Five in the Morning After, 110508

It’s over. And I’ll bet a lot of folks aren’t getting up anywhere close to 5 in the morning!

Truth be told, I wasn’t up then either. Closer to 6 am. But here are your 5 fresh posts to start the day…

MarketingShift brings us two interesting lessons. British Airways finds out about the power of social networking (and not in a good way). And, by seeking to “do good” with free election day giveaways, did some companies “do wrong”? Didn’t see this one coming…(I did get a free cup of Starbucks yesterday…does that make me and a few million others accessories to a felony?)

Rohit Bhargava gives us a nice visual on how one Obama branding strategy was quite effective. I agree with him, though I am usually more of a branding/logo “purist” – what do you think?

Rick Turoczy drinks some Juice. Have you tried it yet? I plan to!

Seth Godin summarizes some interesting marketing lessons (yes, with “tribe” angles) from the U.S. election.

The speed of Twitter. An interesting example from Mack Collier, along with a link to a good post from Mike Sansone.

PLUS: The power of a simple graphic. Really neat. From Todd And’s blog.

If I were John McCain right now…

I’d try to finish off the campaign with 4 primary words to brand the Republican ticket:

Proven, Principled, Patriotic Leadership

The McCain/Palin ticket can lay legitimate claim to all four of those words (yes, I know, many would dispute that, but bear with me…), and can project a positive reason to vote Republican. Also, every one of those words can be used to highlight Obama/Biden weaknesses by contrast.

In uncertain times, this is the type of leadership many people want. That picture ought to be positively projected, lest McCain/Palin be portrayed merely as a couple of negative snipes.

On the other hand (fair balance), I don’t think the Democratic ticket should change strategy at all. They’re tapping into voter dissatisfaction with the Change message, and if the Republican ticket cannot neutralize it and present an even more compelling vision, there’s a lot of built-in momentum there. Just muzzle Jawin’ Joe Biden and keep trying to tie McCain to the Bush administration. Very effective, at least for the Democratic base.

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P.S. – just found this article: How much did Biden get wrong (in the debate)? Wow – that’s quite a list!

Slogan-stealing

Barack Obama has built his presidential candidacy bid on the theme of “Change.” It has become a slogan, a piece of common political parlance in this season, which, from a marketing perspective, is a great accomplishment. While you’d like to have a bunch of people who can articulately explain what they’d like to see by way of “change,” their votes count just as much as those who can only say that they want something different than the status quo, without being able to explain or defend what a candidate actually stands for.

The McCain ticket understands this, and they want to steal the thunder by saying that they (the “outsiders,” the “mavericks,” the proven agents of actual change in the past) are the real candidates representing change.

And, of course, the Obama campaign is doing everything they can to tie McCain/Palin to the 8 years of the prior administration. While McCain/Palin now tries to paint Obama/Biden into the corner of representing the failed policies of a do-nothing Congress.

I think Obama will be able to maintain the veneer of being the primary change agent in this election, because he’s owned the message longer, and tapped deeply into voter dissatisfaction. However, the Republicans are skillfully chipping away at this brand image. Will Obama keep the change? It’ll be an interesting couple of months coming up, in this branding warfare about who truly represents change!