I am a Cincinnati Reds fan. They are in first place right now and playing well. We Reds fans are given that pleasure in the second year after each leap year, and only during the month of May.
The question is, why do I care about this team? I am “branded” to them, that is, I have an emotional loyalty that transcends reason.
In my case, it goes way back to when I was first married, and was developing resentments toward my first wife. She was a rabid New York Mets fan, and the Mets and Reds played each other that year for the right to go to the World Series. The Mets won, but it was an electric contest with close games and a fight between Buddy Harrelson and Pete Rose. Later Rose hit a home run and circled the bases with his fist defiantly in the air. I liked that guy, and the team was a winner – they would become the team of the 70’s, with two World Series (including 1975, a classic). But more than that, they satisfied my need to counter my wife’s extremely annoying devotion to the Mets. They became my subconscious defiance of that woman.
Here it is 2010, and the brand sticks. But I don’t care, as I really enjoy baseball now without any lingering resentments towards people from the long ago. And I have suffered with this team. I cannot re-brand. I should be a Rockies fan now, living in Colorado. It’s not happening.
I have watched others go through similar branding with other sports franchises, as with the Red Sox, Cardinals, and of course, Yankees. Ever notice how, in a sports bar, there is always a larger following for teams that have recently won the Superbowl? We’re quite pathetic, aren’t we, living our miserable little lives and validating ourselves via athletes. These guys have but one loyalty – their teammates. They can play in any city, wear any uniform. Their bonding is with the ones they live with in the trenches.
There’s an interesting book that’s been out for a few years called “Buyology“, by Martin Lindstrom. This is not a book review – Lindstrom merely confirms what I already knew – marketers study us intensely. Most products we buy are crap. Advertising seeks to move this crap off shelves by any effective means. “Brands” are emotional attachments. Most advertising fails – there’s just too much of it. Those who do manage some success are those penetrate our conscious barriers and plant their emotional images. They “brand” us.
Two examples: Burger King created “The King”, a creepy archetype who can be seen peering through windows, just staring at us. It’s Jungian. The beauty of it is that it takes no great mental leap to tie the image to the product. “The King” and Burger King are one in our minds.
The other is Apple Computer with their “Mac” and Justin Long and John Hodgman ads – a nice, likable and very cool guy against an equally likable but stodgy old fart. Two images for two companies. Does anyone not think Apple is a cool company?
There’s so much crap out there – so many Chinese plastic products that we don’t need. Our food is and processed and reprocessed primordial goo with flavor and color added to make it resemble something edible. Advertisers are challenged to market these products by converting them from crap into something emotionally fulfilling.
The Obama campaign won the coveted Advertising Age Marketer of the year award in 2008. Swing voters were fed up with the Bush brand, and so were offered a new one. Corporate money, sensing the sea change, left the Republicans and went to the other party. The hope/change/yes-we-can advertising was brilliant and worked on me and everyone I know on the Democratic/progressive/left. They gave us blanks and allowed us to fill them in with our own angst and yearning. I saw it in the faces of the people in Grant Park that evening in November of 2008 – the tears and smiles and wish fulfillment that the campaign had produced.
I’m lovin’ it.
It was all marketing, of course. Like processed food, Obama is a soulless substance with flavor and color added (no racial inference intended). He has taken office and carried on with all of the important polices of the Bush Administration. He’s New Coke – the old recipe with more sugar, but with a better marketing strategy.
The lesson I draw from this is not that Obama is disingenuous or that we were snookered by Democrats. That plays on a level that is so far beneath real politics that it is naive. The lesson is this: Political campaigns have no bearing on public policy. They merely fill our time and satisfy our democratic pretensions.
Public opinion is an animal all by itself. Leaders cannot pay much attention to it, though they do fear it. The fear leads to sophisticated management techniques. And for that the leadership elite call upon the advertising and public relations industries and all of their skills. The whole notion that we are either ‘D’ or ‘R’ is a management technique, nothing more. The two attract different mainstream personality types – authoritarians on one side, nurturers on the other. Public policy from either is virtually identical once election cycles end. There are two corrals, and public opinion is effectively neutralized by herding us to one or the other.
Oh yes … it is done with great passion. We take tremendous personal validation when our team wins, like Pete Rose circling the bases, fist high.
The blogs are heating up now with campaigns and candidates. This is our preoccupation and will absorb most of our energy in the coming months. It will really heat up in September, since marketers know not to run new ad campaigns in summer. They will be looking to create emotional bonds between voter and candidate.
When it’s over, the ad people will meet and have panel discussions and review the fifteen and thirty-second spots, discussing why each succeeded or failed. Successful advertisers will have more clients later on.
The American public lacks education, time and information. Without those elements, there can be no democratic governance. There will just be advertising.
Piece of Mindful 