Union for Talossan Progress :: The Official Website

Selling Dreams – How to Market a Country

by Antionio Lixhita, as featured in Qator Itrìns, January 2006

For those of you who do not know me, I do a style of marketing and promotion for a living. Amongst other responsibilities, I recruit and market to potential students and their parents for an institution of higher education. It isn’t like selling used cars or new televisions. You can’t just slash your prices, improve your quality, lower your costs and make a profit. Convincing kids to come to your university (and for some of our disadvantaged students, convincing them to go to college at all) is a task that requires them to buy into a lifestyle choice, and you must promote the unique character, traditions and advantages of your institution, all the while reassuring the potential student that your institution is friendly, fun and worth their time.

In short well sell dreams; dreams of a better life, of a special place, of belonging to a unique fellowship and community. I believe that there are great similarities between marketing universities and marketing the Republic.

In the Republic Prime Minister’s opening address to the current Chamber of Deputies, Miestrâ Schivâ focused on the need to market and expand the republic. I agree. In fact last November one of the first proposals of the Union for Talossa Progress (UTP) before it became a political party was the need to market the Republic. We welcome the Prime Minister’s efforts in this area.

The most basic elements of any marketing program are:

To whom are you marketing?
What can you give them that others cannot?

As to whom we should be marketing I will crassly quote myself from the UTP web site:

“It seems that those most likely to join the republic would be reasonably well educated, computer savvy individuals with more than a passing interest in politics. . . . So, where do literate, political technophiles congregate? I think it would be safe to assume that they pool at colleges and universities.”

This is not to say we should only recruit at college and universities, but rather that is where our first official efforts should target. After all, with limited resources we should move into a target rich environment and university communities have a wealth of the open-minded, obsessive, creative people we need for the Republic. My only mistake was in focusing on the political.

We should use this summer as a planning period for a major, coordinated marketing program to coincide with the start of the university school year in North America focusing on campuses and their larger communities throughout the world.

I believe that a promotional committee should be set up immediately, with representatives from the Executive, the Immigration Ministry and chaired by a person with marketing experience to provide a set of specific recommendations to the Executive no later than July 8, 2006. Here are just a few of my personal recommendations which allows individual citizens and the government as a whole to participate in promoting the Republic of Talossa.

Citizen Level

Asking a Likely Friend

Many of us have done this and it is a low – tech, but very effective, not to mention affordable. Not only ask a likely person, but help them work through the necessary process.

Downloadable Flyer

We should supply a downloadable pdf flyer for any citizen to use in libraries, bookstores, coffee shops, etc. to educate people about the Republic and to encourage them to log on and look around.

My Talossan Life

We could include a blog from an active, friendly Talossan citizen as an insight to Talossan relationship and events.

Social Clubs

Start and participate in a Social Club. Whether you want to discuss science fiction, or books, a recent movie, undiscovered music or your concerns over web site standards, active social clubs, with discussion boards and online events can give the non or semi political a real reason to join the republic.
Institutional Level

Comprehensive Media and Social Clubs

The American media is not limited to Time, Newsweek and CNN. There is also Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, South Park, Battlestar Galactica and the New Yorker. Nor should our media be limited to news, politics and language development. Many of our citizens write blogs on technology, the arts, pop culture, etc. Some of us have sough to create music and video web sites. All of these choices should be available on the media section of the web site to provide a wide variety of Talossan publications. Also, citizens who wish to start a social club should have the freedom to start a message board on the Witt, so long as it remains active. This will show that even if your interests does not reside in politics or language construction you can still have a place in Talossa.

Promotional Video

A well-done, humorous, but respectful video could certain be an asset, especially if it is funny enough to be picked up by the viral video web pages.

A Complete Website

All pages on the web site should be complete. Incomplete pages send a message of either decay or organizational shallowness. If it is not important enough to be completed, then it shouldn’t be an empty page on the web site, though a blank Ministry of Information page does at least provide some ironic humor.

MySpace Account

Seems straight forward to me. One of the world’s most popular networking sites should have an “embassy” from the Republic, along with an Ambassador-at-large to maintain the site.

Republic of Talossa Wikipedia Entry

Recently cited as possibly the “best encyclopedia ever” by Time Magazine, I think it an absolute necessity that the Republic have its own entry on Wikipedia. I think that the people who read the Wikipedia obsessively might be our kind of people.

A favorite science fiction novel of my youth observed that societies are either growing or dying, implying that even comfortable stasis is in the long run a death sentence for a society. I think it is time that we make our choice.