Gbenga X Adebija
I have been asked to do a strategic evaluation of the Battle of the Brands between Camp Goodluck Jonathan and Team Muhammadu Buhari leading to the March 28 presidential election. This is essentially a review of the brand building and brand communication initiatives of the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party on behalf of their respective presidential candidates. You will notice the distinction I have made regarding both political parties. For Buhari, his brand managers executed a near-flawless campaign as a cohesive TEAM while President Jonathan’s people were an unwieldy assemblage of individuals in the same CAMP. I have also tried to tone down on the technical terms and speak more of “English” than “Brandlish” in order to achieve more broad-based understanding.
It all started with THOSE PICTURES of Buhari last year. You remember those pictures of his showing the then APC presidential candidate in various poses and attire? (In bow and suit particularly). Suddenly, Buhari was being rebranded and cast in a totally different and more positive light. The pictures created a powerful and compelling visual testament of Buhari. He now looked like a distinguished statesman, a trusted father of the nation and best of all, a P-r-e-s-i-d-e-n-t.
Clearly, the APC orchestrated those pictures as part of a rebranding initiative for their presidential candidate and to recast the cognitive response of the electorate to Buhari. Prior to this, Brand GMB had more baggage than a Nigerian businesswoman arriving from China or Dubai.
Religious Jihadist! Military dictator! Draconian! Retrogressive!
With the release of the pictures, Brand GMB managers had fired the first salvo which reverberated throughout the land and effectively signalled their intention to do battle. That was when the managers of Brand GEJ should have realised that they had a real Battle of the Brands on their hands. A key element of brand warfare is to profile your competitor and try to anticipate possible next steps. Instead, they adopted a business-as -usual posture and did nothing-as-usual.
Instructively, both camps showcased interesting and diverse strategic approaches to engaging the electorate with their respective brand propositions. Team GMB focused more on re-positioning and recasting their brand, smoothening out the edges, reinforcing brand equity and upscaling brand appeal. Camp GEJ instead pursued a gladiatorial and combative strategy which attacked the other brand. They spent more time telling us why Buhari should not be president rather than telling us why Jonathan should continue as President. This was an appalling blunder and by the time they re-adjusted and reset their strategy to focus more on the selling points of their own Brand GEJ, it was too late.
Camp GEJ also had too many voices and too many spokespeople so much so that their brand message at times degenerated into an incomprehensible babble. Ayo Fayose, Doyin Okupe, Mrs Patience Jonathan, Yinka Odumakin, Femi Fani-Kayode, Reuben Abati, Gani Adams, Asari Dokubo, Olisa Metuh and other surrogate Brand GEJ advocates seemed to compete among themselves for audience attention, as well as who could achieve the loudest decibels. Although the relevant changes were later made towards the end of the campaign, it was too late to achieve the desired objectives. Conversely, Team GMB maintained a disciplined and structured strategy of essentially making the brand message more important than the brand advocate/spokespersons.
The brand warfare conducted by Team GMB seemed to have clear guidelines and principles which subsequently reinforced their brand messaging and corresponding levels of stakeholder resonance. Team GMB steered well clear of direct attacks on the PERSON of Jonathan but instead directed their efforts with laser-like precision on the PERFORMANCE of the Jonathan administration. Why is this important? For one thing, despite his (perceived) shortcomings as a leader and administrator, Jonathan still comes across as a very likeable person (despite the abject failure of his brand managers to capitalise on this) and coupled with being an incumbent President, it would be very counter-productive to attempt to make the populace dislike him.
For the two brands to achieve the desired levels of stakeholder resonance, they must strike a chord with the electorate. Missing Chibok girls? Check! Menace of Boko Haram? Check! Poverty? Check! Corruption? Check! Check! Check!
Camp GEJ unwisely conducted the brand warfare like a roforofo fight. No holds barred. No boundaries. Everything and anything goes. No wonder we had those ill-advised documentaries, the death wish adverts, epithets like “brain dead”, “half dead”, “wearing pampers”, “testicular cancer”, and “air ambulance” etc.
Very objectionable and in bad taste especially as studies around the world have shown that the campaign that throws the most insults invariably loses.
Team GMB were outright winners in the area of sloganeering, soundbites and one-liners. “Change” is a simple and stakeholder-friendly slogan whereas “Transformation” is more of a mouthful and does not resonate with the grass roots. Besides, as was correctly noted, “change is the process which leads to transformation”. “Good government, not Good Luck” “Febuhari” amongst others, were devastating slogans and they signposted the creative levels to which Camp GEJ never achieved.
Brand strategists always harp on the importance of the visual elements of developing brand equity. As earlier mentioned, while Team GMB used pictures for building up Brand GMB, it seemed Camp GEJ was determined to pursue the opposite option and use pictures to destroy Brand GEJ. Even before the elections, brand analysts pondered the wisdom of circulating pictures of President Jonathan kneeling in the midst of several pastors while in Israel, kneeling in the sitting room of the mother of the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua and other such embarrassing visuals. Well, it got worse during the elections with pictures of Jonathan with a scantily clad artiste, looking stressed out on a treadmill, surrounded by South-West Obas pointing goodness-knows-what at him, Jonathan allegedly dressed in Ogboni robes and other such “unpresidential” visuals. Amazingly, these pictures were released for public consumption by the managers of Brand GEJ. On the other hand, Brand GMB managers kept a tight leash on this aspect of their brand and only ensured that pictures which contributed to the equity of brand were in circulation.
Camp GEJ had a better outing in the area of brand activation and a flurry of activities leveraging on the incumbency of their candidate ensured a significant level of brand vibrancy. This was however somewhat negated by the fact most of the Brand GEJ activations were largely perceived as either obviously orchestrated for political benefits or totally ill-timed. Special mention must be made of the pictures and videos of President Jonathan doing physical exercises. As brand activation/campaign stunts go, that has to rank as one of the most ridiculous. In the first place, prior to this, Brand GEJ did not have any history of being an exercise person and secondly, the rival Brand GMB did not have any physical challenges despite the disingenuous efforts of Camp GEJ to cast Buhari in that light. Team GMB again showed great discipline in not taking the bait (they could have stupidly put their candidate in a track suit and showed him jogging around the streets of Abuja) and maintained a masterful focus on core issues.
Both campaigns executed brilliant closing gambits for their brands and again Camp GEJ had a great showing and arguably even bested Team GMB in this area. In the week of the election, Camp GEJ published poll results showing their candidate winning the election and also comments from a “US envoy” seemingly reinforcing the apprehensions cast by the narratives they tried to weave around Brand GMB. On the other hand, Team GMB offered a gripping documentary narrated by Brand GMB albeit limited by reach since it was only available on social media.
Camp GEJ were slow off the blocks and mostly operated in an unstructured and unco-ordinated fashion. They failed to deliver on the red button issues for a political brand, namely Effective Messaging and upscaling brand value proposition to key demographics. It would be really interesting to get President Jonathan’s views in the aftermath of the election on the way his political brand was managed. Team GMB conducted a masterful campaign in order to win the Battle of the Brands and they have now set the bar for future presidential brand campaigns in Nigeria.
The Punch
