Marketing professionals have known for years the political arena has become the epicenter of the latest and greatest tools and tactics that drive business. Never before has it been as evident as it was in President Obama’s State of the Union address.
Marketing is used to identify the customer, to satisfy the customer and to keep the customer. In politics, of course, the customer is the voter, so Obama and his advisers approached last week’s nationally televised speech as an opportunity to deliver important messages to voters who ultimately will decide if he remains in office come 2012.
The most striking feature of this speech compared to previous ones was the marketing efforts by almost every politician in the chamber.
Consider:
The color purple
President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden sported purple ties to symbolize commitment to bipartisanship. The State of the Union wardrobe choices are often shaded by party colors — Democrats wear blue, Republicans wear red. Purple, of course, results from mixing red and blue.
Ribbons
All members of Congress wore black-and-white ribbons to honor the 19 victims of the horrific Arizona tragedy in which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head.
Special seating
New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, the poster person of East Coast liberalism, and Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, a symbol of conservative intransigence, sat together during the speech to signify their support for the softening of hurtful political discourse. Dozens of other legislators joined this effort. (Naturally, many of the legislators announced their intent to join the “civility” movement days before the speech to maximize media coverage.)
While marketing gimmicks were in full bloom, Obama crafted a speech chock full of strategic messaging tied to the administration’s agenda for 2011. Using a tagline similar to those used in corporate marketing, Obama coined the phrase “Win the future” and used it 11 times in some variation in his 62-minute address.
His chief message was powerful: Competing in the new world using old American ideals to outperform the rest of the world in education, infrastructure and investment. The president said, “We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.”
He had other well-conceived phrases (“We do big things,” “Sputnik moment,” new tone”) to bolster the main messages, just like Fortune 1,000 businesses do when marketing products and services.
For local businesses, there was a lot to learn from President Obama’s address:
Develop strategic messaging that defines your product or service.
- Identify a vehicle that effectively reaches your customer.
- Trumpet your message with great frequency.
- Deploy ancillary marketing activities to dramatize the campaign.
As we know, Obama’s extraordinary use of social media and marketing in the 2008 campaign played a significant role in his victory. His team’s marketing work continues to be stellar. Josh Sommers is president and CEO of Focus Media, a leading Hudson Valley advertising and public relations agency. He can be reached at josh@advertisingandpr.com or 294-3342, ext. 303. Read his blog at www.advertisingandpr.com. His column appears Fridays.
