I've learnt a lot from you about marketing. And a lot from other online places. Now I recognise some of the steps that politicians use to market themselves.

My take on marketing is that it's an emotional connection backed up by a strategy. For example, Americans were very fearful after 9/11. Bush first created a story that fitted round that fear and then laid out the step that would allay that fear (invade Iraq). Obviously, the less public strategy was to get a few partner countries to legitimise his war, doctor the intelligence, and browbeat the media into self-censorship (actually, I'm given to understand that the American media don't need browbeating).

Whatever.

Point being that education is a wonderful thing because it allows ordinary people to see how the levers of power are being pulled.

Hi Richard
Glad to hear you learned some marketing stuff from me. I fear that typically I lose a lot of people because they just write me off as a whiner or cynic and do not understand how marketing relates to markets like politics.

It's been a funny journey for me - I always thought marketting was saddo graduates with too much money for too little work. I think a lot of it still is. But I've come from optimising my own website way back (keywords) to getting interested in (possibly) making a living from it, to getting absolutely fascinated on how the whole lot ties together - copywriting (now video), usbility, design, colour, links, Seth Godin's take on it, hypnotism (communicating directly to the subconscious), various SE patents, sematnic analysis, advertising ...

Take all that lot in, and a bit more such as PR, and suddenly the black arts of politicians seem - well, relatively simple, really.

I look back and wonder how the heck I ended up here?