Branding the Candidate

Book excerpt: American voters will be empowered by this revealing, behind-the-scene exposé of the marketing strategies and tactics political candidates use to win their hearts, minds, donations, and votes. Branding the Candidate: Marketing Strategies to Win Your Vote was written to empower voters to become sharper, more informed political consumers. It does that by taking a close look at political marketing strategies, especially those used by the Obama presidential campaign, which took marketing to a new level of sophistication. Specifically, the book discusses the creation of the Obama brand; how the Obama campaign used database-driven, political microtargeting and high-tech digital media to reach various market segments; and the campaign's development and implementation of new political fundraising techniques. The book also discusses how a candidate who is created as a "brand" must cope with the challenges of "brand management" once in power. Finally, the authors counsel voters on how to arm themselves against the branding and marketing techniques that will be employed by candidates in the 2012 election, and they reflect on what the widespread extension of these techniques to the political process means for American democracy.