Not A Brand

Kim du Toit
May 20, 2008
9:00 AM CDT
· Conservative Platform

Here’s an article which managed to set my teeth on edge. Former-European and now-Californian RINO Arnold Schwartzenegger tells us how he thinks the Republican Party should look:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger created shock and awe in the Republican Party when he warned years ago that the GOP was in danger of “dying at the box office” by failing to make the sale to a wide swath of voters.

And with the presidential election looming, the Republican governor of the nation’s most populous state - a decidedly blue state - has now found a chorus of agreement. The Republican “brand” - thanks to an unpopular president, a war, gas prices, foreclosures and deficit - has become such damaged goods that GOP Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia groused last week that “if we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf.”
...
“The Republican idea is a great idea, but we can’t go and get stuck with just the right wing,” Schwarzenegger said. “Let’s let the party come all the way to the center. Let those people be heard as much as the right. Let it be the big tent we’ve talked about.

“Let’s invade and let’s cross over that (political) center,” he said. “The issues that they’re talking about? Let them be our issues, and let the party be known for that.”

Leaving aside the obvious dissonance caused by an Austrian talking of “invasion”, I take exception to a political pholosophy being referred to as a “brand”—because at the root of it all, brands are the invention of marketing: they are a way to differentiate similar products, like Folgers and Maxwell House, and are kept alive by marketing and advertising, not by conviction.

But since everyone is so all-fired intent on turning a political philosophy into a soft drink, let’s examine the “brand” concept a little more closely, because I understand this stuff about as well as anyone on the planet.

When I studied this stuff, back when I was managing the customer-focused database at a Great Big Retailer, I learned something really interesting. Most of a brand’s sales came from loyal customers, and a very few loyal customers at that. In any single supermarket, brands, even giant brands like Folgers or Charmin, the destiny of a brand lay in the purses of about two hundred customers. Across two hundred stores, therefore, the fate of, say, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes lay in the hands of about five thousand housewives—out of a customer base of about four million shoppers. If something were to happen to that loyal base—if some mysterious disease were to kill all of them—the brand would die, within a matter of weeks.

This was as true about supermarkets as it was about packaged goods. In any single supermarket, once again, about two thousand customers (out of a total of about ten thousand customers) accounted for over 75% of sales—and about 90% of the store’s profits.

The entire enterprise, a chain of two hundred stores covering four Northeastern states, rested in the hands of a few hundred thousand shoppers (out of a total population of over twenty million).

Using the same logic, therefore, had we lost all four hundred thousand loyal customers (our “base"), the chain would have had to shut its doors in about a month. We knew where our bread was buttered, for sure: and we pampered and cosseted those customers to within an inch of their lives—preferential discounts, premium rewards, and non-store services (our Platinum customers, for instance, got free long-distance phone time and free roadside assistance).

What we could not afford to do was anything which would disenchant those valuable customers. Study after study, backed by purchase data (those pesky “shopper” cards) showed us that our strongest features were the quality of our meat department, the quality of our produce department, and the quality of our deli department. That “quality” feature allowed us to stock more upscale products, charge a little more, and make a decent profit. Our customer base was not as large as that of our competitors, but they spent more with us. They were slightly older—more established families with older kids, executives in their peak earning years, and wealthy retirees.

The along came a new CEO and a new management team, who decided that they wanted to “broaden” the customer base, and start going after “young families”. As a marketing idea, it made sense—sense, that is, to anyone who didn’t understand marketing, but his background was in finance, so ‘nuff said.

In vain did I argue that “young families” required not only lower prices on all our merchandise, but a change in merchandise—larger pack sizes, cheaper meat products, cheaper deli products and cheaper produce items. Even more frightening was the fact that “young families” were not loyal customers: they bought from whichever store was selling coffee most cheaply that week, bought only “sale” (ie. not profitable) items and products, which meant that we’d have to buy their business each and every single week. And worst of all, by tampering with our brand’s quality image, our existing “base”—those finicky, quality-driven folks—would become disenchanted with us, and leave. We would become, in other words, just another supermarket.

Well, I was only a middle-level executive, and everyone thought the new CEO walked on water, so the policy was changed, and I resigned in disgust.

The supermarket chain went out of business three years later.

So let’s see exactly what it is that Schwartzenegger is proposing. He wants the Republican Party to be all things to all people, even if the “right wing” becomes disenchanted, because the Republican Party is a big tent (how I loathe that expression). He wants us to become more “centrist”, more “Democrat” so we can appeal to those people who switch between parties at will, depending on which party has the most “gimmies” on offer. And in the meantime, the much-maligned Republican base—those rightwingers, those gun owners, those religious people, those… Constitutionalists, well, they’ll just have to live with the new, improved Republican brand.

In the short term, that will work somewhat. And given that politicians live from election to election—just as finance people live from quarter to quarter—you can’t blame them for thinking like that.

But we are not a nation of panderers, a nation of accountants, a nation of short-term thinkers.

We are a nation formed in the fire of a revolution, and united under a Constitution which says that our government, in all its forms, must exist with the smallest amount of power possible, limited from excess by each of its three branches, and subject to frequent recall by We The People.

We are not a nation of cafeteria customers, shopping from one party or another.

We are conservative: we wish to preserve our Constitution, and this nation with all its freedoms.

There are, however, some people in our nation who want to change all that. They want us to become more creatures of the state, more beholden to government, more… European.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that chief among these people is a man born in Europe, a man for whom the founding principles of this country are malleable and can be changed in order to buy the votes of other people.

Like I said, it’s a strategy which might bring short-term success. But it’s a strategy which will ensure long-term failure, of both the Republican Party and the nation.

It really is that simple.


Comments

Bottom of Comments | Comment Form | Original Post

There is no ‘T’ in Schwarzenegger.

dchamil | 5/20/2008 10:53 AM CDT |

The ironic thing is that they can “make the sale to a wide swath of voters” by becoming more conservative as a party, pushing a conservative agenda, and implementing a conservative platform.

If you are the only supermarket selling x and y then anyone wanting x and y is going to come to you, especially if you are friendly and conveniently located.  This is unlike the Libertarian and Constitution Party “markets” who offer either x or y while pissing on the other in the parking lot.

arkythehun | 5/20/2008 11:00 AM CDT |

As always, concise and so succinct that even I understand it.

“The issues that they’re talking about? Let them be our issues, and let the party be known for that.”

Schwarzenegger’s statement here seems amazingly clueless: the “issues” are the same on both sides, it is how each side addresses them that separates us.
I fear that if the Republican party moves further and further to the right, they may indeed lose their “customer base”, but if the proper leadership does not arise to give guidance and focus, those disenfranchised conservatives may become irrelevant as a voting block. Then the Liberals have won by default.
I am hearing more and more that conservatives need to start over at the grass-roots level. In local government, and working up to the national level, rebuilding the party with true conservatives that understand the views of their constituents.
It’s going to be a long hard struggle getting back up that slippery slope.

Flintlock Tom | 5/20/2008 11:15 AM CDT |

This broadening strategy as used by the Dems sent them to the wilderness in the early 90’s.  No one was too much of a flag-burning, baby-killing, Jesus-hating whacko to not be welcomed with open arms.  This essentially pushed a big chunk of “working class” whites out of the party, when they had formerly been the backbone.  The Republicans don’t have quite the same risk, since there is no large party to the right, but it’s still a concern.

I think the key to the Republicans are 1) Fiscal responsibility 2) Limited Government and 3) Realist foreign policy.  On the social front, gun rights is a winner, pushing for a ban on abortion is a loser.

The supermarket analogy breaks down a bit, as customers vary widly in profitability, but all votes (at least within a state) count the same.

sig

sigp225 | 5/20/2008 12:00 PM CDT |

Alas, Tony Blair did it successfully for the Labour Party.

Quentin | 5/20/2008 12:09 PM CDT |

Yes, Quentin, and it worked, more or less, for eight years. Now the Labour Party is facing utter annihiliation at the next election.

Kim du Toit | 5/20/2008 12:30 PM CDT |

God deciced the Republican party needed it’s own Jimmy Carter, so he gave us Ah-Nuld…

skb12172 | 5/20/2008 12:43 PM CDT |

The supermarket analogy breaks down a bit, as customers vary widly in profitability, but all votes (at least within a state) count the same.

I beg to differ.  Some voters ARE more profitable for a political party than others.  The voters at the extremes are much more likely to contribute time and money to the cause and to stay engaged in the “off-season” when the mushy middle is asleep and going about their daily lives.

blackeagle603 | 5/20/2008 01:35 PM CDT |

The Republicans don’t have quite the same risk, since there is no large party to the right, but it’s still a concern.

Ah, yes, the rallying cry of the Sh*t-Sandwich Republican. “Where you gonna go?”

You see, sig, I have to eat. I don’t have to participate enthusiastically in the political process. And attitudes like yours are why the idea of voting for Obama in November is so tempting. Let’s hit bottom as fast as possible, and maybe after living in a socialist “paradise” for a few years, spiced up with a couple of terror attacks with Iranian nukes, the people of this country will be ready to live like free people again, and we can hang Obama, Pelosi, and Reid from the same lamppost. Won’t take a majority; the Patriots in the Revolution weren’t.

/rant

SDN | 5/21/2008 06:02 AM CDT |

IF it were likely that 4 years of Obama would result in a revolution of patriots..

IF the events of that revolution were something besides wholesale slaughter of those involved…

IF the outcome of that revolution was the restoration of the Constitution’s original intent…

THEN it STILL wouldn’t make sense, because The People are not interested in the Constitution’s Original Intent, or they wouldn’t keep voting the way they do and they wouldn’t support things like universal healthcare, graduated tax, or social security.

So you’d get NO WHERE, except to kill innocents.

You can’t enforce the Constitution on The People at the point of a gun.  That isn’t Constitutional either.  I don’t suspect that anyone would suggest that you point a gun at their head and force them to vote a certain way… which is what it would require to get the perfect outcome some desire.  The best outcome possible is that we’d be right back where we started, faced with moderate choices like McCain, socialist choices like Hillary, and communist whackjobs like Obama.

No, we’re so far from needing a revolution it is laughable that folks suggest it… or think of ways they can hurry along our destruction.  Destruction isn’t going to happen.  It could get a lot more unpleasant, but people aren’t going to get loaded on to cattle cars.

The outcome of 4 years of Obama would be more and more erosion of our liberties, while sacrificing what’s left of our Capitalist economy = misery for no benefit at all.

Even the Founders had to have hundreds and hundreds of patriots shot at for years before they’d consider a revolution, and even then they debated it.  Any talk of it when that is not happening is wacky talk.

Connie du Toit | 5/21/2008 08:27 AM CDT |

This country made it through the depression, It made it through the Carter years. I’m fairly confident we’ll make it through the Obama years if he gets elected.
Then again Hillary could get elected and turn out to have the balls Bill didn’t and all our dreams will come true....ok ok I’ll take the tin foil off.  tongue rolleye

R.L. Hunter | 5/21/2008 12:37 PM CDT |

The supermarket analogy breaks down a bit, as customers vary widly in profitability, but all votes (at least within a state) count the same.

All votes may count the same but not all voters are the same value to a party.  Voters in the mushy middle may or may not vote but they aren’t be the ones who help get out the vote, contribute and pay attention during the “off” season.  That’s the base and it’s what the Dems have energized and the “R’s” have disenfranchised.

Me? I’m working to get another conservative congressman in my district this year.

blackeagle603 | 5/21/2008 01:32 PM CDT |

by tampering with our brand’s quality image, our existing “base”—those finicky, quality-driven folks—would become disenchanted with us, and lea

Well, what is to be done?  There are two separate problems here, the long-term need to restore or replace the current Republican Party, and the immediate need to get a halter on McCain.  I really don’t have a dog in this fight, since the Massachusetts First District will send a Democrat to the Electoral College even if McC has John Kerry for a running mate, and my vote and the other 27 like it will make no never mind.
At the national level, of course, McCain has a very fair chance to be elected.  And then what - we’ll have endorsed the Schwartzenegger viewpoint, and will have a POTUS who is as likely to put Eliot Spitzer on the Supreme bench as he is to chose a strict constructionist.  John McCain is not quality merchandise and is no bargain at any price.
.

stencil | 5/21/2008 03:57 PM CDT |

Looks to me that too many people who get into politics haven’t the slightest idea about a political philosophy which they could describe.  There is a general view of “how things oughta be”, and after that it’s just marketing.

If you’re going to sell something, market your philosophy, showing people how they--and society--will benefit:  Beyond just their own billfold.  Sure, money is important, but so is freedom and liberty.  A major part of that freedom thing is freedom from unnecessary hassle by government.

IMO, the “big tent” idea is just buying votes via the public coffers.  How else to bring opposing views to vote your way?

‘Rat

Desertrat | 5/22/2008 09:30 AM CDT |

So, should a party ignore, or at least, demphasize states (and the candidate who wins there) if they won’t win it in the general election?  If McCain only wins primaries in Blue states, how will this get him elected?  Some state primaries divide their delegates, so winning 55% of the vote might give you 34 vs 31 delegates at the convention.  However, in the General, it’s all or nothing in most the states.  Shouldn’t we want a candidate that does well in Ohio and Florida, and not in Texas or California?

Overload | 5/22/2008 05:45 PM CDT |

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