GOP Branding
US House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-OH gets a big thumbs up from me today. He’s gathering a group of Reps and confidants together to work on rebranding the GOP. This is long overdue and I commend Rep. Boehner for his efforts. To many people this is a wasteful exercise. What Boehner is doing though is no different than what any successful business does - get focused, develop their brand and work out a plan to sell the brand. Rep. Boehner is taking a business approach to politics.
Don’t expect immediate results though - branding takes time. There are two ways to sell something. You can sell a large quantity of something and recognize that next year you could be selling something different. This produces short term gains and you have to hope that the next short term gain is significant. A lot of businesses build themselves on this model.
The other way to build a business is by developing and building a brand. This takes a lot longer. When you begin your brand development, you don’t get much response or much success. But once people identify with the brand, they become loyal customers who come back for more. This is very much a long term strategy.
What Boehner is doing is going for the long term strategy. Don’t expect to see results of this rebranding effort during the next election cycle or even the cyle after that - which means that if everyone who drives the GOP gets on board with the branding method and sticks with it through the difficult times, we can start to see some results of their efforts in time for the 2012 election cycle. Alot of that depends on the presidential election too though. If Democrats win in 2008, then the GOP can continue in its efforts to rebrand. If the GOP wins the White House in 08, then Republicans will have thier brand as determined by the President.