Larner Caleb: Why Brown should be his own brand of Prime Minister

You don't think so? That'll be Brand Brown at work. Or not, depending on your perception of our current PM.

There's a school of thought that says individuals cannot be brands; that brands are only whipped off shelves, forecourts and online shops.

But, having worked in marketing for longer than I care to remember, not to mention trying to part people from cash for anything from iPhones

to eye tests, from feminine hygiene to even fancier new pads, I firmly believe a person can be a brand.

Anything that needs to sell to people automatically inherits a brand. Customers need a set of values they are buying into, a perception, in order to make choices. That perception is the brand. And in the General Election run-up, the country has vital choices ahead and Brown needs some seriously good marketing.

You possibly agree if you've scoffed at the first three words of this article. But Brown wasn't invited to Edinburgh University at 16, where he gained a First Class Honours MA followed by a PhD, while becoming the youngest ever Rector in history, without being brilliant. And you don't become a Member of Parliament without deftly communicating your point. Your early speeches certainly aren't labelled by peers and respected political journalists alike as "electrifying" if they're anything short of high voltage.

But that's probably not how most think of Gordon Brown, is it? And that's where Brand Brown has failed Gordon Brown.

As my father used to rant about John Major: "What the hell is his PR team playing at?"

A winning brand takes more than just PR; it takes the full marketing mix. So our ex-Chancellor has to be bang on the money on everything from advertising to direct marketing, from social media to PR.

Can he really turn around an ill-fated start as PM to win the election?

Well, wasting any kind of marketing budget on Tory voters isn't advisable. No, it's the millions who were shy last time round, the as yet, undecided and abstaining Labour voters who need to see new Brand Brown.

Starting with advertising. Recent billboards showing David Cameron and George Osborne sporting ice-cream Jedward haircuts and the equally, limp-wristed line "You won't be laughing if they win" were childish. The Opposition leader is currently acting like a salesman with no products to shift and it leaves Labour with an opportunity.

So here's some advice from an advertiser: don't advertise. Not in the traditional sales sense. But use the space to communicate your policies and you'll pull yourself out of the desperate name-calling playground that political advertising currently inhabits.

And direct marketing? A more targeted approach that grabs people on their doorsteps? Well, that's just it – Brown isn't communicating. He's too busy defending himself against damaging attacks about damaging attacks. When more of the waverers are warming to the idea that Brown may not be a soggy biscuit after all, now's the time to capitalise on that forthright perception, get out there and talk to people. More importantly, he needs to get his team out there – on Britain's doorsteps rallying the undecided, persuading the passive.

This leads us to social media. It won't be the silver bullet that many marketing men would have us believe, but Twitter, YouTube and the next big thing will be an essential communication tool for reshaping any brand. It's a tool that should be handled with the utmost care, however, as any slip-ups are picked up instantly, lofted high into the baying internet crowd and the bloody end used to beat you where it hurts until the exponentially-multiplying mass becomes virally-charged anti-matter.

So Brown needs to practise his YouTube camera presence. And practise again. Learning to smile is good. Smiling in the wrong places is very bad.

And then there are his public appearances. While a human appearance on TV with Piers Morgan clawed Brown momentarily up the greasy polls, he's inevitably slipped back down by dumping himself among a cesspool of peers, including Katie Price or Jordan or whoever she is these days, Vinnie Jones and Dannii Minogue. An appearance with Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight could have communicated his more human side in more credible surroundings. In other words, Gordon Brown needs to choose his battles wisely.

And if there's just one thing our current PM should remember above all else – it's be yourself in a crowded market. He may not like it but his competition isn't just David Cameron, it's his predecessors, too, most notably Tony Blair. To imitate would be disastrous.

Larner Caleb is a branding expert from Leeds.