Millionaire parents - check. Private schools - check. Underdog status - WTF?
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/underdogged/#postComment
“I definitely think Mitt goes in as an underdog,” Ann Romney said in a television interview earlier this month. Mr. Romney’s campaign happens to be imploding at the moment, but his supporters have been calling him an underdog since the primaries. In February, Mr. Romney said he was the underdog in Michigan, his home state. In June, Gov. Scott Walker said Mr. Romney was the underdog in Wisconsin. Sometimes, being just any old underdog isn’t enough. “He’s the tremendous underdog,” said a Republican committeeman in New Hampshire.
In August, the Republican nominee was somehow the underdog at his own nominating convention. “Romney entered the G.O.P. convention the underdog and left the convention the underdog,” as one blogger put it. Mr. Romney said it best: “It’s always a good thing to be seen as the underdog.”
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When Mr. Romney says he’s an underdog, that’s not humility: that’s branding. Last year, a team of scholars that included Harvard’s Neeru Paharia and Anat Keinan published a study called “The Underdog Effect: The Marketing of Disadvantage and Determination through Brand Biography.” They defined “underdog brand biography” as “an emerging trend in branding in which firms author a historical account of their humble origins, lack of resources, and determined struggle against the odds.” Their research, they say, demonstrates that telling a story about yourself in which you are an underdog builds brand loyalty, especially in cultures where “underdog narratives are part of the national identity.” Pretending to be an underdog is good business.
Mr. Romney’s branding himself an underdog to earn voter sympathy might not be the weirdest feature of his topsy-turvy campaign. It’s not even the most ruthless. But it is one of the saddest.
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