Big Bill’s Branding

A master of many things, Bill Clinton has now weighed-in on branding. Recalling his own experience of not being able to brand a big idea successfully–specifically, his much-maligned first-term health care plan, Clinton said:

"I did a disservice to the American people–not by putting forward a
bad plan, but by not being a better brander and not explaining it
better."

Writing in Forbes.com, Seth McGookin reports of that in a recent speech, "[Clinton] said that the Republican party–both under former House Speaker
Newt Gingrich in the 1990s and during the current administration–had ‘won the branding war,’ capturing the initiative on a series of issues
by effectively labeling them in ways that divided people, rather than
invited a common understanding.

Gingrich, Clinton said, was a
"brilliant brander," describing how he had a Mao-Tse Tung-like little
red book containing phrases Republicans would use repetitively to
describe Democrats. "They would use these catchphrases–like ‘weak’ or
‘liberal’–over and over.""