The Branding of Politics
Whoever doesn’t believe that marketing is playing an increasingly popular role for success hasn’t been paying attention to politics in both the US and the UK. Marketing experts aren’t surprised that Donald Trump’s brand and the Brexit campaign have achieved more success than had been thought possible.
Both the Trump and Brexit brands are like a mashup of reality tv and the home shopping channel. The core of these ‘brands’ are associated with grassroots values. People associate them with “telling it like it is” and “fixing what’s wrong”—an amazing accomplishment given the contradictions and realities reported behind the scenes.
The success of both of these political brands has been to focus on pain drivers and presenting an easy fix—regardless of the realities and hard consequences. In marketing terms, they’ve both broken down complex positions into simple and engaging campaign levers—and then repeat, repeat, repeat.
