Marketing lessons from the 2024 US election

The polarizing US presidential election reflects communication and marketing principles that I have learned over the years, and I teach these to my students each semester:

It’s not how much marketing budget you have. I was impressed that Kamala Harris raised $1.5 billion in three months, compared to Donald Trump’s $1 billion. You can do a lot of marketing with $500 million! Instead, you need to focus on making the message clear and persuasive. The consensus out there is that Trump’s campaign resonated better with the voters who are concerned about the economy and inflation.

Celebrity endorsement is nice to have, but often inconsequential. Taylor Swift, the biggest pop star in the world, endorsed Kamala Harris but so what? And all the hullabaloo about “Kamala Is Brat”, said by Charli XCX, went nowhere, because many voters are probably too old to know who the singer is. There was a long list of A-list celebs backing Harris: Arnie, Beyonce, George Clooney and Oprah… but it’s not the star power; it’s what you offer the customer that counts.

There are echo chambers everywhere, learn to recognize when you are in one and visit other echo chambers to broaden your perspective. I’m a subscriber to the New York Times which has campaigned relentlessly against Trump and if that is all you read, it would seem like the world thought the same way. I think reddit is a good place to see people sharing and contesting views in a mature (and often humorous) manner.

Finally, if you don’t understand what happened, you are probably not the target audience. That’s okay. Go find out why things happened the way they did and discover the target audience’s perspective. Knowing the customer and accepting different viewpoints makes us better communicators.