Out of the Box

Getting on the Presidential Radar Screen

By Menachem Lubinsky on April 27 2007

In case you haven’t noticed, the 2008 presidential election campaign is well under way, even as voters will not be going to the polls for another 18 months. There are already frontrunners and underdogs. Staggering sums of money have been raised in what will certainly be the most costly campaign in history.

At this point, all of the candidates are looking for an “edge”. This edge can be name recognition, fundraising ability, historical notoriety or even being a family person. Their main objective is to prove that they are a viable candidate and that they can win. At this juncture, it’s all marketing.

Each of the candidates are probably already retaining marketing consultants who are lining up for their prize. Obviously those with the best track record will command the largest fees. The consultants may in turn be responsible for hiring the “team” that will consist of publicists, creative talent and media people.

The marketing team will initially develop a strategy to position their candidate properly in the frey. They will evaluate the candidate’s resume and extract the strongest points about their background. For Democratic Presidential hopeful Illinois Sen. Barack Obama it might be his humble roots and being a rising star, including his appearance at the last Democratic National Convention and the publication of his book. For New York Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton it is probably experience, for former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, it’s the “nation’s mayor” (a term coined after 9/11) and so forth.

The background will naturally be combined with policy issues on current items on the national agenda (i.e. Iraq, national health care, terrorism etc.) Some marketing experts will be constantly testing the waters with different messages in local markets to see if they would work nationally. They might try specific slogans in given appearances. In the high stake presidential race, they will closely monitor polls and attempt to determine strengths and weaknesses.

As the campaign unfolds, marketing people will take even more control. They will carefully orchestrate appearances, look for friendly media, and develop the messages that will hopefully carry the candidate to the next level. The media strategist will become a key player as he directs the campaign in the media. This will include selecting the creative and crafting a media plan that will give their candidate the biggest reach.

While the marketing team is planning the run for the White House, they are also mentally prepared to face the potholes that invariably come up. Their hope is that the bumps in the road will be minor. Most dreaded is a discovery about some aspect of the candidate’s background that can potentially derail a campaign. PR strategists typically pour over background material to make sure that they are not surprised.

Marketing people are very resentful if not told the complete truth by their clients. Some experts recount how they probed their candidates about background even before they sign up for the job. I have occasionally been involved in marketing campaigns where I discovered facts about a product or organization that were never told to me. I probably could have saved the client lots of grief and money, if only I knew the whole truth up front.

The candidates will also keep their marketing people on a short leash. They will expect to see results, namely that they are moving up in the polls. If they are in fact going in reverse, the marketing team will almost certainly become the scapegoats. It is common to see a mid-course change in the hope that a fresh approach could reverse the slide.

I find this entire experience to be fascinating. People who desire to be president will not only have to endure a long and arduous journey to one of the most coveted position in the world, they will in some cases be marketed like soap. Through sound bites and carefully chosen appearances, the marketers seek to build up a national profile for their candidate. The challenge is to make their candidate “look presidential” even if the chances for winning are small. Looking presidential, they reason, can help convince Americans that they should vote for the person who ultimately looks like they would best govern and represent the United States of America.

Candidates themselves are like other marketing clients in that some are more involved in their own marketing than others. Having worked on a few campaigns, I used to be equally surprised by candidates who edited their own ads as those who had absolutely no clue about what the commercials say about them.

For the moment, many of the candidates are opting for the safe road. Instead of making major policy pronouncements, they simply attack the president on Iraq. They know very well that most Americans are in favor of a withdrawal and that the media and the majority of the Congress are with them. So why not?

As the campaign proceeds, the debate on Iraq may shift to who has the best plan for withdrawal that will also guarantee that Iraq stays democratic. That is when the race will really get interesting and the savvy marketing person will earn their keep.

Out of the Box is a collection of strategic marketing articles that Lubicom has published on various topics, trends and ideas in the marketing world. The articles have been published in the Hamodia weekly newspaper circulated on three continents to a readership of well over 100,000.

The name, "Out of the Box" is a term used frequently in business nowadays to describe creative thinking that is not the norm. It is meant to help a business pull away from the pack or separate oneself from the competition. It is to some extent fraught with risk, simply because it is not the run of the mill thinking, but it is at the same time the key to reaching the next opportunity.