Maybe Rush Limbaugh has been reading Chapter 7 (and the beginning of Chapter 8). I received an e-mail from a friend who forwarded Limbaugh’s daily “Show Notes” e-blast. On his show yesterday, Rush evidently shared this perspective:
“People are saying the Republican Party has ‘lost its brand.’ That’s silly talk. It’s lost its identity. The identity and brand are two different things. The Republican Party used to be real. It used to stand for things. Core principles don’t need to be marketed; they need to be articulated. The people saying that the party needs a new ‘brand’ are those who want to become a more moderate, McCain-like party.”
And it stands to reason that all those who see Obama’s success as a demonstration of the power of brand management — such as that found in Fast Company’s piece some time ago, “The Brand Called Obama” — should instead acknowledge that Obama did not market a brand so much as render authenticity, and he did so by powerfully articulating a particular set of principles. It wasn’t any marketing campaign that built his brand, but offering of himself as an authentically rendered candidate that created a movement and won the day. (That and his operational capability on the ground.) The Obama brand was the result of his success, not the reason for it. Like any brand, its value is earned, not fabricated in some branding exercise.
“Joe the plumber.” Now that’s the type of brand that flows from your typical branding exercise conducted by that giant phoniness-generating machine called Marketing. Whether in politics or in business, real demand-creation comes from real offerings, not phony pitches.
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