Speech by High Commissioner at the CIM Annual Conference 2017
His Excellency, Mr. James Dauris delivered the following speech at the CIM Annual Conference on 17 July 2017.
I am delighted to be here, not least because today is in part a celebration of one of the many educational and professional ties that bind our two countries, Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom, together. Education is a tie that has bound our countries together for generations and continues to bring us together as closely today as ever.
We are linked through language; we are linked through schools and universities and post-graduate education; we are linked through the tremendous work that the British Council has been doing here for so many years; we are linked through bodies like yours and other chartered institutes and professional associations. All of which is exciting.
In the two and a bit years I have now been in your country I have spent quite a lot of time thinking and talking about marketing.
Like any business, we spend time inside the High Commission thinking about how we are marketing ourselves and the work we are doing, as we do inside the British Council. In the context of our networks of diplomatic missions around the world, marketing as a rule has little if anything to do with getting customers to pay for our product. However it has a lot to do with maintaining and developing reputation and demand for our messages. For us a message, ideas, values well sold, one that gets buy-in and support, is a success story. …
The point I’m coming to is this: that marketing has, and has to have, a big place in politics. It is central to success in selling ideas to sometimes skeptical electorates. It has an essential place in developing and selling a national image overseas to would be tourists and investors. Marketing plays a part, and needs to play a part, in determining how we and others conceive of our national identities, and in how we position and brand our nations for the future.
In today’s world of instant mass communication, it’s probably more important than ever before that we market our messages well. Doing so reduces the risks that the voices of others with different and sometimes twisted agendas will be louder than ours.
We all know that our businesses need to market their business values. We know that more and more customers take account of how companies look after their employees and whether they are environmentally aware, for example, when deciding what to buy and from whom.
And in the same way, as societies we need to market the values we hold precious. That we recognise and embrace differences – in religion, in race, in language, in gender; that we believe that people should be accountable for what they do, especially people in positions of influence and power; that we believe that laws are for one and all. Each of you will be able to add points of your own.
These are principles that make societies strong and prosperous. They are also principles that are constantly threatened. As we see almost daily in our newspapers hear on the TV and read in social media, around the world there are lots of people marketing divisive and dangerous visions, speaking with hate about people of other faiths, and sowing seeds of discord between communities.
What do we and our governments do about this? In many ways the thinking behind the marketing that governments need to do – the what, the why and the how – is similar to the thinking and the planning that companies need to do.
First, as governments we need to understand our marketing purpose. What business are we in? Where are we trying to get to, and why?
Second, we need a marketing strategy or plan. Who is our target audience, at home and overseas? What are the advantages to our audience of what we are recommending as opposed to what others might be recommending? What is the simple message we are going to deliver through our marketing strategy? And who is going to deliver it? What is the political, economic, social and technological environment we are working in? Are there other environmental or ethical issues we need to take into consideration?
And it will pay to do our SWOT analysis. What are our strengths and weaknesses. Where are the opportunities? What or who are the threats?
As part of our plan we need to have good marketing tactics – tactics that result in convinced voters, confident investors, lowered barriers to trade, enthusiastic tourists, willing taxpayers, reconciled communities … all achieved within the limits of the available resources, of course.
Where do all of you come in? Where do I as a friend of Sri Lanka come in for that matter? We all come in because, I suggest, we are better in this together. The best results will come from a team effort. Our leaders need to lead, certainly. They need to message confidently, clearly and convincingly. They need to listen too. But they will do better when they are feeling that people are behind them when they are pushing agendas and reforms that we recognise are difficult, but believe are important.
If I may I’ll finish with a question, ladies and gentlemen. My question is this: whether each of you will be able to give a confident yes, if you ask yourself whether you and the company you work for are doing as much as you would like to be doing to help your country win the battle for minds, to market the vision, to position the values and to win the arguments, that you believe will assure for this beautiful island of yours a safe, fair and prosperous future.
Thank you.