It’s tempting to say if Trump wins today, his commercial brand may survive. But there’s a good chance he will ruin that opportunity in office, most likely over conflict-of-interest violation or IRS issues. Or his winning-at-all-costs campaign has exposed the Trump brand for what it really is, for those who care to recognise it.
Rance & Crain have an interesting piece in Ad Age today, articulating the brilliance of Trump’s political brand marketing, and the shortcomings of Hillary Clinton’s. As they put it, it’s brilliant because the race is close and Trump is clearly the inferior presidential product (to the majority of Americans). I would argue this is only because political campaigns aren’t burdened with the same standard of honesty that commercial campaigns are.
Call me naive, but this isn’t what brand marketing is supposed to do – help an inferior brand win. Just like the popular “any PR is good PR” philosophy is all wrong, unless your goal is to be a very niche (minority) brand. It may work in the parallel universe of politics, but we’re all a little more practical when it comes to our business or our personal safety and comfort.
Mr Philp is right, because for some reason, politics is different.
The big difference between marketing a political candidate and marketing toothpaste is that the candidate only needs to win once. The toothpaste needs to win every time it’s on a shopping list. I think that’s why so much political marketing is repugnant… it never has to answer for the damage it does. It sounds like you’ll be as glad this is over as I will be.
Thanks for reading, Robert.
Tuesday, November 08 @ 3:58 pm
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Can Brand Trump ever recover from this campaign? (Column)
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It’s tempting to say if Trump wins today, his commercial brand may survive. But there’s a good chance he will ruin that opportunity in office, most likely over conflict-of-interest violation or IRS issues. Or his winning-at-all-costs campaign has exposed the Trump brand for what it really is, for those who care to recognise it.
Rance & Crain have an interesting piece in Ad Age today, articulating the brilliance of Trump’s political brand marketing, and the shortcomings of Hillary Clinton’s. As they put it, it’s brilliant because the race is close and Trump is clearly the inferior presidential product (to the majority of Americans). I would argue this is only because political campaigns aren’t burdened with the same standard of honesty that commercial campaigns are.
Call me naive, but this isn’t what brand marketing is supposed to do – help an inferior brand win. Just like the popular “any PR is good PR” philosophy is all wrong, unless your goal is to be a very niche (minority) brand. It may work in the parallel universe of politics, but we’re all a little more practical when it comes to our business or our personal safety and comfort.
Mr Philp is right, because for some reason, politics is different.
Tuesday, November 08 @ 10:36 am |
The big difference between marketing a political candidate and marketing toothpaste is that the candidate only needs to win once. The toothpaste needs to win every time it’s on a shopping list. I think that’s why so much political marketing is repugnant… it never has to answer for the damage it does. It sounds like you’ll be as glad this is over as I will be.
Thanks for reading, Robert.
Tuesday, November 08 @ 3:58 pm