As 9/11 was unfolding, a relatively new president, down in the polls shortly after getting into office, George W. Bush, skyrocketed in the polls because of his clever use of branding and marketing. He became the icon for confronting the “all evil” that was behind the first attack on U.S. soil since the attack at Pearl Harbor.
What makes a great leader can be seen if we go back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His fireside chats became his megaphone to a country standing up in its role as the leading democracy in the world.
The study of psychology and human behavior is at the center of all marketing, regardless of the product or service being sold by an organization. Understanding and predicting the future behavior of people is what determines the tactics and strategy implemented.
The organization can be a corporation, a political party or a government attempting to reinforce the thinking of its citizenry. This is a necessary first step in the political marketing process, with an even more important step being the development of a coherent message of a leader that resonates with those he or she is leading.
The evidence is clear in all messaging strategies: Repetition is necessary. How many people in the U.S. believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump? The answer is tens of millions of his followers, which is due to the regular reinforcement of a theme that resonates with the attitudes of his base. Trusted communicators speaking via trusted media channels is a recipe for success.
President Joe Biden has made it very clear to the world that the U.S. plans to enforce the power of democracy and position the U.S. as the leader of the free world in the same way that Bush did with great success during his tenure as president. Biden has announced that his job, as leader of the free world, is to “drive public opinion” and use his bully pulpit to do so.
In marketing terms, his job is to reinforce and strengthen the U.S. brand with a resounding statement on the continued strength of democracy. Biden’s political marketing strategy is very clever, shifting from his lackluster start to defining his brand on the back of climate change and the economy so as to unite America’s fragile democracy.
Now that he has finally hit his stride relative to the resonating appeal of his new administration, he must use social media, traditional media and all other communication channels to continue to reinforce the mission of his presidency. His pro-democracy message must be communicated in the same way that FDR used fireside chats, and Trump used Twitter to reinforce the attitudes of his base — first with his promise to “make America great again” and then with his assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.
By following in the steps of predecessors who implemented a similar strategy during difficult times in the U.S., our forecast is a positive trend line in popularity for Biden if he follows up on his promise to strengthen democracy around the world with the establishment of a weekly address to the nation, which could be called “Speaking from the heart of the American democracy.”
The ultimate goal of a national leader is to reinforce the thinking and actions of that nation’s people, which is only possible with the right message, matched with the right messenger, and continually repeated.
Now that Biden has found the right message, he needs to consistently reinforce it. If he doesn’t, he’s doomed to fail during his tenure in the White House.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Bruce I. Newman is a professor of marketing and the Wicklander Fellow in Business Ethics in DePaul University’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business. Todd P. Newman is an assistant professor in the life sciences communication department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and an affiliate of the Holtz Center for Science & Technology Studies and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
