POSITIONING A PRESIDENT

Email ^ | 6 July 2012 | John Truman Wolfe

[Windflier]

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are standing on opposite sides of a giant scale right now and it doesn’t tilt in either direction.

The race for the Presidency of the United States is a dead heat at this point.

It depends on which poll you read: Gallup has Obama up a few points, while Rasmussen gives Romney an edge.

No surprise.

Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars the campaigns are spending marketing their respective candidates, neither have an overall position that they are communicating for their man.

It’s a shocking omission.

More shocking is the fact that the promotion of the two campaigns sounds like marketing of the Bobbsey Twins. The stance on various issues is different of course, but the overall positioning – represented by tag lines or positioning slogans – is an exercise in TweedlDum and TweedleDee PR.

The slogan of the Obama campaign, which is now the basis of his bus tour, is “Betting on America.” There’s no positioning image to go along with this, just the slogan, which, according to Breibart, is a rip off of a Clinton slogan.

But hey.

And Mitt? The tag line of the Romney campaign is “Believe in America.” Huh? Betting on America … Believe in America. Come on, guys. How about just a little differentiation?

They spend millions on surveys. The “Button” that is pushed ad nauseam on the campaign trail is Jobs. That’s all either of them talk about. And it probably is the top answer to the question, “What is the most important issue facing the country today?”

Yet, neither campaign has a properly positioned itself with Jobs. Yes, they talk about them, but words come and go. Where’s the positioning image? Or, in the words of Laura Ries’ new book, the Visual Hammer? Where’s a prominent silhouette of a hard hat over the slogan Believe in America? Such an image from the Romney campaign would communicate volumes.

The positioning for the Obama campaign in 2008 was easy. They grabbed the right word and drove it into the mind - Change. This word represented an “against” position. Bush, and the Iraq War were extremely unpopular and “Change” was change from Bush and his policies. It went down like a buttered oyster.

There was a positioning opportunity for McCain in that campaign. As the Jeremiah Wright controversy exploded across the media, McCain could have positioned Obama with Wright and his raging anti-Americanism. McCain let it go. And he lost the race.

Would McCain have won the Presidency if his campaign had challenged Obama’s assertion that he had attended that church for 20 years and never heard a word of the racist rantings? I don’t know, but the outcome of the race would have been undeniably different. Positioning works.

Opponents of John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid who had served on swift boats during the Vietnam War had no such qualms. Hammering the media with evidence of John Kerry’s misrepresentations of his service during the Vietnam War and that of other veterans, Kerry was positioned as a something of a coward and a liar and “Swiftboated” right out of the race.

Positioning is where you place your product or service or…candidate in the mind of your public. It’s dominant. It monitors the overall communications strategy.

The Obama campaign hasn’t positioned the President. They can’t use “Change” this time. And Betting on America is only for his bus tour. With big fan fare a few weeks ago, they rolled out a new word that was to position the campaign – Forward.

Eh…. Really?

Not a bad word, but a very tough sell when the percent of the population working is the lowest since 1983, long-term unemployment is the highest since the 1930s, home ownership is the lowest since 1965 and government dependency of 47% is the highest in American history.

So, Forward doesn’t really work because the economy has been going…well, backwards. To their credit, they dropped it, fast.

Then, what do they use to position him? His signature domestic legislation, Obamacare, remains largely unpopular with the American public.

Positioning surveys would find the answer, but the campaign's marketing continues to flounder and their strategy seems to be solely to position Romney “against” job creation by claiming some of the companies Bain Capital, the private equity company he ran, invested in companies that shipped jobs overseas.

Yawn.

True or not (I have no idea), it’s pretty weak. Not only that, several leading Democrats voices have been vocal in their opposition to attacking private equity firms and the venerable Washington Post, the Democratic media mainstay attacked the Obama campaign – twice – for misrepresenting Bain’s activities.

Whoa!

The guy can speak. No doubt about that, but they are going to need something more powerful than the fact that Bain invested in companies that sent some jobs overseas (if, in fact, they did).

Romney, on the other hand, is not focused in his attack at all. He has attacked Obama on immigration reform, the economy, Obamacare, flip flopping, Solyndra, Obama’s golfing… Yes, these are all viable issues, but there needs to be a focus. The Romney campaign needs to position Obama, not like a Jackson Pollack painting, but with a laser-like concentration that drives him into the mind as________.

If I were running that campaign, I would survey to find what the public is truly most troubled about and what the Obama administration has done to create that. The survey might well come up with the fact that it has created – not jobs – but a mind numbing $5 trillion dollars in new debt, which weighs on the U.S. economy like a mountain of doubt.

Much of the debt is owned by those new homies of international finance, the Communist Chinese.

There is no wiggle room on this issue, the numbers are right there. I would hang that issue around Obama’s neck and hammer it mercilessly – The Debt President.

The slogan? You could use the above – The Debt President. But even better, I think, would be to use the rate at which the federal debt is increasing - $49,000 a second. It’s a horrifying number when you confront it. $49,000 a second would become the rallying cry - the tip of the positioning arrow. And I would drive it into the mind of the public with a jackhammer PR campaign that was dressed up with an appropriately surveyed image.

The supporting data; the fact that U.S. government debt has been downgraded for the first time in our history, how the debt makes us vulnerable in foreign affairs and world trade, affecting American jobs, the cost of the interest on the debt alone (half a trillion a year) and on and on.

Of course, other issues would need to be discussed and positions communicated, but this is how the Romney campaign could Swift Boat Obama. Will they? So far the Romney campaign has shown no understanding of marketing techniques involved here.

There are 90 days to go before the election. We’ll see if either campaign develops a viable positioning strategy. So far, they are… missing the boat.

[Windflier]

John Truman Wolfe, author of 'America the Litigious', 'Mind Games', and 'The Gift', has released his latest stunning bestseller – 'Crisis By Design: The Untold Story of the Global Financial Coup and What You Can Do About It'. Wolfe draws on experience as a senior credit officer in two banks.

He is also the co-founder of a Los Angeles based business management company, where, he oversaw the business and financial matters of some of the biggest names in Hollywood.

[Windflier]

I get interesting write-ups from John Truman Wolfe via email once in a while. Got this one tonight, and thought it was an interesting angle on the presidential race that I hadn’t seen addressed before.

[exnavy]

I disagree with the original premise, the scale is tilted all one way.

An avowed marxist verses a free market capitalist.

[abclily]

The Republican slogan should be Restore Free Enterprise.

[exnavy]

That’s a good one.

[Windflier]

I disagree with the original premise, the scale is tilted all one way. An avowed marxist verses a free market capitalist.

The actual premise of the article is about the lack of market positioning on the part of both campaigns. No one in the country has any idea what the central message is for (or against) either campaign.

Like that author said, Kerry was positioned as a man who lied about his Vietnam service, and he never shook it. He lost as a result of that successful positioning by the Swiftboat veterans.

Likewise, the Romney campaign should be positioning Obama with a simple and devastating image that he can't shake off. They're not doing it though, which speaks to their lack of expertise in campaigning.

At the same time, the Romney campaign can't seem to positively position their guy in the minds of the voting public. Who is he? Dunno. What does he stand for? Dunno. What's his agenda? Dunno.

Neither campaign is doing enough to draw a sharp contrast between their guy and his opponent. Honestly, that's probably a tough job, since they're so much alike.

[Windflier]

The Republican slogan should be Restore Free Enterprise.

Too lofty. Doesn't slam the communication home like, "It's the economy, stupid!"

Romney needs something like Carville's slogan. It really shouldn't be that tough an assignment, given who he's facing.

How 'bout, "We didn't vote for Socialism!"? That's aggressive, and instantly communicates what everyone's pissed off/petrified about.

[onona]

You hit the nail squarely on the head.

This mantra should be on the lips of everyone opposed to Obama and the Dem Machine.

What are the odds though....

[onona]

Waking up is hard to do

[nathanbedford]

Our frustration as committed conservatives comes because we want a crusade but Romney is going to give us a campaign.

We see the matter as a contest between good and evil and for the good of the nation, indeed for the survival of the Republic, we believe that Obama must be exposed and repudiated.

Romney sees the matter less strategically and more tactically, he sees the matter as an election to win. Having won, he will be in a position to deploy the right technocrats and the right strategies to bring America back on course.

My great fear is that Romney will win this election but will not expose and repudiate Obama and his henchmen for the evil Marxists they are. Hence, the serpent will not be killed, the virus will only go dormant, the demographic advantage and the dependency culture created over the years by Democrats and dramatically increased by Obama will reemerge to swamp us in one of the next few election cycles and the Republic will be irredeemably lost.

It is this nagging fear in me which desperately needs to see Romney morally destroy Obama.

The campaign is not yet over. Traditionally, it is the job of the vice presidential candidate to act as attack dog and we have yet to see what emerges down ticket. Additionally, Romney has proved in a long and contentious primary campaign that he is fully capable of deconstructing his opponents, witness the public assassination of my pick, Newt Gingrich. Finally, so far Romney has done quite well counterpunching-at least up until the point that he has unaccountably gone rope a dope on the jobs outsourcing issue.

It is wrong to say that Romney has not outlined sound conservative remedies for the problems that presently plague us. A review of his website and speeches and programs puts the lie to this canard. But it is true to say that he is not fashioned a slogan or a phrase to capture the essence of his campaign nor has he defined Obama negatively in a single slogan.

I think this is the lull before the storm, my fear is that when Romney attacks it will be a tactical rather than strategic level that I so desperately yearn for.

[GenXteacher]

Not big enough. “Bring America Back!”

[csmusaret]

Taking America Back!

[csmusaret]

“Making Amerika America Again”