MARKETER IN CHIEF
How Each President Sold the American Idea
by Jason Voiovich
A reconsideration of American presidential history centers on the categories of modern marketing.
Voiovich is not a historian—in fact, his diverse background includes “product development, persuasion, psychology, marketing strategy, storytelling, value signaling, audience segmentation, negotiation, and sales.” Unsurprisingly, his nonfiction book aims to reassess the history of the United States and, in particular, its parade of presidents in light of their attempts to sell ideas to their constituencies, to persuade them to buy into the latest stage of the always-evolving American experience. The model for this role—“Marketer in Chief”—wasn’t a president at all. Benjamin Franklin “made the French fall in love with the idea of America” and, as a result, should be considered an “advertising and marketing genius.” The author appropriates the categories of a theory devised by Everett Rogers, a communications expert, called the diffusion of innovation, in which people generally fall into different groups depending on their psychological attitudes toward novelty and risk. The range extends from “innovators” and “early adopters” to “laggards,” those who stubbornly resist invention until such intractability is rendered impossible. George Washington counts as an innovator, one charged with pushing the frighteningly new, while Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford are considered laggards. The two men focused on holding on to America’s “past in the face of dramatic change around the world.” Voiovich invents a new category as well—Barack Obama and Donald Trump are labeled “disruptors,” two “leaders who saw the challenges of declining dominance and decided to shake up the system to do something about it.”
The author’s knowledge of modern marketing is impressive, and the book is spangled with astute comparisons to McDonald’s, Walmart, and Kodak. In addition, his interpretations can be refreshingly unconventional—for example, he argues that James Polk “is the most important President you’ve never heard of” and that Abraham Lincoln’s principal rhetorical gift, his “superpower,” was his talent for humor, especially his “power to lampoon ridiculous behavior.” Given the influence of popular opinion on a democratic republic, it simply makes sense to look at executive action from the perspective of modern marketing categories. But there are limitations to this mode of analysis, and some presidents are harder to capture in these terms than others. Voiovich admits that he struggled to explain Ronald Reagan’s presidency using this method. Moreover, the most disappointing accounts the author offers are of the more modern presidents, Obama and Trump—scant insights are provided into the kinds of public sentiment that defined those historic presidencies. To his credit, Voiovich acknowledges the limits of his analytical perspective: “This history—exploring the role of the Presidency as Chief Marketing Officer of the American idea—is another simplification. Because of that, there are plenty of stories I chose not to tell. Like all histories, I needed to curate a small selection of stories to help illuminate an aspect of the Presidency that hadn’t been fully explored.” There are far deeper works of scholarship on the development of presidential rhetoric, ones that delve more rigorously into the speeches given and the strategies devised. But for those looking for a more accessible synopsis, this is an entertaining and instructive book.An enjoyable and edifying guide to presidential history.