Andrew Graff, chairman of Boston’s Ad Club, writing in Adweek notes that Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat in a special election yesterday largely by portraying himself as a common man.
Brown’s ads showed him driving a pickup truck, amping up his Massachusetts accent and donning a barn jacket, like he was on his way to grab a Dunkin Donuts coffee and a Boston Herald before taking the T to work. He was positioned as a family man, a man of the people, walking the streets of South Boston, calling up to a fan in a triple-decker. Quite a feat for a man with three homes.
Graff also notes that Brown mastered the social space, online and off. So, he took a page from George W. Bush’s playbook, and another one from Obama’s.
Welcome to Washington, DC, Senator Brown.
