The Rise and Fall of ObamaMarketing

In the summer of 2008, I noticed something I’d never seen before. All around midtown Manhattan, on various sidewalks, people were selling cheap plastic trinkets out of open briefcases propped atop folding tray tables.

To anyone who’s spent any time in New York City–where makeshift sidewalk vendors are more plentiful than Starbucks–that probably doesn’t sound so strange. But as someone who’s lived here since before the Reagan/Carter election, these vendors were different. Rather, the nature of what they sold was different.

Months before Barack Obama formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, the name “Obama” was already being stamped on or sewn into objects of every type, and these objects could be purchased just about anywhere you happened to be standing. Keychains, buttons, hats, t-shirts were all readily available. I saw Obama skateboards and heard rumors of Obama bongs. Eventually, companies usually seen selling things like pewter gnomes and porcelain kittens got into the game, hawking commemorative coins and Obama dinner plates on late-night cable shows.

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