The Great Picture Hunt - Where's Waldox?

by Peach Pie

Peach State Voice (Atlanta)

July 12, 2010







It is no accident that John Oxendine, Republican Candidate for Governor seems to be hiding from the electorate. It is a cold calculated strategy to reinvent this candidate and his handlers are hunting for the best pictures.



The first inkling we read of this was in the Political Insider Blog in the piece The new, improved John Oxendine campaign, 3:00 pm June 5, 2010, by Jim Galloway. Galloway wrote; "But one of the biggest changes in the Republican race for governor in the past three months has been the quiet transformation of the John Oxendine campaign." Oxendine brought in campaign manager Stephen Puetz, who had been political director of the Tom Foley gubernatorial campaign and Jeff Roe, the man who focused on getting out the vote for Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign in ‘08 throughout much of the South, including Georgia. Why do this when Oxendine has been the front runner in the race from the beginning? Simply put Oxendine had been running all over the state and his message was stale and tiring. When consumers get tired of a celebrity that celebrity risks overexposure.



In High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Professionals into Celebrities (NTC, 1997), professors Irving Rein, Philip Kotler and Martin Stoller argue that overexposure of celebrity endorsers may come about: When consumers get tired of the celebrity; or When the product and celebrity conflict. John Oxendine's product his message prior to March was the same old and disjointed Conservatism promised for decades by pandering politicians from the Republican Party. That message conflicted too with allegations of corruption and insider contributions. John Oxendine needed to reinvent himself to an electorate that is growing more and more Conservative if he had any chance of winning the Governor's race.



To illustrate lets take the reinvention of the Miller Beer brand. In the late 1970's Miller Beer executives recognized their brand needing reinventing if they were to be successful marketing to baby boomers with increased wealth and a penchant for "tony" brands. This commercial is from 1977 and featured four hard hat working men.







Miller ran ads from 1978-1980 featuring a bottle in a fresh babbling brook not associated with people. The idea was to let the public forget the hard hat image Miller had become. By the mid-1980's Miller had successfully transformed itself into a brand that baby boomers identified with.

It all comes down to exposure management. The basic challenge in exposure management is balancing the amount of energy (money) that goes into generating an audience (voter) against the rewards that can be expected from that audience. Will they vote for the candidate?

Authors Rein, Kotler, and Stoller identify five kinds of celebrities. There are one-day celebrities — the hero who rescues a boy from drowning; one-week celebrities — the politician immersed in a scandal; one-year celebrities — Time’s “Person of the Year”; one-generation celebrities — Elvis Presley; and finally, legends — Winston Churchill. There is no question John Oxendine is a one-year celebrity having started his campaign before any other candidate.

Sociologist Chris Rojek of Nottingham Trent University in Great Britain feels it is primarily the celebrity of the year who must be concerned about overexposure. Noting the large number of rising and falling first-year stars, he feels that the greatest risk of over-exposure probably occurs during the first year of the celebrity’s ascent. “I guess the antidote is to have a clever manager who rations your appearances accordingly.” says Rojek. During this absence the candidate can reinvent himself credibly.

According to Professor Rein, who teaches at Northwestern University, “One of the big themes now in terms of brand management is reinvention — looking at a tired brand and asking how it can be freshened. It’s possible to reinvent a one-year celebrity," says Rein, "but it might take speech lessons, walking lessons, music lessons, exposure to a different kind of crowd or audiences, or building a much broader base."

John Oxendine is broadening his base to include Conservatives with a strong Pro-Life message, tough on Illegal Immigration, fiscal soundness with the Fair Tax, smaller government, and local control of schools. According to the independent candidate rating agency Elect the Right Candidate John Oxendine scores perfectly as a Constitutional Conservative in the race for Governor.

When you ask the question Where is Waldox? He is quietly reinventing himself to appeal to a broader base of support outside the traditional Liberal Republican base.

Will the run-off be between the two most Conservative Candidates Ray McBerry and John Oxendine or two RINO candidates? Time will tell.