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John Tantillo's Brand Winner... And Loser: Shrek and President Obama
Posted by The Marketing Doctor at 6/8/2010 10:07 PM 
Categories: Marketing, Branding
Tags: branding Shrek Target Market President Obama executive oil spill marketing
Categories: Marketing, Branding
Tags: branding Shrek Target Market President Obama executive oil spill marketing
| Brand Winner... | And Loser... |
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John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week:
Winner: Shrek
Loser: President Obama
Winner: Shrek
Loser: President Obama
Winner
Shrek dominated the box office for the third weekend in a row and has won our Winner of the Week.
Some might say the Dreamworks ogre’s triumph is inevitable. But they miss the point. No brand’s success is ever inevitable. Branding is always dynamic, in flux. Sure, brand equity is real —it’s just not a free pass. Better for all branders to think of brand equity like grains of sand always slipping away. The grains have got to be constantly replenished. Branding should always based on the Target Market’s question: “What have you done for me lately?”
In the case of Shrek, the answer is a lot. Once the winning brand formula was developed and embraced worldwide, the people at Dreamworks stuck with it. This formula is all about maintaining the high quality of animation, writing and music in the Shrek franchise. Do that and people will keep coming back.
Incidentally, the past few weeks have also provided a great example of what happens when you forget your brand.
The Sex and the City sequel did terribly.
Why? The movie forgot its Target Market and, more specifically, forgot why its Target Market supported the concept in the first place. Basically, the producers presented the audience with an unimaginative, product-placement reunion romp, forgetting that what kept the audience committed to the show for all those years was story, real conflict and, most importantly, characters that the audience could identify with. The sequel treated all of these elements as if they didn’t really matter, and the result was that the movie alienated the Target Market.
Basically, what Shrek remembered and Sex and the City 2 forgot was that your Target Market is always composed of real people who make real decisions about how they are going to spend their real money. “Build it and they will come” doesn’t work. Building something that your Target Market really wants to come to does.
Loser
Barack Obama’s brand is melting down.
About a year ago, I drew comparisons between President Obama’s micro-managing, over-thinking ways and Jimmy Carter’s similar tendencies
—tendencies that limited the man from Georgia to a one-term presidency.
President Obama still has those Carter-like traits, but there’s something even worse threatening his brand.
The President is not behaving like an executive. Executives make hard decisions that are bound to make some people angry but are necessary to get things done.
But President Obama is no executive; he is an academic and a legislator. He has had no executive experience other than as president. (What a place to start!) This means that his tendency is to build consensus and go slowly. This doesn’t work well in disasters such as the BP spill.
As a result of this lack of experience, Obama has merely reacted (i.e., the moratorium on off-shore drilling). As opposed to simply acting like an executive (i.e., we’re bringing in the Navy, special task forces, whatever it takes to get this thing capped immediately).
The public can rightly demand why there weren’t a series of possible solutions lined up, so that we didn’t have to wait weeks after one possible solution failed before giving the next bright idea a shot. A true executive would have demanded this kind of approach and, in fact, only the President had the power to get something like this done in the BP case.
Executives provide an emotional focal point in both good times and bad. This is never more true than it is for an American president. But we haven’t had a single moment from Obama when we could say the president really “got” the situation and expressed what we were collectively feeling, as a nation. Bush flubbed this in Katrina with the unfortunately famous photo of him looking out the window of Air Force One at the disaster below when flying back (non-stop) from Denver to D.C. Obama has flubbed it even worse because even his failures haven’t been memorable. He’s like the great disappearing executive.
In other words, he’s beginning to run the risk of not making any impression at all on the public imagination. Even when he gets upset, we only hear about it second hand (i.e., “cap the damn thing”). Can you imagine Reagan handling this? Absolutely. He would have been down on the shores of the gulf, surveying the endangered coast with a tear in his eye, and people would have believed it because everyone would have sensed that this was both personal and national.
Executives who don’t take risks not only aren’t doing their jobs, but their brands are at risk of being overlooked. Even Carter (a former governor) took genuine risks.
For President Obama to avoid having the the “no-risk Obama” moniker stick, he will have to show —and show very soon— that he is willing to take charge when it counts.
And, remember, things are always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY -
Executive brands must take risks.
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