Watch a little election analysis and you’ve likely noticed how the vocabulary of
branding has infiltrated the commentary of the talking head crowd. For the CNN
and MSNBC commentariat in particular, the word “brand” has become a formula and
a fashion. It’s the “Republican brand” this and the “Obama brand” that, et
cetera and so on.
It’s not that they’re getting
the underlying mechanism of brand equity wrong. Quite the contrary. The major
parties and candidates do anchor distinctive constellations of values,
perceived strengths, and associations that attract communities of loyalists and
spread their influence by word of mouth.
But for those of us who deal
in these social and business phenomena regularly, this is old news. Even so, I
think there’s a lesson here. The vigor with which the on-camera experts (and
party surrogates) have flocked to these terms of art as if they were remarkably
fresh and insightful bears out how memes (even concepts that are pretty standard in other communities) can spread with eureka! enthusiasm among
cohesive social networks.
Make no mistake: for all its
internal differences in political stance and affiliation, the fraternity-sorority of
talking heads is a full-fledged social network. Not an entirely closed one of
course, but one with enough commonality of focus, go-to sources of
information, and ritualized habits of inter-communication to qualify as soc-nets as
surely as the more self-consciously fervent communities of Harley owners, Sam Adams drinkers, and PETA
members.
