Marketing is a simple concept. Good decisions about the 4-P’s (Price, Product, Promotion, and Place) will cause customers to beat a path to your door.

In practice, of course, marketing is much more complex. This is particularly visible in marketing a political candidate where candidates must choose between motivation and persuasion.

Matthew Dowd, Chief Strategist of Bush-Cheney 2004, recently spoke to a group of students about doing just this. Although he does not speak directly about technology, he does present issues we can relate to technology. For example, his AIMD (audience, insight, message, and delivery) discussion deals with candidates in the face of the “free” media. This free media, of course, has grown substantially with podcasts, blogs and Youtube.

I particularly enjoyed his discussion of the main “message” in a marketing campaign. With so many outlets for a marketing messages, selecting and then maintaining a single message can be difficult.

This video is for all students, but in particular those interested in an application of real-world marketing.

UChannel podcasts can be searched using Itunes, or
Link directly to the Matthew Dowd presentation-page at UChannel, or link to an AUDIO or VIDEO version of the presentation (~45 min.).