Can't Sell What You Don't Market

The GOP needs to take a lesson from the Democrats. They just got a lesson in selling, advertising and marketing they should review that lesson for a long time to come.

I have never known anyone who was able to sell a product or service with out some form of marketing, even if it was the simplest form such as word of mouth. Marketing and selling involves the promotion of the virtues of a particular product or service and not necessarily disparaging another product or service. How many times have you seen some company trashing a competitors product in order to sell their product? My guess is not many.

This is not about Aubertine or Barclay, because they did not finance nor did they run their respective campaigns, Aubertine and Barclay were no more than the product these party machines were attempting to market. The GOP got their butts whooped in marketing.

From the start, the Aubertine campaign marketed him as a folksy down home clean living family guy, the "one of us" campaign and they stuck to the theme no matter how much they were tugged on to respond or react or get off message. This was true guerrilla marketing it was pounded home to people again and again; in radio, TV, mailers and letters to the editors. It was so well grounded in people involved in the campaign they walked and talked the message and no one ever got off message.

On the other hand, the Barclay campaign was anything but disciplined. They entered the marketing campaign swinging with negative advertising, in politics you only do this if your favorables are comfortably high and you are fairly well known. This is a risky strategy because your favorables can fall as fast as your opponent. They never defined a clear campaign message or theme, they reacted to whatever the Aubertine campaign did, often referred to as annoying flattery. They failed to define Will Barclay as effectively as the opponents defined Darrel Aubertine, even worse Barclay ended up being defined by the Aubertine camp. They failed to present ideas from Will Barclay, they attacked Aubertine as if they were losing. If this were the TV show Apprentice, Donald Trump would have fired all their a$$es long ago in this campaign. This was a marketing nightmare.

As I started out by saying this was not about Aubertine or Barclay, it was about the Albany people who financed and ran the campaigns. I predicted to a friend the night before an Aubertine victory, although I had advocated otherwise. I think in the end Aubertine is a nice guy, who is definitely getting more political savvy and experienced, but Barclay is more intelligent and articulate on the issues facing Northern New York and the state of New York, but he was overtaken by outside forces and lead into a battle with a bad strategy.

Congratulations Darrel Aubertine!