How Did Republicans Brand Themselves At The Convention?

The Republican National Convention has wrapped up in Tampa, Florida, after last night’s big speech by Mitt Romney. And perhaps more than anything else, the week was an attempt by the GOP to shape its own brand and message on its own terms. So how’d they do? For answers, let’s bring in Don Goldberg. He’s a branding and marketing strategist with BlueText in Washington. He says the goal was to attract the women vote and bring in more young people. “What they needed to do was put up a bunch of good spokespeople who could could send those messages to those audiences,” Goldberg says. “That’s the kind of thing that we would tell them to do if they were a company.” He says Sen. Marco Rubio, who was the main person to introduce Mitt Romney, is very charismatic and therefore appealing to young voters. At the same time, there were a lot of mixed messages, he said, especially in actor/director Clint Eastwood’s appearance in which he appeared to be lecturing an empty chair meant to represent President Obama. That didn’t appeal to either of the target audiences, Goldberg says. Hear more details in the audio above.