in 1997, China was synonymous to the Vietnam War and today’s North Korea. Who in their right minds would leave their money with a bank bearing the name of “Hong Kong” where there was an atmosphere of doom circulating as the communist tanks rolled over the city for the official turnover?
And that is the power of marketing for you. Marketing is more than sales and promotions or even advertising. Marketing begins in the boardroom where a new identity for a product or organization is planned. The rest – advertising, sales, promotions and public relations are just tools to implement the bigger picture that is brand strategy.
Businesses are like people. In fact, they are first given an “entity” by registering as an enterprise with ASIC. A company, like any person, lives among society. Companies are judged and mistreated by public perception. They are also loved if they are sensational or contributes to the greater well-being of the community. Modern marketing have terms like “Corporate Social Responsibility” and advocacies which makes them sound sweet to the public. Companies are also like people in terms of wealth and popularity. How many corporations have come under fire because of controversial violations of the law or human rights which smaller restaurants are far guiltier of? In the world of big business, the job of marketing is both to thrust their brands forward and to repel covert attacks from competing companies. For the smaller to medium ones, marketing brings you to the sphere of public opinion by first creating a fresh new persona for your business and maximizing the use of available media both traditional and new.
In the year 1831, a young woman named Aurore Dupin Dudevant left her husband and family in the provinces and moved to Paris. She wanted to be a writer. She felt that marriage was worse than prison for it left her neither the time nor the freedom to pursue her passion. In Paris, she would establish her independence and make her living by writing.
Soon after Dudevant arrived in the capital, she had to confront certain harsh realities. To have any degree of freedom in Paris, you had to have money. For a woman, money could only come through marriage or prostitution. No woman had ever come close to making a living by writing. Women wrote as a hobby, supported by their husbands, or by an inheritance In fact, when Dudevant first showed her writing to an editor, he told her “You should make babies, Madame, not literature”
Clearly, Dudevant had come to Paris to attempt the impossible. In the end, though, she came up with a strategy to do what no woman had ever done – a strategy to re-create herself completely, forging a public image of her own making. Women writers before her had been forced into a ready-made role, that of the second-rate artist who wrote mostly for other women. Dudevant decided that if she had to play a role, she would turn the game around. She would play the part of a man.
In 1832, a publisher accepted Dudevant’s first major novel, Indiana. She had chosen to publish it under a pseudonym “George Sand” and all of Paris assumed his impressive new writer was male. Dudevant had sometimes worn men’s clothes before creating “George Sand”. Coincidentally, she had always found men’s shirts and riding breeches more comfortable. Now, as a public figure, she exaggerated the image. She added long men’s coats, grey hats, heavy boots and dandyish cravats to her wardrobe. She smoked cigars and in conversation expressed herself like a man, unafraid to dominate the conversation or to use a saucy word.
This strange “male/female” writer fascinated the public. And unlike other women writers, Sand found herself accepted into the clique of male artists. She drank and smoked with them, even carried on affairs with the most famous artists of Europe – Musset, Liszt, Chopin. It was she who did the wooing, and also the abandoning – she moved on at her discretion.
Those who knew Sand well understood that her male persona protected her from the public’s prying eyes. Out in the world, she enjoyed playing the part to the extreme; in private she remained herself. She also realized that the character of “George Sand” could grow stale or predictable. To avoid this, she would every now and then dramatically alter the character she had created. Instead of conducting affairs with famous men, she would begin meddling in politics, leading demonstrations, inspiring student rebellions. No one would dictate to her the limits of the character she had created.
An excerpt from
48 Laws of Power,
Robert Greene
Josh Avinante
7.7.2013
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