- Never let a rival define you
- If your rival is worried, find out what he knows that you don’t
- Employ one marketing smartie who thinks like an outsider, will tell you the truth, and is endowed by you with veto power over messages and themes
- When your rival punches you, punch back – but elegantly, by taking the conversation above him to a bigger point
Be who you are but put your energy, vocabulary and instincts on steroids- Stats and numbers can keep you in the weeds; use them shrewdly but don’t depend upon them – tell the story of what they mean in the aggregate to your customer
- After a distinct, authentic viewpoint, put nimble thinking and decisiveness above all else
- Incessantly cultivate the mindset that every customer is yours to lose; this is the wellspring of both the confidence and the humility every person needs to lead and to prevail
MAKE A RENAISSANCE 
It’s quite interesting that now everybody is blaming Romney, his campaign and staff when till 8.30pm on 6th the very same people were calling a close race….. I’m wondering; if it is so obvious why almost anybody has said all of this before?….(actually quite the opposite “…overperforming at the TV debates…bla bla…”; “….better grip over the economy that is the key topic of the election…bla.. bla…”)
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Thanks, Giuseppe. I think this particular election demonstrates that there is a lot of air time to fill and few minds to fill it. My personal frustration is rarely hearing pundits ask the questions I would ask or not taking the time for followup questions to probe what a candidate had just said. The fact that Romney surged after the debates tells me that he did some breaking through; this put the Obama campaign on the run. Then the Obama team did a better job of, for lack of a better word, fighting.
Of course, there is another school of thought on this: that people liked the president’s message and world view better than they liked the governor’s. If this is correct, then judging the results — numbers and state-by-state trends, the fact that the House remains a Republican majority — the president received no mandate. My feeling is that for the Obama campaign, this was less about philosophy and more about the fight. They recognized Mr Romney’s potential and very astutely took command of the story. This was always Mr Romney’s campaign to lose, and the president’s advisers wisely took action to make sure he did.
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9. “Speak softly and carry a big stick”?
🙂
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Well, that often works. I would amend it to “speak powerfully and clearly and make them think you have a big stick.”
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