Hillary/Obama ticket not a good idea
Clintons push a Hillary/Obama ticket | U.S. | Reuters
Its a recent strategy of the Clinton campaign to suggest Barack as VP to garner votes, but not only are the framing of the issues so vastly different, the brands won’t mesh. In addition, the campaign infrastructures are totally incompatible. In one case we have top down command and control, and in another buttom up grass roots. If a strategic mixed branding plan were in case 2 years ago, perhaps it might have made sense with a ton of work behind the scenes… but today, the only thing they share is a base set of policy, and the rest is vastly incompatible, at least from an operational and electability pov.
Barack Obama’s campaign has a rather amazing consistency in branding, and its truly amazing, even so far as to include grassroots diy graphics. I’m not sure how it came to be, but certainly any marcom group would jump up and down to have this level of consistency across their corp, much less across a geographically and sociologically diverse group of volunteers. Certainly there is a high risk of mis-steps and mixed messages when you take command and control out of the equation, especially in the pr domain. Yet, when mistakes happen, folks take ownership very very fast, as evidenced by Samantha Power and Kirk Watson. Granted, I think Samantha’s resignation was overkill, yet in her choosing to do so, an even stronger message is sent concerning her commitment to the message.
Yet, I contrast the consistent message and branding of Barack’s grass roots campaign, with the mixed and variable messages sent by Hillary’s top down command and control. Within a weeks time frame, Hillary’s messages and the framing of such have swung back and forth and sideways. Barack’s campaign on the other hand canges very slowly and deliberately, in part probably due to real time feedback via the social network combined with the bottom up messages from the field. Its fascinating to watch how changes on the network affect the message presented. It is very subtle effect, but causality is definitely there.
I almost wonder if perhaps the Clinton campaign is measuring impulse response followed by Bayesian analysis…Â intentionally creating ripples for predictive modeling while cool from an academic pov, would seem to be too risky to use in a high stakes campaign. Yet, if such ripples are not intentional, the only other option suggests a scatter gun approach perhaps out of desparation, and I sort of doubt that as well. Either way, this campaign and its associated social dynamics would make for a fascinating paper.
Lastly, there is the I or We factor I previously blogged about… and to some extent, I think that sets the tone of the major incompatible differences between the campaigns. Branding, framing, consistency, command and control vs grass roots bottom up, all tie to the I or We factor. Short of one or the other party completely jettisoning their principles and operating practices, a mixed ticket is just not workable. I hope it never happens, as effectively it kills off the participation of the strongest activists on both sides. Ultimately, I go back to Seth’s analysis, that stepping aside may be the best course of action for Hillary as well as the party.



