How To Learn From The Al Gore Brand!

Former Vice President and current Nobel Prize Winning Environmentalist Extraordinaire Al Gore is a controversial figure and the Marketing Doctor typically avoids discussing politics and/or controversy (usually the same thing especially when you throw in religion), but I’ll take the chance for the sake of spreading the good word about branding!!!  And, anyway, we’re going to be talking brands here not politics!  So there!

This is not a cut and dry “how to.”  Basically, it’s a “how to” in two parts.  The first part is learning directly from the Al Gore brand and what he’s done to catapult his brand from not-so-popular obscurity to rock-star prominence!  The second is going to take a look at his recent environmental ad campaign and explain why it’s all wrong –clever but not strong enough to sell and selling is the point of all advertising!

So let’s start with Al Gore.  How did a man who a few years ago was being lampooned as a has-been become today’s go-to guy?  In a phrase, he re-discovered his brand!!!  A quick look at his bio through the lens of branding tells you this.  Al Gore was always this global, environmentalist figure.  He promoted the worldwide web (and once even seemed to take credit for inventing it!).  He was an environmentalist long before anyone was even thinking about greenhouse gases!  But as his political career developed, he played down these elements in favor of a more “centrist” approach.  That is, he got away from his brand essentials. 

But for Gore losing the presidential election in 2000 meant being able to re-assess and re-discover his brand.  And, boy, did he ever!  In the span of a few years he made an Oscar-Winning documentary, won a Nobel Prize and now has assumed a kind of wiseman/statesman role.  He’s a global figure who speaks at international conferences and runs a socially-conscious hedge fund out of Switzerland…  Wow!  I can’t say that Al Gore sat down and went through the following brand checklist, but I bet he did something like it:

1. Was my brand once successful? (Answer: yes.  Before Gore tried to be something he wasn’t, lost an election (even his own state!));
2. Why was my brand once successful? (Answer: Gore once had a reputation for forward-thinking in big areas like the environment and being seen as committed to them.  That reputation helped Gore get noticed in politics but didn’t play as well in presidential politics);
3. What can I do to promote my brand essentials again (Answer: forget trying to be all things to all people and instead focus on the things you care about and meeting the needs of your target market.  In Gore’s case, it meant a refocusing on things environmental with renewed urgency and energy and reaching out from there.)

The main thing here is that Gore returned to where he started, but with a big difference and greater focus –he no longer was aiming at political office and in a way he was free to be Gore and commit all of his brand to the cause he cared about…

So like him or not; agree with him or not; from a branding perspective it’s a pretty impressive turn around.

Now for the big clever ad campaign!  It looks like Al Gore is getting ready to spend up to $300 million dollars on the biggest public advocacy advertising campaign of all time.  The subject: global warming.  See here, here and here for coverage.  

It’s being billed as a “climate in crisis” campaign, but I’ve got to say –and this is without knowing everything that’s going to be involved— that I would not bet on it being a success!  The reason: it’s too clever and it’s not strong enough!

What are you talking about, Tantillo?  Folks, I’m talking about brands.  Al Gore’s brand might be as a kind of conciliator who brought global warming to the attention of millions, but the fact is that global warming has its own brand too –and if that brand is forgotten you might as well kiss this campaign goodbye!

Global warming’s brand IS crisis!  From what I know about the ads, they’re going to be built around other celebrities –read personal brands!— who disagree about everything except the need for action on global warming.  One of the first spots is supposed to feature Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson sitting on a couch agreeing about global warming.  Terrific!  But where’s the global warming brand?  Maybe they’ll weave it in somehow, but I’m worried that it’ll get lost beneath all these other brands.  These ads might make people feel good, but will they get people to act?

It’s almost like they’re doing the “Milk Does A Body Good” campaign for the end of the world!  The milk campaign had all these celebrities with milk moustaches talking about the benefits of dairy.  Terrific for building healthy eating habits (and promoting the dairy industry), but global warming is supposed to be an end-of-the-world, we-have-to-take-immediate-action-or-else kind of crisis!  Sharpton and Robertson kibitizing on a couch is more inside joke than alarm puller … it just doesn’t have the gravity!  This might be an example of one brand, Gore, the uniter, muddying the waters of another… 

The global warming ads are examples of issues advertising.  For issues ads to be effective they must be strong!  They have to get people angry or sad and instigate action.  They must be provocative and frequently they are negative!  Political ads are examples of issue advertising and as much as people say they hate them, the one’s that work best are negative!!! 

Ultimately nothing in advertising is subtle and if alarm bells are meant to be ringing about global warming then by all means let them ring!  Why not take a lesson from history and the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign.  This was the one that produced the legendary crying Indian at the end (in a closeup after paddling through a polluted wasteland)!  Not only do people still remember this ad vividly almost forty years later, but it directly led to big changes in the way people thought about pollution and what the government was supposed to do about it (the Federal Clean Water Act followed)!  Here’s the video link to that famous ad.

My advice to Al Gore: don’t forget the Global Warming brand and go make an ad that really drives it home!