Among the large amount of academic study of brand management, some of the most interesting is what might be called brand stretching. It’s what John McCain is wisely doing when he’s not sitting in front of the TV watching Clinton and Obama beat each other up.

Profitability of many products is driven both by market share and what category the product occupies. So, for example, whether premium brands or value brands dominate a category impacts how market share relates to profitability. And moving to or stretching into a new category requires careful planning and execution. Some brands have done it very well. Some brands have not. Mercedes did it flawlessly in introducing the C-Class. Jaguar stumbled when it introduced its “lower-class” model.

I’ve been intrigued to see John McCain stand on that famous bridge in Selma, or walk the streets of New Orleans stating the obvious-but-important observation that the current administration failed that city’s citizens (especially, and painfully, minority citizens) following Katrina.

John McCain, obviously, has very strong market share in his principal product category: Republicans. He also enjoys rather strong market share among independents. So, during this time of waiting for the conventions and an opponent, he decides to present perhaps a new picture of himself to categories where he’s not so strong: Democrats, African Americans, etc.

I’m not being cynical. Not at all. John McCain does not strike me as a man who says the President should have been on the ground in New Orleans, not up in a plane flying over looking down, if he doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t strike me as a man who pays tribute to painful memories on that bridge in Selma, if he doesn’t mean it.

And it strikes me that he and his team are doing some very smart brand stretching.

My teenage daughter is living in a completely separate universe. I know because of a conversation I had with her last week. She had just won the 800 meters in the county regional track meet by 30 meters (now she’s on to the county championship):

Me: I wish you’d consider running track in high school.

Teen daughter: I don’t want to.

Me: But you have so much talent.

Teen daughter: I don’t want to.

Me: Well, maybe when you get to high school you’ll change your mind.

Teen daughter: Dad, if it didn’t mess up my hair I’d run track, but it does, so I won’t.

Me: [Speechlessly praying that she returns from this other universe]
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A local radio news reporter broadcast a 30-second story this morning. It included, “beyond his wildest dreams,” “apple of his eye,” and “hope against hope.” Wow. All in 30-seconds. But this only comes in second.

Denzel Washington wrote a letter of support for Wesley Snipes. “Wesley is like a tree — a mighty oak,” Washington wrote in his letter to the judge. “Many who know him have witnessed the fruit of his labors, have sat in his shade and even been protected by his presence.” Wow. That wins the first ever Blogenberg best writing I’ve ever, ever, ever read while using metaphor like an editorial stealth missile award.

Recommending reading for this week…

• Business Week ranks The World’s Most Innovative Companies.
• Wikileaks is a great site for finding leaked information and documents.
• Slippery versus sticky - Strategic Public Relations discusses the difference between websites that offer an experience versus just a visit.
• What is a blogger? The most recent (and interesting) demographics of bloggers.
• A few days old, but still a very good read on building a small business and sweating the small things.
• Blogenberg lives in this county. Blogenberg is disgusted, yet not surprised, by this example of racism by wealthy “enlightened” white people.
• At CNET, Charles Cooper explains how PR is changing in “Revenge of the Flacks“.
• How can a good video get millions of views, yet still leave unanswered the most important question: did we sell more shoes? MediaPost explains how with the new Kobe Bryant viral video.

I start this post by noting that Senator Obama’s ascension means something to my family and me. My three children are the children of an interracial marriage; none of them considers his or her self white. Seeing an African-American man becoming a party’s presidential candidate is important for our family. But Obama has a slight church problem.

It’s not his controversial former pastor, whom I’ve blogenberged about previously. It’s that, with his impressive oratorical skills, he sometimes forgets he’s not in an African-American church. That’s what happened with his recent “bitter gate.” He didn’t say anything so awful. He didn’t say anything that would make a reasonable person conclude he’s elitist. But he gave attacks an opening.

I’ve been the only white face in an African-American church, at an African-American wedding, and in an African-American club. My wife often listens to the Sunday sermons at Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel at Howard University, and I listen along. It doesn’t make me any darker than the average white guy, just a bit different in my insights.

Homilies at African-American churches often mix political with the spiritual. Not every line would pass a magazine’s fact checker (I’m not sure they would in my church, either) — or political opposition research, for that matter — but the meaning and the feeling are expertly communicated. Obama’s real good at that style of communicating. But, as he’s learning with “bitter gate,” it can be dangerous in politics.

I’ve just switched to Mac; I’m slowly growing out of my PC years. When a Mac is processing something, a colorful little beach ball appears on my screen and it spins and spins until the computer’s work is done. When a PC is processing something a little hourglass pops up on my screen; nothing moves, the sand doesn’t drip. It’s static.

My Mac makes me feel as if something is happening. The PC reminds me that I am waiting. The PC is doing a lousy marketing job.
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My son is a classical pianist. He is studying at a conservatory in a major city with a preeminent pianist. His preeminent pianist instructor told him it’s time for him to perform a full public recital. I’ve helped my son with some advertising and online marketing. Whether 200 or 20 people show up doesn’t matter. Together, we put his face and musical resume in front of the consumers that care about music in a major city. That’s good marketing, no matter how many people show up, because sometimes the marketing is the sale.
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On the rare occasions that the e-mail goes down in our offices I curse — a lot. That’s because, once our clients learn our e-mail is down, it’s bad marketing.

Because good — and bad — marketing is countless little things.

Recommended reading for this week…

• What is “news”? Mathew Ingram takes a look at the changing news cycle and process of news development.
• Tiger Woods on always improving: “The greatest thing about tomorrow is, I will be better than I am today.” Good advice for golf, life, and business.
• As always DoshDosh provides incomparable insight into how to navigate online communities for fun and profit.
• The move towards more environmentally-friendly living will accelerate the decline of print journalism. (Will the same reasoning apply to cars and SUVs?)
• Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Blink,” explains the effect of too much information.
• We all get stuck sometimes - whether it’s writer’s block or that difficult item on our To Do List. Here’s some advice on how to get unstuck.
• John Jantsch offers some useful tips for small businesses on finding high-quality images.
• It’s not all fun and games. An appearance on the Colbert Report can help a candidate gain more donations and media coverage.

Last Blogenberg I wrote that “accuracy is what accuracy does” when noting why the mumbling in the distance heard by traditional media is the last rites. That is, unless traditional media stops pretending it controls information and, most important, has a monopoly on accuracy.

Citizen journalism — where your neighbor feeds your need for information — will overtake traditional journalism as the trusted source of information in the coming years. That’s because it’s all about control and accuracy. Technology allows consumers to control where and how they get information. Journalism, advertising, marketing, etc. no longer have control over what information you get and where you get it. You do. And traditional journalism no longer decides what’s accurate. You do. People assign credibility where they decide to assign it.

What do you think people find most credible? The New York Times, Washington Post, or Los Angeles Times? Or different feeds of information from neighbors, colleagues, family, the clerk at the local drugstore, etc., all creating a tapestry of information from which they determine their version of accuracy. Because accuracy is what accuracy does.
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I usually pay no attention to the Public Relations Society of America online discussion group for independent and small PR shop owners. But a recent thread about marketing caught my eye. Several contributors raved about a certain marketing consultant. They touted his books, his websites, his talks. They said he can revolutionize your marketing.

I was intrigued. Goodness knows, bringing in new business is one of the biggest challenges I face. So I clicked through to the marketing genius’ website. It was a cluttered mess. It was the online version of the proverbial everything but the kitchen sink. My reaction? If you can’t put together a clean, tight, attractive website that easily and quickly tells me what I need to know, why in the world would I pay the brain that created that website to think about my marketing?

Here are some stories we’ve found interesting this week…

• Death by blogging. This just in: Work is hazardous to your health. (don’t worry we here at Blogenberg are in tip-top shape)
• On The Media covers the end of the TV show, “The Wire,” and asks “what happened when ‘The Wire’ turned its attention back on the media“?
• China has realized it has a real problem on its hands with the Olympics so it’s looking for PR help. (gratuitous editorializing: it’ll take more than a fresh batch of talking points and ads.)
• NPR’s Marketplace covers Wal-Mart’s efforts to get its Chinese suppliers to go green.
• The sheer volume of information we’re exposed to causes us to jump to conclusions on little bits of data. Seth Godin asks: “Where do you want me to jump?“
• New York Magazine chronicles how Facebook tore apart one of the nation’s most elite private schools.
• How not to reach out to bloggers… You can’t force your way into a reporter’s blog or story by referencing random Twitter postings (”tweets”).
• Speaking of which… are you wondering what the heck this Twitter thing actually is? Here’s a simple explanation. And Jason Calacanis shows actor Matthew Modine how to build a Twitter following of several hundred people to support his new effort, Bicycle For A Day.

I am the end of journalism. The very end, my friend.

I read the Washington Post every day. But I never read the front section, the news section. Because all my news comes from news aggregators, blogs, social networking sites, etc. (I read the Washington Post for sports, arts, entertainment, etc. But that’s only because I’m from a newspaper generation.) Obviously, I could know everything I want to know without ever reading a newspaper or watching TV news.

There’s something else I can get without ever touching a newspaper, something more important than information alone — and it’s what really portends the end of journalism as we know it. I can get proximity of information source. I can get credibility where I assign credibility. I can get trust. In other words, I can choose to assign accuracy and credibility to, and invest trust in, blogs, Facebook feeds, Twitter updates, etc.

In a recent post in his influential blog, Micro Persuasion, Steve Rubel, writes, “Trust is by far a more important metric, one that clearly rules when it comes to influence.”

It’s trust and accuracy that has always been the currency of traditional media. It’s trust and accuracy upon which journalism professors hang their hopes for their profession. Problem is, to steal from Forrest Gump: accuracy is what accuracy does. Next Blogenberg I’ll explain what I mean, and why, within 15 years, at most, citizen journalism will be the market for this currency.

*Borrowed, with a bit of Blogenberging, from The Doors depressing song, The End.

I’m in Tennessee today, the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., which, of course, took place in Tennessee.

I stopped at a drugstore. Stepping out of my car a good old boy, his face framed by a scruffy beard on the bottom, a dirty Tennessee Volunteers baseball cap on the top, approached me. All he said to me was, in a long southern drawl, “You think Tennessee can beat LSU without Candace Parker?”

Candace Parker is the African-American star of the University of Tennessee women’s basketball team. She’s battling a bad shoulder injury. The Tennessee Volunteers are playing LSU in the national semi-finals Sunday night.

Forty years ago somebody (some people?) killed one of my heroes in Tennessee. Today, a good old boy in Tennessee shared with me that he was worried about the left shoulder of an African-American woman basketball player.

Some unexpected things make me feel good.