Be careful what your competitors say, because their reverse branding can easily affect how others see you.

Seems like a simple thought, right? Not if you are the one being re-branded by the other party.

Take Obama for instance. His campaign branding has been that he is the young, media darling with fresh ideas, while his opponents position him as a “flip flopper” or one who easily “changes with the tides.”

McCain’s team brands him as the one with experience and knowledge to run the country. His opponents try to make you feel as if he is the “old” one rather than experienced and that he may not make it through a four-year term. Some Democrats also say that electing McCain would be like giving Bush another term.

Included in the branding for this campaign are multiple different messages. Just last week Kendall and I attended a PRSA/FPRA event. The keynote speakers were Tico Perez and Dick Batchelor – two political commentators and local leaders in Central Florida. The two men discussed this very issue. In fact, in Tico’s final message to the audience, he stated the following acronym as the key points to winning this campaign – all being influenced by not only the branding for that candidate – but the reverse branding of his opponent.

T – Trust
W – War
I – Immigration
S – Safety and Security
T – Taxes and Economy

Do you agree?

Written by Catriona Harris

Last 3 posts by CatrionaMHarris

• Our Blog Has Moved - June 29th, 2010
• Donegal - Old and New Social Networks - February 1st, 2010
• 2009: A Bad Year…or Was It? - January 20th, 2010

Tags: branding

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 6:33 am and is filed under High Tech PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.