“Brand Burnham”: Why Andy is a marketing success story

Will Dunn· Host0:00

[gentle music] The New Statesman.

Anoosh Chakelian· Host0:02

I'm Anoosh Chakelian, and you're listening to The Politics Show from the New Statesman. I'm here again with my colleague Will Dunn for our weekly roundup. Hi, Will.

Will Dunn· Host0:13

Hello.

Anoosh Chakelian· Host0:14

Our first category is Brand of the Week. Um, and we should tell our listeners before we start chatting, we're recording this episode before the result of the Makerfield- Mm ... by-election. But if you do want to get the full scoop, then you can go to your Politics Show podcast feed, and by now there should be an episode out with future Anoosh in it- [laughs] ... um, giving you all the latest from the result in Makerfield. So we don't know who's won.

Will Dunn· Host0:37

But we do know that future Anoosh will be very tired- [laughs] Yeah ... having stayed up for the count.

Anoosh Chakelian· Host0:41

Actually, don't bother listening to that.

Will Dunn· Host0:43

[laughs] [laughs] But- She'll be a shadow of the person that she is on this podcast ... she'll be ex- extremely sharp, I am sure. [laughs] And, um, yeah, but you have, nonetheless, we can still talk about Brand Burnham, can't we?

Anoosh Chakelian· Host0:57

Mm-hmm.

Will Dunn· Host0:57

And, uh, your fascinating column in this week's magazine on the importance of branding in British politics, and Andy Burnham's capability of forming a brand, and also other people who are less capable of doing so. [laughs] So tell me a bit about Netflixification in politics.

Anoosh Chakelian· Host1:19

Yeah. So there's this theory, I think George Eaton, our former colleague, um, was the person who came up with this, but it's been... I think it's an analogy that's used by a number of people in British politics now, that we're experiencing