When it comes right down to it, the recent mid-term election was decided because of brand meaning. Sure, there was an anti-incumbent tidal wave. But the Democrats were the ones running for cover from the onslaught of the wave of discontent.

When we work on a brand to steal market share, we look for focus, intensity and meaning. The Republican Party gets this. I am not making judgments on ideology or correctness here, just brand equity.

In considering brand meaning and its ability to persuade, it is plainly evident the Democratic Party lacks meaning, aside from the power of personality (like Obama and the 2008 Presidential election). It is a splintered conglomerate of disparate ideas and agendas. As such, charismatic candidates – and not ideology – decide its fortunes. As long as the Democrats allow the Republicans to define them, Democrats will be underrepresented despite an advantage in registered voters.

When it comes to branding it is all about focus and a party that celebrates diversity has a difficult road ahead of it when it tries to mobilize an electorate or influence Independent voters.

Want proof? Single-issue blocks like the Tea Party, despite their marginalized position for the vast majority of voters, defeated the Dems and almost beat a powerful and established Senator in Nevada — Harry Reid. That is the power of a singular idea. We caution our clients that a single average idea is better than a host of excellent ideas when it comes to brand meaning.

Will anyone from either party contact us and ask for help in persuasive meaning? I doubt it. Political correctness trumps reality every time in politics and I can’t imagine any political leader to have the brass necessary to hire a company called Stealing Share. After all, we only represent they claim to covet.

Brands have the greatest impact when they touch an emotional nerve. When the brand message reverberates on that emotional nerve, three very interesting and important phenomena takes place.

1) The brand is remembered and noticed. When an emotion is struck, it is felt, by definition, and is virtually impossible to ignore

2) The brand is placed. By this I mean it is provided with an emotional context that allows us to understand where the brand belongs in the flood of ideas and messages that come our way every day. Being able to “place” a brand message is the first step in understanding the brand’s meaning. It is the route every brand must take if it is striving for acceptance and new customers.

3) The motivational ideas transform themselves into equity markers. This is an important transformation because equity markers are the “things” we witness (see, here, taste, and feel) that seem to belong to that brand. When we experience these markers, we are instantly reminded of that brand and because the brand has been placed, we are able to file all of this information and feeling into the cubby hole that our brains now reserve for that brand

If you think this is just the ramblings of a brand theorist, I want to share with you exactly what brought these ideas to mind this morning, and why it matters to all of us.

I was driving to the office this morning and I was listening to NPR’s Morning Edition. In the course of 10 minutes, I heard three equity markers mentioned and expounded on, and all three of them belong to the Republican Party. They spoke of Grizzly Moms, Obamacare, and the Tea Party.

This is not a dissertation on ideology. (You would be hard pressed to guess my political bent.) It is simply a brand guy seeing a political party that uses its brand capital well.

The Republicans have not only defined the political agenda in the US, they have defined the language in which the debate is framed. Brand genius? Might well be.

I have to think hard to find a political equity that the Democratic Party has defined and used. I’m not talking about slogans like “Yes We Can.” Slogans have short lifetimes and feel “authored.” Equity markers are carefully designed ideas that resonate and become part of the vernacular.

If brand is any indicator, the Democrats have a tough road ahead of then in November. That is, unless they can revive New Deal or Great Society.

Politics in America is in a quagmire. No matter which side of the aisle you sit on personally, we all agree with Will Rogers when he was asked many years ago what he thought about FDR if he got elected during his first run at the Presidency. “Well,” Will said, “if he gets elected and the White House catches fire and burns to the ground we will say at least he got something started.”

The reason nothing ever gets accomplished in the partisan politics of today has everything to do with the process (i.e., focus groups) by which the political parties ridiculously believe they understand the needs and wants of the populace.

Napoleon, who no one can doubt exemplified the ability to lead, once said, “Without doubt the first duty of a ruler is to do what the people want. But what the people want is almost never the same as what the people say. Its will and needs ought to be found not so much in the people’s mouth as in the ruler’s heart.”

Well said.

For-profit companies come to us to uncover what the people want. It is Stealing Share’s charter to uncover that knowledge and to identify the barriers to acceptance. We never conduct focus groups. We conduct meaningful research that is designed to uncover truths, beliefs, needs and wants. We then test these findings to make sure they are persuasive and move the brand into a position of power so it changes the market space and redefines the selling argument.

Maybe politics has not learned this lesson because the players are trading in votes and power and not real money (well not their money anyway). Companies that need to win and can’t afford waste or the wastefulness of a single move know better than to ask us to conduct focus groups.

Just this morning, NPR reported on President Obama as he sets off on a four-state, three-day political tour. According to NPR, the trip includes a big rally in Madison, Wis., aimed at mobilizing younger voters.

I have no idea where the insight into influencing the behavior of these “younger voters” came from, but the same report went on to quote Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. He said the insight has “the wrong answer.” According to NPR, Greenberg has been conducting focus groups for congressional candidates across the country. “He says the argument that things are slowly getting better might wash with professional economists, but it doesn’t fly with many voters.”

If Mr. Greenberg and the Democratic Party are basing their strategy on focus groups, I am stating with absolute certainty that he is wrong. Focus groups are never revealing and they are never projectable research. They are just a wasteful example of being process driven. That is, being satisfied by doing something even if what you do has little bearing on the job at hand. Will Rogers would applaud this sort of activity — even if all they get is the “White House catches fire and burns to the ground.”

The problem with focus groups is the idea of the “group.” People act and speak differently in a group then they do in the privacy of their own world. No doubt everyone but the Republicans, Democrats and Tea Party has heard of the group mentality.

Focus groups are led by leaders, including both the facilitator and the extremes of the participants. As a result, they reflect that leadership and not the individuals in it. Within that crucible, all sorts of ideas are possible and most of them are dead wrong. At their best, focus groups deliver ideas that are so vanilla that no one objects or, so extreme, that everyone gets more polarized.

Wait a moment. Sounds a lot like the rhetoric and strategy of all the political parties, does it not?

Leadership has a prerequisite — the willingness to lead. Real research, the kind we do here at Stealing Share and Resultant Research, is designed to sell products and ideas to those that currently have an affinity to a competitor’s idea or product. Maybe our “leaders” should get with the program and tell the focus group pollsters to try to peddle their wares to the competition?

Brand is a reflection of your customer’s aspirations and self-description. We judge a brand’s vitality by the level to which its customer’s covet the brand and feel incomplete without it. I am sick over healthcare reform. Not the reform itself. I am just tired of the posturing and fighting, and total lack of civility (root: civilized).

The political situation here in the US is an indication of two brands, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, losing any brand equity they hold. Don’t be surprised if, for the first time in US history since the Bull Moose Party of TR, a new movement pushes both of these dinosaurs aside.

Neither party represents anything other than the aspirations of extreme fringes. They have forgotten that we elect Representatives, Senators and Presidents to get things done, not make everything a quagmire.

No political party will ever hire us, Our name is unsavory: Stealing Share. Our name could be more poisonous. We could the Republican or the Democratic Branding Company.

As a brand strategist, I have worked for almost 30 years developing brand strategies and finding ways to provide ownership of transformative ideas that increase a brand’s ability to attract new customers and influence prospects.

This morning, I came into my office and listened to a voice mail from Jeremy Davis, who said he was calling me from Newt Gingrich’s offices. He said I had been selected by Newt to serve on an advisory panel concerning business. He said that they were preparing a press release and I should call him back ASAP to give them permission to publicize my name.

As a brand expert, taking any personal politics out of this, I asked myself, “What does the Newt Gingrich brand own?” By assessing brand ownership, a set of permissions arises. In other words, if the brand owns such and such, it has permission to say such and such and act in such and such a manner. Everything a brand says, does and supports must be reflective of those permissions and they need to be viewed as legitimate within those confines. Otherwise, a brand is just not believable.

When I think about the Newt Gingrich brand, I think the positives it owns are “no-nonsense, brashness, not politics as usual, integrity beyond what is expedient, and the telling of truth as the brand really believes it to be.” I think even the enemies of the Newt Gingrich brand would acknowledge those are the positives. (For sake of discussion, let’s leave out the negatives.)

So, with this background in mind, I called Jeremy Davis back. Of course, I did not get Jeremy on the phone. Instead, a pleasant young lady answered the phone, took my name and asked the name of my company. She told me that, while Jeremy was currently unavailable, she could help me.

She then said, “Oh, Stealing Share is headquartered in Greensboro NC, right?” I said we were indeed from North Carolina and she replied, “Newt has a message for you. Let me play it for you and then I will be back to answer any of your questions.”

With that, I was treated to a pre-recorded message from Newt who then informed me how fed up I was with the administration and how upset I was that the Obama administration did not care about business. He told me that he needed my help and ideas.

This is my recollection of the recording. But it was obvious to me at that point, listening a recording, this was not for ME, it was for ANYONE who would listen and send him money.

As a brand strategist, my brand curiosity kept me on the call. It was more powerful a draw than my desire to flee because I knew I was being duped. By the way, Newt then thanked me for taking the time to hear his important message because he “knew how busy I was.”

His pre-recorded message ended, but the woman who had originally answered my call into Jeremy was not on the line. Instead another gentleman picked up the call and said his job was to “fill me in on the details” and to answer my questions.

Each time I asked him a question, he recited a pre-written response, which ended with the question, “So can Newt count on your help?”

After three rounds of getting no real details, I decided to cut to the chase and ask, “Are there any fees involved?”

The Newt salesman answered, “Well, we are going to be asking for a donation so that your name will appear in the list of names in the full page Wall Street Journal ad we are taking out.” At which point I said that I had already made my political contributions for the year — and he hung up.

So let’s revisit the attributes of the “Newt Gingrich Brand” highlighted earlier. Are the attributes of “no-nonsense, brashness, not politics as usual, integrity beyond what is expedient, and the telling of truth “ still realized in my head? Well, “brashness” still applies. But ask me now what the Newt Gingrich brand owns and I will tell you “duplicity, slight of hand, a lack of regard for my time and intelligence, and politics as usual.”

Too bad. I thought the brand was better than the man.