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Tortus April Newsletter

April 16, 2008

Kumbaya_campfire

Kumbaya

What does Jimmy Buffett's world renown tune "Margaritaville" and the famous anti-war song "Kumbaya" have in common?

Watching C-Span in October of last year, I watched Senator Barack Obama, a well-spoken candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for President, describe a new offensive to differentiate his policies from his primary opponent, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. I quickly scribbled down Barack's words; they went something like this, "the notion that Hillary Clinton and I are holding hands and singing kumbaya and agree on every issue is completely false".

Currently, Obama leads in delegates AND popular votes and is likely to be nominated as the Democratic Presidential Nominee this August. I asked myself, did Obama's use of kumbaya as a political metaphor start him on a path that could potentially lead to the White House?

It's really quite brilliant - a politician using an old anti-war folk song, covered by such artists as Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, Nanci Griffith, and the Seekers, to define his policy differences with his opponent. He effectively communicated his stance to millions of people by using a simple, yet tasteful, universal metaphor. In politics, as in business, successful communication is essential to define yourself. Or as in Barack's case, to separate yourself from the pack.

So, is the moral of the story that if you preach kumbaya you may someday become President of the United States? Nope, that's not the message, but it does answer the question we began with.

Kumbaya, like Margaritaville, consists of only 3 simple chords. Three chords is all it took to create a message that will last throughout the ages. If you keep your marketing message simple, and communicate it clearly to a well-defined target audience, maybe, just maybe, you'll be successful.

Tortus Talk

Tortus welcomes a new member to the pond, Jill Fitzsimmons. Jill joined Tortus in March as the Marketing Coordinator. She attended American University before graduating from the University of Connecticut with a Bachelors degree in Communication Disorders. Jill brings experience in sales and marketing, most recently serving as the Marketing Coordinator for a legal advertising firm in Western Massachusetts.

We are holding one executive seminar in April. The topic of this seminar is: How to use website metrics and analysis to grow your business.

WebTrends reporting software shows you who is visiting your site, what pages they're looking at and how they found you, allowing you to make more informed business and marketing decisions. Whether you're just publishing your first website or have been using WebTrends for years, this seminar will help you make the best use of the valuable information WebTrends can provide.