"Branding the Candidate: Marketing Strategies to Win Your Vote" was written to empower voters to become sharper, more informed political consumers. It does that by taking a close look at political marketing strategies, especially those used by the Obama presidential campaign, which took marketing to a new level of sophistication.

Specifically, the book discusses the creation of the Obama brand; how the Obama campaign used database-driven, political microtargeting and high-tech digital media to reach various market segments; and the campaign's development and implementation of new...