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.

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.

Brands are sticky. Visceral reactions, emotions, gut instincts, what was spinning in your head the last time you were exposed to the brand — all have much more to do with how you respond to that brand than intellectual thought. That’s the mistake too many people make when it comes to PR and marketing: it’s the feeling, stupid, not the thought. And that’s the problem Barack Obama has right now and, unfortunately, for quite some time to come.

When it comes to marketing (and politics is the ultimate in marketing) feelings trump intellectualizing every time. People feel a brand. They feel a candidate. Relatively little deductive reasoning enters into their personal equation. And what they feel is the sum of lots of different feelings felt at different times. Permanently added into the sum of feelings people have toward the Barack Obama brand are the controversial words of his former pastor. For many people, that’s not going away. For them, it will color, at least a bit, how they forever view Barack Obama even if they forget all about Rev. Wright.

The big problem for Barack Obama? Brands are sticky. You can’t intellectualize away what sticks to a brand. That’s how the Obama team is trying to deal with the Rev. Wright problem. That’s all they can do, and they are doing it very well. Problem is, brands are sticky — for months to come.

Last Friday The Washington Post ran a front-page article slamming the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for toning down a television campaign promoting breastfeeding following lobbying from the baby formula industry. The ads changed from scare tactic – one ad showed an insulin bottle topped by a nipple (highlighting a correlation between not breastfeeding and future diabetes) – to softer advertising that tried to highlight the positives of breastfeeding. Here’s my reaction, based on nearly a quarter-century doing public relations in Washington, DC: so what?

Let me be perfectly clear: I am an advocate for breastfeeding. My wife breastfed all of our children. It is clearly the healthiest choice, and I’m very thankful my wife did so. But, depending on what year you look at the data, only about 60 to 70 percent of new mothers attempt to breastfeed and, by the time their babies are six months old, the figure drops to 40 percent – at that age, less than 15 percent of mothers are only giving their babies breast milk. That means there are a whole lot of parents relying on baby formula. What ex-government official called what current government official aside, did we really need the federal government scaring the heck out of millions of mothers who do not breastfeed? (more…)

Nobody wants this war,
Fewer seem to understand it.
Talking pundits (the non-talking kinds are better) scream
behind me on TV about Scooter not going to jail.
24-hours news predicts “spectacular� terrorism this summer.
“Spectacular� – TV talking heads’ word, not mine.
Wow, “spectacular� I wonder – should they sell tickets?
I’m old enough to remember when this was not a violent society in which we lived.
I’m old enough to remember when as a kid I left first thing in the morning for adventure with directions to just be home for dinner.
How did I survive childhood without Dateline catching predators on TV seemingly every night?
We don’t get along. We can’t get along. We’re terrified of immigrants. We’re nonchalant about young mothers killed as collateral damage in gang violence.
Is this the remix that Sam, John, Thomas, George, and the rest of them thought they were starting in steaming disease ridden Philadelphia?
Maybe.
I’m confused.
But that’s good. ‘Cause I live where nobody can order me how to act, what to think, when to have faith, and when to be enraged.
I live in America.
It’s good to be confused; it shows I’m not too old to pay attention.
Happy 4th.

The principal at my twins’ middle school gets it. He understands how to make kids succeed.

Research shows that kids who are “connected� to their school are less likely to get into trouble, use drugs, or have emotional problems. And kids who aren’t in trouble, in any sense of the word, are more likely to succeed – in school and life. I’ve read the research, but always wondered how one creates a school that kids connect to.

My kids’ principal knows how. Apparently, it starts with a principal who cares about what students do with their lives outside of the classroom as much as he cares about what scores students get on the ubiquitous standardized tests.

At a time of budget squeezes, not only does he refuse to let music programs wilt, he’s expanding them, and puts everything he can behind two music teachers that should be on every rich private schools recruitment list. Hundreds of kids take part in orchestra, band, jazz band, chorus, chamber singers, and pop choir. The music program not only dominates county competitions, but mops the floor with schools from neighboring states. (more…)

We have frequent conversations around our office (that’s right, the one with cranberry zinger colored walls) about the Administration. It’s hard to avoid such talk being in Washington and having political backgrounds with an election season approaches.

It is not uncommon for these conversations to devolve into a critique of the Administration’s PR strategy. It seems they rely too heavily on playing defense and far too much on the power of the War-time President image. As Fox News blares the “breaking news� of the “President comments on the War on Terror,� we ask is it too much to ask for the President to talk about something other than the war – even if just for one news cycle? Of course, it’s not that easy. But why not try?

Then I read this quote from the book “The CIA at War� by Ronald Kessler:

The events of 9/11 fundamentally changed the way the President looked at the world,� said McLaughlin who periodically briefed Bush and attended most of the meetings with the President to plan a counterattack. “I’m convinced he wakes up every morning thinking about how to prevent anything like that from happening again.�

[note: “McLaughlin� is John E. McLaughlin who, in 2003, the book’s publication date, was Deputy Director at the CIA.]

It’s hardly an earth-shattering statement. It’s nearly cliché. We’ve read something like it a million times since 9/11. For some reason, in light of our office discussions, it strikes me differently this week. (more…)