Building Positive Brands in Politics

I made a shocking discovery on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal today: I found an article I agreed with. That isn't very common for me, a quite liberal independent. But John Ellis, former columnist for the Boston Globe hit the nail on the head about why American voters are turned off by today's political campaigns:

According to Advertising Age magazine, the total amount spent this year on political advertising will reach $2 billion, a hefty increase over 2004. If one conservatively estimates that at least half of all political advertising can be fairly described as "negative," then 2006 will be the first year that negative political advertising expenditures reached the $1 billion mark. That's a dollar amount greater than all of the television, radio and print advertising buys done by Anheuser-Busch (estimated by Ad Age to be $919 million) in 2005.

Imagine, if you will, what your taste for Miller beer would be if Anheuser-Busch spent half of its annual advertising budget describing all of the various Miller brands in the most unsavory terms. Or, what your taste for a Budweiser would be if the lads at Miller unleashed a $500 million negative ad campaign against "the King of Beers." Imagine both at the same time and you get some idea of what domestic politics is like for most Americans.

Look through the list of the major advertisers in the U.S. and what strikes you is that all of them spend vast sums of money building and strengthening brands. The nation's leading advertiser, Procter & Gamble, spends over $4.5 billion annually doing just that. P&G spends not one dime on negative advertising because they understand that it is ultimately self-destructive.

Yup, that's the problem all right. And then John talks about what this could lead to.

Ultimately, the reaction to this ceaseless negative barrage, if it continues unchecked, will be the rejection of both major political parties. As more and more people are repulsed by the political process, their number will at some point reach a critical mass. Americans share two overriding beliefs: Tomorrow will be a better day and the idea of America is fundamentally important. That critical mass will eventually embrace a party of hope and mission. The alternative, after all, is a new record every two years -- $2 billion of negative advertising, then $4 billion, then $8 billion. All slander all the time eventually collapses of its own foul weight.

Despite John's painting both parties with this foul brush, we have seen in the last six weeks or so two examples of actual politicians rejecting this path and trying to do honest-to-goodness positive brand-building. One is Barack Obama, who has done so much personal positive brand-building, there's now a name for it: Obama-mania. That landed him on the cover of Time magazine. Positive branding works.

The other example is right here in Massachusetts: Deval Patrick. Here's a man who rejected negative campaigning done by his opponent in favor of campaigning on a platform of hope and community. Did the voters go for it? Well, he got a fair amount of complaining by political veterans that his was a "Barney" campaign: all love and no hard issue campaigning. Yet despite a fairly tough negative campaign barrage from his opponent, he won in a landslide. Positive branding works.

There are a lot of marketing techniques that political candidates can use, such as micro-targeting, differentiation, and countless others. But the best way to win real people over is to give them an emotional benefit, a positive reason to vote for you. For Senator Obama, it's The Audacity Of Hope. For Deval Patrick, it's his grandmother's message of, "Hope for the best, and then go work for it." But both men touch the emotions of listeners with their honesty and positive views. And in today's political world, that brand-building sets them apart from their opponents more than any amount of negative campaigning could ever do.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Branding, Deval Patrick, Marketing, Political Communication