Can Gay Marriage Help Your Brand? (part 2)

In my last post, I shared with you some learning I took from the recent state electoral victories for proponents of gay marriage and recreational marijuana.  To wit, each of these victories represent merely one point in organizations’ overall agendas.  Moreover, these simple yes or no questions around concrete topics allow supporters to grasp something easily defined understood.

For organizations dedicated to social change, these kinds of concrete topics serve as waypoints towards a larger goal.  However, today I plan to discuss how marketers at commercial enterprises can use this kind of thinking to help build their brands and increase sales.

In short, this kind of concrete thinking helps organizations who sell products with a longer buying cycle, especially business-to-business (b2b) products and big-ticket business-to-consumer (b2c) products such as cars.

Data and politics

While other bloggers have made predictions of how the outcome of the Presidential elections will have an impact on the Supreme Court or the economy, those weighty issues fall beyond this blog’s purview.  However, we should ask “what will happen to interactive marketing if President Obama wins re-election or if Governor Romney unseats him?”

Here’s why: the Senate recently opened an inquiry into data brokers.  While a representative of the Direct Marketing Association dismissed the inquiry as “a baseless fishing expedition” (translation: oh, shit), the inquiry could have an impact on what marketers now consider standard marketing practices.

Moreover, the man who will sit in the Oval Office will have the choice to broaden or narrow that impact.  In turn, marketers will have to adjust to these two possible worlds.

The short answer: hedge against potential legislation by making the most of your own data.

Will Marketing Become Politics?

Familiarity breeds contempt.  

Nowhere does this adage seem more appropriate than in the realm of the current Presidential election.  Voters have now seen so much of President Barack Obama and of Governor Mitt Romney that they can now hate them for any number of reasons based on policy, their wives, choices of attire or hand gestures.  Moreover, their supporters and detractors seem to have fossilized into violently opposed camps.

Welcome to marketing, circa 2025.