07 October 2008
U.S. Presidential Nominees Market Themselves to Voters
“Branding” techniques help candidates reinforces core message
Washington — Republican presidential nominee John McCain and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama are using the advertising tool of “branding” to market themselves to the U.S. electorate, advertising specialists tell America.gov.
“What we know about branding of political candidates,” said Allen Adamson of Landor Associates, which offers marketing and research services, “is that you’ve got to be single-minded, very focused,” and voters have to understand the candidate’s message with their “gut,” emotionally, and their “head,” intellectually.
Physical interaction with voters, such as walking into an audience like a television talk-show host, can reinforce the core message that a candidate evokes in his speeches, said Adamson, managing director of Landor’s New York office. He said his firm has mapped the attributes of political candidates to images and well-known commercial brands.
For instance, the company’s “Presidential ImagePower” study for incumbent President George W. Bush’s successful bid for re-election in 2004 showed that his supporters associated him with the “brand” that evoked such positive attributes as “reliable, humble and solid.” Bush’s brand was consistent with such established mainstay products as IBM, Ford Motor Company and Bud Lite beer. Landor’s study was done in collaboration with the market research firm Penn, Schoen and Berland.
Supporters of 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry associated him with a brand that conveyed attributes of “high quality, high performance, hip and young.” He was associated with the premium brands of BMW automobiles, Apple computers, and Heineken beer.
For the 2008 campaign, Adamson said he believes McCain could be branded like the soft drink Coca-Cola. That will evoke images of “the real thing, all about America, authenticity, patriotic, experienced, and a war hero” with “the core message that he has been there, done that.”
Meanwhile, Obama would be “Pepsi-Cola,” associated with “the choice of the next generation, more the challenger brand [that] is trying to change things,” said Adamson, whose firm is nonpartisan.
Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, has branded herself as the “hockey mom,” said Adamson. He said neither Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden nor the presidential nominees have branded themselves “as clearly or as powerfully” as Palin, although McCain seeks to appeal to voters as “a maverick who bucks the trends.”
Adamson wrote in his blog, BrandSimple, that “one of the essential rules of successful brand building is to establish something you want to represent in the minds of consumers and stick with it.”
As McCain and Obama prepare for the final weeks of the 2008 campaign, wrote Adamson, “they must do everything possible to stick to the brand position that initially resonated with their party platforms and take every opportunity to convey this position, no matter the specific issue at hand.”
AN INDIVIDUAL’S POWER TO AFFECT ELECTIONS
Andrew Rasiej, who consults on the use of technology in politics, says both Obama and McCain are branding themselves as agents of change. Where they differ, he said, is that Obama’s campaign is casting its candidate as the agent of “generational change,” in which Americans are asked to make a shift in “the way in which our democracy works.”
McCain is using “institutional change,” saying that the U.S. government in Washington needs to alter the way it operates, Rasiej said. McCain’s brand of change invokes patriotism to appeal to voters, said Rasiej, who previously has consulted for a number of Democrats but is not working for a candidate in the 2008 campaign.
Rasiej said Obama’s brand of change is notable for spreading his advertising message through the Internet, using broadband technology to move “beyond the cultural wars” that defined previous presidential campaigns. Obama is using a language that is comfortable and familiar for people under age 40 who use computer technology in their daily lives, Rasiej said. The consultant founded a Web site called techPresident that tracks how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the Internet. (See “Presidential Campaigns Take to the Internet.”)
Rasiej said e-mail allows individuals to play a powerful role in presidential campaigns. He cited his 82-year-old father as an example of how one person hopes to influence voters. His father, Rasiej said, is e-mailing YouTube videos of Obama speeches to his friends, which is a “less overt” and “less intrusive” way to communicate a political message. Rasiej said that in past elections, his father might have political conversations with 50 friends, “but it would take a year and half” to meet those people in casual situations to engage in political conversation.
The power of one person becomes evident when millions of other Americans multiply his father’s efforts with their own e-mail appeals for the same candidate, Rasiej said.
YouTube, Flickr and other video-sharing Web sites allow a huge audience to watch a candidate’s presentations in full. For example, Rasiej said, the public has “clicked on” Obama’s 37-minute speech on race relations in America 6 million times.
Rasiej said that “we’re going from the era of the sound bite to the sound blast,” where millions can watch, read and absorb a political speech.
Learn more about techPresident on its Web site.
BrandSimple is available on Adamson’s Web site.
