The Chartered Institute of Marketing, Ghana (CIMG) has implored political parties to engage marketing experts for their political marketing and communication activities in order to purge the atmosphere of mudslinging and insults.
According to the CIMG National President Dr Daniel Kasser Tee, the conduct of political parties in the country which had “unnecessarily jaundiced, charged and polarised” the political environment was undesirable.
He recommended that parties immediately ditched the non-marketing experts, mainly lawyers who were only “loud-mouth communicators and fine English speakers” and look within the CIMG for better substitutes.
“Political parties must consider embracing political marketing to help promote their cause. Marketing professionals do not and will not use insults and foul language in promoting your parties, as corporate entities, and your political ideologies and Presidential candidates as the main products on offer”, he said.
Dr Tee was speaking on the theme”30 years of celebrating marketing excellence: challenges for the next decade” at the 30th CIMG President’s Ball held in Accra on Saturday December 21, last year.
The annual event which draws down the curtain on the the Institute’s activities for each calendar year, enables the National President to take stock of past activities, restrategise and also touch on a subject of national interest.
“As we enter what has come to be known today as “the Nasty season” or the Silly season for election 2020, I wish to call on all political parties to exercise restraints in their communications messages and all pronouncements. We need sanity and civility to conduct peaceful and respected elections, going forward”, Dr Tee stated.
To overcome emerging challenges in marketing as the wheels of digitisation spins, he called on practitioners to study changes in the business environment and adopt innovative strategies in order to satisfy ever changing customers’ tastes and behaviours, beat competition and remain relevant.
Dr Tee expressed concern about the lack of service standards in key industries of the country, particularly the regulated industries, announcing that CIMG’s intent to conduct annual studies, in which it would measure the service quality levels in these identified industries and publish the results.
For his part, Mr Alhassan Andani, the Managing Director of Stanbic Bank commended CIMG for transforming the marketing regime over the years and urged it to reposition itself to brace the emerging challenges and leverage on emerging opportunities in the industry.
As part of the event, CIMG inducted 142 new members into its fold under different statuses while a national patron status was conferred on Professor Stephen Adei, the Board Chairman of the Ghana Revenue Authority.
BY JONATHAN DONKOR
