It’s been a fascinating respite from blogging, reporting and doing various commentaries… one prompted by the birth of my third child (my second daughter).
Prior to Tessa’s arrival, I was on someone’s air, website or pages about every other week or so. With the self-imposed downtime following Tessa’s birth I had the opportunity to:
➢ Act like a husband and father.
➢ Give my day job some TLC (running The M Network)
➢ Take a two-week family vacation (driving a 35 foot RV up and down the East Coast – which I will write about at a later post)
➢ Review some of my past commentaries.
In tackling the last bullet point, I discovered a rather large error in what I’ve been yapping about for the past couple years.
Ok… maybe error is a little strong --- omission is probably the best way to put it. Nevertheless, I’d like to take this opportunity to correct that omission.
You see - I’ve always approached my role in giving political commentary as being limited to the branding and marketing aspects. But in watching the events of the past few months unfold - without having the obligation to create new and pithy commentary around them - I believe I’ve hit upon something I’ve never said before.
There is no such thing as political marketing. – It’s a redundant statement. Politics IS marketing.
The idea behind marketing/branding has always been to understand the emotional connection that a target audience already has with a product, service, issue or other human being and then massage (or manipulate) that emotional connection in a specific and desired direction (try my product – vote for me).
As I watch the administration (henceforth to be known as Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show) trying to sell healthcare, automobiles and the desire to kill more Afghanis than Iraqis -- and the conservative opposition to each of these issues --- it dawned on me that I was not watching a heated political battle in which lives and ideas hang in the balance – I was watching Bud-Light vs. Miller Lite.
Our beer has fewer calories.
Well our beer has less carbs.
Their beer costs more
Well their beer comes in a can.
Such and such celebrity drinks our beer
Hot chicks dig guys who drink ours.
And while some of those statements may actually be true, none of them have anything at all to do with the customers’ best interest. It’s beer after all – and even the “drink responsibly” genre of commercials are carefully scripted to achieve the beer company’s main objective: Selling more beer – or, getting more votes – ya know – same thing.
(My sincere apologies to Adlai Stevenson).
Monday, August 24, 2009
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