PSYCHOANALISING OBAMA-McCAIN
by Kenny Badmus
Posted on 24 Oct 2008
Starting the story can be daunting but you have to find a common ground.
How often do we hear brand’s narrative without any familiar tone to share with the audience? To begin a great brand story, it’s good to find the common ground between your brand and the market. For Obama, it’s Dick, a great friend, a known, then to the unknown “my fellow citizens of this great nation”. For, McCain, it’s to all Americans first and then to the great party of the Republicans.
Think a sec. Which is more believable? “My great friend, Dick Durbin” and “all”.
Good brand narrators know how to start the conversation on a familiar note. As the world gets more facebooked and googled in, the 21st century consumer requires a brand with a more familiar tone and a more believable voice. In the mediascape today, we are often bombarded with messages for “all”. Go find a more personal voice like Kumalo, Ganzallo and Kayode to enter a conversation with your market. For Obama, Dick is the crack. And not just DICK. Check the adjective: GREAT FRIEND. Every savvy brand strategist knows how to find their adjectives. Dick would be a bland endorsement without the intensifier “great”.
CASE # 2: What story do we share in common?
In a dog-eat-dog marketplace, Orange teaches the principle of Carl’s archetype whereby the consumer knows your brand role in everyday living. The two candidates get this principle in place in their sales pitches. For Obama, he is a traveller, who is on a journey for the American dream. For McCain, this story is all about a fighter for the American pride. What story is your brand telling?
Finding an overarching narrative for the brand is becoming a major discourse in institutes like ours around the world. ‘cause when all the layers are peeled off and you are left with a poster on a wall of a barbing salon, your brand construct must remain. And it must speak.
According to a recent study from Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman of Harvard Business School, good brands know how to use deep metaphoria to connect with their market. Deep metaphors are powerful predictors of what customers think and how they react to new or existing goods and services. Deep metaphors are basic frames or orientations we have toward the world around us. They are "deep" because they are largely unconscious and universal. They are "metaphors" because they recast everything we think about, hear, say, and do. Because deep metaphors shape the way we engage the world, an understanding of them is necessary to explain why we think and act as we do.
In 1969, The Coca-Cola Company and its advertising agency, McCann-Erickson, started a campaign that centered on the slogan "It's the Real Thing." Beginning with a hit song, the new campaign featured what proved to be one of the most popular ads ever created.
The song "I'd Like to Buy The World a Coke" had its origins on January 18, 1971, in a fog. Bill Backer, the creative director on the Coca-Cola account for McCann-Erickson, was travelling to London to join two other songwriters, Billy Davis and Roger Cook, to write and arrange several radio commercials for The Coca-Cola Company that would be recorded by the popular singing group the New Seekers. As the plane approached Great Britain, heavy fog at London's Heathrow Airport forced it to land instead at Shannon Airport, Ireland. The irate passengers were obliged to share rooms at the one hotel available in Shannon or to sleep at the airport. Tensions and tempers ran high.
The next morning, as the passengers gathered in the airport coffee shop awaiting clearance to fly, Backer noticed that several who had been among the most irate were now laughing and sharing stories over bottles of Coke. As Backer himself recalled in his book The Care and Feeding of Ideas (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1993):
In that moment . . . [I] began to see a bottle of Coca-Cola as more than a drink. . . . [I] began to see the familiar words, "Let's have a Coke," as . . . actually a subtle way of saying, "Let's keep each other company for a little while." And [I] knew they were being said all over the world as [I] sat there in Ireland. So that was the basic idea: to see Coke not as it was originally designed to be—a liquid refresher—but as a tiny bit of commonality between all peoples, a universally liked formula that would help to keep them company for a few minutes.
Backer's flight never did reach London. Heathrow Airport was still fogged in, so the passengers were redirected to Liverpool and bussed to London, arriving around midnight. At his hotel, Backer immediately met with Billy Davis and Roger Cook, finding that they had completed one song and were working on a second as they prepared to meet the New Seekers' musical arranger the next day. Backer told them he thought they should work through the night on an idea he had had: "I could see and hear a song that treated the whole world as if it were a person—a person the singer would like to help and get to know. I'm not sure how the lyric should start, but I know the last line." With that he pulled out the paper napkin on which he had scribbled the line, "I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company."
Coca-Cola campaign is THE REAL THING but the essence of the brand that connected with the audience is a deep metaphor of CONNECTION. The Obama campaign is PRESIDENTIAL but the basic frame of orientation shared with the American people is the metaphor of JOURNEY. What’s your consumer’s basic frame towards your brand? Is it reiterated in your brand narrative? Unfortunately, Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman haven’t listed FIGHTING as a deep metaphoria!
CASE # 3 How big is your lovemark at home?
Most brands or permit us to say most products are victims of double lifestyles. Check the internal staffing of a bank; compare that to what they are saying in the media, you will find big disparity. Every great brand must be ready to invite us into their private life. The Virgin Brand is such a strong brand because we are invited into the private life of Richard Branson. Quoting McCain “You know, Cindy said a lot of nice things about me tonight. But, in truth, she's more my inspiration than I am hers”.
Great brand narratives must find inspiration in their internal staff and private moments. You can’t replace that with a fantastic ad.
Psychoanalyzing this a bit further, one begins to wonder how loving a man is by his words. Obama uses 31 words in our case # 3 as against McCain 76 words. Could it be the shy-do-it-at-home romantic nature of the black man or just a breezing journey that leaves extraneous details out? Obama should learn some loving from McCain’ speech.
With the sexy talk on lovemark from Satchi and Satchi worldwide, there is a more secret place to look into in moments as this. Brand narrators have more work in this area. We need to find the lovemark within the brand’s circle before we take it out to the streets. Believe us, we have seen a bank’ staff who would rather have her husband open a current account somewhere else. Hmmm. Lovemark begins at home. Right?
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