Somalian Pirates. A brand that’s off course

You gotta feel for those guys. Lets start with the obvious aesthetics. Skinny guys, (and a lot of Somalians are) just don’t look good holding AK47’s. It is not a skinny man’s gun. The Mujahideen got away with it because they wear a lot of bulky clothing to fill out their figures. But those Somalians look kind of awkward. If I was in charge of styling them I’d suggest something like the Heckler & Koch HK MP5. Small and compact it makes the guy holding it look bigger than he is, and when you’re are centimeters above sea level in a fishing canoe with an outboard, trying to talk to a sailor 15 meters above you in a 500,000 ton oil tanker, you need all the presence you can muster .
But the Somalians have bigger problems that cut to the very essence of their brand and that’s the fact they call themselves pirates. The pirate brand that has been around for centuries and instantly conjures up images with the consumer. Thanks to Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean series, the brand has had resurgence among youngsters and so often happens in conflicts around the globe, it is the children who are suffering in Somalia. Imagine a little kid in a Somalian school who proudly tells his classmates that his dad is a pirate. ‘Does he know Johnny Depp?’ would be one of the first questions. ‘What kind of hat does he wear? Does he let you hold his sword? Does his captain have an octopus for a face? Do you buy your lunch with pieces of gold that your mum gets out of a chest buried in the backyard?’ Sadly, the answers to all these questions is no. Then the kid pulls out a picture of a skinny guy struggling to hold a rusty old AK47. The class burst out laughing and the damage is done.
There is an obvious gap between the pirate brand as the consumer knows it and the Somalian version and if they are not careful the next generation of young Somalians will not want to take up their fathers sea faring profession. A few eye patches some skull and cross bone flags and a captain who looks like Geoffrey Rush aint gonna fix this problem. Somalian pirates need to sit down with a branding agency, probably a really flash one from London because they seem to be all the rage, and work out how to put their stamp on this famous brand. With the worldwide economic crisis growing it wont be long before the Somalian pirates are facing competition from other nations. Take the Japanese for example. You just know that if they decided to get into the pirating business they are going to do it right with all the cool gear. If the Somalians don’t act now their brand risks being sunk on the high seas.