When the New Yorker reporter Jeffrey Goldberg asked Sen. John Kerry whether the Democrats had a credibility problem on defense controversies, the party’s titular leader replied without equivocation, “Look, the answer is, we have to do an unbranding.” As Kerry saw it, the political problem had to do with salesmanship: “We have to brand more effectively. It’s marketing.” An editor on the linguistic qui vive titled Goldberg’s article about the Democrats’ need to shuck off the appearance of weakness “The Unbranding.”

The hot word in the field of sales — indeed, pervading the world of perfect pitching — is brand.

In a world where the words new and fresh are relentlessly repeated on every product label, the name of the sales technique is getting old and stale. Where is the ad-Ubermensch, the creative Ogilvy, who will put forward a new moniker for the name of the atmospheric marketing game? The time has come, as John Kerry puts it, to unbrand the word brand.

Via Houston Cronicle