The Brand Called Obama

No matter what your political views, this article in Fast Company is worth checking out. Marketing anything, including yourself usually involves creating a brand, and the brand that is Obama represents the reality of life after the Boomers. His appeal to the 18-29 year old millennial generation ( who will outnumber the Boomers by 2010) is a taste of things to come.  Evidently Obama has a secret weapon in Chris Hughes (co-founder of FaceBook), who is doing online organizing for the campaign. Can you say social networking?

I’m someone who pays attention to what goes on in advertising, and if you’re in VO you should too. Here’s the message I took away from this article.

“There is a new, authoritative consumer empowered by the Web,” says Karen Scholl, a creative director at the digital-advertising agency Resource Interactive. “And they can smell a fake.” The agency has coined the term “OPEN brand,” an acronym for on-demand, personal, engaging, and networks; it is a framework for companies to think about distributing brand messages in new ways. With Obama, “not only do people feel they know who he is, they feel trusted to share their views,” Scholl says. “And they get constant feedback from the campaign and from each other.”

Who will we be talking to in ten years? Whoever they are, it’s clear we’ll be taking to them in different places and in a different way than we are now.  Our marketing should be adjusting to this new reality too.  Twitter anyone?