Good Change/Bad Change

Political season is almost over, and it's time to talk about change. Good change, bad change, and the fact that we might all soon be standing on a street corner begging for change.

A funny thing, this concept of "change." When it comes to marketing, particularly in politics, it's a good thing (when times are bad, the challenger has two basic rules: run on "change" and tie your opponent to the current unpopular president). But it occurs to me that there's one kind of change that nobody likes: a candidate that seems to change during the course of the campaign.

Think back to the Gore-Bush debates. Back in those heady times, when we were blissfully unaware of the terrorist attack, wars and global recession soon to come, we had the luxury of fixating on eye rolls and sighs. After Al Gore showed much of both in his less-than-stellar first debate performance, an interesting thing happened: His handlers sat him down in front of a TV and made him watch Saturday Night Live's Darrell Hammond do his Gore imitation. "See?" the handlers said. "People see you as stiff and uptight. You have to change that."

And what did Gore do? He started wearing earth tones, doing morning-show interviews while sitting in an easy chair, and most notably, seeming to do his next debate performance on Xanax.

I remember thinking that it was a horrible decision. Sure, if we had never seen the other Gore, this Gore might seem more pleasant. But more important, people saw that Gore would change based on their perceptions of him. That's far worse, because it shows weakness. (His handlers blew it even more by leaking the SNL sit-down story to the media.)

In the next election, what was the angle that the Republicans introduced early and rode to victory? "Our guy is resolute; their guy is a flip-flopper." Hillary Clinton refused to change when it came to her initial approval of the war in Iraq, but what really hurt was the perception that she changed her personality on the campaign trail almost weekly. And McCain, who as of this writing is down eight points nationally, has always had a tough time convincing people that the current self-proclaimed "maverick" is the same guy as the media-dubbed maverick of 2000. (In the final presidential debate, most people saw one angry guy and one guy who remains calm under attack. They preferred the latter.)

Before you make any radical changes to your product, service or entire corporate brand, think about whether it's change that people want, rather than change you think they need.