Great article over at Advertising Age by Bonnie Fuller about the successful marketing the Obama's have done to make themselves the first couple of cool and popularity.
Portraying Barack and Michelle as Brangelina Is Working
It's official. The Obamas are just like us. With their latest PR move -- being photographed as a family for this week's People magazine cover story titled "The Obamas At Home" -- it's apparent that Team Obama has a clear and clever presidential marketing strategy: present Michelle and Barack as the beloved Brangelina of the political world.
Like every in-demand A-list couple who concedes to allowing a peek behind the curtain, the Obamas insist this will be the "first and last" up-close and personal look at them as a family. What they don't admit to is that this was a carefully orchestrated, well-thought out brand presentation. And it isn't actually the first highly personal look at the photogenic family. No, it's the culmination of a publicity campaign designed to take advantage of the couple's charisma and Hollywood-worthy good looks. Team Obama is using popular mass-media vehicles such as People, Us Weekly, "The View," "Access Hollywood" and "The Colbert Report" to familiarize the American public with the candidate and his wife, and to dispel myths about the couple, in a far more aggressive way than has ever been done before in a presidential election.
The article goes on to mention that the strategy is working. She cites as evidence a recent Associated Press-Yahoo News poll finding that 52% of Americans would like to invite Barack Obama to their summer barbecue vs. the 45% for John McCain.
I don't know about everyone else here, but I truly hate the whole "Who would you rather have a beer with?" BS of modern politics. That said, this is the first time I can recall the democratic nominee for president winning that (ridiculous) race for a long time. And the simple fact is that it doesn't hurt.
Most people aren't nearly as media literate as they think they are. Team Obama's approach to packaging the couple and their family as the must know celebrities in US popular culture is straight genious. Like most others on Kos, it sickens me a little that this is the way to run a successful election campaign in 2008. That said however, failing to recognize the potential benefits of marketing Obama and company to some voters, and refusing to embrace such a strategy would be foolish.
Yes, some of the folks that read US and People magazines are the same as those who watch Meet the Press and watch cable news channels. I would suggest however, that far more of these people don't do both. Love them or hate them, for some (very) low info voters, these might be one of, if not the primary source of information about the candidates and their families.
As the article points out
More than 60 million women a week now read the enormously influential glossies, and one of their biggest appeals are the "Stars Are Just Like Us"-style features -- those regularly featured photographs of stars going about their everyday lives
These celeb tabloids allow people to develop parasocial relationships with the individuals who appear between their covers. Research has shown that people literally come to think of the people they read about in these rags as friends. For those with a little more info, but who also read these things, it's simply got to be harder to vote against a person when you think they are your friend.
One thing this makes very clear to me: the Obama campaign understands the multidimensionality of the modern media environment and today's electorate. What's more, they re is running an effort that capitializes on that entire environment.