Branding has become a central part of presidential elections. That’s not good or bad; it’s a reality and an understandable one for that matter. It is part of the gradual decline of ‘ideological politics’ and the growing importance of the ‘politics of trust’. John Thompson writes about this in his excellent book on political scandals—a phenomenon that has great impact on political branding. He states that the rise of the service sector and knowledge-intensive industries has transformed the social context of politics. Parties can no longer simply rely on the old social classes which once provided the core of their electoral support. Increasingly parties and their leaders have to struggle to win the support of a growing pool of uncommitted voters. It is important to emphasize that traditional class-based politics has not disappeared; political affiliations are just less likely to be handed down from one generation to the next and voters are more likely to decide on the basis of the specific policy packages offered by the political parties.

This has two major impacts. Ideologies are an interconnected set of believes that give people a framework to view the world. With the decline of these, many people feel increasingly uncertain about how best to tackle problems. In a world where there are no simple solutions, we have to place more and more faith in our political leaders to make sound judgments. Thus people become more concerned with the character of the candidates and with the question of trust.

The second impact of the gradual decline of ideological politics is that politicians move increasingly towards a common centre ground. Therefore they search for other means by which they can differentiate themselves from one another: character. The Democratic nomination race was a clear example of this. Obama and Hillary didn’t differ much on policies. So where there were differences they were amplified. But the main means of differentiating was the packaging: change versus experience.

The growing importance of trust and the growing importance of character slash packaging, make political branding essential.

What is the connection between trust and branding? One only has to look at the definition of the latter. Brand is the recognition and personal connection that forms in the hearts and minds of your customers through their accumulated experience with your brand, at every point of contact. Ideally the brand that emerges is a positive one, leading to trust, loyalty and advocacy for your offerings. Short version: with branding you can stimulate trust.

And the connection between character/packaging and branding? Well, branding is about character. An analogy between Obama vs Hillary and Pepsi vs Coke shows how powerful this can be. As I said before, Obama and Hillary didn’t differ much in factual flavor—i.e. their policies—just like Pepsi and Coke, but the more in character. And what does an interesting experiment show us?

The experiment, a laboratory-controlled version of the famous Pepsi Challenge, revealed that flavour seems to be the last thing that consumers rely on in their preference for Pepsi or Coca-Cola.

When asked to taste blind, they showed no preference. However, when the participants were shown company logos before they drank, the Coke label, the more famous of the two, had a dramatic impact: three-quarters of the tasters declared they preferred Coke.

Branding is so influential it alters our perception of the product—in our case presidential candidates. Actually it is so powerful that it doesn’t simply differentiate two similar products, it sets a preference based on how we feel about a product: Coke over Pepsi.

But how important is packaging when there are substantive differences, like between Obama and McCain? Well there’s enough proof that packaging is still essential. First, many people might see the difference between the candidates but don’t have a preference. People might not be well-informed to know about the differences. People might rather stay at home at November 4. And there’s even proof that packaging prevails over substantive arguments—for this read the great book The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. In all these cases packaging can be the lever.

So we come back to the question why branding is so important in elections. First, branding can stimulate trust from the voter in the candidate, an important feature in a world where ideologies have become less important and we therefore have to place more and more faith in our political leaders to make sound judgments. Second, branding helps differentiating on basis of character/packaging where voters have no preference.

And how is McCain doing in this department? Later on I’ll continue on McCain’s mixed message.