A New Cuban Revolution

Capitalizing on emerging capitalism.

There’s a revolution going on in Cuba. There are guerrillas walking the streets of Havana. They bear little likeness to Fidel’s cadre, though — the one that installed a Marxist dictatorship in 1959. Instead they’re free-market reformers, responding to Raúl Castro’s 2010 easing of restrictions on small business entrepreneurship. They are the island’s first capitalists in three generations, and they’re creating from scratch a uniquely Cuban approach to guerrilla marketing.

They’ve embraced the guerrilla approach — that unconventional, low-budget and ever so effective style of advertising — not because they’ve heard it’s trendy here in the States. They’re doing it because they have no other choice. Print and broadcast media in Cuba is still state controlled and doesn’t accept advertising. Internet connectivity is severely limited. The new entrepreneurs of 2010 were faced with the challenge: how to let their fellow Cubans know they were open for business.

They met that challenge with ingenuity we should all find instructive. They accepted their limited resources, their limited access to mass media, and worked around them.

There’s the restaurant owner, for instance, who takes to the streets of Havana in his garishly painted MG Roadster (displaying the restaurant’s logo, of course). Cuba’s license plates are color coded, so he keeps an eye out for the blue plates designating foreign tour groups, and leaves discount coupons on their windshields.

And there’s the mobile phone repair company (which also does a brisk business unlocking iPhones). They wanted to differentiate themselves from their hundreds of competitors, so they’ve branded themselves as a “clinic,” complete with a cartoon mascot: a cellphone wearing a stethoscope. That icon is becoming familiar throughout the island, thanks to professional signage and thousands of flyers handed out.

Perhaps most innovative is a popular Havana burger stand. They offer 25% lifetime discounts to motorists willing to carry bright yellow advertising decals on their cars. They also managed to get 30 marchers, all wearing branded t-shirts, into this year’s May Day parade (one of Cuba’s biggest public events). The result was mass-market coverage that would have been otherwise impossible.

At this early stage, Cuban marketing is still in its infancy. The same can be said for all aspects of Cuban free enterprise. But as long as they go on showing this same level of resourcefulness and resolve, their future is bright indeed.

And along the way they might have some lessons to teach the free-enterprise giant just 90 miles off their coast. Here’s hoping we’re willing to learn them.

The C4:

1. In 2010 Cuban president Raúl Castro opened the way for limited entrepreneurship throughout the island. Within months thousands of small business — restaurants, specialty stores and beauty shops — hung out their shingles. 
2. They quickly found, however, that they had no easy way of communicating with their customers. Mass media is controlled by the Cuban government and conventional advertising doesn’t exist.
3. So they embraced what we call “guerrilla marketing.” They leveraged ingenuity, meager resources and every opportunity for exposure. It worked. It’s still working.
4. It’s a fascinating, real-time experiment in creating a free-market system from the ground up. There are lessons to be learned in Cuba. Wise marketers everywhere should pay attention to this developing story.

What motivates an entrepreneur?

The urge to create may be high on the list.

There are probably as many answers to that as there are entrepreneurs. Popular opinion, however, holds that there are some similarities: entrepreneurs are seen as brash risk-takers, somewhat abrasive, always impulsive (we’re thinking of you, The Donald).

But are such generalizations fair? Probably not. Personality traits aside, the one thing that motivates most entrepreneurs is that which forms their signature achievement: the urge to create.

The specifics of that are varied. Some build companies within their fields of expertise because they’ve developed valuable innovations. Others enter unfamiliar markets when they sense a challenge or opportunity. But in every case they are inspired to create a new entity — their own unique company — where none had existed before.

Brash? Maybe. But certainly not in any negative sense.

As for risk-taking, the risks are inherent. Every venture risks failure or worse. But when entrepreneurs stake their fortunes and reputations, will they gamble with undue risks? Not likely.

It’s far more accurate to say that an entrepreneur is, whenever possible, a risk eliminator. An entrepreneur evaluates risks, weighs outcomes and chooses the path that offers the highest return with the best chance for success.

That chance for success is ultimately the most driving motivation for entrepreneurship. Maybe it requires a dash of brashness and a modicum of risk-taking. The payoff is worth it, though, for the entrepreneur and for all of society.

Bring on the brashness, we say, and hooray for the entrepreneurs.

The C4:

1. Entrepreneurs are creators at heart.
2. They are not intrinsically brash risk-takers.
3. They rock at starting but not necessarily at maintaining new ventures.
4. Without them, we would all be in big trouble.

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