I'd like to try and learn a branding lesson from the challenge facing Barak Obama as he vies to become the Democratic nominee for President.
His brand seems to be that we need to change the conduct public discourse and, thereby, address important issues more constructively.
Only a lot of people seem uninterested in changing it. Clinton and McCain are happy with business as usual, because they believe (perhaps correctly) that a majority of voters believe so, too. The logic goes something like this:
- Voters vote (like consumers buy) on the WIIFM principle -- what's in it for me? -- even when they might label those benefits as altruistic selflessness
- They (we) have been conditioned to expect pandering to our most base, hot-button issues, and then choose to believe promises that play to our brightest vanities and darkest fears (and violate the facts, if not just common sense, along the way)
- Candidates are supposed to knee-cap one another, and use every dirty trick in the book (or the kitchen sink) to promote their politicking each day
- The media aren't a mirror to some objective, meaningful truth, but rather a Greek chorus of paparazzi and sports color commentary
There's no way to be above the fray of this context. It just is, and everyone and everything is within it.
So Obama's complaints about the silly questions he got in the last debate, or apparent accountability for Rev. Wright's latest insanity, aren't distractions...they're part of the toolkit from which candidates declare their differences, the substance with which media report on the campaigns, and tidbits upon which voters base their decisions.
Brands, whether corporate or political, are inexorably immersed in context and behavior.
For Presidential aspirants in the U.S., it's a knock-down, drag-through-the-streets-bloody context that has been this way ever since John Adams and Thomas Jefferson threw mud at one another. The presumption (and hope) has always been that, once beyond this phase, the winner would relinquish the behaviors that produced victory, and embrace governance with true vision and equanimity.
Yeah, right. Like in the business world, you usually get what you pay for. I think it's why government, high-tech gizmos, or most anything else we buy rarely works.
Hence Obama's branding conundrum, and perhaps his opportunity.
His conundrum is that he can't, or won't, win playing the game of politics, but he's stuck playing it. His ripostes to Clinton's attacks seem weak, his pandering lame (memories of those bowling photos make me shudder), and his protests and impatience appear like he's the one who is distracted, not us.
The opportunity is that he can still play his own game, but he needs to play it according to the rules by which the game is played.
If he truly means what he says, I think he needs to crystalize what change means. Humanize it. Put it into the same tangible, WIIFM terms that make individual voters (or groups) think that they're getting something at the expense of someone else. Run against the specific shortcomings of the politicking process. Cite a handful of the particular things he'll deliver if people will give him their vote, but do so in terms of what it will mean to each individual voter (money saved, jobs created, security enhanced and, most importantly, what will they do differently...like act, join, save, buy, whatever):
- Healthcare that's available and financial solvent (not just a mandate or expensive government bureaucracy)
- A true alternate energy Manhattan Project (not just lip-service of taxes on oil companies and miniscule givebacks to truckers);
- A global partnership to defeat the jihadists (not empty rhetoric on war and unilateral American might)
- Financial reform that strengthens institutions (not punitive taxes, handouts, etc.)
Conversely, he could label every attack or question from the media intended to produce a quick headline as impeding or fighting to keep this real change from happening.
How many people are refused medical care every day? The planet warms up another nth of a degree. Hedge fund managers collect more millions. Iran gets closer to a nuclear weapon.
In marketing, we used to call the ultimate challenge of delivering branding within a specific context that of finding a "burning platform." A burning platform is making the call-to-action for a particular behavior more desirable, or palatable, than not taking action.
The issues that I believe Obama cares about are going to ultimately motivate voters one way or another, either now as proscriptive levers or, once one of the simmering crises we're facing explodes into something far worse, a reactive lever. There's a burning platform here, for sure. The fires are already raging.
He needs to define the WIIFM qualities of these issues, and present himself as the change agent for taking action now versus later. In doing so, he can define his opponents -- Clinton, McCain, the process itself -- as impeding this real action. Just like selling toothpaste or car insurance, his brand needs to embody a solution, not just be an alternative option that's a part of the problem.
Business and politics as usual will hurt voters. Obama has to tell them how and why he will change things. Explicitly. Repeatedly. Consistently.
Would it work? Ultimately, that's the real conundrum, and I defer to bulbs far brighter than my own to figure it out.
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