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From Hillary Clinton to Jeb Bush: The importance of personal branding to the US presidential hopefuls

By Wally Krantz, worldwide creative director

March 10, 2015 | 11 min read

Wally Krantz, worldwide creative director at Brand Union, asks if the usual rules of branding can be applied to the way the US presidential hopefuls are presenting themselves.

Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton

Yes, it’s that time again, when the candidate pageant kicks off, and we the people are left to make sense of who exactly these people are and just what it is they stand for.

By the time the primaries roll around there’ll be a dozen or so wannabe presidents vying for our attention – and eventually our votes – and playing all matter of Get to Know Me! with the voting public.

Somewhere along the way, to help us get a grip on who the contestants – sorry, the candidates – are and what they represent, the listicles will start to pop up, listicles like ‘If the Presidential candidates were breeds of dogs…’ or candy bars, or Disney characters, or NFL teams, or brands of beer, or one of the girls on ‘The Bachelor’ (please someone make this list), or kinds of cars.

Cars are very popular for these exercises, and whatever one may think of fine German engineering, don’t expect to see any BMWs or Mercedes on the lists if the candidates have anything to say about it – only Chrysler, Ford, or GM. American brands or bust, baby (just ask John Kerry, a definite Saab).

On the surface it seems kind of ridiculous, comparing people to brands, but the state of American politics and media practically insists that candidates distil themselves to just that. Presidential candidates are products, they have messages, they have websites, they tweet (sometimes poorly, like some companies), they want you to buy them, and they want ‘brand loyalty’.

And we, the voters, the consumers, want them to demonstrate the characteristics of brands we already love – we want them to be relevant and responsive, we want them to be easy to identify with, we want them to feel ‘right for me,’ we want them to grow and adapt with us.

At Brand Union, we use our Experience Framework to gain an understanding of what a brand is about and how healthy it is. The Framework focuses on four core dimensions: Impression (I like what this brand has to offer me), Interaction (This brand says what it will do), Responsiveness (This brand listens and acts upon my needs), and Resilience (I believe this brand will deliver in the future). In thinking about the upcoming presidential campaign, I wondered: how applicable is this framework to understanding the brands of the potential presidential candidates?

Can one understand candidates’ self-identification the same way one might approach understanding the branding of the F-150s or Dodge trucks or Budweiser the candidates may find themselves likened to on a listicle at Buzzfeed?

To talk this out, I turned to the closest thing I had to political expert on hand, my news junkie wife, Stephanie, and asked her about the potential candidates for 2016. I spend the bulk of my time working with companies and organizations on their brands – mostly in how they manifest from a visual standpoint: symbols, typography, photography, illustration – and I figured between the two of us, we might be able to shed some light on how relevant branding is to running a campaign and selling a candidate. It went like this:

Me: So, who’s running in 2016? I know some are in, and some are hinting at it, but who is locked down?

Her: Well, no one, officially. I mean, for the Democrats, obviously, there’s Hillary and she’s kind of the only game in town. Bernie Sanders is talking about throwing his hat in the ring. Elizabeth Warren keeps getting asked even though she’s said repeatedly that she won’t run, but lefties keep bring her name up anyway. Joe Biden wants to run – I mean, think of all the neck rubs he could give – but he won’t take on Hillary, probably. Which is kind of everyone’s thing.

Hillary Clinton

Me: Right. So is that it on that side?

Her: No, there’s also Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, and there’s Jim Webb, the former senator from Virginia… but it’s just hard to imagine either of those guys going up against Hillary. She has the money. She has the name recognition. The resume. No one wants to cross the Clintons. She already is a huge brand, isn’t she? I mean, she’s sort of Coca-Cola, right? How do you take on Coca-Cola?

Me: Right. Well, a lot try, but when it comes down to it there will always be a couple of cans of Coke at a party. She’s definitely not Pepsi. Ok, what about the Republicans?

Her: Lots more action here. There’s Jeb, of course, Bush numero tres, who is raising mountains of dollars already. He’s got a huge fundraising ability and that’s intimidating to other candidates. After Jeb it’s the usual clown car of Republican buffoons. There’s Scott Walker, governor of my home state of Wisconsin. He dropped out of college and thinks it’s snobby of us to believe finishing college is a reasonable prerequisite for being president of the United States of America. He’s polling really well, but I think he’ll implode in the primaries. I don’t think he’s a very complex thinker. He said something at C-PAC about how he has the strength to take on Isis because he took on the public sector unions and the pro-union protesters in Wisconsin. A little dodgy to compare teacher’s unions to a terrorist death cult, no?

Jeb Bush

Me: He’s just not into school I guess. Ok, who else?

Her: There’s Chris Christie, but I don’t think that’s happening. He’s not going to play well in middle America. People in New Jersey like him. They like his bravado, his tough talk - but I don’t know if that that plays well in Nebraska. Then you’ve got Rand Paul – he’s not in the fuckwit category. He’s sort of his own thing – his own crazy thing. And Ted Cruz too, he’s worse, and he definitely wants to run. After that it’s After that it’s Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee. Rick Perry. Marco Rubio. Rick Santorum. That crew.

Me: Ok. So we’ve got the players lined up. I’m looking into how people help to identify candidate with brands – and looking at it through the framework that we look at brands at work. Let’s start with Interaction – this brand says what it will do. Some attributes that we further measure this are consistency, access, and delivery.

Her: Doesn’t apply.

Me: Wait, what? That’s not true.

Her: I know it’s a cynical thing to say, but this early, they all just speak in sound bites. I’m talking mostly the Republicans here. They’re stoking their base. They’re hitting hot button issues, but they’re not spelling out what they’re going to do. Scott Walker’s way to fight Isis is to 'Demonstrate Stength'. They say things like that that have no meaning. They’re not required to have real plans right now so it’s difficult to evaluate them in that way.

Me: Just the Republicans? Democrats don’t do it?

Her: Oh no, Democrats totally do it, but it’s just so different for them this year because of the Hillary situation. She isn’t talking to anybody, so neither is anyone else. The Democratic pre-primary isn’t really happening, you don’t have that feeling that people are trying to get themselves out there. So in terms of the Interaction thing, the brand will do what it says it will do – right now, they don’t have to say they will do anything. Right now they’re just trying to give you a sense of what they believe in.

Me: Their Impression: relevance, differentiation, truthfulness?

Her: Yes.

Me: Well that’s great, because that’s the next facet of a brand experience I wanted to ask about: Impression, or 'I like what this brand has to offer me.'

Her: Sure. That’s what’s happening now. It’s mostly about giving people a feeling, right? People liking what’s being projected. Without digging too deep. Later comes the other one, the –

Me: Interaction.

Her: Right, what they say they’ll do. In a sense, the campaign is just a slow roll out – start with the image, then present a little more substance, then get specific. Once the primaries are really in swing, they’ll be expected to have more detailed policy proposals on all kinds of issues – foreign policy, economic policy, ‘entitlement’ reform – whatever, all of it. All their plans will be on their websites. And no one will read them. Except the wonks. So maybe it’s still only Impression that matters most.

But when they get more specific, that’s how they get weeded out a bit. Last time around Rick Perry said he’d eliminate three federal government agencies and then couldn’t remember the third one. A voter doesn’t have to know a lot of policy details to know that’s bad moment for a brand – unless the brand is stupid. This time around though he has glasses, and obviously that smartens up a brand. So, damage control.

Me: What about Responsiveness - adaptability, approachability, personalization – 'this brand listens and acts upon my needs'? Is that what they’re focusing on now?

Her: Well it’s interesting here to ask WHO are they responsive to? The Republicans have a problem in the primaries of catering to the far right because that’s who votes in the primaries. So they have to show a level of responsiveness to the dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, like the people at CPAC. But it’s a problem for them later in the general elections. The Democrats don’t have this problem as much since there isn’t a powerful constituency that is so way far left, though Dems are definitely more progressive sounding in the primaries, I think.

But apart from that, you can’t think of the whole responsive thing and not think about the money part. Who are they really responsive to? Approachable to whom? And whose needs will they act on? It’s hard not to feel like on both sides they’re most likely to be responsive to the people who fund their campaigns as opposed to the public at large, right?

Me: That’s really it, isn’t it? The who. For all us voters, it’s really about how their platforms speak to us. And by 'us' – in most cases, hopefully – it’s not just the individual, but it’s the community, the country. Maybe it would be good to apply the Experience Framework to the candidates, but replace 'me' and 'my' with 'us' and 'our':

I like what this candidate has to offer us.

This candidate says what he/she will do.

This candidate listens and acts upon our needs.

I believe this candidate will deliver in the future.

Wouldn’t that be a nice thing?

Her: Yes. Yes it would.

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