Branding Lessons From Tom Haverford of Parks and Rec.

I’m hoping you’re all a bunch of marketing nerds who love Parks and Rec just as much as I do. If you aren’t a fan yet, well, yet is the key word there.

Assuming that you know the character, Tom Haverford from the sitcom, Parks and Recreation, you know he’s insane and has a million failed business ideas a day. But you have to give him props for his creativity and his love of brands and branding. His character really shines during Leslie Knope’s political campaign, but in one particular recent episode titled “Fluoride” Tom is successful in re-branding the idea of putting fluoride in the town’s drinking water.

Long story short, people in the town of Pawnee don’t know what fluoride is and refuse to learn about it and will not allow it in their drinking water. The character Leslie Knope attempts to teach the citizens about the factual benefits of fluoride, when Tom Haverford sweeps in to save the day with the re-branded fluoride, “#TDazzle” and then re-branded again to “H2Flow.”

#TDazzle

H2Flow

So what lessons can we take away from Tom’s exaggerated campaigns?

1. Know your audience: Tom was very well versed in his target audience. He knows exactly who they are, what they value, what they’ll respond to, and where to reach them.
2. Engage your audience: Both of Tom’s re-branding efforts included engagement of his audience. TDazzle encouraged his audience to use the hashtag (#TDazzle) on social media sites to win prizes while the H2Flow campaign asks people to collect points and badges while they use H2Flow.
3. Create a community: The fluoride’s H2Flow campaign, literally, created a community for users to interact with one another and feel included.
4. Utilize social media: Both campaigns encourage the use of social media. TDazzle provides a hashtag (#TDazzle) and H2Flow encourages the use of social media through achieving something that they would want to share with her friends.
5. Be transparent: Although it is not necessarily shown through the fluoride campaigns Tom is very transparent in his business. As the owner of Rent-A-Swag, Tom Haverford does everything and anything to make his customers happy. This means he listens to them and negotiates what they can afford. He has nothing to hide about himself or the way he runs his business, making his brand authentic.

Have we gained any more marketer Parks and Rec fans? Yeah, thought so.