Can Gay Marriage Help Your Brand? (part 1)

In the wake of President Obama’s victory last week, two other sets of election results received somewhat less discussion.  Namely, Colorado and Washington voters approved a referendum in favor of recreational marijuana use and voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington voted in favor of same-sex marriage.

While the pundits have, well, pundited about the votes, I don’t wish to rehash arguments for or against any of them (Disclosure: I strongly favor same-sex marriage and honestly don’t know what to think about legalizing marijuana).  Instead, I find the marketing implications of the votes more interesting.  

To the point: both sets of votes transpired not as one-off issues, but actually as parts of long-term strategic thinking and attitude changing campaigns from organizations with broader agendas.

In this post, I’d like to show how a single point-in-time vote fits into a broader issue.  In the next, I’d like to discuss how even marketers focused on quarterly or monthly results can benefit from this kind of broad-scale thinking.