The ultimate goal of branding is to cultivate an emotional connection with the customer, based on shared values (e.g. trust, credibility, etc.) and perceptions (e.g. how one feels about the brand). This is often called the brand essence, personality or image.
However, researching a brand image can be challenging as it is difficult for most people to articulate these feelings. Instead recognizable contrasting analogies to well-known brand types are often used in market research to clarify customer perceptions and feelings – e.g. celebrities (e.g. Meryl Streep vs. Madonna), professions (e.g. doctor vs. sportsman), animals (e.g. lion vs. pussy cat), or simple one word descriptions of a brand.
Cars represent a category with well entranced brand imagery. Perceptual brand mapping is a graphic technique used in research to determine the perceived image of different cars. For example, using the perception of “classy/distinctive” vs. “practical/affordable” on the Y axis, and “sporty” vs. “conservative” on the X axis, research reveals that consumers perceive BMW and Porsche to be the most “classy and sporty“, with Plymouth, Dodge and Ford at the opposite end as the most “conservative and practical”.
Perceptions Of Biden’s Brand
To gauge how voters perceive politicians, researchers often use a similar approach of using a car type or brand that best fits how they feel about them. Recently the NY Times conducted focus groups with 12 voters of varying backgrounds and locations to seek a qualitative glimpse of their views of Biden and Trump. A key question was simple: If Joe Biden (or Donald Trump) were a car, what kind of car would he be? For Biden, the descriptions reflected a core perception of old fashioned, fragile and unreliable:
- “A rusted out Buick with flat tires” and “old people love Buicks”
- “A Model T Ford”, ideally fitting for an “80 something”
- “A broken-down Jeep”, they can do a lot but “they don’t last “
- “A Ford Mustang”, although it was nothing but trouble for me
- “An Edsel”
When asked to use one word to describe Biden, the feedback was also quite negative, ranging from capabilities like “murderer”, “corrupt”, and “Incompetent” to age related qualities like “dementia”, “unfit” and “old”.
How Trump’s Brand Is Perceived
Applying the same question if Trump were a car, the perceptions of his brand image reflected his celebrity fame but also disturbingly shallow and untrustworthy with superficial attributes:
- Like a “car in a junkyard that doesn’t have tires and is rusted out”
- “A car that really looks nice on the outside, but inside is all rusted out or is missing an engine”
- “A brightly colored limousine”
- “A fancy looking car with a lot of pieces missing, no wheels left and a busted-out windshield, with the color orange”
- A “58 Plymouth”
The one word descriptions of Trump were consistent with these car descriptions. A few were positive (“charismatic” and “confident”), but more were scary – “evil”, “incompetent”, “bombastic”, “undisciplined”, “crazy” and “arrogant”.
The ideal situation is for each candidate to convey qualities that would invite voters to emotionally bond with their brand personality or image. However, assuming all this feedback is directionally representative, both candidates are facing a major challenge. The next election may well have to be a contest between the brand promises (e.g. proposed policies and expectations) of the Democrats vs. the Republicans, although it will be impossible to completely separate the influence of each candidate to shape our future.
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