Occupy's big-ass branding problem

By Mark Blanchard

If anyone has to make a definitive list of 2011’s People of the Year, the Occupy Movement would have to feature high on it. Love ‘em, loathe ‘em, deride them for dyed-in-the-wool hippie-ness or question their personal hygiene, but there’s one thing that can’t be ignored: These are the people putting the major problem facing Western society into the forefront of popular consciousness. The problem: Capitalism is broken; we need to fix it.

But for all of their undoubted PR- and controversy-generating success, I can’t help feeling, as an adman, that they are doing something wrong, and in a fundamental way, are failing to really connect and get their message across. Then it hit me—they are lacking that most elementary of devices that has often been the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful marketing campaign: the effective brand spokesperson. They need their own Old Spice Man, Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World or Geico Lizard. Or in a more elevated way, their own JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., or Harvey Milk—someone with the character, charisma, smarts and media-friendliness to make a loose assortment of the concerned, committed (and the downright crazy) appear like a valid, forward-thinking, visionary collective. Someone who can articulate their common vision in a compelling, memorable and quotable way.

I’m sure they’d hate me saying this, but the principal immediate barrier to moving their cause forward may not reside in the political sphere but in the old-fashioned, grubby marketing arena.