Marketing Lessons From The Election

Found two great articles about marketing lessons learned from the campaign. There will be arguments as to whether products and services can be marketed the same as politicians and statesmen, but I think the analysis is interesting nonetheless.

AdAge: What Marketers Can Learn From Obama’s Campaign

• Repetition of a single idea
  If you tell the truth often enough and keep repeating it, the truth gets bigger and bigger, creating an aura of legitimacy and authenticity.
  What word did Hillary Clinton own? First she tried “experience.” When she saw the progress Mr. Obama was making, she shifted to “Countdown to change.” Then when the critics pointed out her me-too approach, she shifted to “Solutions for America.”
  Then there’s John McCain. An Oct. 26 cover story in The New York Times Magazine was titled “The Making (and Remaking and Remaking) of the Candidate.” The visual listed some of the labels the candidate was associated with: “Conservative. Maverick. Hero. Straight talker. Commander. Bipartisan conciliator. Experienced leader. Patriot.” Subhead: “When a Campaign Can’t Settle on a Central Narrative, Does It Imperil Its Protagonist?”
• Better Not Different
  “Better” never works in marketing. The only thing that works in marketing is “different.” When you’re different, you can pre-empt the concept in consumers’ minds so your competitors can never take it away from you.
• Simplicity
  About 70% of the population thinks the country is going in the wrong direction, hence Obama’s focus on the word “change.” Based on my experience, in the boardrooms of corporate America “change” is an idea that is too simple to sell. Corporate executives are looking for advertising concepts that are “clever.” For all the money being spent, corporate executives want something they couldn’t have thought of themselves. Hopefully, something exceedingly clever. Some of these slogans might be clever, some might be inspiring and some might be descriptive of the company’s product line, but none will ever drive the company’s business in the way that “change” drove the Obama campaign. They’re not simple enough.
• Consistency
  What’s wrong with 90% of all advertising? Companies try to “communicate” when they should be trying to “position.” What Mr. Obama actually did was to repeat the “change” message over and over again, so that potential voters identified Mr. Obama with the concept. In other words, he owns the “change” idea in voters’ minds.
• Relevance
  “If you’re losing the battle, shift the battlefield” is an old military axiom that applies equally as well to marketing. By his relentless focus on change, Mr. Obama shifted the political battlefield. He forced his opponents to devote much of their campaign time discussing changes they proposed for the country. And how their changes would differ from the changes that he proposed. All the talk about “change” distracted both Ms. Clinton and Mr. McCain from talking about their strengths: their track records, their experience and their relationships with world leaders.

Seth Godin’s Blog: Marketing Lessons From The US Election

• Stories Matter
  More than a billion dollars spent, two ‘products’ that have very different features, and yet, when people look back at the election they will remember mavericky winking. You can say that’s trivial. I’ll say that it’s human nature. Your product doesn’t have features that are more important than the ‘features’ being discussed in this election, yet, like most marketers, you’re obsessed with them. Forget it. The story is what people respond to.
• TV is over
  f people are interested, they’ll watch. On their time (or their boss’s time). They’ll watch online, and spread the idea. You can’t email a TV commercial to a friend, but you can definitely spread a YouTube video. Your challenge isn’t to scrape up enough money to buy TV time. Your challenge is to make video interesting enough that we’ll choose to watch it and choose to share it.
• Marketing is Tribal
  Karl Rove and others before him were known for cultivating the ‘base’. This was shorthand for a tribe of people with shared interests and vision (it included a number of conservatives and evangelicals). George W. Bush was able to get elected twice by embracing the base, by connecting them, by being one of them.
  John McCain had a dilemma. He didn’t particularly like the base nor did they like him. His initial strategy was not to lead this existing tribe, but to weave a new tribe. The idea was that independents and some Democrats, together with the traditional pre-Reagan core of the Republican party, would weave together a new centrist base.Barack Obama also had a challenge. He knew that the traditional base for Democratic candidates wouldn’t be sufficient to get him elected (it had failed John Kerry). So he too set out to weave a new tribe, a tribe that included progressives, the center, younger religious voters, weary veterans, internationalists, Nobel prize winners, black voters and others.

  Then, McCain made a momentous decision. He chose Sarah Palin, and did it for one huge reason: to embrace the Rove/Bush ‘base’. To lead a tribe that was already there, but not yet his. He was hoping for a side effect, which was to attract Hillary Clinton’s tribe, one that in that moment, was also leaderless.

• Motivating the committed is better than persuading the uncommitted
  The unheralded success factor of Obama’s campaign is the get out the vote effort. Every marketer can learn from this. It’s easier (far easier) to motivate the slightly motivated than it is to argue with those that either ignore you or are predisposed to not like you.