A big part of the success of Justin Trudeau’s election campaign success is due to the excellent branding work of Bensimon Byrne. If you need a refresher on that, see the case study here.
After election, and before the absolute need to worry about re-election, politicians and ruling parties tend to forget all about leader branding. I get that this is the time to deliver on policy and actually get things done, not the time to run ads about yourself in media. But you can still act like a smart brand builder. Consider this week’s missed opportunity to build the global Trudeau brand:
The ratification of CETA
I’m over-simplifying things a bit here, but there are number of (global leader) brands out there right now who are vocally against free trade. Mr Trudeau’s first meeting with the most vocal of those brands went as well as it could have. Early signs are that if Trudeau doesn’t publicly embarrass the current leader of the World’s Most Powerful Nation (WMPN), he can promote differing policy for Canada. This, by the way, is something he learned from his father.
What Justin Trudeau should have done this week, to better promote his global brand, is acknowledge and thank the originators of Canada’s side of the agreement. That started in 2009, not under his leadership nor by his party. It was the other guys. The opposition. The guy you beat.
Bipartisan politics is killing the progress of WMPN and it’s hurting other democracies, including Canada. Be the leader who demonstrates—rather than just says—that politics should be about doing the right thing for the country and its people rather than his/her party.
- Susan Krashinsky, “The ad agency behind Trudeau’s winning campaign”, The Globe and Mail, Oct 22, 2015.
