Politics

[Alistair]

So who's shrinking the tent? The bad-tempered candidate who says something stupid or the "adult" pearl-clutchers who are saying "well I never, I'm taking MY ball and staying home!"

The candidate. 100% the candidate.

I work with the marketing function of our business from time to time.

They're pretty good at what they do, but every now and again, they launch a campaign or a product that simply doesn't land with consumers. It happens.

Now, they can tell me "Well, it was a great campaign, people were just too oblivious to get it", or "The campaign was good, but people were too distracted by something else" or even "The campaign message was right, but people were dumb and misinterpreted the situation".

They might be right with those observations, but it doesn't bring back that lost market share, and that's on them. Frankly, I respect the employees in that function who own their screw up, learn from it, and then try and fix their mistakes far more than the ones who make excuses...

Politics is exactly the same. It is, after all, just marketing with the candidate as the 'product'. You tell stories that resonate with your market, you present the product in the best possible light, hopefully that grows your market share. If you don't manage that, you fail.