The challenge for political personal branding - The democratic leader paradox

Abstract

The present text is a theoretical study that brings a new perspective on the issue of political branding in contemporary democracies. The goal is to answer the apparent contradictions we see in the campaign narratives of the current leaders. How do you simply connect the fact that you are part of the political establishment and you are equally against the elites? A candidate’s independent brand is gaining more and more space and attention. Today, people vote for a personality they can connect with, not parties that try to lure them with empty promises (Saelens, 2019). Hughes (2007), Hughes, Dann, and Neale (2008) understand leaders and politicians in general not only as a component of a party’s political brand but directly as so-called personal brands, that is, as separate unique brands that are then in a “co-branding” relationship with the party brand. A candidate’s brand is the politician’s public image, formed from all communication impressions (Marland, 2013, p. 4). One of the essential components of the personal brand is the story that the politician’s brand tells. A successful personal brand in politics nowadays combines two narratives in particular - on the one hand, the politician is supposed to embody a hero; on the other hand, he is supposed to be one of us, an ordinary person. These contradictory characteristics, which voters are clamoring for in today’s turbulent times, have been referred to in the literature as the paradox of the democratic leader (e.g., Kane, Hart, and Patapan 2011; Hart and Uhr, 2008). How do we reconcile these conflicting archetypes in a single political brand?