The Worst/Best Campaign Swag
Curated by the politics nerds at Purple
Campaign swag is a fun part of election season, and some of the things you can buy from the campaign’s themselves is hilariously awesome (like Jeb’s guaca-bowle). But it’s also a really interesting part of campaign finance and the branding of a campaign.
Here’s what I mean, check out this chart:
Trump does an excellent job at branding, and his main brand right now is himself: Donald Trump. Brad Van Auken, a branding strategy consultant, talked to NPR about the image Trump is trying to reinforce:
“You know it’s successful, it’s risk-taking but it’s combative. He’s not afraid to offend. He is a fighter. He’s entertaining. He’s confident.”
In the third quarter, Trump’s campaign spent more than $912,000 on hats, T-shirts, banners, yard signs and decals emblazoned with Make America Great Again. He often tosses the hats out to the crowd at rallies, but Trump’s website also sells them at $20 to $30 apiece. Those purchases count as campaign contributions.
In thinking about political campaign branding, I decided to check out what the other campaigns are doing swag-wise and rounded up the best and the worst.
Hillary Clinton
Wow very punny guys.
Kind of a strange piece of campaign “swag” in general…
It doesn’t matter if you like Hillary or not, this pillow is badass.
Bernie Sanders
Bernie got pretty lucky that “Feel the Bern” kind of happened organically because it’s a great slogan. Plus you can make coffee jokes (like below).
Donald Trump
Ted Cruz
Marco Rubio
Jeb Bush
John Kasich
Ben Carson
Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie have no official campaign swag :(
