They Think You're Stupid (13 page)

Whereas the Democratic Party has an
ideology problem
, the Republican Party has a
brand identity problem
. Brand identity is based upon people's perceptions of you and your message. Brand identity for a product, a business, or a political party is driven by one thing--messages in the mind over time. Those messages create brand identity, over time, in the mind of the consumer.

My business goggles taught me that people hear not just with their ears, but they hear with their hearts, their eyes, and their heads. The ears are simply a vehicle to feed the heart, the eyes, and the head. Democrats usually go right for the heart with emotional rhetoric. Republicans usually go to the head with facts and an understanding of the logic.

When I became CEO of Godfather's Pizza in 1986, it was a failing company. The company literally was about to go under. Our sales were declining, company morale was declining, and our brand identity was blurred. My own management team and employees no longer knew the Godfather's mission. My number one task was to get everyone to realize that we had a brand identity crisis. Our management team had forgotten, and our customer base had forgotten, that Godfather's made the best-tasting pizza. Why? Because we gradually stopped making the best-tasting pizza. As a result, we lost customers, we lost profitability, and we were losing our company.

Both political parties spend millions of dollars trying to sell their brand identity during elections, when a lot of the perception of their brand is created between elections by . . . (
drum roll
) the media.

Let's illustrate the power of brand identity. If I were to say the term "Big Blue," what company pops into your mind? How long did it take you to answer IBM? If I were to say "copiers," what product comes to mind? Most likely, it is Xerox. How many times have you done as I have done and incorrectly said, "Would you make a Xerox of this for me?" Or "I'd like a Coke," and someone brings you another cola product. These are examples of strong brand identity. The brand is so strong that it becomes synonymous with the product.

Strong messages are not enough, though, to create a strong, positive brand identity. The messages must be credible. There must be substance underlying the message. At Godfather's we decided to have one goal--make the best-tasting pizza. To achieve this goal we had to eliminate a lot of barriers that prevented us from achieving this goal. It's called focus. Basically, Godfather's was trying to be all things to all people before I arrived. They were trying to provide multiple products to multiple groups of consumers in an attempt to attract everybody. Instead of achieving "the best-tasting pizza," they ended up with a conglomeration of poor products.

This is the direction the Democrats have taken their political party, and the Republicans have started to drift in that direction by losing their focus on fiscal responsibility. The Democrats tell anyone who will listen that their policies appeal to that person or their group and that the competition (the Republican Party) is too busy focusing on one consumer group (the rich) to care about them.

When most people stop and really look at the primary tenets of what it means to be a Republican, they quickly realize that they are more ideologically aligned with the Republican Party. But they quickly go back to their perception of the party and denounce any formal affiliation. That's the weakness of the brand.

The Republican Party has allowed its primary competition (Democrats) to define its image and what it stands for. Because of this, there now exists among millions of citizens a perception of what a Republican is that differs from the reality of what it means to be a Republican.

Do you remember the story about Scotty, the college sophomore who accompanied me one day as part of a job shadow project at his school? Scotty told me, "A Democrat stands for the little people and a Republican stands for the rich guy."

I then asked Scotty if he had heard of the term "GOP."

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Do you know what GOP means?"

Scotty replied, "No."

I said, "What if I told you it stood for 'Grand Old Party'? What would that suggest to you?"

"Sounds like a bunch of old dudes," Scotty answered.

Perception has been allowed to cloud reality. The Republican brand is perceived by many Democrats as showing a lack of compassion toward the poor, the elderly, and children in public schools. The brand is thought by millions to be unaccepting of racial minorities and uncaring about blue-collar workers struggling to achieve their American Dreams. Nothing is further from the truth, but a lot people do not know it. As a result, Republicans are experiencing difficulty connecting to the all-important middle or
politically homeless
voter.

How did the Republicans allow themselves to become perceived as an uncaring, unaccepting, uncompassionate party comprised of "old dudes"? For too many years, Republicans have done little to combat the negative and divisive rhetoric of the Democrats and liberal members of the print and television media. In addition, Republicans do not package their message in a format that connects on a personal level with Leroy and Bessie Public.

When Republicans make statements like "We want to eliminate the Department of Education," Leroy and Bessie Public hear, "Republicans don't care about education." When Republicans say, "We want to end all affirmative action programs," Leroy and Bessie think, "See, I knew they were racists and elitists." When Republicans say, "We need to build more prisons," Leroy and Bessie wonder, "Where are the programs to keep people out of prison?"

There is merit to the ideas of reducing the size and influence of the U.S. Department of Education and eliminating quota-based hiring mandates. The solutions to these issues, however, must be explained to the public in terms of the direct benefits derived from their implementation. Voters want to know how policy solutions will affect them personally, and not necessarily how many billions of dollars will be saved.

The public is much more likely to support changes in education policy if they are explained as allowing more local control of curriculums as opposed to eliminating an entire U.S. department because its bureaucrats are too liberal. "Education reform" is a nice term, but it is not the language of real people. Republicans need to say that they support strong, accountable public education. More citizens depend on public education than on private education. The fact that most teachers and administrators are more liberal than you does not mean you have to take a negative stance toward public education as an institution. Public education will be the only option for millions of children for a long time. We need to make it better.

Taxpayers will understand the logic behind cutting marginal tax rates on income when they see their personal incomes rise and increased job opportunities become available. The term "tax cut" does not resonate with all potential voters in the real world. Tax code replacement does resonate with small business owners frustrated with the compliance costs of filling out all their tax forms and watching valuable cash generated by their business being sucked out by unfair inventory and depreciation rules. Connecting with voters, like connecting with customers, requires a marketing and communications plan that adequately describes your superior product and inspires potential consumers to buy it.

If the Republicans solve their brand identity problem, they will have an expanded voter base for decades. This will not be accomplished by simply loudly criticizing the Democrats during election time; it will require a deliberate plan between elections to inform and inspire voters.

Since the Contract with America stalled after Newt Gingrich left Congress, the Republicans have fallen back into the often used Democratic techniques of negative rhetoric and blame of the other party to win elections and to explain their policy agendas to voters. Republicans were put on the defensive by the Democrats most of the time. This contributed to gridlock in Congress and an expansion of the great divides and helped produce the close presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.

I understand that running a campaign is different in many ways from running a business. But political parties, like businesses, will never grow their voter base by promoting their product only to repeat customers and by constantly criticizing their competition. Businesses rely on their loyal repeat customers to keep the business going but are engaged every day in a battle to expand their customer base and show their competitors' customers why their product is better.

There is at least one big similarity between running a campaign and running a business. It's the thought, care, and attention that go into developing the message for the media campaign. For federal elections, this is critical and expensive. But not nearly enough attention and resources are expended between elections. Political campaigns are often focused primarily on securing the base and generating support for a candidate by telling the base all the reasons not to vote for the competing candidate. Businesses are focused primarily on spreading the positive news about their product or service. This in turn helps build a positive brand identity.

Millions of advertising dollars are spent by political campaigns each election cycle to portray competing candidates as the worst people on Earth, barely deserving of oxygen, let alone your vote. Truth is often the first casualty of an intense, negative campaign war, which leaves all but the dedicated base of political activists and observers confused and uninspired to vote.

The next casualties of an intense, negative campaign are the issues and, worse yet, the solutions a candidate proposes. Many candidates spend too little time discussing the issues and solutions to problems. Voters do not want to hear only how bad things are. They already know that. They want to hear credible hope that things can be better. Voters have always been inspired by hope, and they always will be.

Republicans also damage their brand identity when they repeatedly attack the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates. They are in effect attacking the party where many of the politically homeless once belonged. Many of the politically homeless have their political roots in the Democratic Party, and may still have family members who consider themselves Democrats. The politically homeless view attacks on the Democratic Party as an attack on some of the ideas they once supported. When Republicans focus their attacks on entities rather than specific issues and solutions, they alienate the politically homeless and a large pool of potentially Republican voters.

Since Democrats have co-opted most of the credit for civil rights gains, an attack on Democrats is viewed by many and especially Blacks as an attack on positive civil rights legislation. These attacks send a clear signal to the conservative base, but they send a negative signal to Blacks and other minority groups. Voters then question the racial sincerity of a political party that would attack the institutions they believe opened up opportunities and equal access for all citizens.

Most members of racial minorities support Democrat candidates, and many view the conservative policy agenda as hostile toward protection of their rights. The Republican Party could expand its base of supporters exponentially if it worked toward educating the public on its positive contributions to the civil rights struggle, coupled with the positive things it is doing even today. Potential voters would then be willing to listen to other policy solutions Republicans have to offer.
In business you look for a sustainable point of difference between you and your competitors and then market and promote it until the cows come home.

Republicans will not capture the politically homeless and expand their base with the "build it and they will come" mentality or a strategy that employs the constant use of negative and divisive political rhetoric. Too many people do not pay attention to politics on a day-to-day basis, and they do not take time to connect political headlines to the facts. This is why it is so easy for perception to become reality in politics. Perception has to be deliberately managed.

At the heart of most people's version of the American Dream is a desire to achieve economic freedom. They also want to live in a nation that values the rule of law and protection of our moral foundations and to live in a nation that actively defends its citizens through military superiority from those who want to destroy our freedoms.

The version of economic freedom, like the version of the American Dream, varies from citizen to citizen. Achieving economic freedom could mean starting or expanding your own business, having enough money to invest or save for your children's future, or acquiring a level of financial security. Whatever your definition of economic freedom is, achieving it begins with controlling your own money.

The majority of U.S. citizens will never be able to control all their own money and work toward economic freedom as long as federal, state, and local governments continue to tax inheritance and incomes at disparate (or what government likes to call "progressive") rates and impose mountains of needless regulations and compliance costs on small businesses and large corporations.

The tax codes at all levels of government are used by politicians as tools for social engineering and to reward specific interests with credits for specific behaviors. The Social Security system has been abused for decades by Congress as a method to raise funds for members' favorite pork barrel projects in their districts to the point that the system will soon be fiscally insolvent. Instead of demonstrating leadership by addressing these problems and inequities head on, most of the solutions we hear about amount to slight cuts in marginal tax rates, more tax credits and deductions, and raising the Social Security retirement age to avoid having to make the politically dangerous decision of actually fixing the problems that undermine our nation's economic foundation.

If members of Congress were gamblers in Las Vegas, we would say they are playing with "house money." Unfortunately for us, we the people are the house and the money they play fast and loose with is our money, taken from us in the form of taxes every time we receive a paycheck, an investment dividend, an inheritance from our family members, or a Social Security check.