Hasta La Creative!

One of the things marketers must do is understand their audience, and if they want to increase market share, they must also understand the audience who isn’t yet sold on their product or service.

I’m intrigued by the idea that Democrats understand their base–which is really a coalition of disparate interests–but that they fail miserably when it comes to understanding the people who consistently vote against them. From a marketer’s perspective, non-Dems ought to be seen as future customers who have yet to be converted to a better offering. Sadly, that’s not how the brand managers in the Democratic camp see “the people.” A fact which increases partisanship at a time when unity is sorely needed.

Judith Warner, a Dem and a journalist, ventured deep into Red territory this week, attending a McCain/Palin rally in Fairfax, Va. This is one of the things she heard from the podium:

“I hope they brought their own Brie and Chablis with them,” Fred Thompson said, to raucous laughter, as I willed myself to disappear, remembering, with a shudder, that my children had demanded Brie for breakfast only that morning.

Thompson was referring to the “lawyers and scandal mongers and representatives of cable networks” descending on Alaska, in effort to learn more about Sarah Palin.

The complexity and duplicity in this kind of language is daunting. How did a political party run by the richest people in the world, manage to portray the American workers’ party as elitists?