Branding like Barry
November 20, 2008
Just what the world needs - another blog post about Obama’s victory. Political satire aside, there are some awesome branding lessons to be learned from his historic win. Please note that this not a political post, nor an analysis of the ideology, social impact, etc of the campaign and/or victory. This is simply an assessment of what businesses can learn from “branding like Barry” …
- Have a Simple Idea - Obama’s was “change”. Everyone understood it. McCain had to compete against it. And it negated much of the talk about experience. If there is any criticism, it’s that “change” became too much of a cliche.For those of you that read the Trike blog regularly, you know that having a Simple Idea is the most critical piece of an effective branding strategy. There are many reasons but it really boils down to moving people with the same idea that inspires you. While I was not an Obama supporter, I do believe that he was motivated to run because he did want “change”. This leads to this key point: brands born of a process almost always lose to brands born of a movement. McCain was never really a movement. His candidacy was that born of the nomination process.
- Become a Movement - Because Obama was born of a movement; one that first defeated the “process” candidate in his own party (Hillary) then McCain. In becoming a movement, Obama received huge amounts of free advertising; positive PR, hand-made or 3rd party created Obama products and a very effective use of Social Media. It is essential to note that Obama didn’t use Social Media to “broadcast” his message. Instead, the campaign knew that it was a place for followers to gather and talk to each other. Other than taking over a MySpace page, they didn’t worry too much about content or message control. It also helped that the GOP and the McCain campaign did such a poor job in their social media strategy and implementation.
- Have a Big Smile - Obama is a polished, articulate brand. While he often struggled without a teleprompter, his over-all brand was extremely well-packaged. In short, image still matters. Every little detail about the visual elements of your brand are important. There is no such thing as just throwing together a logo, brochure, and web site and hope that people over-look that. Is it a bit of a game? Yes - but only in the sense that your visual brand is a mirror of your audience’s self-perception.
- Have a Big List - This is your feature list. Obama had a specific list of items he was campaigning on; all of which where tied to his Simple Idea. The list is important because it brings tangibility to your Simple Idea. It helps people put your “features” in to the context of their lives. Obama was brilliant at helping people internalize his brand; that he was “my” candidate. By having a defined list, it also created comparison to McCain; whose list was much more nebulous and lacked tangibility. By doing so, Obama essentially eliminated McCain’s credibility. Undisciplined brands (and salespeople) tend to lead with the their “speeds and feeds”. Obama didn’t do this; it was always after the 3 points above.
- Tell Them What Will Happen - Obama did a great job of saying what would happen when he got in to office. This was tied to both the Simple Idea and the Big List. It helped people actualize him as President; to see that picture in their head and become comfortable with it. This eliminated the “funny name” issue and created a strong sense of assumption. Companies can do the same thing by drawing clear pictures of what will happen when customers start using their product/service. This is especially important if you are a new brand in an existing category.
Obviously there are other factors that helped in the Obama victory ($600 million in campaign funds and a cheerleading media didn’t hurt), but these 5 areas are the best lessons on modern branding for businesses. They are scalable to any size of business or industry - and don’t require expensive tools. However, it does require strategic thinking, followed by discipline and accountability.
If you find this useful, we might have created the branding process that “we can all believe in”!
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Good stuff! Can yogurt or widget companies bottle change? Probably not!
Kudos, Justin. For a guy who didn’t support Obama, the veteran marketeer in you did a marvelous job of identifying some aspects of his campaign that give it a sense of inevitability.
By the way, I also think that personal conviction around your brand doesn’t hurt either. There were times in the campaign when Obama’s own advisers urged him to go more negative, or to retreat from a position if it didn’t poll well (e.g., Clinton’s assertion that his position on meeting with leaders of enemy states without precondition was naive). His push back was to defend his brand — he wanted to be seen as the same person at the end of the race that he was in the beginning.