Linda's Marketing Leverage Blog

Yes You Can...Use Lessons From the Obama Campaign Marketing in Business

In the December 1st issue of Business Week, Jon Fine says Your Brand is Not a Candidate:(Marketing Lessons from Obama's Campaign) "The Obama campaign's marketing was remarkable. But you can't use it to sell yogurt."

His point is that the selling of a political candidate, particularly a presidential one, is very different than buying an everyday product or service. He says the lessons are limited to "something that makes people cry when they see it giving an acceptance speech."

Granted, the Obama campaign was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, for many reasons. But the strategies and tactics the campaign team used so effectively were not.

As I mentioned in my last post, the Obama team understood the importance of building a brand that people crossed party lines, demographics, race, and ethnicity. They knew better than to focus on features, but instead targeted clear benefits. They integrated traditional and new media, effectively used personalization and built an outstanding grass roots, bottoms-up groundswell of support. They kept one clear, focused message throughout the campaign and focused on the benefits to the consumer--the voter. (How many times did we hear Obama say, "It's not about me--it's about you."?)

So which of these strategies are not relevant to businesses and individuals as they market products and services?

They're all relevant.

The bottom line, to quote Million Dollar Consultant Alan Weiss, is that logic makes people think, emotion makes them act. When you get behind the wheel of a brand new high-end sports car or buy an attractive new outfit or treat yourself to a wonderful dinner at a great restaurant, or buy an iPhone, what's driving that purchase is emotion, not logic. It's not about the need for transportation or clothing or sustenance or communication--it's about the emotional experience and fulfillment you get from purchasing that particular product or service.

Look at the hundreds of thousands of teenage girls (including mine) who lined up to see the new movie Twilight this past weekend. If that's not an emotional reaction, what is? There's certainly no logical reason to flock to a fairly mediocre movie about vegetarian vampires.

In a time of recession and economic turbulence, it is even more important for companies and organizations to understand the emotional factors that motivate customers to buy their products or services. Before you decide to bite the bullet and compete on price, understand the implications of what that means. The number one retailer in the world, Wal-Mart, owns that position fair and square. They tightly control their supply chain to eliminate excess cost and because of their size, they have the clout to negotiate more effectively than any of their competitors. Is that what you want to compete with?

Even more importantly, no matter what market position you choose to differentiate yourself, look at what happens when you don't take the time to build an effective brand with clear differentiation and a solid brand promise you can deliver. For a timely example, let's look at the Detroit 3 auto manufacturers, who were in Washington this past week looking for a bailout. Their problems are complex: high overhead, bloated pension and health care costs for retirees, etc.

But even if all of those issues could be fixed, through bankruptcy or a bailout, they'd still be faced with a critical problem. With few exceptions, they haven't built strong, solid brands that consumers feel passionately about.We can't force people to buy Chevys or Fords, any more than we can force people to not want to buy BMWs or Toyotas.

Apple and Nike and Coke, among others, have figured it out.The problem is that many other American companies haven't. That doesn't mean we can't put lessons from the Obama campaign to work in business today. It means that it's a crying shame if we don't.

Brand Obama: How Barack Obama Really Won the Presidency

There's been much discussion over the last two weeks of what exactly Barack Obama's campaign team did right to help him win the presidency of the United States.

In their November 17th Business Week column "Three Reasons Obama Won,"  Jack and Suzy Welch focus on lessons business leaders can take from McCain's loss and Obama's win. They make three points which they say business leaders can learn from:

• Start with a clear, consistent vision.
• Execute well.
• Have friends in high places.

While I agree that all three of these are true, they've missed something critical: in a very short time, Obama built a strong, powerful personal brand--basically from scratch.

I teach Branding Strategies at San Francisco State. I ask my students to tell us their favorite brands. We get the usual favorites: Apple, Nike, Target, Trader Joes, Coke, etc. In October, however, several students said their favorite brand was Barack Obama.

How interesting. For the last 18 months, I've had my students evaluate each of the candidates brands, tell me what they stand for and how well they are doing in delivering on their brand promise. This was a fascinating exercise in the early primary season when we had a varied cast of characters from Hillary Clinton to Rudi Guiliani, Mike Hucklebee to Mitt Romney, not to mention McCain and Obama.

In the early days, the candidates were often defined by their demographics (female, African-American, Mormon, ex-POW, divorced Catholic, etc.). But as time went on, it became clear that Barack Obama had done a tremendous job building a strong brand, based on change, hope, inclusion and making a difference for America. He did this using a combination of grass roots efforts, traditional media, and an outstanding use of new media, from websites and blogs to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, from personalized donation emails to brightly colored logowear that was hot and hard to find.

As opposed to McCain, Obama did this by focusing on the future, on the potential for good, and on the positive--not by knocking the competition, shouting and screaming, or defending the current situation.  In doing so, he created a brand that people were proud to be involved with--a brand that transcended race, ethnicity, gender or age. He created the kind of brand all companies wish they had.

And that, as much as the three reasons the Welchs articulated, is the reason Obama won.