Branding
Posted at 11:24am on Feb. 28, 2008 The Top Ten Reasons Republicans Shouldn’t Fear Barack Obama in November
The Big Rock Candy Mountain Candidate Has the Odds Against Him
By Ben Domenech
Barring a shocking turn of events, Barack Obama will effectively seal the nomination of the Democratic Party on March 4th. While Hillary Clinton may still pull off victories in Ohio and Texas, she would have to win by large margins to have a realistic path to victory – which seems unlikely given the increasingly desperate nature of her on-trail performance and a growing impression that her moment of opportunity has passed, if it ever existed.
Republicans are now confronted with a Democratic candidate who, as Fred Barnes has pointed out, is a candidate of a consensus party for the first time in more than a generation. With a delicate coalition that must come together around the controversial John McCain in order to win, the odds are strongly against the GOP in November.
But should they be?
As we all know by now, Obama comes equipped with many innate gifts that make him the most appealing and pop culturally significant Democratic candidate since John F. Kennedy. As recently as six months ago, I believed it was impossible for anyone other than McCain to have any hope of beating the young Illinois Senator. Yet the primary results led me to reevaluate my opinion, and I now believe that Obama presents not just an inherently flawed candidacy, but a kamikaze leftist candidate, whose out-of-step views will not last the duration of a general election without full exposure, and whose mawkish storytelling can't carry him to the White House without some serious good fortune.
Read on, then, for the top ten reasons Republicans should not be afraid of Obama in a general election:
Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Barack Obama is like Jesus but cooler | Branding | John McCain | Obamafiles — Comments (119)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 2:01pm on Feb. 20, 2008 The Big Rock Candy Mountain Candidate
The HopeChangeObama Brand Hits a Snag
By Ben Domenech
For years, I’ve had conversations with friends in politics that all conclude with something like this: “We’re never going to fix the Republican brand until we get our leadership to start recognizing that what a brand is, and that candidates need to sell themselves not by looking at other candidates, but by looking at Nike.”
Yesterday, Barack Obama’s audacious brand continues to triumph. Marketed with dazzling skill to the high end consumer and the conformist college-age Millennial, it enables Obama to make a much broader appeal as a unifying force, in spite of his narrow policy views. He’s the iPhone of politics, sleek, sexy, and pop culture, and even as only 2.5 percent of the market, last year, everyone – even the nonpolitical – know the brand instantly. As Patrick Ruffini noted in his own analysis of Obama: The Brand – “The end result is that great brands are fungible. They can be all things to all people. The branding approach liberates Obama to be the candidate of the MoveOn wing and of national unity. That’s not a criticism. It is a compliment.”
Last night, though, we also started to see a few chinks in this HopeChangeObama brand. See, while the benefits of marketing a candidate like anything in a box are enormous, it’s a dangerous game to play.
Read on
Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama is like Jesus but cooler | Branding | Millennials | Obamafiles — Comments (50)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:28am on Dec. 14, 2007 Talk about BRANDING... the Dems keep doing all the work themselves
By RightMichigan.com
Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.
A political party or a candidate can spend an entire election cycle trying to brand the opposition on an issue. One way or another, whatever issue it might be it's difficult work. There are campaigns that never pull it off and watch their opponents slip by with a Teflon coating. Others are more successful. But nothing in this business has ever been as effective as sitting back and letting the opposition brand themselves.
Posted in Barak Obama | Branding | Breaking News | Carl Levin | Debbie Stabenow | Hillary Clinton | John Edwards | Michigan | POTUS — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »
