Choosy voters choose to go beyond branding

Will "branditics" continue to rule American politics? After the Iowa caucuses, it's not clear. But it's worth considering now, during the primary election push, while we have the chance to turn the tables.

By branditics I mean the fusion of "branding" and politics that characterizes not only the way candidates and consultants pitch campaigns to the public, but also the way many of us now see public life.

Branditics is about taking a complex proposition -- such as "I'm the best choice to be your next president" -- and reducing it to something so simple it'd make Cap'n Crunch blush.

Branditics is about high-stakes, short-term gains, and, in most cases, long-term trouble. Brands work better in grocery stores than in the White House.

Before getting to the trouble, let's look at the term. Branding is the process of taking something on a shelf or in an office park and transforming it into an emotional experience that pulls us in, makes us believe, inspires us to buy. A strong brand captures, compresses and conveys an organization's values, the promise of its products and the guarantee of a consistent customer experience. Apple is a great tech brand, Nordstrom's a great service brand, Coca-Cola a great beverage brand.

But are Mitt Romney and Barack Obama really cans of Coke? Can their potential as presidents be summed up in the campaign equivalents of a well-designed swoosh and carefully chosen color palette?

No. Yet the way candidates talk about themselves, the way much of the media report on them and the way many of us think about them indicate we're content with oversimplification -- branditics.

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Rudy Giuliani is the security candidate, Hillary Clinton the competency candidate, Mike Huckabee the candidate of faith, Obama the candidate of hope. Such easy-to-grasp, easy-to-like images pull people into the voting booth and, in that way, promote democracy.

The problems come when "the brand" moves into power and confronts challenges much tougher than marketing.

George W. Bush is arguably our most heavily branded president. His war on terror is the defining American initiative of this young century. On the flip side, his appearance on an aircraft carrier in a military flight suit and his "mission accomplished" banner are defining examples of branditics gone bad. The president so heavily branded himself that when policy didn't go as planned (as it rarely does), he looked like a washout not only to a majority of Americans but also to much of the world.

Bush's hard-won brand -- tough, salt-of-the-earth, action-oriented -- boxed him in. Politicians need room to maneuver.

That doesn't mean flip-flopping. It simply means that a tumultuous world requires leaders to be proactive and reactive, firm and flexible, not chained to talking points and image-building tactics.

Since the branding of wannabe presidents isn't going away, what's a skeptic to do?

First, pay attention to the news streaking by on the margins. Look for inconsistencies in the brand that offer glimpses of what the candidate might be like not as a commercial but as commander-in-chief.

Keep your eyes and ears open when second-tier candidates bow out. Who's the first candidate to pick up the dropouts' biggest and boldest ideas? That's not robbery, that's savvy.

Be open to third party candidates. They usually assume the role of truth-tellers whose version of truth consists of shredding the image puffery of the better-funded major party candidates. You might not vote for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but his presence as a party-crasher would make you a better-informed voter.

Battling branditics doesn't mean being cynical. On the contrary, skepticism about image overload is the antidote to cynicism. And it might just help elect a great leader, as opposed to a great walking, talking logo.

(Billy Warden is a communications strategist and writer based in Raleigh)