The marketing of Obama

When I reconnected with a high school friend more than 25 years since graduation, he said that he was into brand management consulting, or something along those lines.  A successful operation he runs.  I bet he will be interested in this piece about how the Obama brand is not seemingly working well:

In his November 2008 essay in the Harvard Business Review, “How Better Marketing Elected Barack Obama,” Quelch cited “Obama's personal charisma, his listening and public speaking skills, his consistently positive and unruffled demeanor and his compelling biography” as components of a brand that “attracted the attention and empathy of voters.” He added that “Obama chose an excellent marketing and campaign team, and managed them well. From start to finish, there was no public dissension.”
But nearly two years later, the marketing challenge for President Obama is far more complicated than for candidate Obama. ...
Quelch warns that “after you are elected, you are only as good as the product and performance you deliver, and the brand promise has to be lived up to. If the promise has been very substantial and the performance has been average, that’s going to put you in a bigger hole than if the promise was modest and the performance has been average. Individual citizens run, if you like, a gap analysis on promise versus performance.”