THE MARKETING OF THE PRESIDENT….I’ve been thinking about the presentation of Bush’s economic plan yesterday, and the more I think about it the more I admire it. Mind you, this is strictly from the point of view of a competitor admiring another competitor’s marketing coup.
Think about what Bush had to work with: he’s proposing a $300+ billion tax cut on dividends. Most of this will go to wealthy stockholders and is therefore open to attack as a standard Republican sop to the rich. So how does he sell it? Like this:
About half of all dividend income goes to America’s seniors, and they often rely on those checks for a steady source of income in their retirement. It’s fair to tax a company’s profits. It’s not fair to double tax by taxing the shareholder on the same profits.
So today, for the good of our senior citizens, and to support capital formation across the land, I’m asking the United States Congress to abolish the double taxation of dividends.
This is inspired marketing and follows the fundamental law of all brilliant marketing messages:
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Technically, it is absolutely true
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But it leaves an impression exactly the opposite of the truth.
The “seniors” who receive most of the benefits are actually wealthy retirees who keep most of their assets in stocks. But the impression the president leaves is that of a frail, aging grandmother depending on the $500 check she gets each quarter from the 1000 shares of General Public Utilities stock that her husband left her when he passed away.
I wonder who came up with this idea? It’s the kind of thing that’s only obvious after you hear it, and it’s absolutely devastating. Paul Krugman can write columns until his fingers fall off from carpal tunnel syndrome and it won’t change the impression that Bush left in just a few seconds of speaking. As a marketing guy who has struggled to figure out the best way to position products many times in the past, I give this effort an A+. It’s simply brilliant.
