Of course, if you’re operating in the web 2.0 world you feel that this type of openness and new leadership is almost old news. But big business doesn’t work like that, and only a scant few business leaders (A.G. Lafley at P&G for one) have “gotten it” so far. As the president of the United States, Obama is a such a strong icon of leadership and example, that the rest of the management world might finally take note.

This guy just sold quite a product,” said David B. Friend, president and chief executive of Palladium Group, a Boston consulting group specializing in strategy execution. “Obama became the ultimate brand. So if you’re in business, it’s hard to miss what this guy did.”

In the nation’s business schools, training grounds for the next generation of CEOs, students have been paying close attention.

“There’s been effervescence in the air around here as we’ve watched this election,” said Leigh G. Hafrey, senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, who described a hunger for a new leadership style. “What happens in the White House has a huge impact on attitudes and practices.”

Full article on the Boston Globe

“If there is anyone out there who doubts that America is a place where anything is possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

Those are the words with which Barack Obama declared himself as the next president of the United States. Truly a historic day and one that will do a lot of good not only for Americans, but the world-at-large. But aside from politics, I have another interest in the subject of Obama’s election.

Grant already touched upon this subject briefly, saying that either candidate winning would have effects on culture and commerce alike. Certainly, given how president-centric the US political structure is made to be, whoever is sitting in the White House will have an enormous influence on people’s daily life and perception of self. It’s my perception that for Americans the “idea” of America has more of an effect on the self than in most countries: the idea of the self-made man, the belief in democracy, America’s manifest destiny as the leader of the free world etc.

All these core American beliefs have been toiling in crisis pretty much from the start of George W. Bush’s presidency – especially for liberal Americans who happen to populate the majority of America’s biggest cities. I believe the Iraq war and John Kerry’s unlikely and crushing defeat in the 2004 election had left many liberals disillusioned and disappointed in America. As Douglas Holt points out in “How Brands Becom Icons”, one of the biggest drivers for consumption of identity products is how people aspire to meet a given culture’s or society’s identity models or “myths”, as Holt puts it. When there’s a disconnect between your own life and what you perceive your immediate culture expecting from you, this is when the tension and anxiety will create the most opportunities for brands and other cultural products (especially movies and music) to soothe these anxieties.

If we go back 30 years, we’ll find one of the most classic examples of a cultural product soothing national anxieties. As George Lucas himself put it: Star Wars was “really about the Vietnam War”. America had lost a big chunk of its belief in itself as the hero of the world after what conspired in Vietnam. In large part this was because this was the first fully televised war, people got to see the brutality of war in its fullness. The nation was badly divided when the war was over (as Obama said, even worse than it is now because of the Iraq war) but Star Wars, while it didn’t totally heal the American spiritual wound left by Vietnam, gave America the permission to believe in heroism and American ideals again. I’m sure the movie would have been a colossal success even without Vietnam, but it would have never found this kind of cultural resonance on its own. Similarly, I think Obama would have found followers and support on his own, but his message and persona hit a cultural key that really resonated. A lot of people say that without the financial crisis Obama wouldn’t have won. I say without the “crisis of democracy” (as Al Gore put it), a transformational figure like Obama wouldn’t have even been in the running.

I have some theories of how consumption and culture was shaped during the Bush years. I for one think that the DYI consumer movement was in part fueled by a sense of distrust and cynicism towards the establishment and any authority – especially by liberals in America. The Bush years have provided academics with a very interesting historical era to mine; not only politically but also culturally and commercially. I’m sure we will be reading about these findings a lot in the near future, but right now I just know that marketers shouldn’t neglect this newly found trust in old American ideals. It will be interesting to see which (big) companies will capture this new zeitgeist first, and which ones will do it best, not by just playing lip service to “change”.

On one hand, McCain’s decision to pick Sarah Palin as his vice president candidate was a genius marketing move. The Obama camp was telling a story about political change, and how John McCain would bring more of the same tried politics. People – especially in the Obama camp – were expecting McCain to pick a Mitt Romney or a Mike Huckabee for VP, and that would have fit the story of “more of the same”.

But McCain took that punchline away with one swift stroke. He changed the story.

For the next few days, people will concentrate less on “more of the same” but more on “bold choice”. If the story you’re telling isn’t working, tell a new story. And this is what makes this choice of VP a great marketing move. Kinda like running a great AD that gets a lot of buzz.

But the question is, where does the story go from here? Meaning what happens when the ad has run its course and people get to actually see the product. This is where this story turns into a potential marketing disaster. As some pundits have already noted, she’s unknown, woefully unqualified and a total mismatch for liberal Hillary voters, the voters she was presumably going to fetch. She also puts a damper on any accusations about Obama’s inexperience, the “other” story the republicans had going.

She’s a bold and very risky choice, but then again, a safe choice would have been playing right to the hands of the Obama camp.

We’ll see how the story goes from here.