It may be, as some would say, “just a logo”, but without doubt it’s the best symbol I know of for a modern political brand. Everyone’s been talking of Obama’s superbly effective campaign; harnessing social networking both on and off line, using new ways to connect with, raise funds from and mobilise people who traditionally have sat on their hands. But less has been said about the Obama brand and the way it’s been deployed with such focused sophistication and impact, soaking up instruction from the best of commercial branding and flashing back with lessons for brands everywhere, big and small.
Of course, with any brand that’s linked so strongly to a personality, you have to bend your mind hard to prise the two apart. But just as Obama transcends U.S. politics, the brand transcends the man. This is good ol’ all-American “vision-n-values” rewritten for our times; hope, renewal, opportunity and progress. Brand Obama is stirring stuff. It evokes the raw pioneering spirit and resolute belief in the new, the better and the self that are the foundations of this great nation.
Of course, all previous Presidents strongly invoked patriotism in their campaigns. But Brand Obama goes one better. It IS patriotism. Embodied. In its most raw, un-rationalised, emotional form. For just like the rest of us, Americans aren’t Vulcan’s. People’s reasons for choosing rarely have much to do with reason – and everything to do feeling. Orange proved the future was bright by leading the way with per second billing. Now that sounds like a rational reason to choose – but it was because it felt fair.
It’s the same for any brand. And, politics aside, brand Obama grabs you by the emotives. The McCain machine couldn’t hope to compete, so it didn’t – and got bogged down in the rational low-ground of hairsplitting detail about voting records, policy wonk and comparative experience. Leaving brand Obama to soar above it all.
And this is why the logo’s so good. It captures and projects in one simple, graphic device the emotional qualities of brand Obama. OK, luckily one of his initials is an ‘O’, but anyone can appropriate a circle - a timeless symbol of optimism and positivity that all goes back to the sun. Which is what this logo is - a bright, shining new dawn (remember Tony Blair, “a new dawn, is it not?”), rising into a clear blue sky over a red and white striped, mid-west furrowed field.
It’s simple and powerful, robust and memorable enough to share it with people and for them to make it their own (succeeding better in this than London’s 2012 squiggle). Kids drew it in schools and people painted it themselves on home-made banners. Brand Obama made partner brands of diverse organisations – allowing them to use personalised versions of the Obama logo - and inserted itself into place names, visually claiming individual states as sub-brands.
As Simon Sharma says, “an America governed by a President Obama will feel like a state transformed and the paralytic empire will get up off it’s hands and knees and make an effort to walk tall”. Today, it does. And brand Obama, through its symbolism, messages, narrative and deployment; by sticking to what it stands for and staying true to its values shows brands everywhere how to succeed. That in the battle for hearts and minds, victory is seized by brands that fire with the most feeling.
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