ABSTRACT
The branding of Obama as an agent of hope and change was central to the successful strategy of marketing the Democratic presidential candidate as an appealing alternative to the Republican status quo in 2008. However, unlike either the re-election of Bush in 2004 in the US, or Tony Blair in 2001 in the UK, which were also characterised by the use of branding strategies, it is not clear whether the Obama brand was, or will become the Democratic Party brand. In both the Blair and Bush re-elections, the candidate’s message reflected ideas central to an established party brand (Gould 1998; Lilleker 2005; Cosgrove 2007). This was less the case with Obama’s election, given the absence of a similar, market-oriented effort to brand the Democratic Party over the last decade. The Obama election, then, raises questions about why candidates, parties and other political organisations are increasingly using branding strategies. It also raises questions about how and when branding strategies are formally incorporated into the functioning of a party, and specifically whether or not the Obama brand will be adopted by the Democratic Party or will remain, as it originated, the product of a highly successful political entrepreneur. The development and use of more market-oriented strategies, including branding, is a rela-
tively new trend in US and UK politics. In the US, for example, the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George Bush were each characterised, with varying degrees of success, by the development of branded political personalities and stories. In the UK, Tony Blair and the Labour Party’s ability to defeat the Conservatives in 1997 after more than a decade out of power also illustrates how the development of a market-based brand story can change a party’s or a candidate’s fortunes. Now Barack Obama, and his story of hope and change, has provided one of the most pronounced examples to date of the manner in which a branded politics is redefining how political leaders interact with and are perceived by the public. What is equally clear is that some parties have been more successful than others at designing and implementing unique brand stories. This is particularly true in the US, where despite the Republican Party’s success at institutionalising a conservative political brand, the Democrats have largely been
unable to brand themselves (Cosgrove 2007). The Democratic Party has had branded candidates, party leaders and, more recently, electoral campaigns. What Democratic leaders have struggled to do is brand the party itself, or to institutionally codify a consistent and differentiating political narrative, with associated policies, symbols and images. However, with the approach of the 2010 mid-term elections, the Democratic Party hoped
to capitalise on Obama’s branding success by incorporating themes central to his brand story into the party’s core message. It was unlikely, I would argue, that the Democrats would be able to replicate the Republican Party’s branding success in 2010 owing to persistent institutional and cultural differences between the parties. While the Republicans have traditionally been a more centrally organised, top-driven party organisation, dominated by an institutional culture that prioritises party unity over dissension, the Democrats, by contrast, have historically been less organisationally cohesive (Freeman 1986). The practical consequences of this are that the Democrats, as a party and as individual office holders and candidates, have been less able than the Republicans or Labour to cohere around a unifying political narrative. The focus of the chapter will be on the Obama brand and the extent to which the brand was
or was not institutionalised by the Democratic Party during the mid-term 2010 elections. To analyse this, the chapter will look first at the concepts of political and party brands. I will do so as an entry point into a broader discussion of how differences in political culture might help to explain variations between Republican, Labour and Democratic Party branding. Do differences in internal political culture and the degree of party centralisation help explain why the Democrats, unlike either the Republican or Labour Parties have been unable to institutionalise a unique political brand? To test this question, I will look at the degree to which the Democratic Party and its candidates who ran to retain party seats in the US Senate in the 2010 midterm election were able to run a coordinated campaign, centred on a unifying brand story. I will do so by examining the degree to which they adopted two policies central to the Obama brand: economic recovery and tax relief.
