Fauxbamagate (it happens)…

Well, Obama’s splashy target marketing doesn’t work for a lot of people.  They just don’t see him as a candidate with actual plans that can solve the problems our country is facing right now.  How are they able to get their own messages out?  Cafe Press.

This is what is great about America’s Democracy.  People are allowed to speak freely here.

My sense was that the backlash was bound to happen sooner or later because you just can’t buy your way into the White House.  You can’t.   He got name recognition in the web with his splashy campaign and logos target marketed to various groups.  It’s kind of like anything where you can automatically recognize the “brand” you are getting.  Think about the logo for “Target,” or “Starbucks,” or “Jack in the Box.”  I could go on but I think you know what I mean.

In advertising you create a look for something, and if you are making a logo you want that “look” to carry, and stick in people’s minds.  When you see the logo for “Starbucks,” you know you are going to get coffee, right?

Maybe looking at the logo makes you think of your favorite coffee drink that you like to buy when you go there.  Maybe looking at the logo makes you imagine you “taste” the drink you are going to choose?

Well, the Obama campaign has done the same thing.  A graphic designer made a great logo for him.  All the artistic process that went into thinking about how the logo would look in print and in the web is a planned thing.  The design is meant as a “hook” to hook you on the brand, kind of like catching a fish — if you have ever gone fishing.

Brand “Obama” is no different than Brand “Starbucks” except that our President is not a thing you buy like a cup of coffee, is it?  No!  The marketing people made the campaign for him on purpose so that he would be branded and recognizeable, instantly.  You don’t even need him, you just need to see that logo, and know it’s him. Believe me, this is the first time anybody ever thought of using advertising in such sophisticated and sweeping ways to launch a person running for President of the United States.  Remember the old I “heart” NY stuff?  Well here is a link to show you how the Obama campaign spun off that tactic but just put his logo in instead of the heart.  That’s how advertising works…

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/casperr67/nyc_poster_01.jpg

Here is the original “I heart NY” from a long time ago  — like the 70’s maybe…

http://images.43things.com/entry/15365pw150.jpg

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Check out this article on what people are doing as backlash to Brand Obama.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/economy/2008/02/29/obama-t-shirt-sales-surge-online.html

People are making their own T-Shirts! and there is a whole movement towards NObama as well…

http://www.cafepress.com/bobmccarty/2303950

This is a very strong usage of a font to get a message across.  It’s just “Words” — but they are very powerfully presented, from a designer’s point.  The “NO” is presented like “Vote NO” — you could say that the message is targeted to people who don’t like Obama’s middle name.  See how strong advertising messages are?

Here is a link into Cafe Press’ anti-Obama page, so you can see how people are fighting back by making up their own designs for things.  From a designer’s point some of these are more sophisticated than others but it’s interesting to see what people are coming up with.

http://www.cafepress.com/buy/anti-obama

Personally, I’m partial to the design in black and white “The audacity of inexperience” — that design is graphically very clean and the message very clear.

Fauxbamagate.  It was bound to happen.

You can’t target market yourself into the White House in this country.

You just can’t.  It makes people mad.

Here’s another site called Not Stuff and you can see just how mad people have gotten.  Each person has a take on what kind of ad or slogan  is going to work best.  People that go for the logos on these things are choosing what they want to express.  It’s a painful process to watch the Democratic Party split down the middle.  Very sad.  How I long for the days of the 70’s.  When I was little people were joined politically under the umbrella of the Democratic Party.  Not any more.

I wrote a piece on that a while back here, about the kinder gentler world we once knew.

I wish those times would return.  I really do.

It’s all very hard to watch all this as it unfolds.  I’ve never seen an election like this one, ever.  You know how I’d like it to be?  Like in the old days.  It wouldn’t cost money to travel around the country on trains giving speeches like our old Presidents did.  That would be so great! It should be more about getting to meet the candidates in person, not using ad campaigns in the web.

I’m into all that retro stuff, I guess.  Can’t help it.  Life was way simpler when we had rotary phones, I swear.  Damn.