I was watching Jack Cafferty today on CNN talking about the questions why Obama gets so much more coverage than McCain. When Obama announced his trip, 200 journalists have asked to join him although the campaign can only be able to accommodate 40. Meanwhile, McCain has taken 3 foreign trips the last 4 months, and not a single network anchor has gone on any of them.
A post from Tina on Cafferty’s blog. “Jack, God bless John McCain, he is a war hero. But let’s face it, every time he gives a speech I fall asleep. On the other hand, I actually surf channels looking for any coverage of Barack Obama; I can’t seem to get enough of him. He makes me feel like there is hope for this country… I imagine that the news media senses the same thing and wants to be there to record it all.” That pretty much describes the difference between the two brands.
No question Obama is probably one of the hippest American brand in this decade, ranking together with Google and Facebook. This election is a competition between brands, or endorsed brands. These candidates are all cross-endorsed by parties and other politicians and entertainers. The future of American depends how the elected brand manifest itself. This branding decision affects everyone in the world and people from all walks of life, particularly the resulting US policy has huge implications outside America since the world war two. This is unarguably the most important brand decisions in this decade.
Is the media biased? Yes. But why? Because the Obama brand has stories for us, it has dreams to share and words that give us hope. Wondering how everything can go so wrong in American and how to get out this mess. Given the beating of the image of America during the last five years, getting back to "trustable and hopeful" is a long uphill climb, bit not am impossible one.
As for the McCain brand, it is as boring as a Warmart store but offer less value than the retailers do. His straight-talking, grand-pa-can-do-it do persona are not helping and translate into "arrogance" by many and that’s exactly the kind of brand attributes America doesn’t want for his brand. Some see this as Bush extension brand. So what would you pick?
