Mark Schreiber Outlines Branding Initiative

Mark Schreiber, the LP’s evangelist for its ‘branding initiative’, brings a deep resume of marketing experience to the Party.

His success is based on some elementary practices. “I listen to the customer, not the client”, Mark stated.

The Strategic Planning Team of the LP National Committee in its strategy work named ‘branding the Libertarian Party’ its number one initiative.

“A brand’, Mark noted, “is what you say about yourself if you adopt it”. Society uses brands as a short hand. The challenge in branding is to determine how to put a label on our foreheads and have others look at us and say “cool”.

As an initial step in his work, Mark surveyed LP members. He asked, “Why did you join”? The top answers included “To make a difference” and then “To be with people like me”.

From other questions Mark learned taxes and government spending was an extremely important issue to our members with drug prohibition coming in fifth.

Mark observed however that, “Issues are fundamentally divisive; people are either for the issue or against it”. Even among our members not all agree on which issue is most important and we don't always agree on how it should be presented.

Mark concluded that the overall branding of the LP we should not be issue driven. He believes issues are best left to candidates who know the local situation. National should instead create "good will" for all candidates that run on our ticket.

Mark also pointed to the Viet Nam war protest as evidence that protests generally don’t work unless they’re about somebody else”, as was the case for civil rights.

“Protests actually weaken us as a political party since your goal is to appeal to voters, be respected, and earn their trust".

We must be on the inside and making decisions and influencing outcomes. Mark explained, "There are a lot of ways to share power without getting elected.”

For example in 1999's Indianapolis, mayoral race the LP candidate was not invited to participate in the Press Clubs debates. In 2002 the Libertarian Party candidate for Sheriff was also not invited. Mark made a call to Brad Klopfenstein the LPIN Executive Director who in turn called the Press Club President and informed him the LPIN candidate would be there. Brad sits on the Press Clubs board of directors and Mark Rutherford LPIN state chair and Mark are members of the Press Club. The LPIN also holds many LPIN functions at the Press Club. This is how you get included and earn respect.

What’s our brand? Mark held up a Wall Street Journal story with the headline, “sex, drugs and rock and roll”. The story was vary favorable towards the libertarian philosophy but concluded the Libertarian Party was just too extreme to be credible. "That's our image and it's not electable", Mark said.

We have to learn new tricks or forever forget accomplishing our mission statement of getting Libertarians elected.

In a Wisconsin poll only 8% of the population trusted the LP. When those polled were read our principles that were presented as the basis of a “new party, the Wisconsin Party”, 64% trusted us and 24% wanted to know more.

How do we rectify that and connect with the populace and get them to absorb our message?

Mark explained in order to create a brand, you must

• Know who you are,
• Know why you exist,
• Know who you serve.

First, know who you are:

Libertarians are principled individuals, who are self-reliant and who have reluctantly entered the political arena in order to restore and preserve the American values of liberty

Second, know why you exist:

Our mission statement is our contract with each other. It is the one unifying purpose for us to join our resources and time together in a noble cause. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Our mission statement does not call for espousing the libertarian philosophy. It does not call on us to oppose every government program or even the existence of government. It calls on us to, "affect public policy in a more libertarian direction by electing libertarians to public office." That’s our contract. Period.

After 30 years of failure, we have to take stock of how we are doing and change our behavior.

Third, know who you serve:

Political parties get their influence by representing constituencies. The Democrats have big labor and minorities. Republicans have big business and rich folks. All of our (LP) rhetoric has focus on what we want. This gets us nowhere. We need to care about someone else in order for others to hear our message.

Mark recommends we champion small business owners and points to Indiana As example. “They’re getting excellent coverage all over the state when LPIN press releases are focused on benefiting small business.

Indiana chair Mark Rutherford delivered the state of the state speech at the LPIN convention focusing on small businesses, and the Michigan City Herald featured a positive Sunday front-page article on the LP the next day.

One additional indicator of the promise of the small business focus is the National Federation for Independent Business. The NFIB has 600,000 members who pay $20/month for membership.

To summarize the criteria Mark uses to select a constituency: Do they mirror who we are? Are they well liked and respected? Is it large enough to be meaningful to the media? Do they have a champion already? Do they share our philosophy of less government is more?

Mark has not had anyone present a better fit for our first effort at representing a core constituency and is quick to point out that there may be others we can reach out too. But, you have to start somewhere, and with limited resources the LP's focus on small business looks like our best shot.

The MO Executive Committee will likely be forging branding initiatives over the upcoming months.