brand marketing blog

Renowned brand marketer Al Ries, penned an excellent article today on his blog entitled 'The Obama Marketing Lesson'.

In the post Ries postulates how Barack Obama used a superior brand positioning strategy to beat Hilary Clinton and John McCain in last years Presidential elections.

At the outset Obama was a relatively unknown black man with a bad-sounding name and much younger than his opponents. His first opponent: the best-known woman in America, connected to one of the most successful politicians in history. His second opponent: a well-known war hero with a long, distinguished record as a U.S. Senator.

It didn't matter. Barack Obama had a better marketing strategy than either of them based on the position 'Change'.

While Obama stuck with his 'change' position throughout the campaign, Clinton and McCain had several variants of campaign slogan. Their slogans were essentially ‘better' variations of Obama's, but 'different' is the only thing that works in marketing. ‘Better’ never works.

Look at what 'driving' has done for BMW. There are probably vehicles that are more fun to drive than BMW's, but it doesn't matter. BMW has pre-empted the 'driving' position in the mind.

Only a few dozen brands truly 'own' a market positioning word, but sadly most don't even use them as advertising slogans. For example, Pepsi-Cola owns 'Pepsi generation, 'but doesn't use the words as a marketing slogan.

Thirty-three years ago when the 'Ultimate driving machine' campaign started, BMW was the 11th-largest-selling European imported vehicle in the U.S. market. Today it's No 1.

Some slogans might be clever, some might be inspiring and some might be descriptive of the company's product, but unless they present a unique point of difference they are meaningless.

Al Ries goes on to highlight three key factors to successful brand positioning:

1. Simplicity

Many business owners and corporate executives consider positioning slogans such as 'change' to be too simple, typically looking for advertising concepts that are clever or something they couldn't have thought of themselves.

2. Consistency

In todays overcommunicated society, it takes endless repetition to effectively position a brand in the consumers mind. For a typical consumer brand that might mean years and years of advertising and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Companies (brands) jerk from one marketing message to another, hoping for a magic bullet that will energise their brands. That doesn't work today. The only thing that works is the BMW approach...consistency, consistency and consistency over decades.

3. Relevance.

"If you're losing the battle, shift the battlefield" is an old military axiom that applies equally as well to marketing. By his relentless focus on change, Obama shifted the political battlefield. He forced his opponents to devote much of their campaign time discussing changes they proposed for the country, and how their changes would differ from the changes that he proposed.

All the talk about 'change' distracted both Clinton and McCain from talking about their strengths i.e. their track records, experience and relationships with world leaders.

Read the full post here.