Yesterday was Super Sunday and a huge marketing day for the two main political parties in Trinidad.
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When you’re looking for the perfect dress, do you go to your favourite boutique or do you go to the store across the road with its unappealing window, the one that never really catches your fancy?
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You only have to go to a political meeting to see it in oversupply. Look in the crowds. It’s on their faces. It’s a thing called hope.
That’s what politicians really sell.
Often it is based on the leader’s charisma. But it can also be based on peculiar positions or policies or when the ‘man’ and the moment intersects.
Whatever the grounding, the ingredient that pushes it all up to the top is hope.
The reason is simple: people always seem to need more hope. It gets scarce and when it does we run out to get more.
“The magical thing about selling hope is that it makes everything else work better, every day gets better, every project works better, every relationship feels better. If you can actually deliver on the hope you sell, there will be a line out the door,” says marketer and author Seth Goodin.
But I wonder what if people stop believing? Where does that line turn?
I believe it turns inwards and that’s when the people outside the door break it down and demand change.
But politicians are a clever bunch. They know they can always bottle hope, and later take off its cap and sprinkle it around. Hope cures skepticism. Hope needs no justification.
It simply needs a bunch of people who desperately want to believe.
