SFGate Home Business Sports Entertainment Travel Classifieds Jobs Real Estate Cars SFGate Web by ... CAMPAIGN 2008: Buying Bran

In a modern trend that goes back to "The Selling of the President" -- a book that described how advertising consultants packaged Richard Nixon in the 1968 campaign -- consultants are aiming to make a sale to American voters by positioning their candidate as a brand.

But as American consumers absorb as many as 5,000 advertising messages a day, political campaigns must become increasingly savvy about how and why successful brands cut through the clutter. "In an over-communicated age, products and candidates both understand that they need to own something."

And in the brave new world of 21st-century politics, candidates' "brands" are shaped not only by TV commercials and word-of-mouth, but by an ever-expanding number of Internet freelancers -- including bloggers, YouTube videographers and Facebook users.

They pose an unprecedented danger for the candidates, experts said, via fast-raging viral attacks, videos or blogs that can erode loyalty, reshape a brand and be impossible to control.

The delicate nature of the candidate's brand was underscored this month with the debut of a homemade video that depicted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as a "big brother" figure in a "mashup" or remake of the classic "1984" Apple Macintosh ad.

"This ad wasn't done by the (Sen. Barack) Obama camp, but it did exactly what they wanted to do," Levick said. "Position (Clinton) as the IBM to their Apple. She's old Washington, he's the fresh face."

The emergence of the "Hillary 1984" Web ad emphasized the power of the Internet, and dramatized how candidates could lose control of their brand in the blogosphere.

Experts said a candidate's brand is more than just a slick image. It is built on a foundation of issues and priorities that help define each contender and what he or she stands for.

The importance of maintaining the candidate as a brand -- echoing the successes of companies that have burned their identities into the American psyche -- may have its most recent example in California.

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- dismissed by voters as a divisive conservative in 2005 -- successfully repositioned himself as the environmentally friendly centrist in his re-election campaign. With his revamped "Schwarzenegger" logo, fresh orange and green campaign colors, and the new "Protecting the California Dream" slogan, the governor sailed to a double-digit victory last November in a Democratic state.

Republican strategist Mike Murphy, whose work in the 2003 recall election helped catapult Schwarzenegger into the governor's seat, said the Internet is changing the way such political brands are shaped and protected.

Campaign consultants in 2008 must be prepared for what may happen to a candidate's brand when "political dirty tricks in our winner-take-all political system meet an unregulated but highly influential media channel,'' he said.

That means such "viral accusations and innuendo" may represent a whole new generation of October surprises that could undo "years of careful policy articulation" and political branding literally overnight, he said.

Candidates hope to craft images of themselves that spring immediately to the minds of voters. Looking at their Web sites, here are some of the qualities the top candidates are trying to associate with their names in much the same way a company tries to brand a product.

This is cache, read story here