High Stakes Typography, Pt. I
Posted by mackchacky 
There’s a uniquely American product category which is marketed to us with an astonishing level of focus and raw capital. It’s an abstract, intangible category, where the marketers draw on every level of our society and identity to craft perfect packages that they think we’ll be willing to buy. In 2008, for the first time, 1.5 billion dollars were spent in this category, all in the pursuit of your purchase. Wanna take a guess at what it is?
It’s these guys (and girl)!
Modern American presidential candidates some of the most robustly marketed products in history. Barack Obama’s successful quest to be president marked the most expensive of these marketing campaigns, ever. He and his supporters got their money’s worth- the rest, not so much. With these kind of stakes, and only one winner, every marketing decision that goes into a modern presidential campaign is agonized over by a platoon of highly paid consultants whose sole job is to distill the American zeitgeist into a mythical creature that can get 50% +1 (let’s just ignore the electoral college).
Forget policy planks, forget legitimate points of difference and parity- suddenly, the most mundane decision is critical! Red or blue tie? Dye your hair, or keep the grey? Point with a straightened index finger, or use Bill Clinton style thumb-pointing? The indecisive dare not tread here.
Next time, we’ll go into how a specific mundane choice is really one of the most important ones- Which font do you choose as the official face of the campaign?
