Cheap campaign — 2 billion dollars
Trump is the new President of the United States of America. Okay, not exactly new information, since it is the topic everyone is talking about. When I wake up the first thing I do is check my phone (at least I don’t try to hide it) and for a couple of months, there is this one orange face that is constantly on my Facebook-Feed. Donald J. Trump. I am neither going to write a blogpost on how shocking this news is, nor in what way this is going to affect us in Germany (although I probably could write a novel on this). As I read more articles about the election and the propaganda itself, I began to wonder how much the candidates actually ended up spending on their campaigns.
The Media is without a doubt the most influential source when voters inform themselves about the candidates; actively or passively, just by watching TV, reading articles, or checking the Facebook newsfeed, individuals encounter a tremendous amount of information, which ultimately plays a key role in determining his or her vote. But how much of the information concerning the candidates is paid advertisement and how much is just free press?
Checking the internet, I quickly found a diagram showing how much money the candidates spent in 2016 on presidential campaign advertising; I was shocked. After the two big spenders Bush and Rubio, there were Sanders and Clinton, coming in third and fourth place. But where was the blond, loud Republican that has covered the news for such a long time? He was in tenth place, with “only” 10.0 million dollars spent on his campaign (probably still much less than the taxes he has yet to pay, just saying).
What Donald Trump did take advantage of, and what also probably explains why his face is all I see on my Facebook feed when I wake up, is called earned media. This simply stands for all the comments and news about his campaign, his personal life and his outlandish statements (whether or not they have been racist and sexist) on for example social network sites. According to a diagram made by a mediaQuant website, Donald Trump’s earned Media is worth almost 2 billion dollars, while Clinton does not even hit the 1 billion mark. So are we somehow responsible for his win? Did we push the gifs, funny pictures and quotes of Trump too much? Probably not, but sensationalism is one prevalent force and one major trigger; and we can see how much it benefited Trump and his campaign in this case. There is no such thing as bad press. The earned media Donald Trump gained was not all positive. In fact, most of it was negative, portraying his nonsensical remarks, lies and sexual assaults: and the list goes on. However, people want to be entertained and making fun of his hair and his let’s call it rude, behaviour is certainly amusing. That he actually became president of the United States, however, is not. When I talked to an American friend of mine he said that Trump is probably going to host a reality TV show on his move-in to the White House (Orange is the new Black would be a very good name for that one).
Somehow politics that deal with America’s real problems seem to be less important than watching people act like politicians. When I think of the election in 2020 I picture Kim Kardashian as first Lady and ask myself when we went wrong. Kanye West and his family will probably even outpace Trump’s media coverage. Keeping up with the Kardashians has fascinated people all over the world for 12 seasons now. Yep, not kidding, 12 seasons with more than 170 episodes of the family doing, yes, let’s call it nothing. How much earned media Mr. West will have in a presidential campaign is appreciable. Get ready America, for some serious reality Stuff.
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