• by Kathleen Stockham , April 8, 2014

As the parent of a teen and a “tween,” I am well aware the effect of marketing on kids and how they interpret the “messages” they unwittingly encounter 24/7.

However, as political yard signs start to sprout up like weeds at every street corner for primary races my 14 year old suddenly asked me from the back seat of the car, “Mom, why does every politician’s sign say ‘values’ and ‘caring’? Don’t they all care? Why is ‘caring’ a reason to vote for [him/her]?”

While I kept the wheels of the car on the road (barely), I took a hard swerve in my head to digest the question and its remarkable context.

True, every politician uses very carefully crafted adjectives to describe themselves (and their “mission”) on a 2-foot (red, white and blue) yard sign you peruse for 2.5 seconds as you drive by, but what are we actually retaining in those adjectives?

The question from my 14 year old is a good one; why does every politician have to call out that they “care” or that they “get results” or have “values” or are “honest?” I mean, wouldn’t that be a given? 

(Okay, fine, that’s a whole other column over a cocktail or two surrounding “honesty…”)

But in the overall mix, what message is the most important? 

Is it fiscal? 

Social? 

Environmental? 

Or...just mental? 

And to that end, what if we fail to realize as marketers the absorption that comes from those who are actually younger than 18; too young to vote but certainly not too young to read?

Asked about any political marketing he sees on TV, my 12 year old quickly rattled off names and positions of a majority of the office-seekers in our state. Impressed with the recall, I noticed that he also carefully named them by their “position…” too as in “Conservative, More Conservative, The Outsider, The Big Guy, and The Only Choice…”

The narrow chasm in name the politicians carve for themselves has deeper ramifications to young people than we realize. At 12, my son already notices the buzz terms and the “identity politics” terms used to show distinction. And, while I think he has a decent foundation to know the difference between all of them, it also shows me that we are at possibly a bigger political divide than we may have meant to be.

Will he ignore the issues overall and only vote for the “label” of “Most this” or “More that?” Will he miss the true “kitchen table” elements that matter to him because of a tagline?

Are we driving an “in tagline only” style of candidate? Or rather promoting the kind of person that campaigns to the tagline but governs elsewhere once they get elected.

Are we ideologically opposed to just being “good” or “smart” or just plain “electable?”

I noticed with my kids this seems to be a pattern for ideology overall that they are picking up from us; from the schoolyard to the locker room, kids already ideologically draw lines around each other by what they see. It’s as simple as those who are rich/poor, kids that love/hate the President, those that love/hate the military and even those kids who love/hate the idea of a charter school or only salads for lunch. They draw lines accordingly.

Where do they get that stuff? They get it from us; from marketing, from TV commercials, from their peers and, of course, from us as parents. 

As you drive past political yard signs or tune out the thousands of TV spots coming up between now and November, just remember that there is an unintended consequence of identity politics in marketing.

We are teaching our kids tagline lifestyles that are more about the adjective and less about the action.