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John Tantillo´s Brand Winner... And Loser: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama
Posted by The Marketing Doctor at 7/27/2009 7:26 AM 
Categories: Branding
Tags: intellectual Gates arrest Clinton´s Asia Tour President Obama brand over-exposure Senate Health Care Reform Barack Obama Henry Louis Gates Hillary Clinton leadership Target Market Asia tour Secretary of State Jimmy Carter John Tantillo Bush marketing Meet The Press Roosevelt Public Relations Woodrow Wilson Upstate John Kerry Professor Factor branding
Categories: Branding
Tags: intellectual Gates arrest Clinton´s Asia Tour President Obama brand over-exposure Senate Health Care Reform Barack Obama Henry Louis Gates Hillary Clinton leadership Target Market Asia tour Secretary of State Jimmy Carter John Tantillo Bush marketing Meet The Press Roosevelt Public Relations Woodrow Wilson Upstate John Kerry Professor Factor branding
Brand Winner… | And Loser |
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John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week:
Winner: Hillary Clinton
Loser: Barack Obama
Folks, this week we return to political brand land once again for a few brief observations.
The Winner
Hillary Clinton.
It was only a few weeks ago that many pundits were counting Clinton out.
The argument basically went like this: Barack Obama had stuck her in the State Department to take a powerful potential political opponent off the table. Once she was there, he effectively deprived her of any power, hamstringing her ability to do anything effective.
This week has been a powerful rebuttal to the notion: Wrong. Hillary capped a triumphal week of touring with an hour-long interview on Meet The Press.
The Hillary Clinton brand has never been an easy one to quantify and analyze; it’s one filled with promise but continually facing setbacks. Finally, I think it is beginning to be genuinely appreciated by people on both sides of the aisle.
When Hillary ran for the U.S. Senate, many believed she would not play with those upstate voters —but she understood that weakness and made those upstaters believe in her brand. Once she got to the Senate, she became a quiet learner. Rather than showboating or pushing her own agenda, she got things done for her state, cultivating the relationships necessary to succeed.
This wasn’t enough to win her the presidency, but now she’s moving to the next stage. We might finally be seeing the emergence of a powerful, stand-alone brand.
After all, it wasn’t Barack Obama that proclaimed to Asia and the world that “The United States is Back.” It was Hillary Clinton.
Hillary´s performance last week's a lesson to all personal brands: if there is a negative perception growing about your brand, you can let it go for a while —but when you address it, you must address it forcefully.
This is what Clinton did over the past week. This isn’t merely public relations; Clinton really has been hard at work doing the job she was given. But she needed to remind everyone that, contrary to a reigning misperception, her brand —and by extension U.S. foreign policy— was firmly on track.
With a strong brand like Hillary’s, it doesn’t take much of a course correction to keep things humming along and remind everyone of your brand’s strength.
The Loser
Barack Obama.
The health care debacle and the Gates arrest comments are, I think, showing us an important weakness in the Obama brand.
First, as I’ve mentioned before over on Fox Forum, Obama is at real risk of over-exposure. Even though it might seem that he has to appear everywhere to sell Health Care reform, the opposite may be true at this point.
But now I’m also starting to think that over-exposure is just a symptom of a deeper brand problem: the President’s impulse to explain everything.
Let’s call it “The Professor Factor.”
It’s as though Barack Obama believes that every situation can be addressed with reasonable negotiation and explanation. Unfortunately, this is simply not true, and it’s a risky thing for a leader to believe.
Leadership is often about moving the ball forward and letting everyone catch up later. It is not about seeking approval after every play. It is about making the touchdown and winning the game —whether or not the crowd agrees with or even understands your strategies.
After the Bush years, when momentous decisions were made with little articulation as to why, many Americans understandably craved a leader who could explain what he was doing and why.
But there is a limit to how much people want things explained. (The time of his health care news conference was changed because one of the networks refused to carry it… the original time conflicted with an interview of the Idol runner-up.)
More than over-exposure or over-explanation, we are talking about what image is beginning to harden in people’s minds about our President.
My concern is that the image might be that of an idealistic, professorial type who talks about leading rather than actually leading. Woodrow Wilson, not Roosevelt.
Think about John Kerry. As soon as he was labeled an overly-intellectual waffler, the label stuck; that was it. And let’s not forget Jimmy Carter. He was thought to be one of the most intelligent people to have held the office of President —and he micro-managed his way out of office.
So far, President Obama has avoided this fate of the sticky intellectual label, but unless he seriously reassesses how he is coming across to his Target Market, something similar could happen.
Instead of being impressed by Obama’s eloquence at the podium, people will connect it to inaction and lack of results. They will call him the professor and be unable to get the connection out of their minds.
Now’s the time for him to change: Step back from the public spotlight, be slower to react to the news cycle and more ready to take action without asking permission. While campaigning, Senator Obama was often admired for playing it cool; President Obama has to do the same if he wants to be known as the leader with certain professorial tendencies —rather than the professor who somehow became a leader.
And remember, it’s always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY -
Strong brands are always quick to make course corrections.
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