What Can We Learn from Political Marketing?
Editor’s note: This week we are revisiting some of the One-Minute Marketer’s most popular blog posts from the past. This one was originally published in January 2012 shortly after the Iowa caucuses.
Iowa’s caucuses are finally over. Now the rest of the nation can enjoy the political ads, telephone calls, robocalls, stump speeches a
nd text messages. Watching the marketing of the presidential candidates, you might believe that marketing a president is different from marketing a company or organization. It is not.
Politicians make sales calls (door knocking, absentee ballots), produce sales materials (brochures, direct mail) and advertise. However, politicians are much more aggressive than most company efforts. 
What is funny to me is that most politicians have personality but no clear brand icon; most companies have clear brand icons, but no personality. Sol Sender was the designer of President Barack Obama’s campaign mark. The Obama logo operated independently from the candidate. It is a great logo with a simplistic message and symbolism.
Other candidates have tried to duplicate the design, but without a deeper meaning to the logo, most just look like red, white and blue toothpaste. What politicians do have is a drive, a passion and a willingness to change quickly based on polling information — they also have a lot of personality. 
Find the personality of your organization (like Aflac and GEICO have) and get your stakeholder votes.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.
