Branding...

At my job we're in the middle of an update of our branding. It's a family owned business (over 140 years old) and the next generation is working on upgrading the look and feel of the public face of our products.

Being a designer, I'm pretty involved...and it's interesting and challenging.

The nice thing, and one we have to be careful of is that the company has a wonderful reputation among all its customers. So, we have to be careful not to create new branding that will confuse any of them, or lead them to believe that we have changed so much that we're strangers to them instead of old friends.

It's a tightrope.

Now...the reason I bring this up is that we have just the opposite problem with Republicanism and Conservatism.

The current branding has been trashed. And we need to "re-Brand" just like my company.

Only we need to create a brand that is entirely divorced from the current one...so that the taint is not transferred.

Oh, it's our own fault. We totally ceded the playing field and the rhetorical field to the Left...and let them have their own way for decades. Trashing our brand is their favorite pastime. We have not defended ourselves. We have not argued. We have not proven them wrong. We've just ignored them, hoping they'd go away.

But they didn't. They took over the conversation to the point that no matter what we say... because WE say it...it is automatically discounted, reviled, rejected.

Here's a story on PJ Media that illustrates my point.

Here's Rush Limbaugh making the same point.

Even though people actually like Conservative ideas, the minute they hear them described as Republican or Conservative, they reject them and vote for, or align themselves with the opposing side!

This shows how effective the brand-trashing has been by the Left.

And it shows how desperately we need to RE-BRAND our message and ourselves.

I've said before that "conservative' has a meaning in English that has nothing to do with politics, and that meaning is not always very attractive.

It makes people think of hide-bound, grey-suited, unexciting, boring, fashion-less, solemn, serious, churchy kill-joys.

Because that's what the damn word means or at least what a lot of people mean by it, in non-political English. You can't blame 'em for not getting that "Conservatives" are some of the most out-there, risk-taking, crazy, out-side-the-box thinkers and actors on the planet...because that's just not what the word evokes.

Like it or not, we've got to consider the marketing.

Principles are great. But not if nobody knows what they are. And it doesn't make the principles any PURER just because you refuse to change how you TITLE them.

If you called Conservative Principles "Liberation Principles" instead, for example, they'd be just as good...just as honest...just as true...just as moral...just as righteous as they are now.

But it just might get more people to give them a listen.

We really need to work on that.

And I'm gonna. Expect to see more on the issue here.

If you've got ideas, SHARE.


The Gunslinger