Target Marketing Changed Politics
“In lines that stretched around schools and churches; in small towns and big cities; you came together as Democrats, Republicans and Independents to stand up and say that we are one nation; we are one people; and our time for change has come.” Barack Obama
No matter what your politics, these are interesting times in the realm of political marketing. After a decade-long footrace between the parties to out-execute each other in the realm of “microtargeting,” the technique is being painted as the root of all evil by progressives bent on putting the “United” back into the good ‘ol USA.
Tabling for a moment whether this shift is motivated by aspiration or resignation on the part of the Democrats, the strategy itself merits some reflection by commercial marketers.
Most brand managers can certainly relate to the battle to build a better database than their competitors, to glean more insight from that data, and act more nimbly upon it. Prevailing wisdom – at least among advertising’s digerati – is that such is the march of progress. Frank Parrish, the brilliant but short-lived Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Direct said way back in 1995 that “the future of advertising is direct, and the future of direct is digital.”
Not long after, the political parties came to embrace the techniques to which Mr. Parrish was referring, led by a Texas direct mail impresario named Karl Rove. As the Los Angeles Times put it on Mr. Rove’s departure from the White House in 2007:
“Rove’s system had three major components. Using powerful computer systems, modern marketing tools, micro-targeting of supporters and sophisticated get-out-the-vote techniques, he revolutionized the nuts and bolts of campaigning…”
Republicans held no monopoly on such techniques, of course, but they appear to have out-executed the Democrats in locating pockets of red voters in blue precincts, and on messaging those voters on carefully framed issues designed to inspire impassioned support. Mr. Rove himself talked of the “permanent republican majority” such tactics might support, and, up until the last mid-term election, appeared well on track toward achieving his goal.
But just as basketball, running, and tennis shoes begat the Cross Trainer, a re-formation may be underway in American politics. Led by Mr. Obama, a backlash to the relentless segmentation of American voters may be – forgive me – afoot.
In Mr. Obama’s words:
“…there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States… But I’ve got news for them, too…. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”
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