I read an interesting question and answer earlier today from a relatively famous graphic designer and wanted to post it here.
Stefan Sagmeister's website has a pretty unique interface and has posted several questions that were sent to him from students. Here's the one I found intriguing:
Q:Do you think you could defeat a politic campaign trough a design campaign? Can a design campaign decide an election? Is a politic campaign a design campaign?
A: No I actually think not. Now I know that Saatchi always claimed he put Margret Thatcher into office and he is full of shit. We have the annoying habit to constantly overestimate our power.
Design and advertising has a huge impact where the consumer cannot possible see a difference between products or services (say: Vodka) but is surprisingly less powerful when the average person does see that difference (say: cars or politics).
The self-promoting Southern Baptist pastor, Rick Warren, has not only insulted gays and compared abortion to the holocaust, but especially hates people like me, who identify as Humanist and atheist.
In interviews with Newsweek and BeliefNet, Warren responds like a bigot when conversing with opposing views. Sam Harris gives thoughtful reasons, which Rick Warren blows off. He is a slippery snake.
I think a key to understanding Warren is his view of religion as marketing. In the book, "Ideas that Stick", Warren's approach is described. He tells his staff to think of a Saddleback Church person -- of a particular income and education level. His church is then tailored to market to that person.
Warren is sometimes praised for promoting environmental causes for Christians. But he appears to thoughlessly blow off other issues, like abortion and gay rights. Was it really so easy? Or did he run it past a marketing poll for which issues to modernize? Enough people hate gays that he doesn't have to love them either?
Please, Barack, ditch this guy.
LAT
When it comes to winning elections, Obama has it made. I believe he has the best marketers in the world. Not to mention he has a charm no one can ignore. You either like him or you hate it. I personally, Like Obama, he has wisdom, and maybe new to this but I think he really means what he says, even if it is written out by his writers. He seems alot more personal then most people that elected to be president, much less anything in office. But his marketing strategies are very good.
Marketing in social networks
Marketing to the youth
marketing to single mothers
Marketing to people without health care
gold and silver coins with his face on them
Posters, shirts, pins, practically anything about him you can buy.
And, I think he's got some really nifty photographers too.
Like I said, I belive he has some good marketing going on and that as well as his followers, contributers, volunteers and helpers, etc all helped him get into office.
Despite his past, his mother, his pastor, and all the negative energy abound in this election-he still made it. And I think 4 years from now, he'll make it again in the next elections.
I personally thought that if this was any kind of a just country that Obama would win by @ 15% margin.This is a clear example of the power of a good man running for president coupled with a high level of communication that reaches the public at the highest level of convenience. The ironic thing is that the republican party could not attempt to do this because it requires an honest party with an honest cadidate in order for them to willingly be exposed so openly and easily.That is why Barrack won by a 100% margin.That is why the republicans sat there on T.V. at John McCain's election watch party with egg on their face because they did their best and pulled every dirty trick that they had as usual and were still thoroughly trounced. That is why the elitists out there were in tears as they watched and realized that Obama has changed the game forever and even the highest level of government must now listen to and answer to the new era welly connected and unified mainstreet massess that are now more highly informed due to the wide spread acceptance and understanding of the internet. Well done.Man, I thought that I would never get to see this day.
As a marketer, I followed Barack Obama's campaign with particular interest. His clear, simple, compelling, and consistent "change" message broke through the political noise bombarding us the past two years. And, talk about energizing an untapped voter base! The web 2.0 tools used to create the supporter community were deployed so effectively that we've never seen such a young adult voter turnout as yesterday. We felt a part of something bigger than ourselves.
And for those who pooh poohed the message as too simplistic and without specifics and depth - I recommend you take a close look at the linkages and strategies used by this campaign to point those interested in becoming more fully informed on plan details to check out the website and listen carefully to the messages delivered during debates and even within ads. Obama's campaign continually reinforced the simple change message with follow-on detail without overloading.
Check out today's Advertising Age's article post for more reasons why Advertising Age voted Barack Obama as marketer of the year. http://adage.com/columns/article?article_id=132237
Fast Company's article on building the Obama brand is interesting, as well. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/124/the-brand-called-obama.html
I mentioned in an earlier blog that I would get to this subject -- Washington, D.C. As a 12 yearold boy, I visited our nation's capitol in the Summer of 1968. Yeah, one of the year's that will go down in American History as a time when we thought it was possible that the great experiment of a democratic state might not last. The Vietnam War had pitched the half the country against the other half. Riots erupted on college campses from coast-to-coast. The Chicago Police brutally beat Anti-War protesters on National TV. The National Gaurd was called out to help. The newspapers and magazines of the day were filled with photos of tear gas, flower power, troops with young college students, people being beaten and dragged away.
The spin from the was into the Media was atrocious -- always listing how many "enemy" dead as compared to how many US sodiers killed each day and each week. And this on the six O'clock new delivered straight to the family dinner table. Never were the numbers believable -- the US troops were always less killed sometimes by orders of magnitude, but the reality surfaced that whole battalions of troops had been killed, sometimes in single days.
It was a time that tried everyone. I really began to believe that the future of our country would not stand, if things continued like this.
And yet, in 1968...
When I visited the Senate, there were no security lines. When I visited the Washington Monument, I walked the stairs all the way to the top with a friend of mine, there was no security ensemble or Xray room to stop us. The biggest security was at the US mint! My friend, Michael, and I went to the Smithsonian, the National Archives, the Sentate, the House, the White House, the Washington and Lincoln Memorials, the Jefferson memorial, the Tresury Building -- heck, we even had lunch in the Senate Office Building cafeteria and rode on the subway to get there from the Capitol with Senator Edward Kennedy! No xray. No security details. No fear.
But in 2008...
I had told my son and his friend of my Summer in '68 and what I had done, and how much I had enjoyed the great City of Washington. How proud I was of it and what a shining example of honor and peace it was.
Everywhere we went, streets blocked off, barricades to prevent "who knows what". Xray machines, and military-like security personnel, yelling at us to stay in line and stand against the wall in order to go into the Capitol rotunda. Heck, my wife had to get her purse Xrayed just to visit the National Aquarium in the Federal Triangle. It was ridiculous, the complete overkill of security and disdain for visitors to our Nation's Capitol. We couldn't climb the stairs in the Washington Monument any more -- closed due to Security. We couldn't visit the White House (owned by the Public since the 19th Century) -- closed for Security. We managed to visit many places, but going to them was worse in most cases than boarding an airplane's security.
And some of you might think that this is necessary because of the terrorists. Is it necessary in your city? Is it necessary in your hometown? Would it make any less of a headline if terrorists blew up something in your city than Washington, D.C.? Would it kill any less people?
What I saw in Washington, D.C. this Summer was fear mongering. Out-and-out marketing to tell everyone who participates in that city that you should be afraid, all the time.
I say that this is wrong. It wasn't necessary in the bomb-throwing times of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, it's not necessary today.
Washington, D.C. needs to lead by example as an exemplary city, the quintessential American city. If the new president wants to lead, the city he lives in and governs from should lead as well.
You know, on the Federal Planning and Urban Development Building there are NO solar panels? There is no water reclamation system in place for any of the city parks or memorials? The traffic gridlock is horrendous and the subway system is fabulous! Oh, by the way, no security measures in the subway system -- oversite? No, just doesn't take as good of a picture for the media marketing.
Fix our city, Mr. President, make it a place where fear doesn't exists again. Lead by example.
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