On Political Branding and the "Real" and "Fake" Americas

By: Sam Ford, PepperDigital

As some of you all may remember, Peppercom Co-Founder Ed Moed wrote a call to action on his Measuring Up blog back in August for PR professionals in the blogosphere to come together on occasion and write about pressing topics that are of interest to the public relations community as a whole. (My response on PepperDigital is here.) That round focused on issues of transparency and ethics in PR using China and the Olympics as a case study. This month, the conversation focuses on brand-building and politics.

Ed and I got engaged with this topic in particular after recording our first podcast on brand building and politics, focusing on the U.S. presidential election. After their recent podcast on the topic of the vice-presidential debate, Peppercom's Steve Cody and Ted Birkhahn graciously allowed us to launch our podcast to their audience. In the future, the podcasts from Ed and me will be housed on the PepperDigital and Measuring Up sites. If you're interested in how brand-building in the industry relates to the political world, I urge you to check it out. Hope you enjoy listening to the conversation as much as we did having it.

Today, though, I wanted to focus on a particular topic surrounding brand-building and politics: small town America, the "real" America that we keep hearing about from the Republican Party of late.

First, if "the real America" is a brand, whose brand is it? Is the promotion done to elevate the standing of rural parts of our country, areas that are often overshadowed by the skyscrapers of America's big cities and written off as unimportant by people who fancy themselves tastemakers and cosmopolitans in urban areas? Of course, the Republican Party would have us believe just that, that their goal is to celebrate the heart of our country often forgotten.

It's pretty transparent to everyone, on the other hand, that they are doing so in the hopes of garnering as many votes as possible from the inhabitants of this land they are calling "real America." But I venture that what they are doing harms small-town America more than it helps, turning complex cultures into simplistic models in the process.

But branding the argument has been something the modern Republican party excels at. George Lakoff has done considerable work on how conservatives have used language to frame arguments. Take the fact that social conservatives claim the term "pro-life," or that liberal itself has taken on a negative connotation, as compared to the "compassionate conservative."

That's starting to break down.

John McCain decided to take the abortion language divide a step further in his final debate with Barack Obama by calling Obama "pro-abortion," but Obama took a strong stance to distance himself from that binary by saying that no one is "pro-abortion." The tactic was enough to convince some social conservatives I know to support Obama despite the fact that they would identify as "pro-life." Further, the idea that Christianity is "owned" by the Republican party is breaking down, now that voters are reconfigured somewhat away from hot-button topics such as gay rights and abortion which dominated some previous election cycles.

Yet, when it comes to this "real America" rhetoric, I'm surprised to find that—once again—commentators and pundits are adopting the Republican party's language and allowing them to paint the conversation. Take Jon Stewart, who has spoken out harshly against Sarah Palin's phrasing of "REAL America." He does so, though, not to strike out against the binary she sets up, but rather to defend cities against small towns. (See here.) Stewart says, "Cities are just a lot of towns piled on top of each other in one place."

Even Ed Moed here at Peppercom falls into this trap, in my opinion, in crafting his recent letter to John McCain. Ed writes, "Why are small town, working class people the only 'real Americans' with real values? By selecting Sarah Palin and having her ride this theme, I believe you have forgotten about and completely alienated hundreds of thousands of republicans who are White Collar professionals."

I agree with these statements from Ed and Jon. Of course, we're all "real America." But, in their defense of urban areas, commentators are at the same time accepting the idea that small towns are:

a.) all aligned in their beliefs; and
b.) homogenous in their social conservatism.

That means, when you disagree with Gov. Palin, the very defense is reinforcing the binary she has set up. She has created this brand of "Real America" that brings with it a false dichotomy. Because of the language she uses, she urges even those to disagree with her to react to the surface language while still taking the bait on this "either/or" idea between rural and urban America.

Jon Stewart's response is to make fun of small towns, which of course only strengthens Palin's appeal to draw rural voters together as a group aligned around that value. While this "real America" brand may have come too late to define the campaign around--given the agenda has been set around economic issues and foreign policy--it's an effective rhetorical strategy to get some last-minute votes and to try and get back to inserting the same dichotomies that prior elections have been decided on.

Those bloggers, pundits, and commentators who don't want to see the "real America" brand succeed in swaying folks shouldn't speak out against it. They should do what Barack Obama did in the debate with "pro-abortionist." They should challenge the mindset surrounding "real" and "fake" America at its core. Otherwise, talking both "for" and "against" the brand "real America" serves the interests of Gov. Palin.

For the past three years, I've written a weekly column for The Ohio County Times-News in Hartford, Ky., called "From Beaver Dam to Boston" and now "From Beaver Dam to Brooklyn." The column focuses on differences in the lifestyle between rural and urban America. In writing those columns, I've spent considerable time thinking about this divide. And, while I agree that folks here in New York and in Boston could benefit from thinking outside the bubble of their city (and that media research and public relations work alike would be benefitted greatly by non-coast perspectives, as Bruce Leichtman advocates), I don't agree that small towns are easy to stereotype any more than big cities are.

Does Beaver Dam, Ky., greatly resemble Sarah Palin's Wasilla, Alaska, in that they share all the same thoughts and values? The differences between Kentucky, the Deep South, the West, and the Mid-West--much less Alaska--speaks to a complex diversity of cultures in our country, one that a small town vs. big city binary does all it can to simplify into this false dichotomy. As a resident of both "real" and "fake" America, I reject the binary altogether.

For full disclosure, I consider myself an independent but have already voted for Sen. Barack Obama in this year's election...so don't try and talk me out of it now.

Note: See Ed Moed's piece on Measuring Up about Barack Obama as a brand here and Todd Defren's post on Obama campaign manager David Plouffe here. Also, see Frank X. Shaw's thoughtful post on Sarah Palin as a "fragile brand" here, Talya Bosch's post about how this election affects the United States as a brand internationally here, and Ted Weismann's good points about takeaways for politics and for industry when it comes to the backlash against negative depositioning here. Look forward to others of you joining in this conversation as we roll into the week of the U.S. presidential election.

Finally, in the wake of President-Elect Obama's victory, Peppercom's Matt Purdue writes about some of the most significant takeaways from Obama's success for brands here, and Indra Gardiner writes about Obama's marketing as compared to Seth Godin's book Tribes here.

Comments

[joe]

Great post Sam (perhaps your longest yet), thank you. I don't think being pro America isn't a brand as much as it is a political trick. You're right to say there is no difference in being American in st. louis, beaver dam or wasilla but in trying to paint a difference the election looses its integrity (what was left at least). Just b/c the Karl Rove's of the world say being pro America is equal to being pro-life or being a red state voter doesn't make it so.

[Sam Ford]

Thanks, Joe. It may be my longest post yet here; certainly not my longest. :) I'd say that there's quite a bit of trickery involved in branding when it's done in lowest common denominator ways. In this case, "real" America tries to simplify and grossly overgeneralize whole areas into being of like mind, but that's what branding is often meant to do. I think the key they're missing here, though, is that simple messages don't have to be simple-minded, something that I think has hurt the McCain-Palin machine as opposed to the Obama machine, because they are facing a candidate who likewise has simple messages (see Ed Moed's piece) but who can speak articulately while backing them up.

[Dustin Bratcher]

The "pro-American" talk is an old school political tactic and nothing more. Just like when McCain came out this week and basically said that once the economy gets back on the upswing, if Obama is elected, McCain said Obama couldn't protect the country and he could. As if the it's the president's job to pack heat and patrol the White House.

These types of statements try to appeal to emotions instead of reason.

Not to speak on which is right or wrong or what I prefer, it's just a tactic.

Personally, I kind of believe that both candidates were essentially running on the "change" ticket, but McCain still went down the scare tactic road. McCain's sometimes fiery message has been "I can change things, he won't." While Obama's has been more calm and even with the message "If you elect me, WE can change things."

When Obama would criticize McCain's policies or proposals, he would maintain that he believed his proposals were better because he knew better. McCain's criticisms seemed to try and hinge around the theme that Obama's ideas were radical and freakish with hidden pitfalls.

It's all about perception. Obama tries to ease the fear and rally the public while McCain is trying to herd them.

I guess we'll see which way works out on Tuesday.

[Sam Ford]

Good point regarding emotions vs. reason. We live in a paradoxical society. When it comes to our art, we often discredit emotion. Soap operas are criticized for being too much about affect and emotional material, and the term "melodrama" is used as a criticism, as is "sentimental." Yet, when it comes to the way we think, human beings make visceral, emotional decisions. Now that we're at the end of an election, it's perhaps not surprising to see those trailing in the polls utilizing what they call in the pro wrestling world as a "cheap pop," trying to get people riled up without prompting them to think about it too deeply.

Rallying vs. herding is an interesting take, by the way, Dustin. It's an astute point to the difference of trusting in McCain because he has the knowledge and experience, vs. Obama's "WE can" mentality of solving problems through collective intelligence. One is looking to be a leader we follow, the other a leader who facilitates communal solutions (and, no, I don't mean that in a communist sense...although Obama did admit he shared some of his toys with others when a child the other day on The Daily Show...)

[Leena]

I absolutely agree with your commentary on the power and bias of language and the merits of rejecting the premise of an argument rather than adopting its discourse. However, I feel the discussion is missing the issue of "code words." Buried beneath this false urban/rural binary, for many of us "real America" is code for a white America and a direct attack on our identity that not only calls into question our allegiances but also works to demonize us as "the other." Political branding would not get very far without these often sticky, but rarely clever euphemisms.

[Sam Ford]

An important point, Leena, and one I certainly didn't mean to gloss over. As I said with "pro-abortionist," language matters, and code words are absolutely included in that. I learned from Jason Mittell recently that a group of scholars were uniting against the McCain campaign's use of tactics just like these, to marginalize audiences while using euphemisms for hateful ideas. What frustrates me about this particular euphemism is that it simultaneously demonizes "fake America" as "the other" while likewise flattening "real America" to be a homogenized "same." Of course, "real America" isn't exactly as white as it's presumed of being, and I'm particularly concerned for the African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and other ethnic groups who are rising up in more rural areas who are left out of this equation altogether, apparently not even American enough to deserve to be "othered." Thanks for adding this to the conversation, Leena. The sad thing is that Palin and others started using it because, despite the progress we have made, it can still be effective, and I still wonder how much more ground the McCain ticket would have gained if they had taken this particular low road earlier. I'd like to believe it wouldn't have been as effective, but I shudder to think of how this sort of marginalization and alienation of the minority on the one hand and simultaneous homogenization and generalization of the majority on the other still gets votes...