Prose and Presidential Politics

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marketing news | October 31, 2012

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Prose and Presidential

Politics Political campaigning is an exercise in elocution, and presidential candidates (and their handlers) have to be savvy marcom strategists to craft messaging that appeals to audiences big and small. Marketing News takes a look at how Obama and Romney stack up.

By Christine Birkner | Staff Writer

 cbirkner@ama.org

“A

re you better off than you were four years ago?” “Read my lips: No new taxes.” “Yes, we can.” While politicians rely heavily on marketing strategies and tactics, from researching and segmenting voter bases, to crafting promotional strategies that accurately and convincingly convey the candidate’s “brand attributes,” messaging is at the heart of every political campaign, of course. And when it’s used effectively, it not only embeds itself in voters’ memories; it wins elections.

The marcom end of things is on full display this election year, as both U.S. presidential candidates attempt to tap voters’ emotions and intellect, and battle to overcome their preconceived notions. Like the cover lines on a package or the content on a company website, the words and phrases, colloquialisms and collegial comments included in everything from campaign speeches to friendly chatter help form the candidate’s brand identity and make or break his chances of winning.

But the real winning strategy in political messaging balances mass and micro, building stump speeches and story lines that both play well to audiences of thousands and ring true in town hall meetings. The devil is in the details—or in the lack thereof—when deciding what to say, and when to localize it.

Attracting Attention at the Point of Purchase Both President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney have been typecast in the 2012 U.S. presidential election season. Obama, who campaigned on a platform of hope and change

during his successful run for president in 2008, now faces opponents who say that he hasn’t changed much for the better and that his policies haven’t sufficiently lifted the country out of its economic doldrums. Romney is known as the millionaire businessman who honed his skills at private equity firm Bain Capital, a background that his opponents say puts him out of touch with the “99%.”

Based on recent polls, most Americans have already made up their minds about which candidate they’ll support next month. A September Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed Obama leading Romney among likely voters, 50% to 45%. (The Associated Press and GfK predict an even closer race, with their late-August poll showing 47% of registered voters in support of Obama and 46% backing Romney.)

Romney leads Obama by three percentage points with voters who would consider themselves to be highly interested in the race, but just 36% of those polled said that Romney is more prepared to lead the United States for the next four years, while nearly 50% said that Obama is better prepared, the Journal reported.

Political campaigns resemble customer acquisition campaigns in that messaging is intended not to shore up the candidate’s standing among loyalists, but to win over new supporters. But more often than not, undecided voters are dispassionate buyers, experts say. “Ninety percent of people have made up their mind and the 10% of people who haven’t made up their mind are the people who spend the least amount of time thinking about politics. You’ve got to keep your message simple,” says Craig Smith, principal at Washington-based political consulting firm Penn Schoen Berland, who was White House political director for President Bill Clinton.

And as any CPG marketer would tell you, packaging matters, says Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of

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“Nobody thinks that because you use the word ‘prairie fire’ or ‘cowpie’ that you’re any more of an Iowan than any Harvard graduate would be, but it’s an effort, and it’s a lot better than if they went [to Iowa] in a three-piece suit with cufflinks and talked about theories of economics and government subsidies. That would be bad and everybody recognizes that.”

Lynn Vavreck University of California, Los Angeles

global branding firm Landor Associates. “Voters are looking at these candidates and making a lot of judgments by the ‘cover,’ which is how they dress, the way they talk, how they talk and what they say, of course.

Often, when the issues are so complicated that people can’t figure out the difference between one product or another, they tend to migrate to a simpler issue that helps them sort out the best choice.”

Talking the Talk Politicians do a lot of talking, but there’s a reason that they don’t dwell in the details of their platforms and proposed policies: They don’t want to confuse voters with too much information. Shoppers in most categories can be easily overwhelmed by too many choices and voters are no different, Adamson says. “People don’t want to understand tax codes and budget issues or read 500 pages. They want to make a decision like they’re buying a product. You take it off the shelf and it feels right. They need to feel good telling their neighbors who they voted for and why.”

As with any great brand, the first messaging tool that political marketers use to try to hook supporters is the slogan. “Elections are about choices and every successful campaign tries to shape the question that voters ask themselves in a way that they’re the answer,” Smith says. “The Romney slogan, ‘Believe in America,’ answers the question, ‘If you want somebody who believes in America, I’m the only choice.’ [Obama’s] ‘Forward.’ increases negative inference that the other guys will take you back. Is it as inspirational as [Obama’s 2008 campaign themes of] hope and change? No, but it does lay out a contrast: ‘I’ll take you forward; he’ll take you back.’ If Obama had to sum up this election, that’s what he’d say.”

Both candidates have received some flak for their chosen slogans and neither is likely to register in voters’ minds long-term, as have the slogans and taglines of CPG heavyweights, says Dan Schnur,

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director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California who has worked on gubernatorial and presidential campaigns, and was the national director of communications for the 2000 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain. “A campaign theme is the first step in the messaging process. It’s not going to close any deals or lock down any votes, but it’s the beginning of an effort to communicate a candidate’s priorities to the voters,” he says. “Neither one of those themes is particularly compelling, but in fairness to the campaigns, they have a much more difficult goal than most private-sector marketers.

Coca-Cola and Apple don’t need to win a 51% market share, so they can afford to target their messaging towards a very specific audience. If you’re running for the president of the United States, you’ve got to cast a wide net.”

That’s the crux of presidential candidates’ marcom conundrum: They can’t weigh down their messaging with too much detail, which could confuse or turn off potential voters, but they have to give enough detail to inspire voters to support them. It’s a mass-vs.-micro dance that requires a healthy dose of salesmanship.

On the campaign trail, both Obama and Romney use verbal cues that connect with voters on a regional, demographic or economic level. For example, in a campaign speech in Iowa in May, Romney said that a “prairie fire of debt is sweeping across our nation,” and Obama, speaking in Iowa a week later, said that Romney’s statement was a “cowpie of distortion.”

“Obama and Romney [are] trying to use words to show they understand the local audience they’re speaking to,” says Harris Diamond, CEO of New York-based PR firm Weber Shandwick, who has worked on gubernatorial and senatorial campaigns. “You want to use those words to get that message across, but there’s a line. You can go over it, and then it becomes a comedy act. The magic would be to go right up to that line.

Clinton had that magic. Ronald Reagan had that magic.”

Bill Clinton is “extremely good” at the salesman’s skills of mirroring and empathy, says John Pitney, professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif. “[He] could ingratiate himself in every audience, given his life experiences. He grew up in Arkansas, so he could appeal to the Bubbas, but he was also a Rhodes scholar, so he could appeal to the intellectuals.”

Obama, with his international upbringing, and Romney, who comes from privilege, might both have a tougher row to hoe in appealing to the common man, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t try, says Lynn Vavreck, associate professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Nobody thinks that because you use the word ‘prairie fire’ or ‘cowpie’ that you’re any more of an Iowan than any Harvard graduate would be, but it’s an effort, and it’s a lot better than if they went [to Iowa] in a three-piece suit with cufflinks and talked about

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theories of economics and government subsidies. That would be bad and everybody recognizes that. The name of the game, all the time, is, ‘I want these people to think that I’m just like them.’ There is a psychology going on here where people can make this inference about political positions.

If this person is like me, they’ll take positions that will be good for people like me.”

From Effective Frequency to Emotive Storytelling Localizing their messages and dialect helps candidates connect with voters on a more one-to-one basis. For an effective mass-marketing strategy, politicians rely on the full arsenal of marcom tools and tactics.

For example, that age-old advertising maxim that dictates that a message must be repeated a number of times before it registers in consumers’ minds is ever-present in politics. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1996, Bill Clinton repeated the phrase “bridge to the future” 26 times, according to Smith. “Scientists say that someone has to hear something seven times to get it into their long-term memory. If you asked people a week later what the speech was about at the convention, they’d say it was about a bridge to the future. It takes a long time for voters to get this.”

In this election cycle, Obama often peppers his speeches with the word “together” and Romney repeats financially focused phrases such as “success” and “job creators,” emphasizing his work at Bain Capital as a source for job creation. Repetition boosts emotional impact and motivates voters to act, says Ken Carbone, co-founder and chief creative director of the Carbone Smolan Agency, a New York-based design and branding firm, who designed the logo for the White House Millennium Council and political paraphernalia for Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT).

“They’re relentless in amplification of [their message] in repetition, in ways that always reflect back on the customer’s mind in terms of making the connections that they need them to make.”

Candidates also often employ illustrative phrases, such as Romney’s use of the now-prevalent term “fiscal cliff,” Carbone says. “[With] ‘fiscal cliff,’ you can picture your whole life savings tumbling into the abyss.”

Clinton’s 1996 inaugural address theme of building a bridge to the 21st century and Ronald Reagan’s 1984 “morning in America” re-election theme also engaged voters by making the messaging more sensory, Schnur says.

“You can picture a bridge being built or the sun coming up”—along the lines of successful brand jingles or taglines that employ pictorial phrasing to associate the brand with a regular occurrence in consumers’ lives.

Emotional appeals also play heavily in presidential politics, but sometimes to the detriment of intellectual ones. “Once you get past the pseudo-clever speechwriter gimmicks, if candidates are actually talking about issues that are important to their audiences, that’s a good thing. If you go to Iowa and discuss issues of concern in the agricultural economy, global trade in farm products, soil conservation, that’s great.

But a lot of consultants insist on emphasizing the glitz and gimmicks instead of the actual issues,” Pitney says.

As with any good marcom strategy, a presidential messaging campaign is all about balance. Candidates must include the right mix of micro-targeted details and messages designed to appeal to the mass electorate, using traditional sales and marcom techniques such as mirroring and repetition to inspire voters and convince them that they made the right choice.

“What candidates are trying to do is what corporations are trying to do, which is associate themselves with a branded image that has a value to the person who’s going to vote, the same as a corporation wants a brand to have a value to the person who’s going to purchase something,” Diamond says. “A true brand is something you live … and that’s what the voters will be looking at: which of these candidates fits the image of the man they want to be president of the United States.” m

Off the Cuff: Responding to Messaging Missteps Corporate marcom strategies often include a focus on crisis communications and campaigns’ messaging strategies are no different. This election season, both campaigns have dealt with unscripted statements that have necessitated some damage control.

The most recent communication issue amongst the candidates occurred in late September, when a video of Mitt Romney speaking at a private fundraiser in Florida was released through independent news organization Mother Jones’ website. The clips show Romney telling the audience that 47% of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes and see themselves as victims, and that he “doesn’t worry about those people.” After the video was released, Romney called a press conference and said that the comments “weren’t elegantly stated.”

Following the video’s release, Romney’s standing in many public opinion polls suffered. A September Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed Romney trailing President Barack Obama among likely voters, 50% to 45%. On Sept.

24, a week after the video was made public, the Romney campaign announced that it was changing its messaging strategy to focus on how four more years with Obama would differ from four years with Romney at the helm. The strategy includes an increased focus on Chinese trade policy, accusing Obama of being too lenient on China, a message designed to appeal to voters in swing states such as manufacturing-oriented Ohio, according to a report from political news organization The Hill.

Romney’s statements captured in the video were targeted at the candidate’s core voter base and likely alienated potential supporters, says Harris Diamond, CEO of New York-based PR firm Weber Shandwick. “The Romney video … plays into the story of the Romney brand. This seems to be a brand he’s comfortable with because he seems to be doubling down on those comments. In the crisis world, that’s not necessarily the smartest move. He needs to be attracting the people who haven’t bought into his brand, not those who already like it. In marketing, we have a built-in constituency group that already buys our products. The real job is to get extra buyers, or extra voters, and the Romney campaign seems to be focusing on those who have already bought his product.”

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