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John Tantillo´s Brand Winner.. And Loser: Walter Cronkite and The Republican Party
Posted by The Marketing Doctor at 7/20/2009 9:54 AM 
Categories: Branding
Tags: CBS Huntley-Brinkley Report Fox Forum GOP NBC You Are There Tantillo brand building CBS Evening News Brinkley obit confirmation hearings Sonia Sotomayor Republican Party The Most Trusted Man in America branding Huntley marketing Palin Morning Show Sotomayor obituary Walter Cronkite anchorman Republicans ratings oposition party Dan Rather Obama
Categories: Branding
Tags: CBS Huntley-Brinkley Report Fox Forum GOP NBC You Are There Tantillo brand building CBS Evening News Brinkley obit confirmation hearings Sonia Sotomayor Republican Party The Most Trusted Man in America branding Huntley marketing Palin Morning Show Sotomayor obituary Walter Cronkite anchorman Republicans ratings oposition party Dan Rather Obama
Brand Winner… | And Loser |
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John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week:
Winner: Goldman Sachs
Loser: The Republican Party
Folks, this week we honor the passing of one great brand and dissect the ongoing undoing of another. Without further ado:
The Winner
Walter Cronkite.
No other single newsman had the powerful credibility of this man —once labeled, “The Most Trusted Man in America.”
It would be easy to say: they simply don’t make them like this anymore. End of story.
But the fact is that Walter Cronkite played a very large role in becoming the iconic journalist and anchorman he was. He was built, not made.
(I couldn’t write the full story better than The Wall Street Journal. (Go here for their obituary.)
Bottom line: Walter Cronkite consistently made choices that built his brand.
These choices included doing things that seemed like mistakes at the time, but were ultimately true to who he was and what he represented.
The Wall Street Journal reports one such event: losing his job on CBS´ “Morning Show” (for a second time) when he stepped out of his pleasant talk show role and went for the jugular of one of his guests. For the run-of-the-mill broadcaster, this would have seemed like disaster, career-ending sort of stuff.
Not for Cronkite. Cronkite was a newsman; he simply did not belong on a show chatting up guests. The firing left him free to return to real news and helped underscore the true nature of his brand.
Consistency and dedication is another thing to learn from the Cronkite brand. He was not always the icon. He began building his brand in high school, from the moment he aspired to become a great journalist.
Cronkite built his brand by skipping college classes that he considered too theoretical to cover Texas politics for the newspapers. He built it by deciding that a war reporter was obligated to go flying on B-17s over Germany, even though the chances of returning were low. He built his brand through choices large and small and, most of all, through his consistent devotion to fact-checking every aspect of a story He created the concept of anchorman —someone who literally “anchors” a program to a strong journalistic standard.
Most of all, he stayed true to this concept and himself despite the many years that his competition (Huntley and Brinkley) beat him in the ratings (until one day he pulled ahead and stayed that way). His core brand feature was being the best journalist he could be, and he never let any related features or quick fix makeovers get in the way.
The result of this brand building is that twenty-eight years after he signed off for the last time, we are still talking about this great newsman.
Now that’s a brand that everyone can learn from.
The Loser
The Republicans are in trouble.
A few months ago, I blogged on Fox Forum about brand Republican, a party I said was in deep brand crisis, getting lost in the wilderness. .
Last week’s confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor also confirmed that the Republican´s brand crisis is becoming even more serious.
Previous confirmation hearings —especially the legendary showdowns (Thomas, Bork, et cetera)— were dramatic for a very good reason.
The opposition was fierce and united, and so were the defenders. You could agree or disagree with either side, but you were never in doubt that there were actually two sides fighting for something.
Our system is designed to work this way. Strong, adversarial opposition, whether in the political arena or the courtroom, is an effective way of representing everyone’s interests (lest we forget, even gridlock is better than having a dictator who can always get things done).
The problem for the Republicans wasn’t that they produced some very boring television last week; it was that they simply did not look like an opposition. In fact, it was never very clear what they stood for.
Worse, after weeks of attacking Sotomayor for emotional, identity politics, several GOP members seemed to be the emotional ones, concerned with identity politics, while the Judge appeared to be unemotional and utterly unthreatening.
The GOP also seemed easily defused by Sotomayor’s bland, monotone and sometimes overly complicated responses to questions that some of them seemed almost embarrassed to be asking.
Bottom line: last week’s hearings demonstrate that Republicans lack the fire of conviction and any semblance of unity.
This is a continuation of what we have seen since Obama´s election. It has carried through to the Palin resignation and the suggestion that Palin, arguably one of the strongest conservative voices around, might abandon the party.
Part of the problem rests on the fact that the party hasn’t cleaned house Where is the outrage over Sanford and Ensign (not the affairs, but the misuse of taxpayer dollars)? As a result of sloppy brand management, the GOP has lost so much credibility that you can forget about voters believing in the GOP —the GOP can’t even believe in itself.
As I wrote a few months ago and repeat now: the Republican party can’t remain the party of “no.” Opposition doesn’t just mean standing in the way by rejecting the other guy’s ideas… it means delivering exciting and workable alternatives. It means developing new ideas built on sound, time-honored principles.
So this is the party’s wilderness. My guess is this brand will be wandering around in it for a while until they do clean house and begin to rebuild their brand around the party standards of fiscal conservatism and strong defense. The GOP will be lost until they remember real marketing and find out what the American people really want (hint, it’s about fixing health care without becoming socialized; it’s about generating jobs without too much government involvement and regulation; it’s about being open to the world without being weak). They need to listen closely and then put new ideas on the table.
Only then will you have an opposition brand worthy of the name.
And remember, it’s always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY -
A brand is built through a series of choices, large and small.
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