Branding in Politics

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing grade: 10 University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm language: English abstract: Experts agree that Obama´s election victory is largely due to a unique and innovative election campaign which managed to convince voters. The huge efforts to raise funds to cover the costs and the extensive and comprehensive use of social media are considered the main innovations Obama introduced into his campaign. (Qualman 2009 p. 64; Waters & Lester 2010 p. 241; Harfoush 2009 pp. VIII) They agree on the fact that Obama can be considered a powerful brand: Brand Obama is a real marketing phe-nomenon. He´s not only making politics cool he´s outpacing Google and iPhone the icon brands of this century states David Jones CEO of one of the world´s biggest advertising agencies. (Euro RSCG Brand Momentum Study 2008)The target of this paper is to analyze from a marketing point of view the mechanisms which helped Barack Obama turn the game around - against initial odds. For this purpose we will first of all deal with the theoretical bases of brand management. We will examine in detail the characteristic features of a brand in order to answer the question as to what extent the comparison of President Obama to a brand is justified. The subse-quent analysis of the functions of a brand has the purpose to explain in what way brands are capable of increasing a product's (or person's) perceived value to the customer (or voter).