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November 07, 2008 at 07:00 PM
Marketers are offering many lessons from Tuesday’s election of Barack Obama.
Al Reis of Advertising Age says, “Obama owns the ‘change’ idea in voters’ minds.” And while Hillary Clinton and John McCain argued that they could do “change” better than Obama, being better never works in marketing, according to Reis. What works? Being different.
“The Obama campaign has a lot to teach the advertising community,” Reis shares, and the campaign’s success also has three clear lessons for financial advisors.
1. Simplicity. “Based on my experience, in the boardrooms of corporate America ‘change’ is an idea that is too simple to sell. Corporate executives are looking for advertising concepts that are ‘clever.’ For all the money being spent, corporate executives want something they couldn’t have thought of themselves,” explains Reis.
“Some … slogans might be clever, some might be inspiring and some might be descriptive of the company’s product line, but none will ever drive the company’s business in the way that “change” drove the Obama campaign. They’re not simple enough.”
For advisors, this type of simplicity might relate best to financial issues through the use of words like protection, retirement, security, income, support, stability, dependability or advice.
2. Consistency. Companies try to “communicate” when they should really be trying instead to “position,” the expert says.
