Let's Review

Campaigns tend to look at issue-testing from polling data and too often immediately fall in love with the best-tested push questions. They wrongly believe their best chance of winning is by making the election a referendum on a limited number of potent issues. Clearly, this is what the Harris for President campaign concluded and then spent a disproportionate amount of their media budget on ads focusing on abortion and protecting Democracy.

I'm quite sure the narrative used to define these issues tested off the chart. But that doesn't necessarily mean it was going to move ballot numbers. In fact, when we probed the "destroy democracy issue," the data indicated it actually moved numbers better for our campaign than for the Harris campaign.

I believe the bigger opportunity for the Harris campaign was to develop her brand rather than try to define President Trump's. To win, Harris needed to reassure voters she was something different than Biden's accomplice on the economy and the border crisis. The reality is that Trump's brand, whether viewed positively or negatively, had been built and solidified over decades. And neither side could say or do much to alter it.

A critical insight in political marketing is that the bigger the race, the more brand image overshadows specific issues. Our data made it crystal clear that once Kamala Harris became the opponent, the general election campaign became a three-month sprint to see who could brand her the fastest, us or them. The results indicate who won that race.

During the final three months of the campaign, there was a commonality in almost every ad run by the Trump for President campaign...it featured Kamala Harris talking. A "he said/she said" battle is usually fought to a draw. We concluded it would be much more powerful to use Harris' own words to define her...on the border, Bidenomics, transgender transitioning for prison inmates funded by taxpayers, the failed Afghanistan pullout, Second Amendment rights, and more.

"The Great Debate"

It's important to note that certain ads were focused less on the specific issue Harris was discussing, and more about demonstrating just how far left Harris's positions were and how far outside mainstream her thinking was. Harris gave us one final gift when just days before the election, she proclaimed on "The View" that she couldn't think of a single thing she would do differently than Biden.

We certainly had a variety of alternative ads ready to go... the kind every media consultant loves to do in a Presidential race: Inspirational ads with wonderful cinematography, great drone shots, the voice of God narrating, and aspirational music scores. But time and again, the reality footage of Harris tested better and more effectively cut through the barrage of clutter for its rawness and indisputable accuracy. So, we stuck with it.

We found there was a dramatic relationship between speed, social virality, and earned media coverage. This was particularly important when responding to the various court cases, candidates entering the primary race, bad press stories, Biden and Harris gaffes, questionable debate moderators, and many other breaking news events. Speed allowed the Trump campaign to become its own news distributor, and parlayed that into both votes and dollars. It also helped that President Trump's social assets created a remarkably large megaphone to quickly and widely distribute content.

Part of our success was based on anticipating events instead of waiting for them to happen. It also meant building up a massive library of videos, photographs, and headlines. By way of example, before Florida Governor Ron DeSantis even entered the race, we were already far along in having content created to define him.

"Only One"

When Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said she had never supported raising the gas tax, we had an ad already sitting there that would discredit her.

"Intrigue"

Late in the fall campaign, when it became clear that Iran was likely to start launching ballistic missiles at Israel, we were ready with an ad that positioned Biden and Harris's weakness as a critical cause for instability around the world...and President Trump's strength as the solution.

"Open Invitation"

In years of handling challenging crisis communications problems, I've always been surprised by how often someone claims, "If we handle this right, we can turn it into a positive!" Unfortunately, it almost never works out this way. But for President Trump's campaign, it worked out!

Never in history has a candidate for President faced high-profile lawsuit after lawsuit like President Trump. Some would have recommended the campaign ignore and minimize them as much as they were able. However, President Trump and the campaign messaging team decided that was our worst path forward. Instead, we chose to publicly take on the prosecutors using the facts, context, and motives against them. Moving fast ensured we were heard while the message was timely.

Polling data revealed voters were increasingly suspicious of the endless court cases and gravitated toward the position that these lawsuits were politically motivated. This movement was most significant during the Republican nomination primaries and caucuses.

"Witches and Wolves"

In the home stretch, the content spending for both campaigns was pretty much even. Yet, for every creative execution run on TV, streaming, or digital, the Trump campaign ran during the final month... the Harris campaign ran about 6 to 8 executions on a variety of unrelated topics with little message cohesiveness; it even became difficult to monitor what Harris' campaign had on air at any given time. It would have made sense if these were simply micro-campaigns to various modeled segments with highly personalized messages. But it wasn't! It seemed more like a "let's throw everything out there and hope something sticks" strategy.

Real-time data made it clear that the share of voice for both Presidential campaigns was smaller than normal thanks to the unprecedented amount of spending by outside groups. In addition, highly competitive U.S. Senate and House races in battleground states like Pennsylvania also cluttered the airwaves. The bottom line is that it was almost impossible to put too many points behind any single spot to ensure it resonated.

It’s obvious to all that President Trump is a unique candidate. To ignore this fact would have been campaign malpractice. So, we leaned into it. All parts of the campaign consistently found ways to leverage this advantage...from having President Trump attend SneakerCon and MMA events to working at a drive-thru window at a McDonald's serving fries and driving a garbage truck. These became extremely viral, highly viewed events. And they certainly didn't have the cringe feel of Michael Dukakis sticking his head out of a tank. 

The message team was also constantly looking for how best to deliver entertaining and provocative sharable content, often timed around specific events. Examples included a heartfelt Christmas ad featuring President Trump's surprise Christmas visit to soldiers serving in Iraq, narrated by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders... to the first-ever Super Bowl response ad featuring a red MAGA cap thrown onto the playing field calling for an instant replay challenge.

"A Christmas to Remember"

"Instant Replay"

We also released much longer content, including a heart-breaking 7-minute documentary featuring the Gold Star families of the young soldiers killed in the Afghanistan pullout. It was premiered at the RNC convention and played live across America. A 30-second ad would never have captured the emotion or told the story that needed to be told as effectively.

"Voices"

And in the campaign's final days, the campaign released a four-minute video featuring the mother of Jocelyn Nungaray, who had been abducted, raped, and murdered by two men illegally in the United States. Without spending a single dollar to promote the video, it received over 50 million views. About the same number of viewers who watched the final episode of "Friends."

"Last Time I Saw Her"

Democrats still don't understand the MAGA voter. Party leaders and left-leaning news organizations seem incapable of defining the quintessential MAGA voter without insulting them. They've conjured up some bizarre fictional caricature that is remarkably removed from reality. President Obama belittled them for "clinging to their guns" and "their religion." Hillary degradingly called them "a basket of deplorables" and even suggested they needed to be "deprogrammed." And in the closing days of the 2024 election, Biden called them "garbage." 

I first wrote about this critical voter segment in 2016 when the Wall Street Journal asked me to write a piece explaining how Trump could possibly defeat Hillary. I offered that there was only one way: for blue-collar working families, who were the sons and daughters of Reagan Democrats, often living in Democrat-dominated rustbelt states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania... to break ranks with their own party, stick a finger in the eye of the establishment, and vote "Trump." These voters felt both parties had left them behind on the economic battlefield. And the new ultra-left priorities of the Democrat party were certainly not their priorities.

The irony was that it took a billionaire from New York to galvanize them. While President Trump's "say it like he sees it" rhetoric makes some cringe, this audience sees it as proof they can trust him. They're not defined by their voter registration; they're defined by their work, their families, and their country. And they've grown increasingly weary of typical focus-group-tested career politicians who only seem to care about them in the weeks leading up to an election.

They want someone who will have their backs. Someone who believes in letting Americans compete on an even playing field. Someone who will protect their traditional values. And someone who will restore America's respect around the world.

We also used every opportunity to let this critical voting segment know that President Trump would always have their backs. We never talked to them as Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives. We talked to them as parents concerned about their family's safety and their struggles to pay their bills, as hard workers who felt their piece of the American dream was being taken from them, and as law-abiding citizens who blinked, and the strong country they had believed in was no longer.

"Blinked"

One of the most remarkable reinforcements I observed of President Trump's support from working families came on July 4th weekend, 2023, in Pickens, South Carolina. President Trump was holding a rally in the quaint downtown Pickens, a city with a total population of 3,391. The staging was set up for an estimated crowd as large as 10,000 people, but with a weather forecast calling for a heat index of over 100 and likely thunderstorms, the concern was that the final crowd could be much smaller.

I had arranged to film the event and arrived the evening before for a walkthrough. I was surprised to see about 100 people already in line with sleeping bags. President Trump wouldn't even be taking the stage until 2 pm the next day. When I arrived again the next day at 5 am, the crowd was already at about 1,000 waiting to get in.

Shortly before President Trump was to take the stage, the crowd had swelled to over 55,000. One of our crew alerted me that there was still a long line outside waiting to get in only moments before President Trump was to take the stage. I suggested that we take a Go-Pro camera and film the line of people willing to wait hours and hours in 100-degree heat to show their support for President Trump and claim their piece of democracy.

As I reviewed the footage, Hillary's description of these "deplorable" families kept playing in my head. She's wrong. These are great Americans who love their country, want to make it great again, and are willing to stand up and fight for the ideals they believe.

"Pickens, South Carolina"

There was a very clear story arc to most of the content the campaign created. Start with a problem and how it affected the voter personally. Position Biden/Harris as the root of the problem and President Trump as the solution. Rarely did we start with President Trump or feature him throughout an ad. That's because we weren't really selling President Trump... we were selling the benefits the voters were most interested in... a better home economy, a safer neighborhood, and more pride in their country.

"Better Off"

"Safe Again"