article_snippet: As the author Joe McGinniss reported in the author Joe McGinniss classic book on the 1968 Nixon campaign, "The Selling of a President," political consultants long ago began marketing candidates like bars of soap.
article_snippet: The practice has accelerated since the '60s as campaigns have concluded that political brands face the same tests among voters that consumer brands do among customers.
article_snippet: Increasingly, people want to give people money to brands -- political as well as commercial -- that have a set of values people can also buy into.
article_snippet: , one could argue by extension, they vote.
article_snippet: These days, too, it's trickier than ever for brands to stay in step with the conversations that move people to make judgments.
article_snippet: Whether people're consumers or voters, people are more in tune with each other than at any other time in human history.
article_snippet: people can gang up more easily to support or reject a person, an idea, and, yes, a company, brand or politician.
article_snippet: Brands are left on the outside looking in, puzzling out how to insert Brands into a meaningful relationship with constituents who can turn on Brands at any second.
article_snippet: This trend of demanding more authenticity from brands more authenticity invest in, and rewarding brands for it, has been accelerating with consumers across the U.S. over the course of the very same seven years since Clinton last ran for president.
article_snippet: Since consumers are also voters, it stands to reason that any political brand -- including Clinton -- should look even more seriously today at how to increase it value by focusing on perceptions of it authenticity.