PR Guru Says Iraq Occupation Needs a Marketing Makeover

What should President Bush do now that the propaganda that deceived a nation into war is being exposed? G. Clotaire Rapaille, a marketing expert whose work we describe in our book Weapons of Mass Deception, told the New York Times that "The important thing is to tell a story. 'I would have an Iraqi child, and I would make a hero of this child. And then we have him on television telling, `Today I went to school, I talked to my grandmother, and this is what my future is going to be now. I want to study, I want to become an engineer.' Then we can have e-mails sent to this child, we create connections. So that's for one day.' The next day, Mr. Rapaille said, the president's advisers should find a young Iraqi woman who wants to be married and have children, and they should put her on television with the message, 'now there is peace, she can do just that.' The next week, Mr. Rapaille said, 'we have a guy who wants to start a shop to repair cars.' Or as Mr. Rapaille concluded, in the words of a true salesman, 'Right now it's not that the president is not good, it's that the story is bad.' "