The Making of Brand Huntsman - WSJ.com

He resigned just 11 weeks ago as the U.S. ambassador to China, but already Jon Huntsman has a logo, a musical theme, a small arsenal of promotional videos, a Hollywood narrator and a line of travel mugs, lapel pins, baseball caps and T-shirts emblazoned with the distinctive H of his infant presidential campaign. He even has a generation named after himself. "Generation H," his campaign calls it.

Of all the GOP's candidates for president, Jon Huntsman is arguably the one with the lowest profile. And so he's taking an unusual approach to his campaign in a bid to separate himself from the pack. WSJ's Neil King Jr. reports. Image courtesy of Getty Images.

His Republican rivals are doing what candidates usually do in the heat of an early campaign—ripping into the incumbent president, pitching economic plans, laying out ways to conquer Alzheimer's.

But Mr. Huntsman is trying something different in GOP politics: a campaign based almost entirely on atmospherics. It is, in many ways, the political version of a Ralph Lauren product launch.

And it has the political class wondering: Can it possibly succeed? Can a guy who is marching well to the left of the core of his party—and garnering barely 2% in most national polls—surge to the fore on the strength of what his message guru calls "a phased branding" campaign designed to sell him as cool, young and different?

via online.wsj.com