11:48am Saturday
Saint Paul, Minn
Recently there have been memes* floating around the web of Vice President J.D. Vance’s face superimposed on all kinds of popular images.
(*when I used “meme” as a Scrabble word some 15 years ago, having read it in Howard Bloom’s The Lucifer Principle, other players were unfamiliar with the concept of self-spreading ideas. They disqualified the word, and ended my turn. Anyways…)
Maybe you’ve seen these Vance memes. Vance as George Washington. Vance as a character from Game of Thrones. And more.
Both his supporters and detractors have been posting the images.
J.D. Vance himself says the memes don’t bother him, and I read somewhere that because he was once a Marine, he can take some good-natured ribbing.
This is great anti-branding and has a valuable lesson for direct response marketing, if you ask me.
Let me explain.
Direct response marketing, at its core, is about serving customers first.
Mainstream brands want nothing more than to be known and remembered—and they do this by slapping their logo or trademark on everything positive they can find.
(Even if that “positive” thing is an ad with zero selling power behind it.)
They live and die by their popularity in the public’s imagination.
And while they want to serve customers, they’ll willingly not do so in order to protect their Brand-Ego.
They’ll do their best to distance themselves from a topic that the public doesn’t love.
Example:
Adult video websites get a ton of traffic, from all types of people. Could an ad for men’s hair loss work there? Women’s weight loss? Dog food?
Probably. But mostly, brand-ego prevents companies from marketing on those platforms.
(I’m not saying they should—maybe they have moral reasons to avoid it—but more likely, it’s about public perception, even though these sites get a lot of traffic.)
Another example: recently companies were all-in on DEI, because the idea was generally popular (even if the business result wasn’t profitable.)
Since Trump and Vance took office in 2024, and even a bit before that, DEI’s popularity has fallen. And brands are now on that bandwagon, for better or worse—even if the new stance isn’t profitable.
I’m not suggesting this is a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation, though it might be.
But more that, brands that stake their popularity and income on their public image are always playing defense.
Vance, apparently, doesn’t care about his personal brand perception. If true, that means his ego isn’t swayed by public opinion. He’s on offense.
Trump has been relentlessly attacked, for over 12 years now, and the media tells us he has a fragile ego.
Yet Trump keeps doing his thing, whether or not you agree with it, and without regard to the media’s hype. He plays offense, too.
Brand-ego, for companies, is all about defense: staying on the “right side” of public perception.
But Direct Response is all about serving the customer first.
A customer wants to pay someone to solve problems—and for the right solution, they generally don’t care what brand it may be.
Can you solve their problems? That’s what they want to know.
Bonus points if you can do it affordably (which means your not spending money on needless marketing, just effective marketing).
In My Life in Advertising, written over 100 years ago, author Claude Hopkins warned companies to not waste money brand advertising.
In the book, Hopkins tells a story of a train passing through the country with a giant logo on the side. It cost a small fortune, and served no purpose other than to make the company owner happy.
(Which, I guess, has its merits… but profit isn’t one…)
In the March 2025 issue of Dan Kennedy’s “No B.S. Newsletter,” Kennedy covers the basic Direct Response 101 principles, one of which is to not let Brand-Ego rule your financial decisions.
Instead, let the customer’s success and experience guide you.
And by pleasing the individual customer, not the ever-fickle public, you do right by your brand, too.
Have a great weekend,
Jeffrey