Rebuilding The Brand: Part 2
It's not so much that Trump is Trump anymore, it's that Trump is what most Americans remember as their better days.
One of the worlds best known brand blunders was the roll out of New Coke. Coca Cola faced a massive ad campaign by its chief rival Pepsi Cola. They ran a series of taste test challenges, showing people choosing between unlabeled cola cans. "Which do you really prefer?"
When the results came in, most people chose Pepsi, claiming Coke was too sweet. Led by book-bred young bean counters and marketing geniuses, Coke management reformulated their monstrously successful brand, and renamed it New Coke.
The new product died on the vine. In fact, after the dust had settled, the restored Classic Coke sales shot up! Surpassing previous records, firmly putting Classic Coke back on top.
Recently another pure American brand began suffering sales declines in their iconic Harley-Davidson Motorcycles brand. It was showing signs of losing it's extraordinary image of the traditional biker's embrace of anti-authoritarianism.
So their younger board decided to bring in a German CEO who sold them on rebranding Harley-Davidson "...as diverse as we could possible be as a brand and a business, and celebrate diversity and inclusion…"
“It’s important that we create new leadership. That we get others to join a new thinking of a more sustainable business, of a better business that is more equitable in every respect. Socially, environmentally and financially.”
-- Harley-Davidson CEO Jochen Zeitz
Zeitz then announced the company was planning to move a portion of their previously exclusive American production facilities to Thailand. This move reveals the reality that reputation alone can't always overcome business challenges, but it also points out that reputation is an intangible asset that can't be treated like a supply chain issue.
If you mistreat your identity, she may walk out on you never to be seen again.
The lesson is, if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it!
Once people choose something, a product, a service, a sports team, a motorcycle brand, it doesn't really matter what the competition says or does. At some point, the reasons they originally picked their winner no longer apply. They have grown to love their choice, and in their minds, everything that happens after that just reaffirms their decision. They love the logo, the artwork, the celebrities used in their advertisement. It becomes a battle of loyalties. Loyalty to an identity connected to an intangible like the sound of the exhaust, or the folks that make the product and the factory they work in.
The Loyalist is part of the American Team. He is a symbol of what America means to its supporters, its real patriots. He noted so much at a campaign stop in Iowa, back in 2016:
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's, like, incredible."
It's not so much that Trump is Trump anymore, it's that Trump is what most Americans remember as their better days. A time when politics was just one of dozens of aspects of our lives. It was something we only took seriously a few minutes a week. Politicians were anomalies. People we hardly knew, and wanted to keep it that way because we knew they wielded a lot of power, but most of the time they were bringing good things to our communities.
Then Trump was an entertainer, someone who did interviews with comedians or Playboy Magazine. Then later he ran the Miss Teen, Miss USA and Miss Universe Beauty Contest franchises. Then later he helped start up the short lived United States Football League. And all along walking among the construction crews in Manhattan, shaking their hands and recognizing their hard work and contributions to his project.
And finally, he starred in The Apprentice, making his decisive and iconic "You're Fired" one of the most overused catch phrases of all time.You either loved it or hated it, but at some point everybody watched at least some of it.
During decades of playing the rich playboy entrepreneur and raconteur, everybody loved Donald. Politicians partied with him, and often received a generous donation for their efforts. He greased their palms and expected some help to get building permits. He went to celebrity parties after the Academy Awards, showed up at Super Bowls and even hosted then President Bill Clinton at his Mira Lago Estate home.
But you would never know any of that if you only watched or listened to the FrankenMedia. Because The Loyalist embraced conservative values, the American flag, and promised to secure our southern border, they have spent billions to destroy the Trump Brand, to literally whack him.
The Democcult Party, like Pepsi, is frustrated because for over 100 years, Coca Cola controlled the soda sales of the working class, the construction unions, the Harley-Davidson riders, and when Pepsi won the Taste Test, they had their chance to upset the applecart and bring down that Coke juggernaut.
The New Coke blunder was as symbolic as the January 6th Capital Hill riots were to the Democcult Party. The Republicans were toast, and Trump was going to jail! The Trump juggernaut was finished and it left the door wide open for the New Progressive Party led by a Black Female, with a tolerance for unlimited abortion access, fluid gender policies, open borders and an end to the Israeli domination of our foreign policy.
But don't be surprised to see a massive rally through the streets of Washington DC just before the January Presidential inauguration, and millions of Harley-Davidsons leading the way.