Broadband and Me

John Kerry, the New Coke

John Kerry, the New Coke
At Church of the Customer they compare Kerry's defeat to the advent of new Coke in the 80s.

The close 2004 presidential election is a superlative parallel to what many organizations face every day: Intense competition with a tough competitor, polarized customer loyalties and winning defined by 1-2 percentage points.

Certainly this election will be discussed and analyzed for years, but I see two clear reasons why George W. Bush beat John Kerry:

1. Bush's campaign consistently preached to the choir.
2. John Kerry was New Coke.

The Bush choir delivered the vote. Kerry's campaign focused on converting people not already in its choir: swing voters.

The Bush campaign consistently "super-charged" its base of true-believer volunteers in the field, whipping them up into a frenzy at every possible opportunity. Kerry's campaign army in key states resembled a professional workforce. In other words, the Republicans were more enthusiastically grassroots-oriented than the Democrats.

The point about new Coke was that it didn't appeal to the existing coke consumers and it wasn't as good at 'being Pepsi' as Pepsi was, and lost sales. Sales returned when the old formula was returned to.

The conclusions for a marketing audience being made are:

• Preach to the choir. For the 2004 election, the base turnout for each candidate may seem virtually identical: Kerry had 89% support among Democrats; Bush had 93% from Republicans. The four percent difference in the base turnout was the key -- by getting the Republican choir stirred up enough, it delivered more choir members and leapfrogged Kerry in Ohio. It saved precious resources by not courting undecideds.
• True-believer volunteers will work several percentage points harder than paid professionals. Howard Dean's true believers of enthusisatic and counter-culture young people were often ridiculed as unrepresentative of mainstream society, but they were mightily effective. The same could be said on both counts of George Bush's base of evangelical Christians. The lesson here: your most enthusiastic believers are usually out there, but they are vastly more effective in winning customers than cash-or-points referral programs or paid spokespeople.
• Your choir will help you succeed, but you must be willing to cede control. Give your true-believer customers clearly identifiable goals to meet and stop worrying about the effect volunteers will have on your "brand."

More and more often I see this particular message (put in different ways) - 'Appeal to the Choir' and yet very few companies seem to get it or indeed apply it. I wonder why?