Marketing and Politics

More stuff from All Marketers Are Liars (I really like this book!):

Worldview is a term used to refer to the rules, values, beliefs, and biases that an individual consumer brings to a situation. (32)

People make decisions big and small based on just one thing:the lie we tell ourselves about what we're about to do. [In 2004, John] Kerry failed to tell a story we wanted to believe. Not a story in a speech, but living a story, consistently telling us the story in everything he did and said. From the clothes a politician wears, to his spouse and his appointees, he's telling a story. Candidates sometimes want to manage response with a press release or a speech. It won't work anymore. (80)

The market for votes is filled with consumers who have already committed to a worldview, who have a bias in favor of their current choice and are delighted to ignore or even denigrate alternative brands. The temptation in politics is to be so certain of the facts of your case that you arrogantly believe you can persuade people to change their minds...

Advice to the candidates for 2008: understand that half the voting population has a worldview that will cause a traditional partisan story to be ignored. Hillary Clinton, more than others, has a worldview problem because the vast majority of the electorate has already told itself a story about her. Same thing is true for John Ashcroft. He has no chance to tell his story to a large portion of the electorate--the worldview it holds about him has already been set. Conventional political wisdom says that either candidate, with a good enough organization and enough money, has a shot. I don't buy it. I believe that there isn't enough money in circulation to persuade those voters that have already made up their minds to change them. (81)