Obama Needs To Risk A Battle of The Brands With Wright!

Where won’t the Marketing Doctor go to preach brand?  Yes, folks, it’s back to politics –an area I instinctively avoid!  What the world doesn’t need now in this political silly season is another political pundit!  But this is politics from 30,000 feet and looking through my branding goggles at the target.

And I won’t stand on the soap box for long.  Here’s my brief “How To” on Barack Obama’s Reverend Wright problem. 

From a branding perspective part of the reason this problem has stuck around for Obama has been because up until this week he wanted his brand to be all things for all people and this meant a very unnatural and ineffective brand extension into very radical territory (i.e., the views expressed by Reverend Wright). The bottom line is that Obama is in a battle to differentiate his brand from Reverend Wright’s and at this point he has to repeat these differences forcefully and again and again and again!!!

Basically, Obama has taken the position that he wants everyone to “look beyond” the controversy –this is an impossible aim until he has made it clear that his brand and Reverend Wright’s have absolutely nothing in common.  Because as long as the two brands appear to have something in common, every time Wright says or does something outrageous it will stick to Obama. 

So what’s the “how to” for Obama vs. Wright brand differentiation?  It’s not going to be easy! 

Basically, Obama needs to hold a press conference where he builds up his brand and his brand only!  This means that brand Obama must address each and every radical point that brand Wright has made and dismiss, lampoon, and banish brand Wright to radical land faraway –a place far away from future-looking Obama land! 

Where he was nuanced in his first speech; he has to be straightforward and brutally clear in this one.  He has to make clear that his brand is about something entirely different than Wright’s and that Wright’s brand is a broken brand –and that whatever his friendship with the man, Obama’s brand has ALWAYS been different and better!!!  

From a purely marketing and branding perspective he must take this one on.  Remember folks, I’m a business marketing man!   In the product world, this kind of brand battle is rarely so brutal, but in a way Obama has let the moment of reckoning drag on until it has become a monumental battle of the brands (according to one article below his aides knew that the Reverend Wright brand was going to be a problem over a year ago)!  Glad I didn’t learn marketing from politics! 

After the big, high profile press conference, Obama’s going to have to re-enforce this message for as long as it takes for his brand to re-establish itself with the freshness it once had (remember, Obama’s brand stood for change)!  And re-enforcing his brand will mean reaching out to brands that are very much unlike the Wright brand (i.e., something like Clinton did appearing on O’Reilly last night)!!!  It’s going to be interesting because there are a whole lot of target markets to navigate here!  So stay tuned!

And, remember, it’s always easier when you keep branding in mind!

Here a few links on the Obama/Wright issue:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/03/throughout-his.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-trailtop2-2008may02,0,1916885.story
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/28/obama.pastor/index.html
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/05/01/obamawright_0501.html
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/05/obama-looks-bey.html