Actually, I’m sure there are a number of lessons to glean from the past few months of watching the candidates duke it out. But there’s one really, really important one. And, I’ve touched on this in a previous blog entry about the election.

It’s a lesson about owning a word FIRST in the mind of the consumer…or, in the case of the election…the voter. Obama owned change. He owned it because he was the first to use it.

That’s how it works in brand theory. Remember, marketing is a battle of perception, not products. It doesn’t matter what the truth is…it only matters what consumers believe. And, the brand that claims a word first, usually gets to own it.

Several other candidates tried to steal this word from Obama….Clinton, Romney, and McCain. They all failed. Not because they weren’t agents of change, but because that word was already taken. So, by trying to stand for the same word as their competitor, they wound up standing for nothing, and they lost.

Some tenants of brand theory thrive in shades of gray. This one doesn’t: whoever owns the word first, gets to keep it.

It applies in politics. It applies in business.