The American election has passed and gone.
As of this writing, Joe Biden is the president-elect with a five million vote lead over incumbent President Trump, and with a substantial margin of electoral college seats and legal challenges aside, Trump can’t catch him.
Currently, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are getting all the credit for the win. As in 2016, when Donald Trump initially received all the credit for the victory. Later, however, when the victory laps subsided, we began to hear about smart marketing from some of the marketing geniuses.
People like Brad Parscale, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, etc., began to receive recognition for the unexpected and upsetting victory.
I imagine that over time, the accolades for the people behind Biden’s victory will also be promoted and at that point we will begin to learn about what happened in the planning and implementation stages that led to the victory.
But until that happens, an event such as an election in the United States is such an important event, that it is indebted to any marketing, sales and entrepreneurship professional to devote deep thought to what happened and how this can be used or used. avoided on our own. situations. In fact, I believe that the American elections are the most important game in the world and if you really want to build a business, this is the game to analyze and criticize.
Now if you had to beat Donald Trump, how would you do it?
Furthermore, if you had to beat Donald Trump during a pandemic, in which Donald Trump obviously mishandled himself, how would you go about getting a victory?
In my analysis, I think the most obvious strategy, what to do, was quite simple. It doesn’t have to involve a lot of marketing magic or hoaxes. It is neither revolutionary nor a master strategy. In fact, I think it was pretty obvious, and Biden’s field nailed it with “swords.”
They chose to compete against Trump for one thing and one thing only, and that was character.
Sometimes in marketing, the simplest things are usually the most effective.
It reminds me of the scene from the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Harrison Ford comes face to face with this bad boy wielding a knife. The baddie is acting, waving the knife, waving it, twisting it and Harrison Ford ducks down, grabs his gun and makes a blast, kills him with one shot. The obvious thing to do. It doesn’t matter how good you are with your knife; you’re not hitting a gun if the guy knows how to use it and he’s very close.
I think it was similar with Biden’s campaign strategy. Biden was obvious, Biden was simple, and Biden stayed focused on character. Whereas Trump, it seemed a bit all over the place. Trump undoubtedly expended enormous energy and that probably earned him 70 million votes. In general, the Trump campaign seemed to focus much more on magic tricks. Brad Parscale was back doing his Facebook stuff. Bannon was targeting the right-wingers in the media. Trump himself was trying to achieve his playbook move, which he has used so effectively throughout his adult life, which is to start abusing people and picking fights. Before Hillary, it was Rosie O’Donnell and that gave her a ton of free publicity and a platform. This time it was anyone he could taint, even the legendary Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Along with this convention that Trump strategically desecrated by using the podium at the White House to drive election campaigns. Trump labeled China the enemy, Antifa the enemy, Democrats the enemy. Trump had innocent people stand aside to take a picture with a Bible. And, of course, there was the alleged attempt to obtain a dirty file from the Ukrainian president on his opponent. Then there were the nicknames. Shifty Schiff, Nasty Nancy, and Sleepy Joe, and so on. But all of this just played out in Biden’s character campaign mostly.
Trump’s most effective tool was his rally. The rallies are a show of power. Demonstrate a large following and give you a platform to hit the media and other enemies, particularly “Sleepy Joe”.
Hats off to Trump, he’s excellent at holding rallies and you could feel the momentum building as he chalked one rally after another, often 3 a day across the country.
Meanwhile, Biden just focused on the character.
To demonstrate this, he listened to people. He was guided and protected that “there is a virus out there”, you cannot see me running all over the United States, organizing big virus spreading events. Perhaps, truth be told, he did not do this because he knew his events would be nothing like Trump events.
Biden stuck to everything about character. All the while using the threat of the virus and mobilizing people to vote by mail, as it would be “much safer”. Joe Biden identified that because he was dangerous out there, he would do the character thing and stay as long as possible in his bunker and exhibit ultra-social distancing. He wore masks, provided confident messages, and didn’t miss an opportunity to describe how badly his opponent was handling him. Biden symbolized a person of integrity, a person of character, and as a consequence, I am the person to vote for, safely and by mail.
He also showed his character in his interactions. He offered help and a platform to the stuttering child, comforted the children who had lost a father, comforted the mother whose child was fighting in Iraq, and so on. I’m not saying any of this was false, but he was choosing to amplify these messages, as is done in marketing, all with the goal of amplifying the character trait: his opponent’s perceived weakness.
Biden’s naming of Kamala Harris was another display of her character. The fact that he could turn the other cheek to someone who actually attacked him during the primaries, the fact that he had a vision to bring a woman to the White House, the first in history. The fact that she had a vision to be a woman of color, to be the first woman of color to serve in the White House as vice president. more character cues.
Through all of this, Trump just continued to rally. Even though he does incredibly well, overall the rallies were more of a 2016 thing and not a 2020-plagued COVID.
At his rallies, Trump was imploring people to give up their midweek election day to stay in a polling place for four to five hours, and put themselves at risk of contracting coronavirus. These people are hard to sell. On the other hand, Biden said, “no, don’t do that to yourself,” and what’s more, “you may even be intimidated by the Trump people.” So don’t do it, send your vote by mail.
And the people did, and they voted early, as we now know.
Having garnered 70 million votes, Trump still generated a solid following and, in fact, that is why he feels defeat with such disbelief, because he knew his rallies were magnificent. And I would have left every one of those rallies thinking, man, I got this in the bag.
So a choice in the United States can be like a business, often in business, the solution can be obvious. You never need to overcomplicate things.
I myself have been guilty of this, in fact, many times.
I’ve tried to show clients that I know my stuff, and in doing so I’ve created overly elaborate and difficult sales funnels and things like that. Sometimes there is a place for these, but most of the time when I am presented with a company, business or situation where they have a marketing problem, usually the answer involves slowing down, taking stock of what is happening. and find one, two or maybe three things that are somewhat out of place. This approach often solves the problem completely.
It is not necessary to make it too difficult. It can be a lot easier than you think.
