SMART Revolution Falls Short – Focus #Egypt

In my last post, I was taken by all the emotions surrounding, what was dubbed as, the 2.0 Revolution in Egypt. I tried to reflect on the marketing lessons behind the success of this social media revolution. In conclusion, the key success factor was the emotional selling proposition represented by the brand elements of the uprise! However, that alone is not sufficient for the sustainability of such success.

The feelings of happiness, freedom, and love that were direct results of the revolution, were soon to be replaced by feelings of anxiety, fear, rage, and complete chaos. But why? where did it all go wrong? and when? Trust me, I won’t even try to analyse this from a political stand point – I would fail miserably as a politician because i’m not familiar with the shades of color between black and white. Instead, I would like to continue the reasoning started in my previous post, and try to extract the marketing lessons from the post-Jan 25 Revolution period.

The post-revolution period is a typical case of Headless Chicken Marketing! OK fine, I can’t really use the word “typical” to explain a term that I just came up with – but the idiom does seem self-sufficient.

This phenomenon is often seen in companies with marketing shortsightedness. They tend to go for tactics and forget strategy. They would rather spend on Ad-hoc marketing campaigns and get immediate short-lived  results instead of  building a sustainable plan resulting in continuous (yet slower) results. If post-campaign sales results are equivalent to pre-campaign sales results, than I have basically spend money to make money, but I’m still in the same position I was in, if not worse! This describes the 2011 Egyptian Revolution – we’re back right where we started!

Every marketing campaign has three phases: pre- (past), during (present), and post (future). All three phases are equally important and crucial to the success of the overall campaign. These phases are defined by SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Attainable/Achievable , Realistic/Relevant, and Timely).

• What are the Specific objectives of the revolution?
• How do you Measure these objectives? Where do we stand from our our specified objectives?
• Do we all Agree on the objectives? Are we aiming for the moon?
• Is aiming for the moon a Realistic thing to do given our resources in terms of human capital, time, etc …? Is aiming for the moon Relevant to our cause?
• When is the deadline to achieve our objectives? when is the cutoff Time?

In my educated opinion, the 2.0 Revolution wasn’t that “SMART” – and because of that, we’re losing time, resources, and even lives!

In closing, I would like to point out that Freedom is not an SMART objective … it’s a beautiful dream! But you know what they say, “Be careful what you wish for!” Are Egyptians ready for the burden of freedom? From what I’m witnessing on the streets of Cairo, I don’t think we’re even close. Think About It!