Are McCain and Obama good marketers?

This year's presidential campaign advertising has been exceptionally negative. News analysts reported that McCain has recently introduced 15 new negative ads, versus 14 new negative ads by Obama. I have not seen a "positive" advertisement in weeks.

Conventional marketing wisdom says that you need a "unique competitive advantage" to attract customers. Historically, marketers have interpreted this as meaning they should improve their product to rise above category commoditization. However McCain and Obama have gone in a different direction. Since they only have one "competitor," they've decided to "improve their product" by making the competition less appealing.

There are three huge "negatives" to this approach:

First, you aren't developing a positive image for your "brand." And if you don't tell customers what your benefits are (or in marketing terms, create a positive "brand image"), who will? Granted, negative ads presumably degrade the opponent's brand image. And theoretically that leaves the negative advertiser one-up. But with the opponent doing the same thing, both sides lose.

Second, this policy of unintentional mutual destruction guarantees that politicians’ “customers” will have an increasingly negative opinion of politics in general. This weakens both the Republican and Democrat parties (“the category”) and leaves them vulnerable to other alternatives (“competitive categories”).

Of those queried in a recent bipartisan survey by the Project on Campaign Conduct:
--39% believe all or most candidates lie to voters
--67% say they can trust the government in Washington only some of the time or never.

Third, defending your brand against attacks eliminates risk taking. You attempt to reduce your vulnerability by avoiding innovation, with the result that your “product” never improves. This strategy virtually guarantees that things remain the same. And as the customers of our politicians, how happy does that make you?