The Obama Bubble

By Randy Fardal

President Obama, entirely lacking in business experience, could learn something about branding from the high tech sector. At the dawn of the tech bubble, startups began to realize the importance of branding -- creating market awareness or "buzz" about a company and its products. As is common with trends, branding became a fad. Small companies soon were shifting large portions of their product development budgets to Super Bowl ads and stadium naming rights. When many products inevitably fell short of their buzz, companies producing them were weakened and the tech bubble burst. It's a good allegory for the 21st century US presidency. Like many pre-bubble tech nerds, President Bush apparently believed that self-promotion would cheapen the Office of the President, so he did little of it. For instance, when competitors attacked his Social Security privatization plan, he didn't defend it, even though he was right and his demagogic opponents were wrong. In terms of political branding, the Bush administration was pre-bubble. Now we have a president that, as they say in.... (Read Full Article)