John Kerry's Blog

Kerry as brand

‘The official John Kerry blog’ is a rather extensive site about John Kerry that is updated on a daily basis to imitate the experience of a personal blog. While Kerry probably does not make the notes themselves, the site’s main focus are the daily events of Kerry. The blog-like entries mostly contain speeches by Kerry from that day.

John Kerry is presented as a person on the site because of the inclusion of  a biography. Nevertheless, insights on his personal life (that is, non-political) are scarce. Most of his biography for instance, focuses on his military past and how the Vietnam war has influenced his path to political interest. 

What is important with American election candidates is that they must create a feeling:  they have to be safe, trustworthy, good-hearted Americans that can be counted on. Therefore a certain consistency of quality is needed. This is also an essential aspect of the experiential brand: a feeling is created that the consumer is familiarized with in order to ensure that the consumer has an affiliation with the brand. To ensure that Kerry creates an affiliation with his potential voter, Kerry is portrayed as a good and noble American citizen. What is missing on the blog, though, is that Kerry is not essentially portrayed as a family man and  a good Catholic. It is mentioned shortly in his biography, but it seems to me that this is the image people want to have. Instead, there is an enormous focus on his role as Vietnam veteran and the speech he held before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on behalf of the veterans. Either way, one cannot deny that Kerry’s presentation on the blog (and in other media for that matter) closely resembles the selling strategies of a brand.

The image of Kerry is also not created by one person (Kerry) but by a whole array of people around him that are concerned with his image and how this is sold to the American citizens. As with most famous people, their image become a public good that is sellable. Musicians and movie stars try to sell their movies to gain money; election candidates sell their image to gain popularity and votes. John Kerry the election candidate is no longer a person, but a representation of a carefully selected persona.

Participatory elements

The most important sign for support for an election candidate is that voters get involved with his campaign. On the Kerry blog this is made clear by the topics under ‘Get Involved’. One can get involved by contributing money, registering to the ‘Kerry core’, attending ‘Kerry meet-ups’, volunteering in the campaign, and interacting via the net. According to the  Kerry’s blog this is possible by a shop-section where you can buy ‘Kerry gear’, joining online communities, setting up your own Kerry-site or blog and adding it to a webring or ofcourse by joining discussions in a forum.

The forum on the Kerry site is rather extensive and deals with topics about Kerry’s political issues and standpoints. The moderators see the forum as an important part of voter affiliation in Kerry’s campaign, since “The sound of you typing on your keyboard is the sound of 21st Century Democracy in action!” Disrespectful posts towards Kerry and his office are also not tolerated:  “Our intent is to run a forum where members are respectful of the office John Kerry is seeking” and “If your intention is to disrupt this discussion, or to deride or defame John Kerry, his staff, volunteers or the forum members you should not participate in this discussion site.”

Like on most forums the net, they are monitored by moderators:

All of the moderators on this discussion board are volunteers with the exception of the campaign administrator. They provide their time and their good judgment to this forum free of charge. They do not make the rules; they only enforce the rules. They do not deserve to be treated harshly either publicly or privately. The moderators have broad discretion to act in the interests of maintaining the civility and goals of this discussion.

Potential voters and site visitors can thus react on the site by either joining the forum or commenting on the daily posts on the blog. It seems to me that this is a good way to keep in touch with the voters and with Kerry supporters (from other countries for instance). People who are not able to vote (because they can’t in America or live elsewhere) but still support Kerry can show their engagement. In my opinion this is a very positive development in the American election campaign.

It seems that there is a certain hierarchy of webmasters on the site, with volunteers and Kerry-fanatics at the bottom, paid campaign administrators in the middle, and a ‘Kerry on top’. It is not clear how much influence Kerry has on the site and the blog-posts. The most probable scenario is that someone of his PR-staff came up with the idea to add a blog to the site and put some campaign administrators in charge of it. Since I don’t know much about how election campaigns work, I do not know this for sure. (Interestingly enough, when you type in ‘presidential campaigns’ on howstuffworks, you not only get articles such as  “How Washington, D.C. works” and “How does the electoral college work?”, but also “How smart bombs work”.)

Even though the site is thoroughly biased and only focuses on positive Kerry-branding, it is informative and enables users and voters to vent their enthusiasm, even if it means that their post gets virtually lost between hundreds of other posts.