Attention shoppers: Price check on aisle politics

At the marketing intersection of politics and shopping

Source: Source: Hartford Courant (McCardle, 2018).

I know, I know, it’s not polite to talk about politics in mixed company. Even less so to ask questions about it. But for years I made it my job to do so, and to this day I can’t escape the thrill of a great political story unfolding before my eyes. Politics is just like sports – all the same verbs, as a beloved editor told me early in my journalism career. How true. Winners, losers, the predictions, and the surprise endings. Unlike most fans, I don’t have a team in the fight. I just enjoy watching the show, preferably with popcorn.

The latest round of presidential politics smacked right into marketing territory. So I grabbed the opportunity to indulge my sport and let it play out in this blog. To be sure, we could examine the entire presidency and Donald Trump himself through the marketing paradigm. Like him or hate him, branding experts agree that Trump mastered his brand in the 2016 election (Applebaum, 2017). But this story in particular concerns just one piece of the marketing milieu that is Trump: his massive campaign database.

At one time, Trump dismissed data mining as overrated. After securing the Republican nomination, though, the necessity of data was no longer in doubt. Trump eventually amassed his own database by encouraging supporters to text him their information. Now he wants to rent out his supporter list. It is information gold: names, email addresses and cell phone numbers of some 20 million Trump supporters. Republican candidates and conservative groups are the obvious audiences for such a list. But businesses, too, think they can profit from knowing who backed Trump, where they live and how to get in touch with them.

Trump would be the first sitting president to market such a list, according to The New York Times (Haberman & Vogel, 2018). He stands to make a lot of money for a 2020 run by doing so. But does he risk hurting his own brand by selling his supporters’ names?
It is a new GOP with Trump at the helm, meaning, in many cases, new messages spoken through a different set of values and potentially a different coalition of support. In marketing speak, new Republican candidates are selling to a different audience. Will the things that differentiated Trump’s political brand no longer be all that different? And will this supporter database benefit candidates who lack Trump’s mastery of the media?

Trump marketed to the insecurities of white, blue-collar factory workers who felt left behind by the latest economic recovery. He specifically targeted votes he thought he could gain in the Midwest (Applebaum, 2017). He promised to blow up the establishment, including the Republican establishment. Is it then outside the bounds of incumbent Republican candidates’ brand permission to speak to the same set of supporters? Will these Republican candidates be forced into Trump’s image, or will they lose authenticity in doing so?

Beyond the political questions renting out this database raises, what are the business implications? It is one thing to share supporters’ names with other Republicans. Conceivably, doing so furthers their party’s cause. But how do Trump’s supporters feel about having their names sold for business marketing?

And which businesses think they can profit from Trump’s supporters? Will this information become public? Are we in for a future of polarized shopping experiences to match our polarized politics? Or have the audiences for politics and businesses been intertwined all along?

No doubt, big business (think Harley-Davidson, Walmart, Starbucks, Nike, to name a few) has made a few recent attention-grabbing attempts at profiting off the surface of politics. But what will happen when intermingling at a much deeper marketing level takes place? One thing is certain: We are in for several more rounds in the politics-business matchup. Pass the popcorn, please.

Applebaum, Y. (2017). The ingenious marketing strategies behind Trump’s success. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/the-ingenious-marketing-strategies-behind-trumps-success/508835/

Haberman, M., & Vogel, K. (2018, October 13). Now for rent: Email addresses and phone numbers for millions of Trump supporters. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/us/politics/trump-political-data.html

McCardle, M. (2018, September 10) Americans agree: Keep politics out of shopping. Hartford Courant. Retrieved from http://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-mcardle-keep-politics-out-of-shopping-20180907-story.html