In the last two blog posts that we have published “Major Repercussions of Political Branding” and “Another Downside of Political Branding“, our team have discussed some major political branding repercussions. They are, turning politicians into commodities and shifting people’s attention from the brand’s substance to the image. Digging deeper into Obama brand, the researcher Staci M. Zavataro deduced a final political branding repercussion.
According to Zavattaro (2015), the third political branding repercussion is the most dangerous.
Indeed, the overreliance on branding and marketing may make the politician slip into a hyperreal situation: “he becomes not an actual leader, but an image of leader. He becomes not an actual statesman, but the embodied image of a national brand. He becomes not a political campaign model, but an image-centric candidate model.”
Simulation is dangerous because it can dilute actual power and make the political leader “resemble that Puppet of Power who is the head of primitive societies”
When the politician becomes a brand, he/she will live with the image he/she created; in other words, live according to the ideal of what was “put out to vote in the political market. Accordingly, people will vote for him/her according to his/her ultimate simulation. Not only does the image that the candidate tries to show create the simulation, but all information and news spread that “conjure away the real with signs of the real” contribute to that imitation process as well.
Zavattaro (2010) concludes that in the case of President Obama, “the simulation was created on the campaign trail and continues to be perpetuated in office, with Obama delivering a message both in traditional forms and through immediate social media.”
Finally, it is important to note that “Obama was not the first to usher in political marketing, but the first to perfect the tactics. He is Brand Obama.”
Source
Zavattaro, S. M. (2010). Brand Obama: The implications of a branded president. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 32(1), 123-128. Retrieved from Brand Obama: The Implications of a Branded President on JSTOR
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