Who defines you?

Political campaigns teach amazing lessons about marketing. None, this year, is more obvious than how important it is for a brand to define itself, lest its competitors do it for them.

Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee won in Iowa because they defined themselves as different. But equally important, they defined their competition as “more of the same.” In 2004, President Bush won the White House by defining John Kerry as a “flip-flopper.” Both Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton marketed themselves as “inevitable.” Huckabee, Obama, and to a lesser extent, McCain have managed to turn that into a bad thing.

In business, Sergio Zyman tells a great story about Pepsi positioning Coke as a boring product, more of the same, as it positioned itself as “the choice of a new generation.”

Your message doesn’t need to be about change (though it probably shouldn’t be “more of the same”). It does need to tell folks who you are. And you need to do it. Before your competition does it to you.