Brand Personality of Presidential Candidates: An Abstract

Abstract

Political marketing has become a separate discipline of its own as a result of the union between political science and marketing. Political branding has become a distinct sub-discipline within the political marketing field (Scammel 2015). Politicians running for office increasingly use branding strategies and techniques to the point that they are labeled “brandidates”. Political professionals construct and present a politician’s persona as a brand personality, similar to when products present a brand personality, which is eventually “bought” by voters. Academics studying political marketing and political operatives running campaigns continue to investigate how politicians’ brand personalities connect with voters. This research responds to the call for examining political branding utilizing a “theoretical lens [concepts, theories, and frameworks] from other disciplines across marketing, psychology, and social sciences” (Pich and Newman 2020, p.11). The purpose of this research is to determine which independent variables, societal priorities (post-materialism) for the country (Inglehart 1977, 1981), political orientation (Nail et al. 2009), and comparative life satisfaction (Meadow et al. 1992) explain voter preference for different political brand personalities in Presidential candidates. In order to select which brand personality traits would be adopted, a review of literature addressing brand personality (Aaker 1997; Verable et al. 2005), political brand personality (Caprara et al. 2002; Guzman and Sierra 2009; Smith 2009), leadership traits important to voters (Pew Research 2015) was performed. The identified traits were employed on a bi-polar scale anchored by Biden and Trump to determine which trait was most associated with each of the Presidential candidates. The Inglehart Index, utilized for decades in national and global research projects, was adopted to determine societal values most important to voters. Nail et al. (2009) initially developed the political orientation scale, equally balanced between conservative and liberal issues, for researching political orientation and social cognition. Meadow et al. (1992) introduced the congruity life satisfaction scale (CLS) to assess a person’s level of satisfaction is based on social and aspirational comparison to evoked standards. Examining the relationship among political orientation, societal values, and life satisfaction with candidates perceived brand personality helps establish a theoretical foundation for understanding how voters select, support, and eventually vote for candidates. A greater understanding of traits, i.e., brand personality, voters seek in a President and factors contributing to these preferences, will result in deeper theoretical insight and understanding of their application in political campaigns. This research will aid politicians to be more adaptable to their target audiences.