Everyone has a few nasty habits that they don’t usually discuss in polite company, and one of mine is paying attention to marketing trends. I know, I know, it’s disgusting, but . . . well, I need to for my job. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
When you observe the intricacies of an election campaign in marketing terms, you get some memorable – and not always particularly successful – slogans, commercials, campaign songs, yard signs, even buttons out of the process. Since Madison Avenue and its spiritual cohorts took control of campaigning back in the 1960s, no campaign for the presidency is complete without a full list of official branding, up to and including a catch-phrase that sums up the candidate in one easy-to-read bite.
"Yes we can" and "We are the ones We are waiting for" and "Fired Up And Ready To Go!" are Obama’s, right now, and they emphasize the affirmation of positive change, as well as call upon the populace to effect that change together. Proud, inspiring, daring – and effective, in the soon-to-be-post-Bush years.
But Hillary’s latest meme: "Solutions for America" or something to that effect, demonstrates why Obama’s people have had the initiative in the race up to now, and why they’ll probably keep it. "Solutions" was an impressive-sounding term that established the competence and workability of a company . . . in 1996.
I was doing some apprentice-level advertising in rural North Carolina in 1996 when I first stole the term for a campaign I was doing. And when you are doing bargain-basement advertising for a local firm, the best place to steal ideas from are the really big firms – and as this was the hey-day of the Dot Com boom, everyone was offering "solutions". It sounded cool. So I took it. Blatantly stole it for my campaign (from Xerox, maybe – but I also stole some from other sources. That’s an old copywriters’ trick: stealing from more than three sources for a given piece constitutes research, not plagiarism. But I digress . . .)
"Solutions" became a buzzword by 1998, so much so that I remember one of my bosses remarking about it in very negative terms – something to the effect of "I got solutions for shit I didn’t know was a problem." After that I ditched the term as hackneyed. I thought the "solutions" meme had died with Pets.com.
The problem with the post-industrial world we now live in isn’t that there aren’t enough solutions. There are plenty of solutions to be had. The problem is that our culture and technology has gotten so complex and sophisticated that we now understand that "solutions" always breed more problems – often far more than they solve. And "solutions" offered by an unpopular Administration? I just don’t see the percentage.
One could see Hillary’s attempt to resurrect it as the direct challenge to Obama’s dominating command of language – the "deeds not words" approach. That would be more helpful, I think, if so many of her deeds weren’t so controversial (the Yes on AUMF in Iraq, the Yes on Kyl-Lieberman, the Yes on clusterbombs, etc.). Offering "solutions" based on your ability to get us in a half-Trillion dollar war of choice is perhaps not the best route to take.
One could also argue that Hillary is attempting to inspire a kind of gauzy nostalgia for the 1990s by resurrecting the marketing phrase of choice, for the period. That may hold some appeal for the retiring Baby Boomers (who were really the only ones persuaded by that "solutions" crap anyway – they couldn’t master the technology, so their "solution" was to outsource their ignorance to kids who could) as a token of their moment of greatness. But it rings very hollow to the ear of the Gen X and beyond crowd who properly see the term as marketing doublespeak, and treat it with all the cynicism it deserves.
But the most damning thing about "Solutions for America" as a political rallying point for Hillary is that the term makes the whole race All About Hillary. Watching her stump speech confirms this – we are "hiring" her, it seems, electing her to do a job like we would a corporate CEO or board member. She can make the changes. She can get the job done. "She’s our girl", she, she, she, her, her, her.
She wants us to elect her so that she can fight our battles for us. And probably lose, if her lamentably shorter coattails hand the Congress to a fresh round of Republicans, but she’ll go down fighting. She might triumph, she might fail, she might strand us in another 4-8 years of legislative gridlock as Bimbo eruptions and allegations of corruption are volleyed back and forth across the aisle. But it will still be All About Hillary. Her "solutions" are hers, not yours, and certainly not "ours" in any meaningful sense.
Obama, by contrast, pitches the "We" meme with deadly precision. It’s perhaps his greatest oratorical strength. He invites us to fight the fight together, noting that only with the strong, enthusiastic backing of his supporters can he make the changes we so desperately needed happen. "Yes, We Can!" and "We are the ones We have been waiting for." We. Us. Ours.
And while both campaigns are hitting the Change meme pretty strongly, there is no doubt that Obama owns it far more than Hillary. She is the status quo candidate, and her campaign’s recent devolution into namecalling and smear tactics has revealed that to all but the ignorant and a small and increasingly bitter group of feminists for whom Hillary can do no wrong. If this is the kind of "change" we can expect from "Solutions for America" . . .
A look at their respective websites is telling.
Hillary’s kind of looks like a 1997 e-commerce site. I expect to see an amazon.com banner in a corner. The icons are childlike and the structure is depressingly boxy. Colors? Red, White and Blue, all bland, unexciting hues. The whole thing looks like an ad for Windows 98. Logo? Hillary, Hillary, Hillary. It’s All About Hillary.
Obama’s site, by contrast, has a dramatic dark blue and white color scheme that fades away attractively – it honestly looks more presidential – and then there is the iconic "O" with the red and white stripes. Beautiful. Even one of my rabidly-pro-Hillary designer friends had to admit that Obama’s site has a chic to it that was strongly compelling. The use of notable quotations to frame the candidate’s position (again invoking his ability to harness our collective affirmative power, not hawking his own power as an agent of change), the refreshingly uncluttered design and the liberal use of embedded YouTube messages make Obama’s site a pleasure to navigate. Hillary’s? Not so much.
So if "Solutions for America" is her catchphrase (and it’s not quite as catchy as "Yes, We Can" or "Fired Up and Ready To GO!", is it?) then she’s added yet another plank in her bridge back to the Twentieth Century.
We don’t want a reliable quote on a quick-printing run of perfect-bound quarterly reports, after all, we want a President – and preferably one that arouses more positive enthusiasm than her "solutions" do.