General layered marketing template

• Tangible benefits
• Credible causal connection
• Measurable characteristics
• Credible causal connection
• Fundamental nature

Clearly, the second of my the two enterprise IT layered messaging templates I proposed,

Enterprise IT product (sustainable-lead messaging stack)

• Tangible benefits
• Technical connection
• Features and metrics
• Technical connection
• Fundamental product architecture

is just a special case of that more general model.

Another special case seems to work well for the other market I tend to write about in this blog, namely US politics. Namely, the template

Political candidates

• Tangible benefits
• Credible effect
• Promised actions in office
• Logical and/or emotional connection
• Biography, character, and values

seems to cover a lot of today’s campaign marketing.

For example, by applying this model to some of this year’s presidential candidates, we could get

John McCain (general election)

• Safe country, economic growth, lower taxes, less corruption, return to good ol’ American values
• Conservative political theories say you’ll get the desired outcomes
• Hawkish policies, low taxes, corruption-fighting, conservative judges
• He’s done it all his life, it’s what he’s all about
• Country-loving pugnacious Republican war hero

Barack Obama (general election)

• Peace, fewer enemies around the world, better times for the poor and middle class, sane public policies, social freedoms, progress on global warming, general change
• Liberal/moderate political theories say you’ll get the desired outcomes
• Dovish policies, leadership-through-inspiration, logic-based policies, liberal judges
• He’s done it all his life, it’s what he’s all about
• People-serving high-IQ Democrat from an outsider background who’s a brilliant orator

Ron Paul

• More money in your pocketbook, more personal freedom, less war
• Libertarian policies would surely deliver what they promise. And libertarian theories say the side effects wouldn’t be nearly as bad as conventional thinking claims.
• Radical reductions in spending, taxes, international involvement, and miscellaneous impingements on freedom.
• He sure sounds sincere. Besides, he’s not really going to get elected anyway, so only his ideas matter, not his actual competence.
• Congressman and doctor who’s talks a pure libertarian line.

Hillary Clinton (late in her campaign)

• Better times for the poor and middle class, sane & non-naive public policies at home and abroad, gender equality
• Clintonian policy-wonkiness in the 1990s gave us our best times in half a century
• Moderate but firm foreign policy, health-care reform, other smart public policies, liberal judges
• She’s done it all her life, it’s what she’s all about
• Long-time liberal/populist/moderate, policy wonk, health-care specialist, woman, fairly experienced

All of these templates seem to be well-accepted by a large group of supporters. “Large” is of course a somewhat relative term, with Ron Paul’s story ringing true with a lot fewer people than Obama’s, McCain’s, or Clinton. But then, not as many people believe in Paul’s libertarian dogma as accept general US right-wing, left-wing, or centrist political approaches. By way of contrast, it’s hard to come up with a layered messaging stack for Rudy Giuliani that would impress many voters; “Subject-Verb-9/11” was never fleshed out in a detailed way that very many people bought. And the same goes for presidential candidate Joe Biden’s “I’m a working-class guy like you, except that I’m smart about foreign policy.”

Much of what has happened in the campaign could be explained starting from templates like these. Not all, of course. For example, field organization – and particularly Obama’s huge advantage in same in most states, and Clinton’s advantage in a few – goes a long way toward explaining the Democratic primary outcome. But on the whole, I think it’s not too inaccurate to say that candidates tend to do well to the extent voters and influencers buy into all the layers of their messaging pitch, but not so well to the extent one or more layers are seen as being seriously lacking.

1. Pitch “change” as a top-level message.
2. Claim that being a pro-change outsider is more conducive to getting things done than being an experienced insider.
3. Adopt similar policy positions to his rivals, so as to reduce the chance for differentiation there.
4. Show that he’s not “too much” of an outsider, by collecting insiders’ endorsements.
5. Claim that primary electoral success demonstrates both that he’s likely to have general election success in the fall and also that he’s likely to lead effectively once elected.

So Clinton desperately needs to differentiate herself from Obama, beneficially, more than she already has. But how?

She’s already tapped out the domestic policy vein. Everybody knows Clinton has immense expertise on health care, and that’s an advantage for her. But otherwise, she and Obama express similar priorities, propose similar programs, and similarly hope that the Republicans won’t convince voters that the Democratic numbers don’t add up.

So Clinton needs to shift the discussion as far back towards foreign policy as she can, simply to create the chance for favorable differentiation versus Obama. But this strategy has further potential advantages as well. They include:

• Defense and foreign policy are the areas where voters historically value experience – certainly more than they do on domestic policy, where since Jimmy Carter they’ve favored outsiders who will try to end business-as-usual.
• Clinton’s experience advantage over Obama is largely in the area of foreign policy, specifically in her globe-trotting as First Lady and her Senate Armed Services Committee work.
• Obama has made a strong “electability” pitch around his consistent opposition to the Iraq War. If Clinton can reestablish perceived superiority in foreign policy, she could recover that aspect of the “electability” story as well. Since McCain will obviously make national defense the cornerstone of his campaign – and by extension foreign policy too – that’s a big deal.

I think there are three specific areas of foreign policy that offer Clinton particularly good chances for competitive advantage.

1. Health care, children’s rights, etc. — emphasizing her traditional advantages and commitments.

2. Women’s rights – she can get inspirational on women’s rights, but too rarely shows it during the campaign. What’s more, it’s an issue that obviously resonates with her core (very large!) constituency.

3. Free trade.

The third item on that list may be rather surprising. So let me explain. Clinton is unlikely to win the nomination unless she out-wonks Obama in a convincing way. And free trade is an issue where he happens to stumble. In Thursday’s debate alone, he twice showed himself to be confused on trade issues. First, he told a story about a steel plant losing out to Chinese competition, and blamed it on NAFTA. Second, even though he’s negative on NAFTA, he spoke favorably of helping the Mexican economy strengthen, create better jobs, and so forth.

Clinton’s calls for a “trade time-out” show that she doesn’t want to run as pure free-trader. Even so, if she aggressively delved into trade details, she could:

• Show command of economic issues.
• Show command of international negotiation issues.
• Remind voters of her and her husband’s accomplishments.
• Remind voters of an important pro-Hispanic position (i.e., pro-NAFTA).
• Co-opt a good point Obama made – she can say he’s right to want to strengthen the Mexican economy, and she’s been long working on that.
• Point up areas where Obama is confused or panders.

This strategy has obvious risks, but I can’t think of another one more likely to succeed.

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They need to find the thirty bloggers matter, and months before they need them, give to them. Post comments, link to them, talk to them, engage them as a member of the community, and then when they roll something out those bloggers trust you. An example is Boing Boing, which is one of the three most popular blogs in the world, and there is a piece of software that just came out that helps you track appointments and stuff like that.

Cory Doctorow wrote a rave review of it yesterday on Boing Boing. Why did he do that? Because they showed up an hour ahead in time and begged him? No, because he’s known the founder for a long time, and the founder actually asked him a lot of advice about how to make the software better, and he gave it to them. So, he has a sense of relationship and ownership, so when the software comes out, of course he is going to say something about it. That time investment, and that respect is an asset that people at a traditional company might not have earned.

Certainly the company/analyst relationship fits into that paradigm.

Godin went on to take a related point to an extreme:

The thing that’s going to be hard for a lot of people is it represents a shift in power, that the reason most people become marketers is because it is fun to be in charge. It’s fun to put on a show; it is fun to have influence that comes from money. What we are seeing in the new marketing is that the opposite is true. People who are succeeding tend to be the ones with no money, because having no money makes you humble and being humble makes you work with the marketplace better.

But while extreme, that’s not entirely wrong. For example, the technology industry has advanced to the point that large firms have huge economies of scale, and startups keep succeeding even so. (E.g., see my coverage of Netezza or Qliktech.) And this year’s presidential campaign has, so far, been friendly to insurgent candidates such as Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama, a rebounding John McCain, or even Ron Paul.

My major points were:

• Hillary Clinton should stress her status as a woman. Yep, that sure was right.
• Clinton should tell this story by emphasizing her unique advantages versus other women’s lots in life. Hmm, maybe that one isn’t so necessary. She seems to have told it just fine her way. And my suggested strategy has some risks.
• Clinton should play defense but not offense in trying to redefine “change.” That’s pretty much what she’s doing now, and it seems to be working. Nobody’s making fun of those “Ready for change” signs waved at her rally.
• Clinton should stress her track record of achievement. This one may not be needed, and it carries some risk of making her seem wooden or not-for-change again. Even so, I think it would be wise to have an aide get the more objective story ready, in case it turns out to be needed after all.
• Clinton should continue to hammer at Obama’s lack of experience. Yep. That seems to be working.
• Clinton should push likability. That was obvious. And she has done a beautiful job of it.
• In particular, Clinton should reach out emotionally to younger women. I absolutely still believe that.
• Hillary Clinton should use Bill Clinton as a surrogate. Actually, much of her New Hampshire win is ascribed to distancing herself from the Bill Clinton legacy, so I’m less sure of this opinion than I was a day ago. Even so, as Super-Duper Tuesday approaches, it will be necessary to fan out as many teams of powerful messengers as possible. And Bill Clinton can surely lead one of the strongest such teams. Maybe it should be a Bill-plus-Chelsea Clinton team, to reduce any back-to-the-past negative reactions.

Links:

• How to market Hillary Clinton more effectively
• The women’s strategy I had thought up for Clinton
• The extent to which marketing “change” makes sense

]]> http://www.strategicmessaging.com/updating-my-marketing-prescriptions-for-the-clinton-campaign/2008/01/09/feed/ 2 http://www.strategicmessaging.com/how-hillary-clinton-regained-authenticity/2008/01/09/ http://www.strategicmessaging.com/how-hillary-clinton-regained-authenticity/2008/01/09/#comments Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:04:38 +0000 Curt Monash http://www.strategicmessaging.com/how-hillary-clinton-regained-authenticity/2008/01/09/ A huge fraction of what I do as a marketing consultant is advise on how to be credible. In consumer marketing – including politics – analysis often focuses on the closely related factor of authenticity instead. Hillary Clinton’s stunning New Hampshire win is in large part being attributed to a sudden recapture of authenticity.

I agree with that top-level analysis. Specifically, I think there were four main factors driving the sudden change in Clinton’s image. First, she started running and presenting herself as a woman. Second, she stopped overdoing it when co-opting Obama’s message of “change,” and scaled back to a level that was credible. Third, she told a very John-Edwards-like “It’s personal to me” story about why she’s campaigning, and didn’t take it to a false-sounding extreme. Fourth, she banished the Bill-Clinton-era human stage props, starting with the ex-President himself. It now seems evident that the presence of Bill Clinton and his advisors had been seen as evidence of her being both an old-school candidate and, even worse, her husband’s puppet.

Most interestingly, I’m not sure that political analysts have yet grasped how completely Clinton can play – and for now is playing — the female role. It’s not just the explicit mentions of the point, plus a few tears. It’s also the choice to show up for her big speech in idiosyncratic yet tasteful clothing, rather than yet another boring costume of suit-and-pearls. It’s the very feminine waves from the podium to individuals in the audience. Hillary Clinton’s staffers have said that she is warm and maternal to them in private. If she can tap into that streak in her public persona as well, I expect that she will indeed be the next President of the United States.

If that interpretation is correct, and I think it is, there are two major ways of explaining the phenomenon.

1. Hidden racism – people are ashamed to admit to being racists, but in the secrecy of the voting booth let their true feelings show.
2. The virtue of supporting a minority – people are eager to be perceived as pro-diversity.  But in the secrecy of the voting booth they pick the candidate they really want, with race being set aside.

Theory #1 is the conventional wisdom, but a key piece of evidence supports Theory #2 instead. According to commentators, the black poll-versus-results gap is a factor only in elections, not in caucuses. The difference is that elections are secret, while in caucuses you stand up in front of your neighbors and vote in a very public way. Well, every white person who voted for Obama at an Iowa caucus gave evidence of non-racism. But did voting for Edwards or Clinton lead anybody to be perceived as racist? I think not. Voting for a white candidate is the common thing to do; it proves nothing about your racism or lack of it. Only when you vote for a non-white person do you make a statement about your racial inclinations either way.

If I’m right in this analysis, then Barack Obama stands to gain by telling a “blackness” story, not to lose. Besides, as I noted before, Obama’s race is an important part of his change-centric messaging strategy.

Implicit in this critique is the idea that one should test messages via polling. Now, up to a point I agree that’s a great idea. But political campaigns aren’t just about pitching to people’s preconceptions — they’re also about changing people’s minds. If Obama wins, it will only be because many people, cynical about change, started to believe it was possible. Ronald Reagan changed US politics for decades by convincing people to give up on the idea of government accomplishing much — and also by convincing them that the benefits of a vigorous-but-insecure entrepreneurial economy outweighed the drawbacks. If the Republicans upset the Democrats in November, it will probably be because they convinced many swing voters that various real or imagined threats (terrorists, immigrants, whatever) are dangerous enough to require more counter-aggression than those voters now think is called for.

The Clintons take a lot of grief for being highly poll-driven, and up to a point it’s served them well. So I imagine the critique has considerable validity. But I think it also misses a larger point — the best strategic marketing communicates what you can lead people to believe, not just what they already think.

Edit: Apparently weBranding has a capital B and also is named Tommy. This may be a more stable link to the same article.

The temptation will be to make a classic marketing error: Excessive focus. And if they fall into that trap, they will lose.

If Hillary Clinton is to win the Democratic nomination, her campaign now has to simultaneously follow all (or at least most) of the following strategies:

• Pitch her experience, positively (and in more detail than they have been).
• Attack Barack Obama’s lack of experience.
• Pitch her “change-through-accomplishment” story, even though that will accomplish little more than stemming defections from her existing base of supporters.
• Open a new conceptual front, by stressing Clinton’s role as a womens’ rights icon.
• Continue to advance on the likability front (she’s a wonderful, moving speaker, when she lets herself be).
• Unleash Bill Clinton on the campaign trail, with the dual assignment of highlighting policy differences with the opposition and – even more important – giving examples of specific Hillary Clinton accomplishments behind closed doors.

This was an easier question to answer when “everybody knew” that Obama was too young and unqualified to be taken wholly seriously. But those days are behind us. Besides, having twice the Senatorial experience of your opponent isn’t all that impressive when you have six years and he has three. Certainly Edwards will get some support because he has a Southern accent, isn’t known to ever have snorted cocaine, and – dare I say it – is white. But those factors don’t seem to be enough for Edwards to prevail.

So what can Edwards do, other than wait around and hope to get lucky from an Obama gaffe? It won’t be easy. The obvious approach is to be specific about what he means by his version of “change,” and try to show how it’s better or more credible than Obama’s. But what can he be specific about?

• Detailed policy proposals? That’s usually a losing campaign strategy.
• Top-level policy goals (e.g., raise the minimum wage)? That’s hard to be credible about. The major goals tend to be expensive to achieve. Even if you convince some voters the cost is worthwhile, they know you’re going to face fierce opposition when you try to push them through.
• A laundry list of enemies (e.g., five different kinds of vile and corrupt corporations)? Try that one and people start noticing you’re picking on their own employers (although health care companies seem to be fair game right now). So it’s probably better to continue Edwards’ current strategy of railing mainly at lobbyists and general corporate baddies.

Unlike the case of Hillary Clinton, I don’t have specific suggestions for John Edwards’ campaign. Edwards is already following the best strategy; it’s just unlikely to work. For as long as Obama continues to be so well-regarded, there isn’t much Edwards can do to slingshot past him.

Classic women’s rights politics of the past 40 years have focused on two main issues – abortion, and blatant workplace discrimination. But Clinton avoids stressing those issues, and she’s wise to do so. Abortion is now a political issue that tends to favor conservatives, and the cruder forms of discrimination are now believed to be behind us.* Meanwhile, Clinton herself was one of the targets of a backlash against “women’s libbers,” including Rush Limbaugh’s memorable “feminazis” label.

*Nor is that belief absurd. #3 and #5 in the succession to the US Presidency are currently female, as are a much higher fraction of the senior executives I deal with in the software industry than 25 or even 10 years earlier.

Most American women today, unless they’re older and/or unusually successful, have never run into serious glass ceilings or overt discrimination. Rather, women’s continued disadvantages versus men are focused in two areas:

1. Women –- married and single alike — are expected and often want to do a disproportionate share of the work in homemaking and child-rearing. But the resulting lack of experience or extra workplace effort puts them at a career disadvantage, with all the financial and status shortfalls such disadvantages produce.
2. In a variety of subtle ways, men are often still “taken more seriously” or viewed as more “authoritative” than women. Classic anecdotal examples of this are differing reactions at a meeting when a woman or a man makes a suggestion, interrupts somebody, and/or shows a flash of temper.

Some people think these problems, to the extent they exist, are minor. But many others think they’re substantial. Indeed, many believe — or could be easily persuaded — that these (especially the first one) are the largest factors still disadvantaging women versus men in the United States today.

Hillary Clinton has spent her life experiencing and overcoming these disadvantages.* Of course, she was holding some aces. Not every woman gets to have a Yale Law Degree and a husband who is President of the United States. But using her own life story as a point of departure, Clinton should be explaining how she’s going to help other women overcome the same challenges she knows so well.

*Yes, I know she had a major legal career – certainly by Arkansas standards. And she was on the board of Wal-Mart, whose CEO told my father that she was their smartest board member. Even so, when her husband’s and her own career objectives conflicted, it’s pretty clear whose took priority. And while I doubt either parent spent a lot of time baking cookies for Chelsea in the governor’s mansion or White House, it’s a safe bet that one did more parenting than the other, and it wasn’t the male one who did more.

I’m not sure exactly what Clinton should be proposing: Child care as good as she enjoyed? A bit of assertiveness training? Beefed-up mid-career education, perhaps delivered online? Maybe she can’t propose much, and should just be giving vague, Obama-like pep talks on the subject. She’s good at those, when she lets herself be – I had a mid-20s employee who was inspired to tears by a Clinton speech in the 1990s.

But speaking as an expert on marketing and positioning, I’m convinced that this is the most powerful arrow Clinton can add to her marketing quiver — in the primaries and probably in the general election as well.