The art behind building the brand of Obama

I’ve read reports that Barack Obama’s campaign has raised more than $650 million through September. Let’s have fun and take a guess that the total amount raised through this election will be around $800 million. It wouldn’t be too farfetched to surmise that most of these funds are somehow leveraged to build the Obama brand to become the candidate of choice. After all, those $$$ are paying for his staff (who spread his gospel,) advertising, public relations, digital communications, large events, more fund raisers, travel costs and many other line items that are focused on “getting the word out” about this candidate.

Assuming you agree with my hypothesis, let’s compare this brand building initiative to what the biggest corporate marketers in the world spent last year. It’s kind of astonishing – Barack Obama’s presidential campaign would be ranked 36th among this prestigious list of corporations. This means that more resources are invested in building the Obama brand than that of Colgate, Microsoft, HP, Viacom, Wal-Mart, Cannon and Samsung.

Think about that for a second. All of these companies spend a lot of money on brand building. But, those budgets are spread across hundreds or thousands of products/services, as well as on the mother brand itself. This dilutes the impact that any one marketing initiative can have on a specific product or corporate brand. Obama’s campaign (on the other hand) continues to singularly focus (like a laser beam) on pushing out the same core messages to America for almost two years now. Just as importantly, the essence of who Obama is (his brand essence some might say) has been consistently choreographed and emitted to the American public in the same strategic manner as well. This has to be one of the largest, concentrated brand-building campaigns of all time.

Of course, brand building isn’t just about the $$$ being spent. And, creating a Presidential brand isn’t an easy assignment. For every ad, email, speech, conversation or article that pushes out the brand of Obama, there are countless negative forces being aimed directly at his reputation. Most of the time, this waters down so much of the positive image that is trying to be built. And, among many disparate audiences, those negatives are believed and taken as gospel (i.e. the man is connected to terrorism.)

In my estimation, this is precisely why Senator Obama’s campaign advisors (brand builders) deserve so much credit. You see, from the day Obama announced his Presidential bid, it’s clear that his advisors had a strategy to reinforce a number of core attributes/beliefs that the Obama brand would stand for. Love or hate the man, the brand of Obama has never wavered (through all the attacks and adversity) and in these final days before he probably becomes our next President, it’s fair to say that the excitement generated because of the Obama brand is a large reason for this success. The Obama camp has brought back so many of JFK’s attributes and brand promises to attract those same audiences that made “Camelot” so appealing to young people in 1960. These include:

-    Fresh, invigorating, change that young people want to be a part of; a new way of thinking; standing for something higher in life; freedom from the old way of politics; something that stands for a greater good; a man who is charismatic and cares.

Yes, I know it’s also about the economy… stupid. That certainly helped to turn the tide on any Republican candidate. Additionally, as I wrote about a few days back Senator McCain’s choice for a running mate certainly didn’t help matters. But there is nothing subtle about the way Barack Obama’s brand has been masterfully built.  I tip my hat to those campaign wizards who had the foresight to make it happen.

UPDATE: Frank X. Shaw has posted his own response to this topic over on Glass House. His post focuses on the concept of "fragile branding" in politics. Meanwhile, see Todd Defren's post about Obama "CMO" David Plouffe, Talya Bosch's post on America as a brand in relation to the political election, Ted Weismann's post on negative depositioning in brand differentiation (political and otherwise), Indra Gardiner's post on Obama's campaign and how it coincides with Seth Godin's book Tribes, and our own Sam Ford's post on "real America" as a brand and Matt Purdue's post on successful Obama strategies that businesses should learn from.

Comments

[Sam Ford]

By the way, Ed, I've been thinking about your post vis-a-vis Frank X. Shaw's on the "fragile brand." You're right that Obama benefits from being the sole product being marketed with millions and millions of promotion under the "Obama" brand. On the other hand, as you point out, his great benefit is that he has a number of clear and simple messages, but the fact that the Obama brands stands for a series of things rather than on one central issue insures that his brand isn't fragile, focused only on fighting the War on Terror in Afghanistan, or health care reform, or education, or tax reform, or green technologies, and so on. He's a central brand who has his own consistency, but he's nuanced and multi-faceted at the same time. I think that's been key to the brand's success.