Thursday, May 25, 2006

A pint of Guinness and a packet of poll numbers, please

We were wondering about this when we saw the news stories reporting the latest disastrous Bush opinion poll numbers from:

the Diageo/Hotline Poll

and then Holden at First Draft explains:

Diageo, the world’s leading spirits, beer and wine company, and The Hotline, the leading daily news briefing on American politics, have teamed up to bring you the Diageo/Hotline Poll.

Based on our zero qualifications in marketing, this seems like a bizarre bit of brand building; there is no actual product called Diageo, so one might have thought that the company would want to pin the name of a member of its "brand portfolio" on the poll, such as Guinness. But upon reflection, the sponsorship of the poll is probably ideal from a Washington lobbying perspective, where the identification with a poll probably beats identification with booze. By the standards of lobbying, it seems innocent enough, for now.

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