The Economy Needs To Be Re-Branded

Although President Obama is trying his hardest to help our struggling economy, he is looking for advice from the wrong experts. Like most people, he is thinking, this is an economic problem so lets ask the economists. But this isn't a problem about money, its about dealing with human emotion and right now those emotions are fear and confidence.

Companies are scared of the recession and are laying off employees. The people who still have jobs fear losing their jobs so they spend less money. Because consumers spend less, companies fears are validated, and so they lay off more people. And Banks don't trust anyone with their money. Its a vicious cycle and unless we can restore confidence, we won't get out of it soon.

It won't matter how much money we pump into the economy if at the end of the day people's confidence isn't restored. Many surveys show that lots of people don't think the economic stimulus package (800 + Billion$) will have any effect on the economy. And if they don't think it will, then it won't. Its kind of like a reverse placebo effect where you don't think a drug will help you get better, so it doesn't.

And the media doesn't help at all. They continuously tell us how bad it is and give us minute to minute updates on the total jobs lost. I admit, its bad, but all the media does is scare us and make a bad situation worse. All in the name of better ratings, they are willing to help us into the hole and cover us with dirt. Sadly, the only way to get the media to stop spreading mass economic chaos is to get them to focus on something else that would bring them bigger ratings. I don't even want to think about what that would be.

We need something that inspires confidence, trust and optimism. The current stimulus plan does just the opposite. Its too big. Happened to quick. Its highly debated. People already don't trust the government with money. And all the fighting in Washington between the two parties only makes it worse.

So how do we fix it? We approach this from a marketing point of view and re-brand the economy. We start from scratch, get rid of the old, throw out the stimulus package and work on developing strategies to gain consumer confidence. A good marketing plan will go further than all the money in the world.