John McCain May Have Lost Due to a Brand Bubble Reveals New Data Analysis from Young & Rubicam and Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates

Analysis of world's largest brand database suggests John McCain lost due to a losing brand strategy. McCain's emphasis on trust and tradition eroded his credibility as a maverick in a race in which both candidates agreed the message was change. Data shows that consumer perception of McCain's brand was comparable to brands that are trusted but don't change like AT&T, Mastercard, the United States Postal Service, Exxon and United Airlines. On the other hand, consumers perceive Obama's brand as similar to energized brands such as Red Bull, Facebook, iPhone, and Starbucks.

Even to the end, McCain stuck to his maverick positioning long after it should have been clear it was not the way to go

The financial crisis was the final blow

New York, NY (Issues Wire / PRWEB) November 19, 2008 -- John McCain may have lost the election due to a "brand bubble" finds new data analysis from Young & Rubicam in partnership with Market Research Firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates. McCain's losing brand strategy is explained with three key findings announced today:

Chart comparing Obama and McCain to consumer brands

1) By casting himself as a "maverick", the Presidential contest became a referendum on who best fit the agreed positioning of change.

2) McCain's mistake was to underestimate the strength Obama had in the change positioning relative to himself and to not have any brand positioning that was all his own.

3) McCain's attributes of trustworthy and traditional rose throughout the campaign but the study shows that such attributes tend to go up when a brand is losing "energized differentiation," -- the consumer perception of motion and direction in a brand (i.e. change). Energized brands like Apple, Google and Whole Foods create velocity and momentum. They move faster, see farther and navigate the future for consumers.

According to John Gerzema, coauthor of The Brand Bubble and Chief Insights Officer at Young & Rubicam, a 'Brand Bubble' occurs when a brand has more credibility than momentum. (e.g. strong esteem and relevance at the expense of energized differentiation). This brand typically performs better on esteem drivers--quality, traditional and trust, but it is less capable of adapting and changing. Consumers may feel this brand is respected, but incapable of changing to meet their future needs. Too much credibility can be a bad thing if consumers think you can't adapt, lead and evolve.

When Young & Rubicam used their BrandAsset™ Valuator (BAV) database (the world's largest database of brands with over 500,000 consumers surveyed across 44 markets on over 40,000 brands) to map the candidates to brands, McCain looked like the tried-and-true, established brands like AT&T, Mastercard, the United States Postal Service, Exxon and United Airlines that everyone knows and trusts, but that are not associated with energized differentiation, or therefore with change. Barack Obama on the other hand maps to innovative and contemporary brands like Facebook, Starbucks, Red Bull, and iPhone. McCain's brands are more populist, while Obama's are more elitist.

"Even to the end, McCain stuck to his maverick positioning long after it should have been clear it was not the way to go," says John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer at Young & Rubicam and author of The Brand Bubble. "His selection of Sarah Palin (whom the campaign dubbed the maverick's maverick) locked him further into his wrong choice rather than bringing a different dimension to the ticket.
                                                                                                                                    
"The financial crisis was the final blow," says Scott Siff, Executive Vice President of Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates. "Once the crisis hit, that long-before implicit agreement between the candidates that the campaign would be about change became a question over who would be more successful in making changes to the way the economy had been managed. But that was not inevitable. Had McCain selected a different context from the beginning, by saying there was a positioning superior to simple change - perhaps seasoned steadiness - the debate over the financial meltdown could have then been framed as whether simply changing everything was a better approach than having solid tested leadership at a time when we most need a steady hand at the wheel. In other words, a battle between two different positions rather than which candidate best represented the same positioning. Ultimately all these choices placed McCain on election day in a position of weakness, and why, at least as a branding matter, he did not fight the right fight."

John Gerzema is Chief Insights Officer of Young & Rubicam and author of The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It (http://www.brandbubble.com).

Scott Siff is Executive Vice President at Penn Schon & Berland.

Young & Rubicam Brands is a global, collaborative network of preeminent companies in advertising, public relations, public affairs, brand identity and design, direct and database marketing, digital and interactive marketing, multicultural marketing and healthcare communications. They were the first company to provide integrated marketing communications services, pioneering its practice in the early 1970s. Today, Young & Rubicam Brands still provides best-in-class communications programs to more than 750 clients worldwide. More than 250 of these clients use more than one Brands company to reach their customers. Young & Rubicam Brands is a member of WPP.

Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB) is a global research-based consultancy that specializes in messaging and communications strategy for blue-chip political, corporate, and entertainment clients. They have over 30 years of experience leveraging unique insights about consumer opinion to provide clients with a competitive advantage -what they call Winning Knowledge™. PSB executes polling and message testing services for numerous Fortune 100 corporations, and have helped elect more than 30 presidents and prime ministers. PSB is a trusted advisor to corporate CEOs and national leaders around the world. For more information, please visit psbresearch.com.

About BrandAsset™ Valuator Model

The BrandAsset™ Valuator (BAV), a proprietary asset of the Y&R Brands (which includes both Y&R Advertising and PSB), is the world's largest database on brands. (See Admap, March 2008 for more in-depth information on the model.) Since 1993, Y&R has surveyed over 500,000 consumers across 44 markets on over 40,000 brands. BAV gauges consumer perceptions on brand health, leadership, and imagery. BAV measures brands in a cultural context, relative to all other brands in each market.

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