Chantal Reed, EMEA Marketing and Communications Director, Interim and Consultant, who’s worked with Microsoft, Cisco, Dell Technologies, and other innovators, talks about the similarities political marketing, B2B and B2C branding strategies.
Propaganda is a word associated with governments and political parties to garner followers and fans. With the number of national country elections taking place in the world in 2024 – India, US, UK, Germany, Jordan, to name just a few – the social media ‘airwaves’ are full of it.
What is really propaganda really … of course its marketing and communications. Delivering the point of view, rallying the cry of the party or organisation and, hopefully, focussing in on their differentiation and the value of this POV to the audience.
When I talk ‘Marketing’ by the way I am including communications – PR, AR, internal and external and brand– I am a full stack marketeer and any touchpoint to your buyer is important.
The marketing community needs to embrace this thinking rather than treating these two disciplines as separate, in fact I have seen so many more Marketing and Communications senior roles being advertised as both these disciplines are critical to brand strength, and in the fight to stand out the brand has become multifaceted.
Elections are of course driven by campaigns. Political campaigns in recent years have finally seen the value of harnessing the power of data and social media, certainly none more so than the campaigns of 2016 and 2020 aligned to Donald Trump’s election as President of the USA. Some say it was manipulative, I say it was creating the ‘edge’ in electioneering through data lead marketing strategies.
Brands in B2B and B2C have long been using social media, but I really don’t see their themes of messaging being well thought through. A brand is a point of view. Pure and Simple. Social media and other marketing channels are the evangelisation of that POV to, yes you have guessed it, the right buyer, at the right time with the right message.
Nothing new. What is new is how brands can now use AI and data management organisations to laser focus the right message to the right buyer and buying committee. Especially relevant in B2B.
Brands that are launching, growing or even pivoting must realise that without certain steps in place the outcome of a strong brand reputation, recall and loyalty with their audience is futile.
First the value proposition of the brand, product, solutions at macro and micro level needs to be created, agreed, and understood at all levels of the organisation. This is not only partly a method of investigation and discovery utilising data points of fact but also stakeholder management and engagement plays a critical role.
Secondly from this what is your brand concept? What are your 1 min, 5 min and 20 min articulation of your brand value proposition. The narrative that highlights your differentiation from your competitors as well as the key USP to your chosen audience.
Then we get on to building truly authentic thought leadership that articulates this brand concept and positioning, something based on research synthetic or natural.
I would align this to a political contender’s opening speech, but most of the time we know this is rarely based on factual or third party trusted data but on their own… they could learn a thing or two from the large tech organisations that evangelise the future.
Then the omni channel marketing mix comes in, aligned, and focused with a data lens. Martech is so key to this part once you have built your plan – now with the advent of AI in marketing I suggest there will be a democratisation of marketing budgeting – a level playing field for small businesses to reach their buying committees without the previous spend required.
As long as your brand has differentiation, and the messaging is strongly qualified then this is the time for marketing leaders to be trawling the market for AI-Martech-as-a-Service.
My suggestion to the businesses I support is break up your marketing operating model into its elements… define what your new AI-Martech-as-a-Service stack could look like and analyse the cost savings plus the mentoring benefits of elevating junior staff to more interesting roles.
Donald Trump, no matter what side of the political fence you stand, is using data and social media tech to influence his audience at the optimum. As long as we keep ethical but focussed on the outcome brands need to take a good look at the Marketing Total Operating Model and embed AI-Martech-as-a-Service.
By Chantal Reed, EMEA Marketing and Communications Director, Interim and Consultant