The Marketing funda in Krugman's Nobel

Never mind the quality of Paul Krugman's work and the Nobel awarded for the same, what makes front page news around the world is that he is a Bush critic (the liberals sure are rubbing their hands in glee; note, Krugman follows in the line of liberal Messrs., Jimmy Carter and Al Gore) .

Now there's a lesson in there that marketers must admit to; no matter how much you try and describe your brand to your consumers, they will in all probability identify the brand with ONE benefit (and hopefully, there's one that matters to them).

A big mistake that a brand can make is to be 'too many things' to its consumers. In spite of the effort you may put in to try and be 'many things', your brand will still be remembered for that one characteristic. And so quit trying to be everything, find that one benefit that matters and is unique to your brand, and hammer it home with consumers.

Take Big Bazaar for instance. Its been hammering home the message that its got the lowest prices. And now, the low price position is one that's stuck to Big Bazaar and that's what its remembered for. Does that translate into sales at its stores? Sure does.

Coming back to Krugman, Peter J. Boettke notes in his Forbes article; 'Unfortunately, and unlike both Friedman and Galbraith, Krugman's work devolved from science to ideology and finally to political partisanship. Friedman and Galbraith had always kept (though from differing perspectives) on the scientific to ideological spectrum, but neither became overtly partisan in their writings. This cannot be said for Krugman and the way he has used his platform as an economist and as a columnist for the New York Times for his Democratic partisanship purposes.

This would be innocent enough if Krugman were just another political pundit, but now the prize has given him an enhanced platform from which to pronounce his partisan positions as if they are grounded in economic science. The casualty of this in the public imagination will be the subtle and fine points of the economic way of thinking that we inherited from a long line of political economists from David Hume and Adam Smith to James Mill, Ricardo, J. B. Say and John Stuart Mill to Frank Knight, Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman and James Buchanan.'

Read Peter's complete take on Krugman and his work here.

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