![\"Brand](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.johnlaurits.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/democrats-branding-change-that-matters-logo-political-parties-marketing.jpg?resize=723%2C382&ssl=1\" "\\"Brand"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n
For the past 17 months or so, much of the US has been steeped in a continual ebb-and-flow of outrage over whatever mess was made most recently by Trump\u2019s administration. This is partly because most US-Americans (like people anywhere else)\u00a0are halfway-decent people who instinctively reject antisocial behaviors like tearing families apart and spiteful resorts to violence. Homo sapiens is a social species, after all, and such popular dismay can act as an oddly precious reminder of how persistently humane most people really are. But it provokes a question, too \u2014 why is it that policies of military aggression, mass-deportation, cronyism, unchecked police violence, and ecological suicide are suddenly facing the \u2018#resistance\u2019 when Obama, Bush, Clinton, and the like all pushed identical policies for decades? Did millions really change their views on these issues in early 2017? A more-likely explanation can be found in the astonishingly successful use of\u00a0brand marketing<\/em>\u00a0by the major US political parties.<\/p>\n Electoral politics and marketing share a lot of in common \u2014 in both cases, the idea is to use a range of psychological tactics to influence a population\u2019s behavior to achieve a desired result. The goal may be for them to buy a product or to support political causes and candidates but, in essence, the job descriptions are the same. The cool thing about marketing is that its methods are fairly well-known compared to career politics, which are much less transparent. Sometimes, the best way to study politics is to\u00a0not\u00a0study politics\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 instead, study how brand marketing works and the politics follow.<\/p>\n In 2004, the personal-care brand Dove began its\u00a0Dove Campaign for Real Beauty<\/em><\/a><\/strong>, seemingly in defiance of the beauty industry\u2019s tradition of marketing products by preying on women\u2019s self-esteem. The relevant media praised the marketing initiative, which included not just the garden-variety print, video, or billboard ads but also photo-exhibits, workshops, and even a play. As Dove Skin\u2019s VP put it, the goal was:<\/p>\n \u201cTo make women feel comfortable in the skin they are in, to create a world where beauty is a source of confidence and not anxiety\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Unilever\u2019s \u2018Fair and Lovely\u2019 skin-whitening product \u2014 helping women \u201cfeel comfortable in the skin they\u2019re in\u201d indeed\u2026.<\/p>\n The marketing term for Unilever\u2019s approach is\u00a0multi-branding<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, a strategy used for taking a bigger share in markets where companies already own an established brand. As it profited off Dove\u2019s fight against advertisers\u2019 distorted portrayals of women, Unilever quietly raked in cash with ads that overtly sexualized and objectified women to sell\u00a0brands like Axe and Lynx<\/strong><\/a>. To be clear, this\u00a0does not<\/em>\u00a0make the issues raised by the campaign less important \u2014 it does, however, call into question the sincerity of the private interests benefited by the ads and whether loyalty to their brand is truly an effective way to combat toxic beauty standards.<\/p>\n Despite already owning the successful detergent brand\u00a0Tide<\/em>, the multinational Proctor & Gamble launched a second detergent branded as\u00a0Cheer<\/em>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0a\u00a0flanker brand<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. Bigger firms often use this maneuver to protect an established brand from startups trying to lure customers away from existing brands by offering a similar product at lower prices. A flanker does the same thing but, since it is owned by the same company, it poses no threat to the established brand. A\u00a0fighter brand<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0is similar but with one distinction \u2014 flankers hold down a strategic segment in the market to lock out new competition but fighters are designed to sandbag an existing one.<\/p>\n Brands tap into how people express identity. Most people know that buying Dove soap is unlikely to alter how ads depict women but, despite the attention to Unilever\u2019s hypocrisy by the press, the ads associated the brand with something people wanted to identify with and\u00a0sales took off<\/strong><\/a>. The contradiction of the brand\u2019s empowered appearance and its dubious ownership vanished. Beneath the dazzling form, substance is obscured.<\/p>\n The \u2018resistance\u2019 \u2014 or, more precisely, anti-Trumpist\u00a0\u2014 movement reveals a deep inconsistency in how partisan factions in the US respond to perceived changes in policy. If it is assumed that the major parties represent worldviews rooted in differing political values, such discrepancy is hard to make sense of. Thinking of them as brand-based organizations (rather than value-based) seems to offer the better explanation.<\/p>\n And sadly immigration policy is not the only instance where the democrats\u2019 brand is contradicted by political reality.<\/p>\n Just as Unilever\u2019s advertising alchemy transmuted the desire to abolish standards of beauty set by industro-patriarchs into revenue from hair-product-sales, democrats turn collective yearning for social progress into money and power.\u200b Their #resistance brand functions in a way that closely resembles a fighter brand launched to undermine progressive challengers that threaten the party from the left. In 2016, both parties lost control over their bases to challengers who appealed to\u00a0popular discontent<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0with politics-as-usual and, while the republicans failed to crush their revolt, democrats regained control of their party \u2014\u00a0barely<\/em>.\u200b While the GOP is reduced to negotiating with their challenger in hopes of a buyout, democrats have a shot at maintaining dominance in their side of the electoral \u2018market.\u2019<\/p>\n Meanwhile, \u2018liberal\u2019 news-media aggressively brands the DNC\u2019s flagship product as the \u2018ethical\u2019 party by criticizing\u00a0Trump\u2019s big arms-deals<\/strong><\/a>(nevermind that Obama peddled\u00a0more weapons than any post-WWII president<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0or that Clinton\u2019s USA was also #1 in global weapons-exports<\/em>); as the party with \u2018compassion\u2019 for immigrants (nevermind the IIRIRA or Obama setting a world-record for most deportations<\/em>); as the party of integrity (nevermind their equally-shady donors<\/em>); as the party that stands up for workers (nevermind their opposition to a\u00a0living wage<\/strong><\/a><\/em>); as the party that you can have a beer with.<\/p>\n But the truth is that Trump is the best marketing tool democrats could have possibly asked for \u2014\u00a0and they know it<\/em>. By portraying the barbaric but routine political events of Trump\u2019s presidency as an all-out assault on a vague alternative presumably represented by the democrats, the partisan news-media uses the public\u2019s genuine outrage to brand them as the \u2018opposition party.\u2019 The real problem with Trump is not that he\u2019s a walking version of capitalism\u2019s late-stage failure or that his cabinet is ruthlessly utilizing the savage framework that both parties gifted them \u2014 the real issue is that people seem to think Trump\u2019s policies are unusual.<\/p>\n But they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n In solidarity,\u00a0<\/em> June 14, 2018 (JohnLaurits.com) For the past 17 months or so, much of the US has been steeped in a continual ebb-and-flow of outrage over whatever mess was made most recently by Trump\u2019s administration. This is partly because most US-Americans (like people anywhere else)\u00a0are halfway-decent people who instinctively reject antisocial… Continue reading #<\/em>Resistance by\u00a0<\/em>Democrats<\/em>™<\/em><\/h2>\n
\u2018America\u2019s\u00a0Viable\u00a0Opposition Party\u2019<\/em><\/h2>\n
Politically-Useful Concepts in Brand Marketing<\/em><\/h2>\n
![\"Brand](\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.johnlaurits.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/unilever-logo.png?resize=273%2C302&ssl=1\" "\\"Brand"){kind=logo}
<\/a>But\u00a0whose goal<\/em>\u00a0was it, exactly? In the end, a brand\u2019s success profits its owner and Dove is owned by the multinational consumer-goods corporation\u00a0Unilever<\/em>. Does Dove deserve support for siding with women harmed by absurd beauty-standards promoted by competing brands even though a lot of these brands are, like Dove, merely part of Unilever\u2019s portfolio? Buying Dove\u2019s products to support its goal for women to \u201cfeel comfortable in the skin they are in\u201d seems great \u2014 but the money might as well have been spent on\u00a0Fair and Lovely<\/em>,\u00a0a skin-whitening product Unilever markets<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to dark-skinned girls in 36 countries. For Unilever\u2019s shareholders, it makes no difference.<\/p>\nUmbrellas & Multibranding<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Unilever's](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.johnlaurits.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/fair-and-lovely-advertisement-unilever-dove.jpg?resize=333%2C189&ssl=1\" "\\"Unilever's")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\u2018Flanker\u2019 & \u2018Fighter\u2019 Brands<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n
Form & Substance: The Political Party Brand
\n<\/em><\/h2>\nThe Democrats™ Brand vs. Actual Democratic Policy<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.johnlaurits.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/resistLGBT_white_buttonPack__democrats-branding.png?resize=360%2C360&ssl=1\" "\\"Brand")
<\/a>If democratic resistance to mass-deportations was value-based, one would expect to see similar opposition as Obama\u00a0deported<\/strong><\/a>more people than all his predecessors for the previous century combined.\u00a0Looking at presidential\u00a0democrats\u2019 past immigration policy<\/strong><\/a>, it is hard to imagine how anyone would think the people deported by Trump\u2019s regime would fare better if the nation had voted blue. And long before Obama was\u00a0deporter-in-chief<\/em>, it was Clinton who signed 1996\u2019s\u00a0Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act<\/em>, criminalizing the undocumented and giving broad authority to the Department of Homeland Security to construct border-walls.\u00a0Policies like Trump\u2019s would be impossible without\u00a0the statutory framework<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Clinton\u2019s administration provided.<\/p>\n#<\/em><\/strong>Resistance: the\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Democratic Party\u2019s\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Fighter Brand<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Democratic](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.johnlaurits.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/obama-logo-inverted-donald-trump.jpg?resize=360%2C191&ssl=1\" "\\"Democratic"){kind=logo}
<\/a>Setting aside Trump\u2019s cringey style and sleazy but apolitical personal traits, no part of his overall political agenda differs fundamentally from the one democrats pursue. In fact, a lot of what anti-Trumpists seem to resist is the same policy-framework embraced by Clintonist democrats that drove Sandernistas to revolt against their party. Policy that\u00a0legalizes corruption, decays civil liberties, guts social benefits\u200b, ignores the climate crisis, militarizes\u00a0racist policing institutions<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0legitimizes a permanent bloodthirsty state of war<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 democrats beat Trump to all of that. Mr. Tiny-Hands is just a manager.<\/p>\nHow the Democratic Marketing Strategy Works<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n
![\"Democrats'](\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.johnlaurits.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Resistance-Summer-Screen-Shot_democrats-DNC-brand-marketing.jpg?resize=360%2C270&ssl=1\" "\\"Democrats'")
<\/a>For obvious reasons, the Democratic Party modeled its faux-progressive #resistence brand after the grassroots challenger that arose around the Sanders campaign. Launching its own signature brand of grassroots opposition lets the party draw supporters from the progressive and leftist groups with more radical potential, while also building DNC-funded organizations whose support would be needed by future progressive movements.<\/p>\n
\nJohn Laurits<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"