To be successful in marketing one must know how to reach their target audience.
To this reader, this marketing technique comes through very clear in the September 22, 2001 Awake magazine, where on the front cover is a picture of a woman working in the rice fields, with a great look of despair on her face. The caption: “Can We Grow Enough Food?”
The first three articles in this issue of the Awake can certainly strike fear into the reader with bold print subheadings, thought provoking questions and quotations from experts on this problem. Here are a few quotes from this issue:
“Without food crops mankind would starve. Science has done much to enhance this vital resource. But has it done more harm than good?” p2
“Is Man destroying his own food Supply?” p3
“Could we be, in effect, sawing off the very branch that supports us?”p3
“In effect, the green revolution may have provided short-term gains at the cost of long-term risks.”p5
“the ecological risks we take in adopting genetic uniformity are enormous.”p5
“Seed Banks-Insurance against extinction?”p6
“THE FARMER An ‘endangered species’?”p7
“A farmer in Australia or Europe may be able to borrow from a bank to tide him over a bad year; a West African farmer may not be able to try again. He might not even survive.”p7
Woes at the bank (subheading p8)
“Who Will Feed the World?”p9
“Can science and Technology Save Us?”
I do not want to downplay the seriousness of this global problem, however it seemed obvious to this reader the WTS marketing department is playing on the fear of many in third world countries. After all this is where the growth is coming from.
After 10 pages of doom and gloom we then get the sales pitch in the last two paragraphs of these three articles. As a JW who has all of the answers to these problems.
The last sentence in this series of articles states:
““Thanks to this sure hope – and God’s fatherly care of his people-we can, even now, “reside in security and be undisturbed from dread of calamity.” Proverbs 1:33.” P11
I could not help but wonder if the thousands of young children and babies who have starved to death over the past 26 years when this system was supposed to have ended would agree with that statement.
Then came the “food at the proper time” (no pun intended)
The title of the very next article on page 12:
“How can I stop worrying so much?” Boy did I ever need that, as I was beginning to worry where my next meal would come from.
I believe that we will see more and more articles from these marketing wizards targeted toward the third world countries as this is where the growth in the organization is taking place.