Tis the season to be jolly, as the carol goes. The nippy, calm, intermittent breeze is upon us, but is quickly dissipated by the weird turnaround of weather conditions and the heat from protests on the Maguindanao massacre, presidential surveys and forums, and other impassioned exchanges, disagreements and “the alignment or non-alignment of the stars.”
The political communication arena is open. I wrote about it last week, and not surprisingly quite a number e-mailed or texted me, either thanking me for the free tips or asking for referrals for a good PR communication counselor they can work with. As we are moving towards 2010, we will for sure see more wannabes coming out, telling their own (and hopefully) unique stories, associating themselves with some service-oriented initiatives, connecting their names in social responsibility projects, or implementing their visibility programs — from tarps with their holiday greetings to interviews in media to bring their awareness level, popularity, and name recall scores to a higher level.
If you are an aspiring political leader, you need to have a strong Brand YOU (your own uniqueness) to be able to lead. This entails a definitive positioning that can bring a winning persona via consistency in words and actions. Walking the walk is something that you should instinctively embrace, articulated in a crystal-clear and focused manner. Your ability to build and demonstrate a compelling Brand YOU equity will undoubtedly bring critical success, whether you are a neophyte or a seasoned candidate.
How does one go about building a political Brand YOU? The underlying principles are the same as those applied to the branding of a cell phone, a shampoo, a whitening cream, or a professional service. Be clear about who you are and what you stand for, audit your strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities, strategize how you can best connect with your constituents, consider what their needs and wants are, know the issues that resonate with them, determine the value you can commit to make your campaign promises happen, and communicate in a way that touches their hearts and minds, utilizing a media mix that can excellently project your key message points. And most importantly, recognize the gaps in your brand, and invest the time and energy to surmount those gaps.
Brand YOU is a trust mark. It makes you distinctive from the rest in your field. As business guru Tom Peters predicts, “It is either Brand YOU or canned you, become distinct or extinct.” It can take your political career in an idiosyncratic direction, but you have to start thinking of how you can be an out-of-the-box contender, somebody with a single-minded proposition that can rise above the clutter. As Dave Buck writes, “The benefits of Brand YOU are unmistakable. Becoming a brand is truly evolutionary, incredibly freeing, and soulfully rewarding.” It distinguishes you from others who are slow and without a differentiating feature.
Brand YOU requires expert collaboration and networking skills to outwit the competition. As management consultant Fred Pfaff avers, “Relying on pure self-promotion to gain reputation can easily backfire.” To get your name in public consciousness, you must get labeled, trademarked, branded, and projected as someone with a big idea. You subscribe to an idea, issue or cause, and combine that subscription with a substantial level of personal passion to get yourself noticed by media, the electorate, and your opponents.
Brand YOU is incomplete if it is built on just one facet of the process. Functional and emotional qualities must always work in tandem. Competent functional abilities can bring credibility, while emotional excellence enlarges your sphere of influence. If built upon functional attributes alone, your Brand YOU will have no differentiating advantage, and will thus be uninspiring. You will be assessed against a menu of traits, and can be seen as being less agile and adaptable if the voting public or even your followers turn against you.
A more preferred Brand YOU is one that has the ability to be relevant, engaging and motivating. There are thousands of hopefuls in political contests and you must be able to break through the filtering that inevitably takes hold of the public. Begin by establishing a connection with your targeted voters. As with any relationship, two-way communication is critical. You should see the branding process and the attendant campaign communication supports as efforts to draw attention to yourself and away from competitors. However, the approach that builds longer-lasting relationships requires that your brand listen, too. If marketing communication is the talking part of the dialogue, then personal brand research and positioning test is the listening part of the conversation.
If you are an aspirant who truly wants to have an impressive lead, then listen to your constituents. Turn them into stakeholders of Brand YOU by allowing them to open up and speak their minds out. You will learn from them as they learn from you. There is great danger in being a non-listener. If an untested Brand YOU initiative fails to perform, you may not only have wasted resources but a turned-off electorate that looks the other way.
A well-planned Brand YOU can lead to effective political leadership. And to be a great political leader, you must have both IQ and EQ competencies. IQ is fundamental, but when put together with EQ it becomes stronger. This combination, when nurtured well, can afford you the big win. And to ensure that win, craft your Brand YOU, use it consistently in the right place, the right time, and with the right message aimed at the right targets. Harness your potentials for EQ-based leadership, and carefully prepare your road map towards political triumph.
More than the medium used, getting and keeping voters’ attention is dependent on how you write or tell your stories and pitches, or how you make your communications executions more solid and engaging. Political candidates are extra-challenged by today’s distracted, disinterested, disengaged, disenchanted and demanding audiences. The pressure is how to get them to interact with you.
The media landscape is breaking, and it is has been happening for years now. The Internet is propelling and accelerating this movement. With every click of the mouse, millions of people are cutting and apportioning media into highly focused niches. And by the millions, they’re putting them back together into custom-made digital channels of their own choice — all too often, without the ads, the lifeblood of all media organizations. This results in a serious shortfall of attention for every candidate that depends on traditional mass media to connect with voters.
It’s a difficulty that has started to confront candidates. They’re all jumbling to face up to the main challenge of fiercer competition. And how do you reach electorates who are suffering from attention deficiency — people who are attracted to new social media? The ubiquity of “networks-of-one” brings amazing prospects like the opportunity to connect with the masses in more intimate conversations rather than the traditional, less emotional and rapid-fire punches aimed at couch potatoes.
The thinking is that if you string together enough of these so-called micro-markets, you will be able to build something that adds up to a new kind of mass market. After all, the same cyberspace that allows people to decide what to watch or read also helps media and marketers to talk to them with extraordinary precision and competence.
Candidates are encouraged to look at the value of online communities and how they can chat with prospective supporters, hand over to them the process of remixing and reformulating platforms as their attention is engaged at a much deeper level.
There are rules to be followed in branding and media usage that candidates must review or perhaps master. It is advisable to heed those tenets. They will arm you in audience capturing, getting their attention, and making them write your name on their ballots.
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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.