What Marketers Can Learn from the 2008 Election

Now that we’ve had a few minutes to recover from/mull over the recent presidential election, I’ve been thinking about the lessons that plain old non-politico marketers can take from it.

Here’s a few things that I came up with.

• A combination of old and new methods just may work best. An awful lot has already been made of the Obama campaign’s stunning use of “new media” - the deft blogging, the texted Veep announcement, the continuous e-mail updates (and appeals), even the YouTube “I’ve got a crush on Obama” girl…But the Obama organization also relied on a traditional methods, knocking on doors and phone-bank calling to get out the vote. Yes, the traditional approaches were facilitated and enhanced by use of technology. (I worked a phone bank and was told the list was pretty well scrubbed, i.e., it contained only voters who were more than likely to vote for Obama, and the names were not on a list being called by another phone bank. Of the calls I made, there were few surprises - less than two percent were McCain voters, less than two percent had already gotten a call that day. I also hit two households where the husband or wife was off working on an Obama phone bank, which gave us a good chuckle. Another smart (albeit a bit sneaky) phone bank touch: we were calling New Hampshire (from Massachusetts) with area code 603 cell phones so that the recipients wouldn’t spot the Massachusetts number and not pick up.) Lesson for marketers: you really do need to take social media and emerging ways of using the Internet into account in your marketing plans, going beyond the ‘I have a web site that’s kinda-sorta optimized’ checklist item and really delve into the ways that the Internet can work for your particular products, in your particular markets. But this doesn’t mean that you have to automatically jettison everything old. There’s still a role for trade shows, direct mail, advertising, and other traditional programs.
  
• It really does help to have money, but you still need to spend it wisely. Love or hate the fact that Obama shunned public financing and raised a barrelful of money, it enabled him to run a 50 state (plus territories!) campaign, which candidates don’t tend to do. On the one hand, high spending may not be all that great for the country (although it’s harder to argue with crazy spending that results from a lot of smaller donations), but you have to believe that having the ability to campaign in every state is an overall good thing. As someone who’s worked on shoestring budgets where the shoestrings were made out of thread, I’ve often times been like the poor little match girl with my nose pressed up against the window, gazing in at richer competitors with money to spend. I’ve also been on the other side of the coin - and I do mean coin - where the marketing spend was insane and resulted in nada - and I do mean nada. Al the money in the world won’t help you if you spend it like a dope.
  
• Trashing the competition turns people off. It’s one thing to play off of the competition, even if it means taking a slight dig at them - Apple vs. Microsoft ads come to mind. It’s another thing to outright trash and impugn the other guy. People didn’t like it when the Obama campaign took its few swipes at McCain’s age, etc. And they really didn’t like it when the McCain campaign made its more incessant and nasty attacks on Obama. When did McCain look the best during the campaign (other than during his concession speech)? It was when he told off the crazy lady who said that Obama was an Arab. Sure, he did it clumsily, but it certainly made McCain look honorable. Competition is good for the market - and for marketers. We should be able to understand both how our product is different and better - and how someone else might find that the competitor’s product is more to their liking. Yes, it’s okay to tell the truth: They don’t support Mac’s, we do. Or even to tell the spin. But trash talking just makes you look like, well, trash. 
• Brand clarity and consistency are important (same goes for your message). I thought I used to have a handle on the McCain brand. It was the Straight Talk Express. And that meant doing what you think is right, and letting the chips fall where they may - even if it ticked people off. At least that was the brand from the mid 1990’s until he started running for president. Veering to the right - and veering off the course that said there’d be no negative campaigning - hurt the McCain brand, big time. And putting Palin on the ticket meant McCain had to downplay his very credible experience message. Overall, brand and message McCain was one big mess. Obama, on the other hand, developed his brand as the unflappable, thoughtful, brainy, articulate, cool hand. And never deviated from it. The message about change may have been nebulous, but they sure stuck with it. Your customers will get to know, like, and expect certain things from your brand. You’re the ones with the most whiz-bang technology. Or the great customer service. Or the lowest priced products. Or the highest quality. When you deviate from the brand, you’d better have a good reason or the market will just get confused. You have more latitude with your message, which can and will change over time (where time is greater than the average political campaign). But the core message, as it is tied to the brand, needs to stay consistent. You’re you, after all. Not the other guy.
  
• Niche marketing has its downsides. God knows there’s not a politician alive that doesn’t play to smaller, niche constituencies within the larger customer, errrrrr, citizen, base. If it’s Tuesday, I must be a tree-hugging, Red Sox fan. If it’s Wednesday, Christianity’s important and how ’bout that Crimson Tide. But if you want to win an election, you better make sure that you have enough niches to add up to a majority. And you better make sure that playing too strongly to one particular niche doesn’t turn the other nice little and big niches off. Truly, is there anyone alive who doesn’t think McCain would have been better off thumbing his nose to the right wing of the party and taken his chances on the vast middle of the road that comprises the vast majority of the electorate?  So it is with niche marketing. For a number of reasons, you may only have the wherewithal to serve a niche within a far larger market. That’s fine. You may be able to make a very nice little living in a niche. Of course, generally, it’s not a sustainable strategy, since if the niche is at all attractive, someone else (someone bigger) will come in and fight you for it. Thus, in general, you really do want to grow market share. It’s the way you win at business (and at politics).

Anyway, I’m sure if I put my mind to it I could come up with other things that we, as marketers, can learn from the 2008 election. But these are the ones I thought of first.

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