BRAND POSITIONING: HOW DONALD TRUMP WON THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WITH BRAND POSITIONING AND PR

Brand Positioning — Brand Bullets

You may like him or dislike him as a politician, but I am about to tell you that Donald Trump is by far not only among the best public speakers on this planet but also without any doubt an outstanding marketer who has learned from his bankruptcies the major lesson on why you should never (NEVER) guess when it comes to branding; if you do guess, you will certainly do it at your own expense.

Please read carefully and do not allow your political lens to undermine my attempt to show you how the president of the United States of America is a perfect case study of the fundamentals on which your business should be built.

Naming: Donald Trump

Visual Hammer: Donald Trump

Verbal Nail: Donald Trump has positioned himself as the epitome of the American dream. He is the guy that turned a $1 million loan into a $10 billion empire in spite of five bankruptcies.

Battle Cry: Make America Great Again

Category: FIRST entrepreneur to run as president of the United States of America with no previous roles in any public or governmental position.

Controversial positions:

1. stopping illegal immigration;
2. renegotiating regional and global trade deals;
3. bringing power back to the people against a political establishment more and more isolated in Washington.

Target: “The forgotten who will be forgotten no longer”

Money raised by Donald Trump: $ 646.8 million

Money raised by by Hillary Clinton: $ 1.191 billion

LET’S START THE ANALYSIS

Although the naming, the visual hammer, and the verbal nail do not need any further explanation, the battle cry could be a perfect element for the beginning of our analysis.

Make America Great Again Vs. Stronger Together

Make America Great Again has two peculiarities as a positioning message:

1. It is a proactive statement remanding to a practical action: Make America Great
2. It recalls a joyful and prosperous past that seems not to belong to the present any more, thus Make America Great AGAIN.

This battle cry is very strategic.

Stronger Together isn’t even close to being a positioning statement.

I will explain why.

Stronger Together can’t be envisioned.

Try to imagine Stronger Together.

What do you see?

Nothing, right?

Now, on the other hand, try to envision Make America Great Again.

You see…You start envisioning a prosperous past when being middle class was fine and you didn’t worry about losing your job, when you could have your nice house to raise your children with no concerns about paying the mortgage.

It’s all in the American storytelling that Hollywood has exported all around the world.

The statement Make America Great Again means:

“Do you remember those wonderful times when everyone could make their dreams come true with a bit of hard work and going the extra mile? I am bringing them back.”

Category.

Donald Trump was the first entrepreneur to run as a nominee for the White House with no previous involvement in public service.

What does this mean practically?

He got massive attention from the media.

He was first in a new category.

He disrupted the status quo.

Donald Trump went even further: he showed the world that there was a way to control the media instead of having the media manage the outcome of your reputation.

I will move a step backward to better explain.

How did he win the competition among the major nominees of the Republican Party?

How did he disqualify Marco Rubio?

He gave him the nickname “Little Rubio.”

How did he disqualify Jeb Bush?

He made him the “Low Energy Guy.”

Without being too rude, he made them look like funny caricatures of themselves.

How did he undermine Hillary Clinton’s credibility?

He gave her the nickname of “Crooked Hillary.”

Here we go…

How did he control his target audience’s perception of the media?

He called them “Fake Media.”

What was the effect of this?

He used his Twitter account as a press office, the only reliable press office in the US.

However, he was very happy to attend any interview on radio or TV.

In that case, he was not only spreading his message but he was doing so by symbolically showing his target audience that he wasn’t afraid of facing them, because his credibility was bigger than their lies.

But Donald Trump, who is a mastodontic marketer, went even beyond any imaginable expectations.

He started to use controversies that appealed to “the forgotten who will be forgotten no longer”:

1. The wall with Mexico
2. The promise to ban travel by Muslims coming from specific countries
3. The corrupted political establishment
4. The trade deals to be renegotiated in favour of the national economy rather than of the global economy.

However, he did it extremely intelligently.

Indeed, he not only had all the media talking about him and his political campaign, but while the media and the Democrats started to demonise him as an old-fashioned racist and misogynist psychopath, he used the strategy of polarisation to make his positions clearer:

1. what he was standing for, and
2. how this would benefit “the forgotten who will be forgotten no longer.”

They are all synthesized in the speech he made two days before the election at The Economic Club of New York:

“This is what our new future will look like.

I am going to lower your taxes very, very substantially.

I am going to get rid of massive amounts of unnecessary regulations.

[…]

I am going to unleash American energy.

I am going to repeal and replace Obamacare.

I am going to appoint justices of the Supreme Court who will follow The Constitution.

I am going to rebuild our depleted military and take care of our vets who are treated so badly.

I am going to save your Second Amendment, which is under siege.

I am going to stop illegal immigration and drugs from pouring into our country and totally poisoning our youth and others.

And yes. We will build the wall.

[…]

And I am going to renegotiate our disastrous trade deals, especially NAFTA, and we will only make great trade deals that will put the American worker first and put the American worker back to work.

[…]

We will rebuild our roads, our bridges, our tunnels, our highways, our airports, schools, hospitals. We will rebuild everything.

American cars will travel the roads.

American planes will soar the skies.

And American ships will patrol the seas.

American steel will send new skyscrapers into the clouds.

American hands will rebuild this nation.

[…]

American workers will be hired to do the job.

[…]

Jobs will return. Incomes will rise.

New factories will come rushing back to our shores.

We will make America wealthy again.

We will make America strong again.

And we will Make America Great Again.”

This is a list of 24 statements.

Do you remember any one statement coming from Hillary?

As a matter of fact, Donald Trump got much more media coverage than Hillary Clinton because of

1. The exclusivity of his position as the first entrepreneur to run as a nominee for the position of President of the United States of America
2. A memorable battle cry
3. The huge amount of PR coverage as a consequence of the controversies he decided to rely upon that went against widespread common sense
4. A clear political platform
5. A weak opposition

And he did so with almost half of the marketing budget of his opponent.

This teaches us two very important principles you can implement right now in your business:

1. Overspending the competition is for dummies.
2. Obscuring the competition by getting more visibility, that is an exponentially amplified chance to spread your values (which clearly describes what you stand for without any doubt), is for champions.

Robert Lingard

Brand Positioning Consultant at Brand Bullets