Imagine if your sales strategy is to talk only
bad things about your rivals and channel your entire advertisement budget to condemn
their products and services; do you think it can help you boost sales? What if you
don’t think you have done enough, can you go beyond?
Your next step may be, you soften it a bit
by adding cash prize contests to hit the soft spots of potential customers, and
later invite an international superstar to sing, dance and gallop your brand out.
After a while, when you notice your brand's
response is only lukewarm, you harden your tactics and include aggressiveness,
this time sending some hooligans to create havoc at your rival's marketing
events, and tear down their banners, splash red paints on their advertising
vehicles, and beat up their supporters. “No problem,” you said, since you have the cops
in your pocket.
Pathetic.
You might think the above despicable
actions are some fictitious and exaggerated illustrations in a Hollywood movie
and restricted to only underworld organizations that control brothels, massage parlors
or nightclubs; you won’t think it would ever happen in normal life, right? And
if someone uses that strategy in business, you might think, he would most probably
end up facing a fiery lawsuit, or behind bars.
But these are exactly the common scenarios happening
now in Malaysia, especially with the General Elections around the corner. Even
in a civilized society, the barbaric approaches in the political arena may not
be necessarily worse than the less civilized. And the dire consequences may not
necessarily occur to them, even when they’re evidently against the law.
My political view is quite simple. You need
to have a choice to deter political hegemony. When a country spends too long a
time controlled by a political party or a dictator, any tactic used can become very
dirty. Normal commercial practices might not be applied anymore. Yes, you can have
the Antitrust Law to promote market competition; but in politics, tyranny
cannot be revoked.
If we appreciate market competition in a
fairground, we should value the same for the political playground. If you have
choices, the invisible hand of economics will steer the market so you’ll get
better products according to your preference. Market competition promotes
improvement. So, a mature country has to encourage alternation in political
parties, and has a healthy rotation of those in power to maximize their
people’s rights.
If we have no choice, we’re left with only
one destination. Regardless of the light in the beginning, it leads to calamity
in the end.
