How Identifying Brand Essence and Creating a Brand Story Can Strengthen Your Brand: Lessons from the US Presidential Campaign

September 8, 2008 by anne

If you’ve been keeping up with news coverage of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign you’ve likely heard the words ‘maverick,’ and ‘change’ being used to describe the respective candidates.

The McCain and Obama campaigns know that the cacophony of assertions and rebuttals, facts and misinformation, can make it difficult to get their message heard. So they boiled down all the positive points about their candidates into the one word or phrase (i.e. brand essence) they believe represents their candidate’s brand and most resonates with American voters.

The Obama campaign promotes change as the essence of the Obama brand, while the McCain campaign asserts McCain’s essence is about independent thought and action, i.e., being a maverick. To prove that the McCain brand is truly maverick or that the Obama brand really can bring about change, each campaign created a narrative, a brand story, told through videos and speeches, to prove the essence has been present throughout their candidate’s life. If the brand story is effective in persuading the target audience to believe the brand essence is authentic and truthful, they are likely to trust that the brand will deliver on its promises, a critical step in getting voters to ‘buy into’ the candidate’s brand.

The brand stories also seek to build an emotional connection with voters by sharing personal, even painful details of the candidate’s lives, e.g. Obama’s desire to excel despite being born to a single mother and his concern for less fortunate people, by showing that he earned a law degree at Harvard and then turned down prestigious job offers to advocate for the impoverished. McCain’s brand story illustrates his courage amid the torture and despair of a North Vietnamese POW camp, and his reputation for bipartisanship.

McCain’s and Obama’s brand stories provide great examples of how to create effective narratives for your brand. First, identify the essence of your brand by examining the themes and the core values that are present from the beginning of the brand, throughout communications, as well as the vision of the brand’s founders. Make sure to confirm that your view of the essence is consistent with your target audience’s view of the essence, and that the particular essence is important, as well as emotionally resonant, to them. Build your brand story on the points that prove the authenticity of your brand’s essence, and remember that consistency and clarity are key to making your story compelling and convincing.

See also:
Brand Essence
brand – what is it?
positioning statement

Images: barackobama.com,  johnmccain.com

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