Obama the Brand

A brand analysis of our last presidential contest

Brand Obama is “in”. To believe the pundits the brand of Barack Obama is the new Gillette or Tide or Google of electoral politics. As is often the case, the meaning of the term “brand” has not been clearly defined. In many cases, it seems to be used with a mildly pejorative inference. Another way to say “lack of substance” or “beginner's luck.”

But to us, in the branding business, a brand has no pejorative implications. To the contrary: A brand is an expectation of predictable future behavior based on past behavior. Creating that expectation is difficult and time consuming. It is also very rewarding because predictability usually engenders understanding, and understanding is the foundation for trust. In business, trust means higher profits.

In the case of Mr. Obama, however, there is little past behavior on which one can base expectations of predictability. The man was basically unknown outside Chicago's south side until a speech he gave at the Democratic Convention four years ago. And then he became better known for his eloquence than for his deeds. So our question is: Did he really build a brand-an expectation of future behavior-- and if so, what are those expectations and how strong is that brand really?

To answer the questions, we used one of our tools of brand analysis, the HBCQ , a questionnaire of over 90 questions, to measure the components of a brand's “character.” Two identical questionnaires were posted online, one for Obama, the other for McCain. Respondents were randomly assigned to one survey. Field ran from January 13 to February 5, 2009.

Then we also wanted to better understand if voters made their choice on the basis of the brand or if they also were influenced by politics in general. So, in addition to the HBCQ questions, we presented nine political statements and asked respondents to attribute them to one politician or the other or to both if both had taken the same position.

Let's get that last issue out of the way first: Respondents were able to correctly identify the correct origin of the nine position statements only 56% of the time. Both the Obama and the McCain voters were equally confused about who had said what… We can thus assume that the candidate's political positions, at least those we selected for our quiz, had little influence over the selection of a candidate.

That leaves the brands as a reason for choice.

We had expected that we'd find the Obama brand clearly stronger than McCain's in the sense that there would be a strong agreement among the respondents as to what constitutes Obama's brand character, and that, in comparison, the McCain brand would be less well defined.

That was not the case. Both candidates showed strong, well-defined but different character profiles.

The strongest characteristics of Brand Obama relative to its competitor are its high “cooperativeness” and high “self-transcendence”. The first measures how well Brand Obama is expected to work with its environment. He is expected to reach across the aisle. If for any reason he were to stop reaching, the perception of his character would be changed, which might be very unsettling to his voters.

The high self-transcendence of Brand Obama indicates that he is seen as willing and able to overlook his own interests in the pursuit of the greater good. This could be an indication that respondents view Obama's goals positively and expect him to pursue them even at a personal cost (I can't help but think of Health Care reform...).

Both Brand Obama and Brand McCain are very self-directed. The surprise here is not McCain's score, as he has cultivated his Maverick image for many years. We find it surprising that Obama seems even more his ”own man”. Neither candidate was perceived as a man of his own party. After many years of partisan politics, it is reassuring that the political system did give us a choice of two independent thinking leaders.

We should note Brand McCain's marginally higher score in harm avoidance (a little more cautious), and the fact that neither brand is in the pursuit of novelty for novelty's sake. Both are serious, “tried and true” solutions brands.

The same HBCQ measures computed only among those who voted for the candidate confirms the differences in brand profiles and seems to point to the importance of those differences in explaining the selection of their candidate.

Obama voters gave the Obama Brand even higher scores of cooperativeness, self-transcendence, and self-directedness, whereas McCain voters rated the McCain Brand highly on its more cautious approach.

This initial analysis of the two political brands of the moment offers a few surprises.

Having a strong brand can help, but it also can hurt: A brand is a double-edged sword because it contains the inherent commitment to continuing the behavior on which it is based in the first place. When a brand competes on the supermarket shelves, the brand commitment can get in the way of profit margins, line extensions and alliances. Political brands are, we are sure, equally attractive and burdensome. We'll find out.

Jacques Chevron

Jacques Chevron is a Chicago-based consultant in innovation and brand strategy. He can be reached at Jacques at jpgroupusa.com

Acknowledgements: I wish to thank Phil Glowatz, partner at JP Group, for helping to fund the online questionnaire and for his tireless editing of my ever-imperfect prose. I also want to thank Ilan Geva, who teaches “Brand” at De Paul University, for helping to find participants for the survey.

© 2009 Jacques Chevron