November 12, 2024 • 37 mins
Businesses that learn forward know that - after a big campaign, whether a big success or big failure - it’s wise to conduct a post-mortem to understand what happened and their implications. In that spirit, and just a few days after a resounding presidential win for Donald Trump, Marisa and Steven offer their view of 5 major learnings for all marketers and brands that we can draw from this election outcome. No (well, almost no) political pontificating - just a smart, objective take that should incite everyone to think a little differently.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi, and thanks for joining us on Brand New from
the iHeart Podcast Network and Brand New Labs.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm Marissa Thalberg.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
And I'm Steven wolf Paneda. Marissa, what just happened? What
do we just witness? Because it's souse historic and so
many different ways, but what an election?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Well well timestamp this conversation for posterity, the election, just
presidential election as well as a general election just happened
earlier this week. And as my husband and I joke, now,
the second easiest job to being a weather forecaster as
a polster, because it seems like you just don't ever
need to really be right.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
The polls didn't have.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
It right, and does anyone give an honest answer in
a poll? I mean, could we just like start there,
like we.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Can start there in terms of what is the role
of that kind of methodology in trying to figure it out?
And listen, here's what I'm gonna say, because you and
I are going to talk about this today, because how
could we not. I mean, this is a podcast about
the intersection of brands, media, marketing, and culture, and it's
impossible for us to talk about our world without talking
(01:13):
about this seismic result that happened this week. But here's
my little disclaimer is that, okay, may I just claim
how should we.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Think about this? How should our listeners think about us
talking about the election?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Look, you and I have lots of opinions, like everyone
has lots of opinions, but we don't envision ourselves to
be political pundits, nor do we want brand New as
a platform to.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Be a political platform.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
However, I was thinking about the word campaign, right, who
won the campaign? And lots of campaign And that's what
we as marketers talk about all the time. We create campaigns.
And you know, when you're a thoughtful I was going
to say marketer, but truly a thoughtful business leader. After
you've done a big campaign of a sort, and if
it's incredibly successful or if it's an incredible failure. Either way,
(02:02):
one of the most important things to do is to
learn forward by having a post mortem that means a
you know, postgame analysis. And so what we thought we
would do very much through this lens of brands business
marketing is to try to break down what we think
are the lessons from Trump's victory, as decisive as it
(02:24):
was for some lessons to draw from what we all
witnessed with this campaign. That's what we're going to spend
our time on, you know what, like it or not.
There are always lessons to be learned.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
For sure, and business culture, technology which obviously weighed in
heavily here from lots of different dimensions. But why don't
we just really start at the top. I think that
when we discussed this Marisa offline, you know, it was
just really interesting. How if you just look at the
winner and the loser and just in a very objective way,
(02:57):
how would you assess this? You've run so many different
campaigns for very large brands, you have to assess what worked,
what didn't work? And so I feel like that's the
spirit that we're coming out of this. How would you
start what would be like your first kind of takeaway
in terms of well work what didn't work?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And it's hard to separate strong personal opinions, which I
know we both have, and try to be a little
bit more objective and try to look at this with
a little bit more of a clinical eye. But that's
what we're going to try to do. So we came
up together with five key implications through the lens of business,
brands and marketing from the election. So let's start with
the first one. Okay, our first implication from this election
(03:36):
result is actual consumer insights emphasis and the word insights matter. Now.
I have a consumer insights team. I've always had a
consumer insights team in my corporate context. It's interesting. I
just was having this conversation earlier in the week with
someone in my new role about writing briefs and whether
people really end It was actually a fellow CMO another
(03:58):
company in Fairness at an industry board meeting. We were
talking about do people even know how to write a
good insight? Okay, So here's what I mean by this
as an election conclusion. There was a big echo chamber
going on, and I think the Democratic Party in particular
might have gotten a little lost in the echo chamber.
And you know, Stephen, remember when we were recently at
(04:20):
the Forbes CMO conference in Aspen and John Goerzma, who's
CEO of Harris Poll, brilliant guy, was presenting day there.
It's so good And this was not an election conclusion.
I've been citing this data point just as a consumer
insight for my business. I think this is it. He said,
the economy objectively has many good positive health signals that
(04:42):
is not how Americans are feeling about it. That difference
and being lulled into maybe some comfort and the economy
is not so bad is a problem because at the
end of the day, and as you and I were
saying the other night when we were talking about this,
it goes back to James Carville famously saying with Clinton,
it's the economy, stupid, working class middle American consumers in particular,
(05:05):
we're voting about the economy and how they feel about
the economy. That's the insight part. Inflation has stung, It
was really in since the two eyes of this election,
where inflation and immigration and elections are about economics, right,
But to me, the insight part is so so critical
when you're stewarding a brand and when you're trying to
(05:27):
tap into an audience that is oftentimes.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Not the same as you.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I mean, I always try to apply my own instincts
and self awareness to it, but really communing with how
people are feeling who you're trying to touch and motivate,
which is fundamentally our jobs. And we have to admit
something didn't go right, at least not enough to sway
a majority vote in favor of Kamala Harris, And it
seems to really come down to that insight about discontent
(05:55):
over inflation in the economy.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
It's so simple. And again everyone here is going to
be armchair quarterback, right or Monday morning quarterback.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yep. For sure.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Bill Clinton nailed it in what nineteen ninety two. It's
the economy stupid, And for some reason, I think that
people have been so disconnected from that reality. But you
could say a statement like that, but you have to
kind of understand the second and third order effects of that.
And so when people are making fifteen dollars a minimum
(06:26):
wage and they can't afford eggs, which are you know,
now four or five six dollars in the price of gas,
all those things really matter. And I just feel that
people have grossly underestimated the lack of information or the
lack of knowledge of all of these things that people
(06:47):
talk about. The economy is doing great, GDP is doing great.
Like bring it back to just Layman's terms. No one
even knows what GDP even stands for. So everyone talks about, hey,
what economy is doing better than the United States? Around
the world right now at this moment, the US is
on fire. It's doing great. But if it doesn't feel
great to you, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
That's it. That's the point.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
And so I just feel that this is the beginning
of a larger wave where you start to see people
that are not working or people that are not able
to kind of earn enough to make ends meet. That
is the real America. And I don't think that people
have spent time in real America because they're so to
(07:30):
your point about an echo chamber, they're on the coast,
you know. I think one of the best things that
you know, you and I have both worked in retail,
is that you have to go visit customers. You have
to go visit people where they are. And I feel
that when I worked on Walmart or you at Taco
Bell or now JC pet like, you're seeing real Americans
and you see what it costs to actually buy things.
(07:51):
And so if it doesn't feel once the economy, but two,
it is about the fields and it's not about your expertise.
It's not about your credit. As hard as it is
to say that out loud, it is about how is
someone going to make me feel? And I think that
has been lost on a lot of not just politicians,
but also on marketers, and it's.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
So hard to draw these conclusions, and we don't really
take any joy at this point in being Monday morning quarterbacks.
But this is coming from the point of view of
trying to be clear sighted about what can we at
least learn.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
If you're happy with the outcome, that's one thing.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
If you're not happy with the outcome, that's a whole
other in terms of how do we learn forward from it,
which is always the idea when you do an exercise
like this after.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
After a campaign. Let's go to the second one.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So first one was actual consumer insights emphasis and insights matter.
Why don't you give us another implication?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So, you know, I think near and dear to our
hearts is understanding the power of media and how the
media playbook has really changed. And you know we've I've this,
you know, from different elections. Maybe Obama in kind of
his first campaign was the social media election, you know,
the way he was raising so much money online from
(09:11):
you know, average consumers. Certainly, I think twenty sixteen was
the Twitter election and the way Donald Trump used Twitter.
But this was really the podcast election. And you know,
for me, I just don't understand how people haven't tapped
into the creator economy, and when you think about the
media playbook, it was really a rejection of traditional media
(09:32):
things that are coming from authority. You know, all these
brand names that you know, probably most folks that are
maybe gen X, maybe millennial, but they probably don't really
have the same kind of gravitas. And wait with younger voters.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
For sure, who do you mean what do you mean?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Well again, just take the New York Times, Washington Post,
you know, traditional media or even TV networks versus TikTok
or Joe Rogan, right, you know, I mean, for the
life of me, why didn' Kamala Harris go on the
Joe Rogan? Why did she go on and do a
two hour free form conversation just to have a real
talk with someone as influential as Joe Rogan?
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I mean, why didn't she go on Brand New Steven
That definitely would.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I mean, that really is the second question I was
gonna askodcasts. But that level of authenticity and again is
it perceived or actual authenticity? That could be in the
eye of the beholder. But the idea that authenticity was
more important than authority I think was a major takeaway.
And how that informs where you show up from a
(10:33):
media playbook perspective, and where you're putting those dollars because
the traditional TV ads versus podcasts using creators and influencers
using obviously social media, which is still you know, kind
of undervalued. I mean, it's about day trading attention, as
Gary Vee likes to talk a lot about, but I
feel like understanding where that attention is. People got that wrong.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
All right, Well, let me ask you as we're talking
about this idea of the media play because it's changed.
Of course, as marketers, we talked about influencers all the time.
I like that you just said creators influencers have become
the new celebrities. Perhaps meantime, we saw a very high
use of call them traditional Hollywood celebrities and some non
(11:14):
traditional celebrities on like get the Republican convention had a
whole cogan up there speaking I mean, wait, what's.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Going on here?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
But then in the last days of the campaign on
the Democratic side, I mean you had Oprah, you would Beyonce.
I mean, of course the tailor endorsement, which wasn't really
part of the campaign, that was a genuine personal endorsement
on her end just a potentially highly influential one. What
do you think did that work the way it was
supposed to work. Did it work in some cases and
(11:44):
not others.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
I think this goes back to very old tactics, and
it's not looking at where the country is and where
consumers are, I would argue, and I'm always going to
look at things from either a technology lens or from
a business finance lens. And I feel that the new
celebrities are entrepreneurs. When you think about the insight that
Americans are always going to be aspirational, and if we
(12:07):
are struggling with making ends meet, if we're struggling with money,
what do you want to see. Not someone that's going
to talk down to you or tell you what you're
doing wrong, or come across as preachy. You want someone
that's going to be aspirational, someone that has actually done it.
All These folks are polarizing. We're not here to kind
of say someone is good or bad. But when you
look at Elon Musk, you cannot argue that the richest
(12:30):
man on the planet that has built companies, that has
been doing all this incredible innovation, and when he talks
plainly about his vision of the world and the way
he wants to build companies and do all this cool
stuff that resonates with so many people in America, regardless
of race, religion, gender, whatever it is. And so I
feel that the use of business people and to see
(12:54):
all the technology folks, you know, the people in Silicon Valley,
I think that was such an eye opening experiences for
so many people that just assume that tech was left leaning.
I mean Mark Andresen, the co creator of the Netscape
Navigator browser, the co founder of Andres and Horowitz, you know,
one of the premier VC firms. You know, he came
out very early supporting Trump. People are like, what, like,
(13:17):
what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I mean, in fairness, there were a bunch of Silicon
Valley executives who did throw their support to Kamala.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
But what you're saying is, but I.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Feel like that was almost a response because when andres
and Horwitz came out in support of Trump, it was
so holy cow, what is happening? Yeah, like that really
caught people off guard. But I didn't see and you know,
maybe I missed it. But like, I think the way
that Elon came out and campaigned so hard for Trump,
I didn't see an equivalent of a business person like
(13:48):
consistently on the Democratic side.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
So then you are saying the definition of celebrity influencer
has to be resought because I don't know Beyonce did
the presence of those types of celebrities final days. It's
like op on the campaign trail or at least at
that one appearance with Kamala. Are you saying it was
really just talking to you already converted.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I think it's more about how you use these you know,
kind of tactics, lattering up to what is the north star?
And it comes back to your earlier point, which is
about the insight. So if the insight is about the fields, right,
politics is emotion, how you feel, And if the key
point in every single election is always going to be
about economics, your pocketbook, your wallet, how much you're making,
(14:32):
how expensive things are, if that is the north star,
then maybe you know, if you have a musician and
artist that's popular, sure, whatever, but it can't just be that.
Maybe it's the point, right where is the counterbalance? And
I feel like we've lost the narrative on the Democratic
side about how you connect to business because there is
(14:52):
a brand perception that Republicans no business and Democrats don't,
and we know that's not the case, but again, does
that perception permeate society and then you're going to make
an election decision based on what you think is going
to be better for business.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Well, but the crazy part is going back to our
consumer insights implication. If that was always the cliche about
the Republican Party, the cliche about or a cliche about
the Democratic Party was the party of the working class,
and that's clearly gotten turn on its head. And it's funny.
A dear friend of mine who was certainly left leaning
in her political ideology and was really impacted by the
(15:32):
hurricane in western North Carolina, un lest we forget about
those things that have hit our country recently, and there
was this big concert for the Carolina is like one
of those big, like a live aid type thing.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
It was in Charlotte.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
She and her husband came and went to it, as
did some other people we knew. But it was definitely
a certain kind of musician and a certain kind of
audience that it attracted that wound up going. And it
was very patriotic and it skewed heavily sort of I
think kind of more about country music.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
What struck me is we saw each other for brunch
next day and she was saying, I suddenly understood how
the other side gets worked up and buys in and
it just again, it's just being able to see it
through another lens, even if you don't want to see
it through that lens, because it is hard for people
that don't understand how this happened to look at this
(16:26):
down and say, how could this happen? And there's there's
a lot of distasteful behavior in this campaign, and I
don't think I hope nothing we're saying is endorsing it
one way or the other, but just trying to assess
it from truly a marketing standpoint.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I think it's looking at it objectively, right, And I
think that leads into the third point that I know
you want to bring up.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
It's about truly assessing what worked and what didn't work right,
that's right, and if that is going to be the
framework for us to have this conversation, I almost feel
that a lot of you know, back to the media playbook,
the assumptions they need to change, right, don't I don't
think it is as simplistic to say democratic or versus Republican.
I don't think it's as simplistic to say that, oh,
(17:07):
this person is left leaning and this person is right leaning.
I feel that you wouldn't do that as a marketer
and say, oh, this person just likes a Coca Cola right,
or you know, this person just likes a certain type
of vehicle. Like these are multi dimensional consumer habits. You know,
the way that people badge themselves, you know, understanding how
(17:31):
someone shows up. So if you do all this work
in trying to do a marketing campaign, and again, if
you are a big brand marketer, you are marketing to everybody.
You're not going to just talk to a certain swath
of the country. You want all consumers. And so I
feel like that is part of, you know, just kind
of regrouping and understanding whatever you're doing, whether it's in
(17:54):
business or in politics, you need to start from understanding
who that consumer is and understanding that it's not just
so simplistic to say black.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Or white literally and figuratively.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
All right, let's go to our third implication, which is
this every campaign, every brand, I'm trying to figure out
how I want to say it has to get your
value proposition right?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
What's a value proposition?
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Would this be our reasons to believe? Mirsa?
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Your no, Well, the reasons to believe are in support
of your value proposition.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Your value proposition is honestly your most simple, clear, existential
articulation of why should I care about you? Why should
I be interested in going to your store? Why should
I buy this car? Why should I care about this label?
(18:50):
It is the fundamental why, and frankly, looking at it
now through this review mirror that we are, I think
there's a question of did each candidate or well, I
guess we should say did Kamalis and she was not
the successful candidate of the two get her value proposition?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Right? So so I'll unpack that right because it ties
to the insights, it ties to the media playbook, but
the value probably, I mean, this is effectively you're talking
about the north Star, right, This is your why why?
How would you distill the why for Trump versus Harris? Well?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
I think the lesson learned is that it has to
be It has to start in something pretty fundamental and
pretty deep that connects with you on a concrete level.
And you know, I admit when I saw those early
posters and the comma came in Joy and it felt
like a really refreshing antidote to some of the to
(19:50):
me more on savory tactics that and you know, in
the fear and all that that I felt was coming
more from the other side. But now I look at it,
and of course, second was Joy just actually not acredible
enough or concrete enough value proposition? Like am I really
going to have joy if to your point, I can't
afford eggs?
Speaker 2 (20:11):
And I think this is a really.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Really important thing for American and global marketers alike to consider,
is it doesn't always have to come down to price
and the economy in that way. And in fact, I
often wind up talking in my corporate context that value
is not just about price, but the ultimate mental calculus
we do as people.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I've said this, I really believe it.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Every day we are making a series of conscious and
unconscious decisions of is something worth it? And to me,
that's what your value proposition is. And at the end
of the day, people went into the voting booth deciding
if it was worth it, And if you like, I
can understand how people didn't think certain things like certain
women's issues, for example, weren't worth it. It was because
(21:00):
they felt something else was more worth it to them,
and that became their ultimate value proposition. That isn't actually
really important lesson for brands and marketers.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Look, I think the value proposition, to your point, really
needs to be put in light of the fields, right,
Like all these things are interconnected. And so if it
always is going to be about the economy, stupid And
I don't know how like that gets forgotten. But it
can't be a platitude, right, It can't just be like, oh,
(21:33):
we're doing great. No, Like, you have to not go
top down and look at GDP for the country. You
have to go bottom up. And when you look at
it bottom up, where thirty four states in this country,
you know what the minimum wages. It's below seven dollars
and twenty five cents an hour in thirty four of
the fifty states. So that is a problem, right, And
(21:57):
so if the federal you know kind of minimum wage
has not really moved from seven to twenty five and
you are talking about eggs costing four dollars five dollars,
you know, the value proposition has to be tied to
the way you are feeling. And if you are not
feeling joy when you cannot make ends meet. I don't
(22:18):
want to hear that right now.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
A couple of things to add to that.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
First of all, I mean the Democratic Party has traditionally
been more of a champion of those protections than the
Republican Party. And I say traditionally as in the past
few decades. Let's say, but what you're talking about it
goes back to the classic Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Everyone listening know what that is.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Not quickly google it, but it's a pretty simple and
absolutely accurate construct of human need and behavior. And the
base of the pyramid is food, clothing, shelter, right, like
the basic needs of survival, and it goes all the
way up the pyramid to sort of self actualization. And
the point is you don't have the luxury of like
(23:01):
communing with self actualization if you can't feed yourself or
your family. That there is an truly important realization about
how Maslow's hierarchy of needs fits into this value proposition conversation.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Yeah, and so you know, break it down to that
hierarchy of needs back to seven twenty five an hour, Yeah,
eight hours a day, That is fifty eight dollars in
one day, Merissa, in five days of work, that is
two hundred and ninety dollars. And what's to say you
multiply that by fifty weeks, right, because you know you
get two weeks.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Off, two weeks off.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
So what that is that's fourteen thousand, five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Well, that's poverty level.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Who is able to make ends meet at fourteen thousand,
five hundred dollars? And I think this is tied to
when everyone says, oh my god, how did Latinos vote
for you know, Trump, Like they're voting against their better interests,
Like aren't they going to get deported? Like? I feel
like this goes back to understanding those Maslow's hierarchy of needs,
(24:03):
that ability to have economic success and security is so
much more important than any other thing, because that is
about taking care of your family, that is, making sure
that you could actually feed them, close them, and ideally
educate them.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
And speaking to that as a marketer, I guess is
the point.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Speaking to that as as a human.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Or from an insight standpoint to understand that that's how
people are wired.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Maybe that's more what I'm trying to say, Yes, but.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Just having the real talk where you go and you
understand that and don't tell me that things are great,
like sit in my pain, really understand and like, how
are you going to make this better for me? Because
I feel that? And you know, it's interesting that you
spoke about the Democratic brand that you know they are
the champion for labor. I would argue have they been right?
(24:55):
Because I would say that the perception and again this
is where we're trying to be as objective.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Well, there's a lot of perception reality as objective as
possible about this.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
What really is the perception of each brand? Because if
you're talking about the value proposition and if the perception is, oh,
there is a leadism, you know, and they're not connected
to me, then you know that means that your value
proposition might not resonate. Right.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
That to me is a very interesting implication. I mean,
how did that get turned on its head? Let's pivot
then to a fourth implication, which I think you were
starting to go to. So we were talking in very
rational terms like Maslow Park.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Now let's talk a little bit.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
As brand people on an implication that is a little
bit more emotional.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
You want to take this one number four.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Look I feel that we need to just understand how
to sit in emotion. I feel like there is so
much intellectualism about you know, we have all the policies,
or we have this or that, strip all that away.
Politics is emotional, right, and it's about the fields. And
there is this, whether we want to admit it or not,
(26:15):
there is this need to have something that is or
someone that is going to be strong. And I feel
that that is not just part of Trump's brand, whether
we like it or not, whether we think it's fake
or not. Again, the perception is greater than the reality.
(26:36):
And you could talk about all the negatives, but the
positives from someone that believes in that narrative is that
this is a strong person, that he is going to fight.
I mean, just all the images from the assassination attempts,
right with the you know, with the fist stop. I mean,
this is the whole perception. His whole brand, by the way,
(26:58):
for fifty years, right has been that he is a fighter,
that he's going to you know, stick it to the man,
that he is going to speak his mind, that he
is going to take things on and he doesn't care.
By the way, who also is like that. Elon right,
Elon doesn't care. He is going to speak his mind. Now. Granted,
you know, these are wealthy people, they could get away
(27:18):
with this kind of stuff. But this whole idea of like,
I'm going to take no prisoners. I'm going to be
the person that is going to kind of take on
you know, whatever it is, like China or this or that. Like,
there is a whole swath of America that absolutely wants
to get behind that, especially young men. And I think
(27:39):
there is this idea that, oh, you know, maybe women
you know, are going to vote for their you know,
reproductive rights. I don't think people really thought about, well,
maybe these women are moms and they might have sons
and they see that their sons are depressed, or they
don't have opportunities, or they're on drugs, or you know,
(28:00):
they're like whatever it is. But there is this epidemic
with young men that they're not able to kind of
have the success maybe that their fathers had, the you know,
the generation beforehand. And at the end of the day,
the men came out in droves in support of Trump,
and I don't know if people realize it's not just
(28:21):
white men. It was Latino men, and it was also
black men, and so I think that is this idea
of a strong man. And again we're not going to
get too much into talking about technology and futures in AI.
But as you start to see more and more economic hardship,
as you start to see more and more jobs being
displaced by automation and AI, I think that you were
(28:42):
going to see the need to have more and more
strong leaders help you know, say that they're going to
fight for them and who is going to be that fighter?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Look, there is this one's a hard conversation to navigate
because as someone who's champion for women my whole adult life,
it's hard for me to have a point of view
about what that implication means for women and women in leadership.
But in again, I just keep saying this throughout this pod,
like in the spirit of trying to look at this
through objective clinician's eyes to say what can we learn
(29:14):
from it? I think that is a real implication, whether
we like it or not, that when people are down,
and a lot of people felt down, we want heroes.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
We want strong heroes.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
It is the superhero complex so that we go to
the movies for I was going to say it's very American,
but it's probably not uniquely American. It does lead to
some scary implications in terms of where this could all go,
because that is how most dictators have risen in history.
Again trying to temper the personal point of view here,
(29:47):
but I do think that idea of strong heroes is
an interesting thing in terms of people want to feel
like realistically or not objectively or not, there is there's
a saving that can have someone is coming in to
save them and to make them Oh dare I say.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
It make them great again?
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Woof? All right, last one.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Well, and as to that point, I mean there was
a recent you know, Pew study talking about masculinity. And
again it's hard, right because I obviously have been such
a huge champion for women and you know, diversity. You know,
obviously I think about my daughter and I want her
to be a strong leader and just power Latina, and
I want her to have her independent voice. And so
(30:33):
I feel that there's been all this talk about supporting women,
but I don't know if there's been I don't know
if it's the same level because I think the argument is, oh, well,
men have it made? You know, like it's the men
that are in power, they have all these great things.
But I do feel that there is this whole narrative
around the view of men and masculinity, right. And so
(30:54):
the Pew study came out saying only a quarter of
Americans say that masculine men they have a mostly negative
view of them, that being masculine is negative. Right, So
now it's like, Okay, what is really the state of masculinity?
How is that viewed? And then six and ten Americans
say people in the US don't place enough value on
(31:14):
men who are caring or open about their emotions, right.
And so I feel that there is this whole thing
around men, and it's been bubbling up for a while
and there's all this research and insights into it, but
I feel that that kind of came out in droves
and maybe it was obviously it's hard because you have,
you know, potentially the first female president of the United States,
(31:37):
and there was all this energy around it. But again
back to reading where the country was and understanding that,
like white women voted for Trump, and so I feel
like you got to unpack that, Like you just can't
ignore it, you can't put your head in the sand.
Don't be mad at it again. We you know, saw
Democrats take the l understand what that meant. And I
(32:00):
feel like this is a deep area of understanding. How
can a brand, in this case the Democratic brand, how
can they connect with men, especially.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Young men well?
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And then let's end on a final implication. We could
go on and on, and many people are but here's
a fifth implication, and I think this one is a
particularly poignant one for marketers, which is that brands take
time to build and sometimes to fix, and often more
(32:31):
time the way we plan for. And I know that
my fellow marketers cmos who are listening are going to
head nod to this one because you often get tapped.
And I said the word sort of xavior before, like
you are going to be the panacea to all of
the brand or businesses problems. And by the way, can
you have it done by yesterday even if something's taken
years to get.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
The way it is.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
And the reality is Kamala did not have a lot
of time to really figure out in a sense what
her brand distinct from Biden's brand was going to be,
what that meant for the Democratic Party brand in the
very short time since she was given the presidential nomination
of her party to the election. And you know, I
(33:17):
think that's a really important implication because to do a
brand correctly, to steward a brand correctly, to manage it,
to nurture it, to evolve it based on insights. See
there's a theme here. It takes some time, it takes
some nuance, it takes some different approaches to media, like
we were saying, and that element of time was just
(33:39):
not on the Democratic Party side as things transpired.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
What do you think.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
I think that's a huge point. I mean, we all
know the CEO that says, oh, just make this happen, right,
like you know, you've got a quarter. You know, it
doesn't work that way, much to the fagrene of you know,
a lot of CEOs and CFOs. But there's also just
the reality of the market is not going to care
right if you don't have enough time to figure it out.
You need to figure it out. And this kind of
(34:06):
leads to a real I think soul searching amongst the
Democratic Party, right, because I think what Kama did was
nothing short of herculean. If you remember, you know, Biden
was so negative in all the polls and it was
really a hole and she dug the Democratic Party out
(34:26):
of that hole and you know, basically to come even.
And so again the country was still roughly even, even
though they focus on the right game, which was winning
the electoral college. Right. I feel like everyone was so
worried about, oh, is Trump going to steal this or that,
and he actually just went straight down the middle and said, oh,
I'm going to win the electoral college. And now no
(34:46):
one could say anything. And I don't think anyone kind
of prepared for that scenario. But when you think about
the Democratic Party, hopefully this is a wake up call
and again I'm I'm curious to see if they will
really do the hard work, which is understanding what people say.
And again this doesn't have to be, you know, taken
as my point of view or Marissa's point view. We're
(35:07):
trying to be as objective as possible. But you need
to hear this, right, and if anyone from the Democratic
Party is listening, understanding that it is viewed as too old,
it is viewed as too many people that are still
in these positions of power, and you need to let
the next generation kind of get into those roles. The
whole idea that maybe identity politics does not work anymore
(35:30):
you know, the whole idea of leaning into things like
LATINX that literally no one in the Latino community uses,
but for some reason that still, you know, is perpetuated
understanding that the Democratic Party is now viewed as elites
and that they're not for the working class, that the
Democratic Party is on the coasts. Again, this is not
my perception or my reality, but this is what is perceived.
(35:55):
And I feel that the Democratic brand really needs to
fix itself in a major way because if not, there
is a risk that there is not going to be
a viable path given that the country is moving in
this direction of either strong leaders and authority. Authoritarian focus
(36:16):
always on economics and business, and does that play more
into the hand of Republicans moving forward? Again, it with
the backdrop of AI and all the disruption that's going
to come, and it's only going to make things even harder.
But I believe that the Democratic Party could find a way.
But you need to have new leaders, and you need
to do an incredible rebrand of this party.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Well sum it up, there are always lessons to be
learned in victory and in defeat. I guess I'm my
personal hope is just that our better kinder human instincts
will prevail because there's reason to be concerned about that
as we go forward, coming together a bit as a nation,
being brought together by a leader would be a really
really nice thing that that will be my one personal commentary.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
In all this.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And in that same spirit, listen, we wanted to open
this up for discussion, as we always do, so instead
of doing what's on your minds as a separate piece today,
we just want to know what's on your minds on
this very important topic. So share with us your thoughts.
Do you agree, do you disagree? Just keep it respectful
as we always try to do. And thanks for joining
(37:23):
us for this special post campaign, post mortem and recap.
We hope you'll join us next time. In the meantime,
if you do want to email us directly, just send
us a note at ideas at brandashnew dot com, drop
us a note in any of our social channels, follow
us everywhere, please, and thanks again for joining us.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
See you next time, See you next time.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
A brand new
Hi, and thanks for joining us on Brand New from
the iHeart Podcast Network and Brand New Labs.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm Marissa Thalberg.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
And I'm Steven wolf Paneda. Marissa, what just happened? What
do we just witness? Because it's souse historic and so
many different ways, but what an election?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Well well timestamp this conversation for posterity, the election, just
presidential election as well as a general election just happened
earlier this week. And as my husband and I joke, now,
the second easiest job to being a weather forecaster as
a polster, because it seems like you just don't ever
need to really be right.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
The polls didn't have.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
It right, and does anyone give an honest answer in
a poll? I mean, could we just like start there,
like we.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Can start there in terms of what is the role
of that kind of methodology in trying to figure it out?
And listen, here's what I'm gonna say, because you and
I are going to talk about this today, because how
could we not. I mean, this is a podcast about
the intersection of brands, media, marketing, and culture, and it's
impossible for us to talk about our world without talking
(01:13):
about this seismic result that happened this week. But here's
my little disclaimer is that, okay, may I just claim
how should we.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Think about this? How should our listeners think about us
talking about the election?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Look, you and I have lots of opinions, like everyone
has lots of opinions, but we don't envision ourselves to
be political pundits, nor do we want brand New as
a platform to.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Be a political platform.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
However, I was thinking about the word campaign, right, who
won the campaign? And lots of campaign And that's what
we as marketers talk about all the time. We create campaigns.
And you know, when you're a thoughtful I was going
to say marketer, but truly a thoughtful business leader. After
you've done a big campaign of a sort, and if
it's incredibly successful or if it's an incredible failure. Either way,
(02:02):
one of the most important things to do is to
learn forward by having a post mortem that means a
you know, postgame analysis. And so what we thought we
would do very much through this lens of brands business
marketing is to try to break down what we think
are the lessons from Trump's victory, as decisive as it
(02:24):
was for some lessons to draw from what we all
witnessed with this campaign. That's what we're going to spend
our time on, you know what, like it or not.
There are always lessons to be learned.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
For sure, and business culture, technology which obviously weighed in
heavily here from lots of different dimensions. But why don't
we just really start at the top. I think that
when we discussed this Marisa offline, you know, it was
just really interesting. How if you just look at the
winner and the loser and just in a very objective way,
(02:57):
how would you assess this? You've run so many different
campaigns for very large brands, you have to assess what worked,
what didn't work? And so I feel like that's the
spirit that we're coming out of this. How would you
start what would be like your first kind of takeaway
in terms of well work what didn't work?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And it's hard to separate strong personal opinions, which I
know we both have, and try to be a little
bit more objective and try to look at this with
a little bit more of a clinical eye. But that's
what we're going to try to do. So we came
up together with five key implications through the lens of business,
brands and marketing from the election. So let's start with
the first one. Okay, our first implication from this election
(03:36):
result is actual consumer insights emphasis and the word insights matter. Now.
I have a consumer insights team. I've always had a
consumer insights team in my corporate context. It's interesting. I
just was having this conversation earlier in the week with
someone in my new role about writing briefs and whether
people really end It was actually a fellow CMO another
(03:58):
company in Fairness at an industry board meeting. We were
talking about do people even know how to write a
good insight? Okay, So here's what I mean by this
as an election conclusion. There was a big echo chamber
going on, and I think the Democratic Party in particular
might have gotten a little lost in the echo chamber.
And you know, Stephen, remember when we were recently at
(04:20):
the Forbes CMO conference in Aspen and John Goerzma, who's
CEO of Harris Poll, brilliant guy, was presenting day there.
It's so good And this was not an election conclusion.
I've been citing this data point just as a consumer
insight for my business. I think this is it. He said,
the economy objectively has many good positive health signals that
(04:42):
is not how Americans are feeling about it. That difference
and being lulled into maybe some comfort and the economy
is not so bad is a problem because at the
end of the day, and as you and I were
saying the other night when we were talking about this,
it goes back to James Carville famously saying with Clinton,
it's the economy, stupid, working class middle American consumers in particular,
(05:05):
we're voting about the economy and how they feel about
the economy. That's the insight part. Inflation has stung, It
was really in since the two eyes of this election,
where inflation and immigration and elections are about economics, right,
But to me, the insight part is so so critical
when you're stewarding a brand and when you're trying to
(05:27):
tap into an audience that is oftentimes.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Not the same as you.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I mean, I always try to apply my own instincts
and self awareness to it, but really communing with how
people are feeling who you're trying to touch and motivate,
which is fundamentally our jobs. And we have to admit
something didn't go right, at least not enough to sway
a majority vote in favor of Kamala Harris, And it
seems to really come down to that insight about discontent
(05:55):
over inflation in the economy.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
It's so simple. And again everyone here is going to
be armchair quarterback, right or Monday morning quarterback.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yep. For sure.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Bill Clinton nailed it in what nineteen ninety two. It's
the economy stupid, And for some reason, I think that
people have been so disconnected from that reality. But you
could say a statement like that, but you have to
kind of understand the second and third order effects of that.
And so when people are making fifteen dollars a minimum
(06:26):
wage and they can't afford eggs, which are you know,
now four or five six dollars in the price of gas,
all those things really matter. And I just feel that
people have grossly underestimated the lack of information or the
lack of knowledge of all of these things that people
(06:47):
talk about. The economy is doing great, GDP is doing great.
Like bring it back to just Layman's terms. No one
even knows what GDP even stands for. So everyone talks about, hey,
what economy is doing better than the United States? Around
the world right now at this moment, the US is
on fire. It's doing great. But if it doesn't feel
great to you, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
That's it. That's the point.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
And so I just feel that this is the beginning
of a larger wave where you start to see people
that are not working or people that are not able
to kind of earn enough to make ends meet. That
is the real America. And I don't think that people
have spent time in real America because they're so to
(07:30):
your point about an echo chamber, they're on the coast,
you know. I think one of the best things that
you know, you and I have both worked in retail,
is that you have to go visit customers. You have
to go visit people where they are. And I feel
that when I worked on Walmart or you at Taco
Bell or now JC pet like, you're seeing real Americans
and you see what it costs to actually buy things.
(07:51):
And so if it doesn't feel once the economy, but two,
it is about the fields and it's not about your expertise.
It's not about your credit. As hard as it is
to say that out loud, it is about how is
someone going to make me feel? And I think that
has been lost on a lot of not just politicians,
but also on marketers, and it's.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
So hard to draw these conclusions, and we don't really
take any joy at this point in being Monday morning quarterbacks.
But this is coming from the point of view of
trying to be clear sighted about what can we at
least learn.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
If you're happy with the outcome, that's one thing.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
If you're not happy with the outcome, that's a whole
other in terms of how do we learn forward from it,
which is always the idea when you do an exercise
like this after.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
After a campaign. Let's go to the second one.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So first one was actual consumer insights emphasis and insights matter.
Why don't you give us another implication?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So, you know, I think near and dear to our
hearts is understanding the power of media and how the
media playbook has really changed. And you know we've I've this,
you know, from different elections. Maybe Obama in kind of
his first campaign was the social media election, you know,
the way he was raising so much money online from
(09:11):
you know, average consumers. Certainly, I think twenty sixteen was
the Twitter election and the way Donald Trump used Twitter.
But this was really the podcast election. And you know,
for me, I just don't understand how people haven't tapped
into the creator economy, and when you think about the
media playbook, it was really a rejection of traditional media
(09:32):
things that are coming from authority. You know, all these
brand names that you know, probably most folks that are
maybe gen X, maybe millennial, but they probably don't really
have the same kind of gravitas. And wait with younger voters.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
For sure, who do you mean what do you mean?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Well again, just take the New York Times, Washington Post,
you know, traditional media or even TV networks versus TikTok
or Joe Rogan, right, you know, I mean, for the
life of me, why didn' Kamala Harris go on the
Joe Rogan? Why did she go on and do a
two hour free form conversation just to have a real
talk with someone as influential as Joe Rogan?
Speaker 1 (10:09):
I mean, why didn't she go on Brand New Steven
That definitely would.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I mean, that really is the second question I was
gonna askodcasts. But that level of authenticity and again is
it perceived or actual authenticity? That could be in the
eye of the beholder. But the idea that authenticity was
more important than authority I think was a major takeaway.
And how that informs where you show up from a
(10:33):
media playbook perspective, and where you're putting those dollars because
the traditional TV ads versus podcasts using creators and influencers
using obviously social media, which is still you know, kind
of undervalued. I mean, it's about day trading attention, as
Gary Vee likes to talk a lot about, but I
feel like understanding where that attention is. People got that wrong.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
All right, Well, let me ask you as we're talking
about this idea of the media play because it's changed.
Of course, as marketers, we talked about influencers all the time.
I like that you just said creators influencers have become
the new celebrities. Perhaps meantime, we saw a very high
use of call them traditional Hollywood celebrities and some non
(11:14):
traditional celebrities on like get the Republican convention had a
whole cogan up there speaking I mean, wait, what's.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Going on here?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
But then in the last days of the campaign on
the Democratic side, I mean you had Oprah, you would Beyonce.
I mean, of course the tailor endorsement, which wasn't really
part of the campaign, that was a genuine personal endorsement
on her end just a potentially highly influential one. What
do you think did that work the way it was
supposed to work. Did it work in some cases and
(11:44):
not others.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
I think this goes back to very old tactics, and
it's not looking at where the country is and where
consumers are, I would argue, and I'm always going to
look at things from either a technology lens or from
a business finance lens. And I feel that the new
celebrities are entrepreneurs. When you think about the insight that
Americans are always going to be aspirational, and if we
(12:07):
are struggling with making ends meet, if we're struggling with money,
what do you want to see. Not someone that's going
to talk down to you or tell you what you're
doing wrong, or come across as preachy. You want someone
that's going to be aspirational, someone that has actually done it.
All These folks are polarizing. We're not here to kind
of say someone is good or bad. But when you
look at Elon Musk, you cannot argue that the richest
(12:30):
man on the planet that has built companies, that has
been doing all this incredible innovation, and when he talks
plainly about his vision of the world and the way
he wants to build companies and do all this cool
stuff that resonates with so many people in America, regardless
of race, religion, gender, whatever it is. And so I
feel that the use of business people and to see
(12:54):
all the technology folks, you know, the people in Silicon Valley,
I think that was such an eye opening experiences for
so many people that just assume that tech was left leaning.
I mean Mark Andresen, the co creator of the Netscape
Navigator browser, the co founder of Andres and Horowitz, you know,
one of the premier VC firms. You know, he came
out very early supporting Trump. People are like, what, like,
(13:17):
what are you doing?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I mean, in fairness, there were a bunch of Silicon
Valley executives who did throw their support to Kamala.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
But what you're saying is, but I.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Feel like that was almost a response because when andres
and Horwitz came out in support of Trump, it was
so holy cow, what is happening? Yeah, like that really
caught people off guard. But I didn't see and you know,
maybe I missed it. But like, I think the way
that Elon came out and campaigned so hard for Trump,
I didn't see an equivalent of a business person like
(13:48):
consistently on the Democratic side.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
So then you are saying the definition of celebrity influencer
has to be resought because I don't know Beyonce did
the presence of those types of celebrities final days. It's
like op on the campaign trail or at least at
that one appearance with Kamala. Are you saying it was
really just talking to you already converted.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
I think it's more about how you use these you know,
kind of tactics, lattering up to what is the north star?
And it comes back to your earlier point, which is
about the insight. So if the insight is about the fields, right,
politics is emotion, how you feel, And if the key
point in every single election is always going to be
about economics, your pocketbook, your wallet, how much you're making,
(14:32):
how expensive things are, if that is the north star,
then maybe you know, if you have a musician and
artist that's popular, sure, whatever, but it can't just be that.
Maybe it's the point, right where is the counterbalance? And
I feel like we've lost the narrative on the Democratic
side about how you connect to business because there is
(14:52):
a brand perception that Republicans no business and Democrats don't,
and we know that's not the case, but again, does
that perception permeate society and then you're going to make
an election decision based on what you think is going
to be better for business.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Well, but the crazy part is going back to our
consumer insights implication. If that was always the cliche about
the Republican Party, the cliche about or a cliche about
the Democratic Party was the party of the working class,
and that's clearly gotten turn on its head. And it's funny.
A dear friend of mine who was certainly left leaning
in her political ideology and was really impacted by the
(15:32):
hurricane in western North Carolina, un lest we forget about
those things that have hit our country recently, and there
was this big concert for the Carolina is like one
of those big, like a live aid type thing.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
It was in Charlotte.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
She and her husband came and went to it, as
did some other people we knew. But it was definitely
a certain kind of musician and a certain kind of
audience that it attracted that wound up going. And it
was very patriotic and it skewed heavily sort of I
think kind of more about country music.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
What struck me is we saw each other for brunch
next day and she was saying, I suddenly understood how
the other side gets worked up and buys in and
it just again, it's just being able to see it
through another lens, even if you don't want to see
it through that lens, because it is hard for people
that don't understand how this happened to look at this
(16:26):
down and say, how could this happen? And there's there's
a lot of distasteful behavior in this campaign, and I
don't think I hope nothing we're saying is endorsing it
one way or the other, but just trying to assess
it from truly a marketing standpoint.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I think it's looking at it objectively, right, And I
think that leads into the third point that I know
you want to bring up.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
It's about truly assessing what worked and what didn't work right,
that's right, and if that is going to be the
framework for us to have this conversation, I almost feel
that a lot of you know, back to the media playbook,
the assumptions they need to change, right, don't I don't
think it is as simplistic to say democratic or versus Republican.
I don't think it's as simplistic to say that, oh,
(17:07):
this person is left leaning and this person is right leaning.
I feel that you wouldn't do that as a marketer
and say, oh, this person just likes a Coca Cola right,
or you know, this person just likes a certain type
of vehicle. Like these are multi dimensional consumer habits. You know,
the way that people badge themselves, you know, understanding how
(17:31):
someone shows up. So if you do all this work
in trying to do a marketing campaign, and again, if
you are a big brand marketer, you are marketing to everybody.
You're not going to just talk to a certain swath
of the country. You want all consumers. And so I
feel like that is part of, you know, just kind
of regrouping and understanding whatever you're doing, whether it's in
(17:54):
business or in politics, you need to start from understanding
who that consumer is and understanding that it's not just
so simplistic to say black.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Or white literally and figuratively.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
All right, let's go to our third implication, which is
this every campaign, every brand, I'm trying to figure out
how I want to say it has to get your
value proposition right?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
What's a value proposition?
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Would this be our reasons to believe? Mirsa?
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Your no, Well, the reasons to believe are in support
of your value proposition.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Your value proposition is honestly your most simple, clear, existential
articulation of why should I care about you? Why should
I be interested in going to your store? Why should
I buy this car? Why should I care about this label?
(18:50):
It is the fundamental why, and frankly, looking at it
now through this review mirror that we are, I think
there's a question of did each candidate or well, I
guess we should say did Kamalis and she was not
the successful candidate of the two get her value proposition?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Right? So so I'll unpack that right because it ties
to the insights, it ties to the media playbook, but
the value probably, I mean, this is effectively you're talking
about the north Star, right, This is your why why?
How would you distill the why for Trump versus Harris? Well?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
I think the lesson learned is that it has to
be It has to start in something pretty fundamental and
pretty deep that connects with you on a concrete level.
And you know, I admit when I saw those early
posters and the comma came in Joy and it felt
like a really refreshing antidote to some of the to
(19:50):
me more on savory tactics that and you know, in
the fear and all that that I felt was coming
more from the other side. But now I look at it,
and of course, second was Joy just actually not acredible
enough or concrete enough value proposition? Like am I really
going to have joy if to your point, I can't
afford eggs?
Speaker 2 (20:11):
And I think this is a really.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Really important thing for American and global marketers alike to consider,
is it doesn't always have to come down to price
and the economy in that way. And in fact, I
often wind up talking in my corporate context that value
is not just about price, but the ultimate mental calculus
we do as people.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I've said this, I really believe it.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Every day we are making a series of conscious and
unconscious decisions of is something worth it? And to me,
that's what your value proposition is. And at the end
of the day, people went into the voting booth deciding
if it was worth it, And if you like, I
can understand how people didn't think certain things like certain
women's issues, for example, weren't worth it. It was because
(21:00):
they felt something else was more worth it to them,
and that became their ultimate value proposition. That isn't actually
really important lesson for brands and marketers.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Look, I think the value proposition, to your point, really
needs to be put in light of the fields, right,
Like all these things are interconnected. And so if it
always is going to be about the economy, stupid And
I don't know how like that gets forgotten. But it
can't be a platitude, right, It can't just be like, oh,
(21:33):
we're doing great. No, Like, you have to not go
top down and look at GDP for the country. You
have to go bottom up. And when you look at
it bottom up, where thirty four states in this country,
you know what the minimum wages. It's below seven dollars
and twenty five cents an hour in thirty four of
the fifty states. So that is a problem, right, And
(21:57):
so if the federal you know kind of minimum wage
has not really moved from seven to twenty five and
you are talking about eggs costing four dollars five dollars,
you know, the value proposition has to be tied to
the way you are feeling. And if you are not
feeling joy when you cannot make ends meet. I don't
(22:18):
want to hear that right now.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
A couple of things to add to that.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
First of all, I mean the Democratic Party has traditionally
been more of a champion of those protections than the
Republican Party. And I say traditionally as in the past
few decades. Let's say, but what you're talking about it
goes back to the classic Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Everyone listening know what that is.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Not quickly google it, but it's a pretty simple and
absolutely accurate construct of human need and behavior. And the
base of the pyramid is food, clothing, shelter, right, like
the basic needs of survival, and it goes all the
way up the pyramid to sort of self actualization. And
the point is you don't have the luxury of like
(23:01):
communing with self actualization if you can't feed yourself or
your family. That there is an truly important realization about
how Maslow's hierarchy of needs fits into this value proposition conversation.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Yeah, and so you know, break it down to that
hierarchy of needs back to seven twenty five an hour, Yeah,
eight hours a day, That is fifty eight dollars in
one day, Merissa, in five days of work, that is
two hundred and ninety dollars. And what's to say you
multiply that by fifty weeks, right, because you know you
get two weeks.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Off, two weeks off.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
So what that is that's fourteen thousand, five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Well, that's poverty level.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Who is able to make ends meet at fourteen thousand,
five hundred dollars? And I think this is tied to
when everyone says, oh my god, how did Latinos vote
for you know, Trump, Like they're voting against their better interests,
Like aren't they going to get deported? Like? I feel
like this goes back to understanding those Maslow's hierarchy of needs,
(24:03):
that ability to have economic success and security is so
much more important than any other thing, because that is
about taking care of your family, that is, making sure
that you could actually feed them, close them, and ideally
educate them.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
And speaking to that as a marketer, I guess is
the point.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Speaking to that as as a human.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Or from an insight standpoint to understand that that's how
people are wired.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Maybe that's more what I'm trying to say, Yes, but.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Just having the real talk where you go and you
understand that and don't tell me that things are great,
like sit in my pain, really understand and like, how
are you going to make this better for me? Because
I feel that? And you know, it's interesting that you
spoke about the Democratic brand that you know they are
the champion for labor. I would argue have they been right?
(24:55):
Because I would say that the perception and again this
is where we're trying to be as objective.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Well, there's a lot of perception reality as objective as
possible about this.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
What really is the perception of each brand? Because if
you're talking about the value proposition and if the perception is, oh,
there is a leadism, you know, and they're not connected
to me, then you know that means that your value
proposition might not resonate. Right.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
That to me is a very interesting implication. I mean,
how did that get turned on its head? Let's pivot
then to a fourth implication, which I think you were
starting to go to. So we were talking in very
rational terms like Maslow Park.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Now let's talk a little bit.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
As brand people on an implication that is a little
bit more emotional.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
You want to take this one number four.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Look I feel that we need to just understand how
to sit in emotion. I feel like there is so
much intellectualism about you know, we have all the policies,
or we have this or that, strip all that away.
Politics is emotional, right, and it's about the fields. And
there is this, whether we want to admit it or not,
(26:15):
there is this need to have something that is or
someone that is going to be strong. And I feel
that that is not just part of Trump's brand, whether
we like it or not, whether we think it's fake
or not. Again, the perception is greater than the reality.
(26:36):
And you could talk about all the negatives, but the
positives from someone that believes in that narrative is that
this is a strong person, that he is going to fight.
I mean, just all the images from the assassination attempts,
right with the you know, with the fist stop. I mean,
this is the whole perception. His whole brand, by the way,
(26:58):
for fifty years, right has been that he is a fighter,
that he's going to you know, stick it to the man,
that he is going to speak his mind, that he
is going to take things on and he doesn't care.
By the way, who also is like that. Elon right,
Elon doesn't care. He is going to speak his mind. Now. Granted,
you know, these are wealthy people, they could get away
(27:18):
with this kind of stuff. But this whole idea of like,
I'm going to take no prisoners. I'm going to be
the person that is going to kind of take on
you know, whatever it is, like China or this or that. Like,
there is a whole swath of America that absolutely wants
to get behind that, especially young men. And I think
(27:39):
there is this idea that, oh, you know, maybe women
you know, are going to vote for their you know,
reproductive rights. I don't think people really thought about, well,
maybe these women are moms and they might have sons
and they see that their sons are depressed, or they
don't have opportunities, or they're on drugs, or you know,
(28:00):
they're like whatever it is. But there is this epidemic
with young men that they're not able to kind of
have the success maybe that their fathers had, the you know,
the generation beforehand. And at the end of the day,
the men came out in droves in support of Trump,
and I don't know if people realize it's not just
(28:21):
white men. It was Latino men, and it was also
black men, and so I think that is this idea
of a strong man. And again we're not going to
get too much into talking about technology and futures in AI.
But as you start to see more and more economic hardship,
as you start to see more and more jobs being
displaced by automation and AI, I think that you were
(28:42):
going to see the need to have more and more
strong leaders help you know, say that they're going to
fight for them and who is going to be that fighter?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Look, there is this one's a hard conversation to navigate
because as someone who's champion for women my whole adult life,
it's hard for me to have a point of view
about what that implication means for women and women in leadership.
But in again, I just keep saying this throughout this pod,
like in the spirit of trying to look at this
through objective clinician's eyes to say what can we learn
(29:14):
from it? I think that is a real implication, whether
we like it or not, that when people are down,
and a lot of people felt down, we want heroes.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
We want strong heroes.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
It is the superhero complex so that we go to
the movies for I was going to say it's very American,
but it's probably not uniquely American. It does lead to
some scary implications in terms of where this could all go,
because that is how most dictators have risen in history.
Again trying to temper the personal point of view here,
(29:47):
but I do think that idea of strong heroes is
an interesting thing in terms of people want to feel
like realistically or not objectively or not, there is there's
a saving that can have someone is coming in to
save them and to make them Oh dare I say.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
It make them great again?
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Woof? All right, last one.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Well, and as to that point, I mean there was
a recent you know, Pew study talking about masculinity. And
again it's hard, right because I obviously have been such
a huge champion for women and you know, diversity. You know,
obviously I think about my daughter and I want her
to be a strong leader and just power Latina, and
I want her to have her independent voice. And so
(30:33):
I feel that there's been all this talk about supporting women,
but I don't know if there's been I don't know
if it's the same level because I think the argument is, oh, well,
men have it made? You know, like it's the men
that are in power, they have all these great things.
But I do feel that there is this whole narrative
around the view of men and masculinity, right. And so
(30:54):
the Pew study came out saying only a quarter of
Americans say that masculine men they have a mostly negative
view of them, that being masculine is negative. Right, So
now it's like, Okay, what is really the state of masculinity?
How is that viewed? And then six and ten Americans
say people in the US don't place enough value on
(31:14):
men who are caring or open about their emotions, right.
And so I feel that there is this whole thing
around men, and it's been bubbling up for a while
and there's all this research and insights into it, but
I feel that that kind of came out in droves
and maybe it was obviously it's hard because you have,
you know, potentially the first female president of the United States,
(31:37):
and there was all this energy around it. But again
back to reading where the country was and understanding that,
like white women voted for Trump, and so I feel
like you got to unpack that, Like you just can't
ignore it, you can't put your head in the sand.
Don't be mad at it again. We you know, saw
Democrats take the l understand what that meant. And I
(32:00):
feel like this is a deep area of understanding. How
can a brand, in this case the Democratic brand, how
can they connect with men, especially.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Young men well?
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And then let's end on a final implication. We could
go on and on, and many people are but here's
a fifth implication, and I think this one is a
particularly poignant one for marketers, which is that brands take
time to build and sometimes to fix, and often more
(32:31):
time the way we plan for. And I know that
my fellow marketers cmos who are listening are going to
head nod to this one because you often get tapped.
And I said the word sort of xavior before, like
you are going to be the panacea to all of
the brand or businesses problems. And by the way, can
you have it done by yesterday even if something's taken
years to get.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
The way it is.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
And the reality is Kamala did not have a lot
of time to really figure out in a sense what
her brand distinct from Biden's brand was going to be,
what that meant for the Democratic Party brand in the
very short time since she was given the presidential nomination
of her party to the election. And you know, I
(33:17):
think that's a really important implication because to do a
brand correctly, to steward a brand correctly, to manage it,
to nurture it, to evolve it based on insights. See
there's a theme here. It takes some time, it takes
some nuance, it takes some different approaches to media, like
we were saying, and that element of time was just
(33:39):
not on the Democratic Party side as things transpired.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
What do you think.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
I think that's a huge point. I mean, we all
know the CEO that says, oh, just make this happen, right,
like you know, you've got a quarter. You know, it
doesn't work that way, much to the fagrene of you know,
a lot of CEOs and CFOs. But there's also just
the reality of the market is not going to care
right if you don't have enough time to figure it out.
You need to figure it out. And this kind of
(34:06):
leads to a real I think soul searching amongst the
Democratic Party, right, because I think what Kama did was
nothing short of herculean. If you remember, you know, Biden
was so negative in all the polls and it was
really a hole and she dug the Democratic Party out
(34:26):
of that hole and you know, basically to come even.
And so again the country was still roughly even, even
though they focus on the right game, which was winning
the electoral college. Right. I feel like everyone was so
worried about, oh, is Trump going to steal this or that,
and he actually just went straight down the middle and said, oh,
I'm going to win the electoral college. And now no
(34:46):
one could say anything. And I don't think anyone kind
of prepared for that scenario. But when you think about
the Democratic Party, hopefully this is a wake up call
and again I'm I'm curious to see if they will
really do the hard work, which is understanding what people say.
And again this doesn't have to be, you know, taken
as my point of view or Marissa's point view. We're
(35:07):
trying to be as objective as possible. But you need
to hear this, right, and if anyone from the Democratic
Party is listening, understanding that it is viewed as too old,
it is viewed as too many people that are still
in these positions of power, and you need to let
the next generation kind of get into those roles. The
whole idea that maybe identity politics does not work anymore
(35:30):
you know, the whole idea of leaning into things like
LATINX that literally no one in the Latino community uses,
but for some reason that still, you know, is perpetuated
understanding that the Democratic Party is now viewed as elites
and that they're not for the working class, that the
Democratic Party is on the coasts. Again, this is not
my perception or my reality, but this is what is perceived.
(35:55):
And I feel that the Democratic brand really needs to
fix itself in a major way because if not, there
is a risk that there is not going to be
a viable path given that the country is moving in
this direction of either strong leaders and authority. Authoritarian focus
(36:16):
always on economics and business, and does that play more
into the hand of Republicans moving forward? Again, it with
the backdrop of AI and all the disruption that's going
to come, and it's only going to make things even harder.
But I believe that the Democratic Party could find a way.
But you need to have new leaders, and you need
to do an incredible rebrand of this party.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Well sum it up, there are always lessons to be
learned in victory and in defeat. I guess I'm my
personal hope is just that our better kinder human instincts
will prevail because there's reason to be concerned about that
as we go forward, coming together a bit as a nation,
being brought together by a leader would be a really
really nice thing that that will be my one personal commentary.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
In all this.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And in that same spirit, listen, we wanted to open
this up for discussion, as we always do, so instead
of doing what's on your minds as a separate piece today,
we just want to know what's on your minds on
this very important topic. So share with us your thoughts.
Do you agree, do you disagree? Just keep it respectful
as we always try to do. And thanks for joining
(37:23):
us for this special post campaign, post mortem and recap.
We hope you'll join us next time. In the meantime,
if you do want to email us directly, just send
us a note at ideas at brandashnew dot com, drop
us a note in any of our social channels, follow
us everywhere, please, and thanks again for joining us.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
See you next time, See you next time.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
A brand new
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