Marketing vs. Politics
by Brian Reich | 21 Mar 2008, 2:00am
The Los Angeles Times posted a photo essay on its website highlighting the similarities between the movie marketing business and the business of campaign politics. They used Barack Obama’s campaign as their case study. They write:
Getting elected to the White House is a lot like opening a Hollywood blockbuster these days. And nowhere is that more in evidence than Barack Obama’s campaign after his speech on race in America.
With the current election cycle consuming the thoughts and dreams of a great majority of Americans, commentators have begun bemoaning the inevitable blurring of the lines between politics and entertainment. Young people get their news from “The Daily Show,” a comedy program, and politically minded voters are putting their energies into creating Internet videos that rely more on cheesecake than issues-oriented slogans.
Some pundits are calling Obama’s race relations oration the most defining speech of his campaign. However, it’s the Obama media blitz that has followed that is most reminiscent of Tom Cruise’s or Denzel Washington’s pre-movie release talk show rounds.
They go on to highlight Obama’s surprise visit to Saturday Night Live, making time for the talk shows (like the Tyra Banks Show) and his ability to “Move the Merch” (translation: sell t-shirts and stuff) and seven other overlapping strategies.
What the LA Times doesn’t note, however, is that the Obama campaign has actually been more successful than Hollywood at engaging people and mobilizing them to action. All the candidates have been really. A movie ticket only (only!) costs you $10 and requires a commitment of 90 minutes, but Hollywood still can’t get a major blockbuster to stay on top of the charts for more than a couple of weeks. The Obama campaign has millions of people donating $25, $50 and $100 at a time (several times over) and spending hours making phone calls, knocking on doors, and similar. And he is doing it in a more challenging environment — talking about serious issues like healthcare and war and race.
The reason for the success: It is not because he is a ‘rock star’ (though that doesn’t hurt) or because he goes on the Daily Show. His success is the result of his substance — its because he’s talking about the issues that people care about, the things that impact our daily lives. All the candidates are… maybe not enough, or in enough detail, but Senator Obama and the others are all talking about issues. And that’s what we want, that is the key to success - understanding what the audience wants to hear about and delivering on their expectations. It’s a tough time in America, the economy is slowing, the war is dragging on, people are concerned and looking for answers. In hollywood terms, he has a better script, a more interesting plot.
Hollywood should pay attention to the Obama campaign, and politics in general. If they can start to relate their work more closely to the serious issues that impact people’s lives — and if they can do it well (and seriously and authentically the way political candidates are doing it) they might just see the kind of interest that Seantor Obama and other political candidates are enjoying transferring over to blockbuster movies again as well.
