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Vol. LXII, No. 10
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Wednesday, March 5, 2008
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Vol. LXII, No. 10
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Wednesday, March 5, 2008
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It’s interesting to hear Tamara Jacobs talk about the 2008 presidential campaign. In fact, it’s refreshing.
Gone is the partisan punditry. Absent from her analysis are talking points on hot-button issues like Iraq, health care, and immigration. Herself a former television broadcaster, Ms. Jacob’s professional opinion is non-partisan, but it is pro-perception.
Last month, the nation saw the suspension of the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who many believed would give former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani a run for his money for the Republican Party nomination. Neither one still stands, of course, but Ms. Jacobs explains why:
“‘Can Your Packaging be Too Perfect?’ that would be my headline as we see Romney drop out of the race,” Ms. Jacobs said from her home office in Princeton Borough.
“I think that’s what could have led to the demise of John Edwards too: they tried to connect but they couldn’t because of their tenacity and their inability to overcome adversity.” She paraphrased an often repeated Mike Huckabee line, about how the former Arkansas governor “looks like the guy on the line,” while Mr. Romney “looks like the guy that would fire you.
“We don’t like perfect people, and I think that’s a lesson to be learned,” she said.
Her analysis is not, of course, for the Sunday morning talk shows or for the 24-hour news cycle, but it is her trade after 18 years in the communications field and now founder and president of Tamara Jacobs Communications. Founded 10 years ago, her company aims to tighten a client’s presentation and interviewing skills, specializing in training consumer, financial, and pharmaceutical company executives and health care providers to empower their employees with personal and professional presentation skills.
So what happened to Mitt Romney? He was too perfect, Ms. Jacobs said, adding that his perfection was, in fact, his most prominent flaw.
“One day he was in a suit, and then we would see him at Wal-Mart wearing a windbreaker. A brand has to be known, liked, and then used,” she said.
Ms. Jacobs has trademarked her “sequence to success” as the ICED method: Impress, Connect, Engage, and Declare. “It’s not that hard,” she said, but dissecting the method, Ms. Jacobs acknowledged, can be daunting, which is where she steps in with her clients.
“People see you before they hear you. I talk a lot about a snapshot society, because we make impressions in the first six seconds it’s not a beauty contest, but if you’re not giving off energy when you walk into a space, I’m probably going to start to disengage.
“If you look at all the candidates, the one common denominator is that they all have tremendous energy, and if you don’t, you drop out, á la Fred Thompson,” she said.
In her book Be the Brand: Define It. Design It. Deliver It (2004, BookSurge Publishing), Ms. Jacobs outlines much of what she has based her career on. “I tell everyone to try to brand themselves and ask people what they think their three most recognizable attributes are.” With college students, who also make up a portion of her client base, “I make them attack those benefits and suddenly, they have a story to tell. It works wherever you are and however old you are,” she said.
But be careful if you are a known brand, Ms. Jacobs warned. Take Hillary Clinton, for example: “She is such a known entity, a lot more people would probably like her if she burst on the scene, but she used to walk around with a known demeanor, and her history had that negative brand for a time.”
Consistency, Ms. Jacobs said, can go a long way and can work from presidential candidates, all the way down to the president of a home business.
On the Web: www.tamarajacobs.com, and www.tjcomm.com.