You suck. Get used to it.

Image by auraelius

Listening to a report on NPR the other day about the presidential campaigns, I heard a comment that every single ‘gotcha’ moment from either candidate is immediately recorded, broadcast, and criticized. Every moment of McCain’s and Obama’s day is there for scrutiny and, each side hopes, derision.

The venues for this massive lab experiment are, of course, the same ones we are all working with on behalf of our clients. And the intense pressure the candidates are under is only an extreme version of what our brands go through today.

I’m hoping that the current state is a passing one – that we will become tired of being outraged about the imperfection of our heroes (or politicians, or brands) and that we start to ride with the untidy edges.

Not to say there’ll be a time where we should give poor behavior a free ride – just not so much self-righteousness when a politician is caught making an off-color aside, for example.

Politicians are human. Brands are human too. We could use the imperfections as proof of that.