The election’s been in the forefront today, and after reading the second chapter of No Logo, I started to make some connections between the two candidates and, say, Nike and Reebok. This is not to say (at least in this post) that there are no real substantive divides between Obama and McCain, but that the whole race can be looked at through the lens of brand warfare.
Essentially, a political campaign is the perfect model for a brand. They are not “selling” anything, in the direct sense (except the “limited edition” t-shirts and other doodads that you can get if you donate right now), but are putting forth a set of ideas about what people fit into their certain brands. The quest to find these people is the marketer’s job, and a cursory look at the candidate’s web sites finds that this is some of the slickest marketing going on today.
Obama’s site has a calm, blue background and smooth, professional looking lines. Things are fuzzed out a bit to make them easier on the eyes. When you first enter, a sign up page for solicitations is offered, with a “first edition” Obama/Biden car magnet as a free gift for a donation of $15 or more (much like a magazine). Continuing on to the main home page, I was struck by the sheer amount that the Obama logo (a rising sun on a field of red and white, making an O) was present. There was even a little red “Obama volunteer man,” reminiscent of the America Online Messaging man, with a logo on his chest, knocking on doors and making phone calls for the candidate. Overall, the site was clean, polished, and very clear in its presentation, exuding the character of his brand—that of modernity, change, and that lovely ambiguous word, hope.
John McCain’s website seems to want that same message, the same control over his brand. It too is a shade of blue (a little bit more blue-grey, a little more sober), and has Obama attack ads playing. What struck me, though, was the bar across the top: Select Your JohnMcCain.com Edition, with supporter, undecided and unregistered voter boxes to click. Essentially, McCain is trying to narrow down his consumer group so he can target them more easily, just as car commercials do on different channels of the television. Trying to piggyback on Obama’s internet success, there’s constantly a “volunteer action center” sidebar on the page, with a big volunteer “points” meter (I sadly had zero).
Points? Logos (McCain’s is a 5 pointed star, reminiscent of the military bronze star medal)? It’s all part of the new politics—one that Barack Obama seems to have partly created. Because today’s social conversations are in terms of the brand, Obama’s lead, especially with young people, can be partly put to his capitalization of the brand industry in his campaign. In a way, Obama has turned around the same formula that helped George W. Bush win in 2000 and 2004—sticking to a simple, strong message that is easy to understand. Obama, however, has upped the ante to a certain extent in that he makes his message more ambiguous. Hope is anything to anybody—it can be the promise of getting out of the ghetto for his black constituency, the promise of health care for a working-class family, or the prospect of guilt alleviation for wealthy white liberals. Obama has made his brand everyone’s brand—adapted it everyone’s lives. He doesn’t control it, really; he just presented it as adaptable to whatever the voters want to do with it. McCain hasn’t been able to define his brand well enough, hasn’t been able to relate it to what people want to identify themselves with.
Check out this article on Obama and branding: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/124/the-brand-called-obama.html
No comments:
Post a Comment