The Obama Brand

Barack Obama is the president-elect, the 44th president of the United States. I'll give you a few moments for the perfunctory sigh of relief and slight smile that the previous sentence will most likely elicit.

Now, let me be clear before I write the rest of this: I did vote for Obama, and so this post is directed as much at me as anyone else. That being said, here it goes:

Obama is as middle of the road, as centrist as they come. I know that change is a powerful slogan, but it is just that: a slogan. Like Apple advertising, it flicks a switch somewhere in our pleasure centers - not whichever center our political leanings reside in (which, admittedly, is a much more drab town than pleasureville). The difference between centrist Obama and centrist McCain is this: Obama and his team of marketers were much more talented at selling their product. Furthermore, they were tech-savvy from the very beginning, while McCain, admittedly, was not.

Of course, McCain made some valid attempts - drafting Palin, for instance. At first it seemed as though she might save his campaign ("revitalizing the base" and all that), but when your product exposes some serious glitches in its opening run, there are bound to be consequences (think Vista and the subsequent disenchantment with Windows). Palin 2.0 made somewhat of a rebound, but the damage was done.

Obama, on the other hand, was on a plethora of social networks - each with their own specific constituency, and each profile was tailored to appeal to the target market. Biden was a smart choice - a downloadable application to be taken advantage of when necessary, but nothing too garish so as to draw attention from the main product.

Obama certainly mobilized people in a way many of us have never seen. What worries me, though, is that we weren't voting for a president so much as we were investing in a product. Obama made it fun, made it cool to vote. We wanted to vote for Obama because, well hell, everyone else is doing it.

The day after, we were satisfied. But now, a few weeks later - who cares? Worse, when he gets into office, I fear that the first time he makes a mistake people will be screaming: we want an upgrade. This is not what we paid for.

-the ambassador