“Don’t let your character get camouflaged with your environment. Find who you are and let it stay in its true colors.” – Rachel Joy Scott

Marketing and promotion are an important part of selling anything. In order to convince the buyer that he or she needs to buy the wonderful product, the seller needs to get the public into his snare in order to get them to buy.

In the beginning it is all about promotion. A business dealer trying to reach the college crowd will put up flyers in recognizable spaces: on the dining tables, on the bulletin boards and on parked cars. Once the promoting is done, the organizer moves on to marketing products.

Products are how businesses make their money. It all depends on books, posters, videos and lunch boxes. That’s how New Kids on the Block went from a teen-popping group to a multi-million-dollar musical sensation. Product marketing.

This a short lesson in how to make money in the world of sales according to what I learned from Marketing 340. And all of these business techniques can be applied to the Columbine victim Rachel Scott’s father, Darrell.

You may remember him. He is a national speaker who last week came to Iowa State giving his message of compassion, caring and cashing in to an audience of 2,300 in the Ames community.

His purpose is simple. Tell the world how his daughter was killed at Columbine because she was a devoted Christian.

Not because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, which would be a logic thought.

Scott said at the lecture that he was inspired by his daughter’s writing and felt he needed to spread her message across the county.

“One of the things I want to challenge you to do is put your thoughts down on paper,” Scott said. “Rachel had no idea when she was inspired by Anne Frank that her writings would affect millions too.”

Millions affected? Oh, please. Comparable to Anne Frank, a victim of the human tragedy of the Holocaust? Hardly.

Sure, I remember the Columbine tragedy. The memory is of my friends and I coming home from class on a beautiful spring day my freshmen year to turn on TRL expecting to watch Carson Daly, but instead saw news coverage of a high school murder.

Sad? Of course. Life-altering? Not really.

But Scott is right in the fact that if millions buy “Rachel’s Tears,” a book written by her parents for the $15 recommended price on racheljoyscott.com (the official Web site of Rachel Scott), then that will yield millions of dollars for Scott.

Or at least for the foundation he has created.

And don’t worry, if you are the type of college student who doesn’t want to read, then the video version of “Rachel’s Tears” is available for $25.

Plus there is Rachel’s journal, which was published by her mother. It is based on “months of painstaking research of Rachel’s writings and in-depth interviews with her family and friends, the book comes alive in first-person narrative as if Rachel had written it herself and is styled as a sort of spiritual workbook for teens, especially young girls. The book also features two never-before published chapters of a book that Rachel had been working on before her life was taken away.”

In an interview the co-author of the book admitted that Rachel’s mother added parts to “The Journals of Rachel Scott.”

So the parents combined her spiral-bound notebooks, scribbles, drawings, poems, and musings to create a message that could speak to high school students about Rachel’s devotion to God and Christianity.

Think for a moment about if you died – what would your parents find in your dorm room?

The scribbles on scraps of paper with random addresses of parties on Campus Avenue and phone numbers of friends. Not really a a record of a personal dedication to religion.

So I want to say, right now, “I’m sorry” to my mom and dad.

If I was killed in some kind of tragic shooting on campus, there isn’t much for my parents to cash in on. They could piece together a short speech of my dedication to life and God with the notebook of random reminders, some glitter crayons, a tin of Altoids and some overdue library books. There would be no $5,000 speech explaining my love for God and humankind. Just a talk by parents about the fact I was always late and was on a never ending quest for fresh breath.

Until then, though, Scott can continue to make money off his daughter’s unfortunate death.

He can work on getting on more television talk shows to spread the good news. He can petition the Pope on having Rachel become a saint in the Catholic Church. And maybe, just maybe, young Christian girls around the nation can play with their Rachel Scott Barbie doll. It is only a matter of time before Scott realizes that Rachel Scott Bread already exists in some parts of the United States. Maybe the two businesses could combine their efforts.

The advertisement would read: Rachel Scott Bread, a kind of hand-molded bread baked using the highest quality of ingredients, is now available at the local Hy-Vee near the “Rachel’s Tears” books. The bread is so good that it tastes like it was baked in heaven itself.

Even Rachel is enjoying a slice right now while she sits next to the 12 disciples, experiencing eternal life. Wouldn’t you enjoy some Rachel Scott bread?

It’s the Christian thing to do.

Michelle Kann is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Garnavillo. She is newsroom managing editor of the Daily.