The final of the world cup is getting near and on Friday July 9th, the world was watching......an octopus. Paul the Octopus living in a zoo in Oberhausen Germany. He choose Spain over Holland to win the final. Do we really believe this in anno 2010? The digital and information age? Apparently so.
However, let us not forget that he predicted the final of the Euro Cup final in 2008incorrectly.
(for more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus )
Superstition is quite common in the Caribbean. We grew up learning a lot of them mainly through our grandparents. I remember being told by mine that one must never give somebody something made of shiny metal. The consequences would be that the relationship would be severely damaged by greedy demons. My mom had to actually buy a toaster from my grandmother for a symbolic amount of 25 cents. Even though it was a gift. All the European people (mostly Dutch) living on Aruba that time called us crazy and made jokes about these superstitious customs.
Now, 20 years later, a couple of million Dutch and many more people worldwide, were nervously paying atention to the, by now, famous octopus Paul. Aren't the Dutch the most sober and cool persons when it comes to superstitions? Guess not. Now it is the most normal thing in the world and poor Paul chose the wrong country (according to the Dutch). But hey.....we still have Mani, the psychic parakeet from India.
(for more info see: http://g.sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/blog/dirty-tackle/post/Now-there-s-a-psychic-parakeet-to-worry-about?urn=sow,254871 )
I discussed this with some marketing & PR people in Europe, and they assured me that octopus Paul was a carefully planned marketing stunt. And the large audience had nothing to do with luck. They fooled me, because I thought they were lucky to have so many people being superstitious and actually believing in this.
The point I am trying to make is that after all, maybe we Caribbeans are not so crazy, and on to something. for all the superstitions, there must have been someone, who came up with it in the first place and counted on word of mouth marketing for it to spread. My grandmother in this case was one of the "customers" spreading the superstition (marketing communication if you will). Maybe the inventor of the money for shiny things superstition was a junk collector who could not sell his products, and thought up this idea to actually get some money from people. His customers would actually feel that he was giving them something for free, but based on the superstition were more than willing to pay him for it.
I remember while studying for my masters in Marketing one professor said: marketing is plain old common sense.Well, the Caribbean junk collector/salesman surely used his.
Therefore I dare to say that digging into our history and folklore, we can actually get some smart marketing schemes.
True.... strange to see a pragmatic culture as the European appointing their expectations to this urban fable, but well, after all, I guess people just want to hold on to something and believe, the 'Caribbean Way'.
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