Pitching the Presidents
How Do You Pitch 80-year-old Products When Customers' Minds Are Made Up?
Oh, it’s a rerun of Leader of the Free World.
The episode where each of two old guys spends the next six months and billions of dollars to convince a small coterie of swing voters that while he is not a “clown” or “sleepy,” his opponent definitely is.
Where’s the popcorn?
Even though we’ve seen this movie before, everyone wants to know how it ends. Especially since a fair number of people didn’t think it actually-really ended last time.
Can Donald Trump pull a Grover Cleveland and get elected for a non-consecutive second term or can Biden…well… hang in there, buddy.
Lots of things could switch the flip and I’m basically going to ignore them all to focus on this question:
How can we pitch either of these knuckleheads as presidential?
Because here’s the deal: you probably don’t matter in this election because you’ve probably already made up your mind. You’re probably already convinced that Trump is a threat to global geopolitical stability (not to mention the stability of those tacos you just ate) or that Biden is an animatronic shell operated remotely by an indecisive committee of establishment liberals (and let’s just say the signal is not always at five bars).
In fact, even if - as a moderate voter - you do matter to the outcome of this election, you might still think Trump is a megalomaniac and Biden is geriatric.
Change We Can’t Believe In
What is a marketer supposed to do with that? What can you say about either one that might swing the vote?
What makes this an interesting question is that everyone already knows the products. It’s untrue that Biden helped Brutus stab Julius Caesar, but the man has been in politics for a long time and Trump, like Truman Burbank, has been on camera since birth. Practically every feature and foible of both men has been examined in excruciating detail for decades. No one will watch the next interview or debate and say to herself: “Huh, I never knew [Donald or Joe] felt that way about [important issue]. He’s got my vote.”
Unlike previous election cycles, you can’t rely on hopey, changey, white knight anonymity to sweep one or the other candidate to victory. Vivek already played that card and the country yawned.
Yes We Can’t
But actually, this glut of information and impression overload is the key to pitching either candidate for president. To effectively position either Trump or Biden, we can’t try to change anyone’s mind. We’ve got to work with what we’ve got - what voters already believe.
This eliminates a LOT of options. 98% of everything we could say doesn’t pass the bullshit detector:
“Trump stands on the principles set forth by our forefathers in the constitution” - Oh, well, except for that one.
“Biden isn’t going to cave to the political elites.” - unless they ask nicely and he owed them a favor from 1974.
“Trump is a steady hand amid the turbulence of history.” - just like a three-year-old on a long flight.
“Biden is a dynamic leader ready to guide America into a dangerous new world.” - let’s just hope he can avoid bombing Albania by mistake.
“Trump is the consummate diplomate, restoring trusted relationships with America’s allies.” - [YouTube’s “Trump handshake”]. Ahhhh…No.
“Biden is feared and respected by America’s foes.” - but mainly just feared to be senile by members of his own party.
“[either] is guided by a strict moral code preventing him from seeking private gain from public office.” - Yeah, not so much. Although one is less blushy about it.
So what can we say for each candidate if we can’t say pretty much all the things campaigns usually say about presidents? Are there qualities of each man that both sides (the fans and the critics) would agree on?
Here are a couple that I think are important, not least because they constitute the most obvious difference between Joe and Donald:
Trump is a Maverick. He’s not controllable by his foes. He’s not controllable by his friends. He’s only questionably controllable by himself. You might love it when he “says it like he sees it” or cringe when he sounds like a petulant, orange-haired child, but no one believes anyone is scripting Trump. Both camps agree that Trump’s press secretary has one of the hardest tasks on planet Earth - a job akin to that of a drywall crew brought in to patch up Chernobyl. You can say a lot of bad things about Trump, and by this point, everything has been said, but no one says Trump is muzzled or leashed - despite many demands that he should be.
Biden is a Team Player. Biden got the nomination in 2020 because he had served his time and it was his turn. His team pushed him to the front and in exchange, he’s faithfully pulled the levers of power as you would expect an amalgamation of the Democratic party would. A zillion years in congress, eight years as VP and three years as President and Biden has yet to surprise anyone about anything. If a top general says we should bomb someone, Biden pushes the red button. If an economic advisor suggests holding off on new stimulus, then Biden will faithfully turn off the spigot. Biden’s press secretary has a hard job for very different reasons. She’s got to somehow assemble all the words from all the sources from across the whole team and place them physically in Biden’s mouth. You may love him or hate him, but no one’s arguing that Biden doesn’t listen to instructions.
It might be a little amusing and a little depressing that this is all we have to work with, but stop and consider for a minute how important these respective qualities are:
A maverick is independent. Part of the reason the 49ers made it to the Super Bowl is that most opposing teams couldn’t figure them out. They weren’t orthodox. When the other team zigged, they zagged (You can’t blame them they didn’t have Taylor’s boyfriend). For a leader, independence is pretty important, especially with all the current geopolitical craziness. If you’re the dear leader of a militant totalitarian state, you’d much rather play nuclear chess with someone predictable than someone who’s just as unhinged and volatile as you are. Even domestically, if a leader can’t be prodded and handled into submission, he’s likely to be able to produce wins in arenas where the usual calculus would fall flat. America, after all, was built on independence - the freedom to live and govern however the hell we the people please. If one of those peoples were just a bit more independent than average, he might well make a good leader for the whole rowdy bunch.
A team player is coachable. Even back in Washington’s day, the top job was more than any one man could handle. The president has to make decisions about economics, immigration, war, peace, which friends to pardon, whether to mask or not, how to handle congress, how to handle the family business - all while trying to remember three regions in Ukraine and the last name of the French president. Everyone knows the president has handlers and everyone knows those handlers (experts in all the minutia of domestic and world affairs) are absolutely necessary to help the president make good decisions and not make a fool of himself. Sure, the experts are wrong sometimes, but do we really want a reality TV star, an Arkansas lawyer, or a lifelong politician choosing unilaterally whether to start World War III? After all, the American system of government was designed to keep guys like George (no, the other George) from acting like a king and making changes at his own whim. If the president doesn’t take advantage of the wisdom of crowds and the presidential apparatus and doesn’t respect the will of the people (or at least his own party) then he’s not likely to be very effective and he may very well be a threat to democracy.
The most obvious qualities of our two contestants are pretty important. And it’s not just spin. It’d be hard to make the case that the president doesn’t need a degree of independence (a little inner maverick) or that the president can lead the country effectively without listening to experts’ input.
For example, consider these two everyday scenarios which any president might encounter:
Scenario #1: Better Cut the Right Wire
A rogue nation led by a dictatorial madman has sponsored a terrorist organization to lock the President of the United States inside the Oval Office with nothing but a cell phone, a pair of wire cutters, and a nuclear bomb capable of levelling the D.C. metro area.
[Explosives Expert (on the phone)] “Ok, Mr. President, you should see two wires emerging from the big cylindrical bomb-shaped thing and going into the digital red countdown thing. One wire is BLUE and the other is RED. What you’re going to have to do is wait for the timer to reach 0:59 and then cut the RED wire.”
If Biden were President
[President Biden] “So you want me to cut the blue wire? But the timer is at 1:11.”
[Explosives Expert] “Wait for the timer to reach 0:59 and then cut the RED wire.”
[President Biden] “It’s 0.55 now. I’m cutting the RED wire.”
[Cut’s red wire, saving D.C.].
If Trump were President
[President Trump] “Look, I have to tell you, and I'm very, very serious about this, I’m not going to cut the red wire. And let me explain why, because it's very important that everybody understands this. Red, as you know, is a fantastic color, a powerful color. It's the color of our great party, and it represents strength, passion, power. We love red, everybody loves red. Cutting the red wire? That's not going to happen under my watch, believe me. The red wire stays. It's a tremendous wire, really tremendous. How about we cut the BLUE wire? What would you think of that?”
[Explosives Expert] “Mr. President, It’s vitally important that you cut the RED wire but only after the timer reads 0.59 or less”
[President Trump] “Wait? We don't wait. We're going to cut the blue wire, and we're going to do it NOW! The blue wire, we’ve looked at it, we've studied it, and it's the one to go.”
[US capital is moved back to Philadelphia]
Scenario #2: An Offer He Can’t Refuse
Same dictator, same terrorists, same nuclear bomb in the Oval Office, but this time, the President doesn’t have wire cutters so the bomb must be deactivated remotely. The President calls the dictator’s direct line:
If Biden were President
[Dictator] “Hello, this is the dear leader”
[President Biden] “Listen! You’ve got to disarm this bomb in my office right now! This is unconscionable. It’s against the Geneva Convention. We will sanction you with the mother of all sanctions!”
[Dictator] “Bomb? What bomb? This is the first I’ve heard of it. It must have been planted by a terrorist organization we have no affiliation with.”
[US Capital is moved back to Philadelphia]
If Trump were President
[Dictator] “Hello…”
[President Trump] “Listen dictamonious! Solve this problem! Turn this bomb off or you’ll never solve any more problems. You're not going to like our solution. It's going to be swift, it's going to be powerful, it might involve a missile to your yacht, your vacation home in Monaco, you’re favorite race horse, your basketball signed by Dennis Rodman.”
[Dictator] “…Ahhh…Bomb? I don’t know what you’re…” [Interrupted by sound of nearby explosion]
[President Trump] “Oops! I guess that one must have hit your riding stables. Sad! The next one will be…”
[Dictator] “I am turning off bomb now! It’s off! It’s off! [Other explosions heard over phone]
[D.C. is Saved]
You see, depending on the situation, being independent or coachable might allow Philly to keep its reputation as the city of brotherly love.
Make The President Great Again
So what should the two campaigns do with this? How could you pitch these two wildly different versions of president and have each pitch be believable? Bonus points if the pitch simultaneously and implicitly throws the other candidate under the bus.
Here’s a stab at just that:
Leaders Lead: Leaders can’t be followers. They can’t ask permission to vote their convictions, and they can’t make every decision by committee. We live now in a dangerous world surrounded by threats here and abroad that our parents never dreamed of. It’s going to require boldness and independent thinking for America to navigate safely through these troubled waters. Haters are going to hate, but a true leader can’t second-guess every action. He’s got to take the helm and act decisively with ironclad conviction. Trump for President!
Leaders Listen: America was founded on the principle that we are stronger when we are united - when our common bonds enable disparate and diverse people to act as one nation. The Declaration of 1776 says “we the people.” The president’s job is to represent the people of the United States - their interests, their goals, their wisdom - and this means listening to them, both directly and through their other elected representatives. America’s leader can’t act as a rogue agent. He must submit to the rule of law and to the principles embodied in the Constitution. Biden for President!
What’s going on here? Why do the presidential pitches above sound plausible even though we may be resistant to their message? It comes down to four stages:
“That’s Bullshit”: By starting from an attribute of each candidate that is hard to argue with, we can bypass the first line of defense. The pushback to most pitches is “that’s bullshit” but Trump is independent and Biden listens. That’s just the facts ma’am.
“Yes, But It Doesn’t Matter”: We’ve dodged the bullshit detector, but we’re not out of the woods. The pushback now shifts to “well, but that doesn’t matter.” This is real progress! We are now able to make the case that the attribute in question is actually a pretty big deal - It is an important quality in a world leader. A leader should have a spine and be a team player.
“Ok, it Matters, but This Matters More”: The haters will now make the case that even though the attributes of independence or coachability are important, they aren’t as important as the qualities of the opposing candidate or all the qualities the candidate fails miserably at. But that’s ok. We’ve gained a lot of ground.
“This Matters More NOW!”: Now comes the cage match. But it’s a different type of cage match than you might expect (and not as entertaining as one involving two old men in an octagon). Now Trump’s side has to argue that at this time independence is more important than coachability what with all the crazy unpredictability in the world and Biden’s side has to argue that actually these conditions won’t be fixed by adding unpredictability to the mix. Rather the present moment requires a steady hand tempered by the input of hundreds of advisors. By associating the candidate with a desirable attribute the contest is now between the attributes not just the personalities.
Change We (Already) Believe In
Will either campaign take my advice and try to associate their candidate with these obvious qualities? I’m not going to sit by the phone. And admittedly, there are other ways to skin the cat.
But I highlight these two angles to illustrate a point about pitching anything - a product, a company, an octogenarian: you don’t have to change anyone’s mind.
Not really. Not totally.
You just have to identify a modicum of pre-existing belief or opinion and then build your entire case from that foundation.
No one elicits stronger likes and dislikes than Trump and Biden and yet even the hardest-core MAGA-cap-wearing zealot would admit that Biden listens to advice (“how else would he tie his shoes in the morning”) and even the wokest progressive couldn’t fail to see Trump’s independence from the political establishment (“like all of history’s would-be dictators”). Neither hyper-partisan will be swayed by these realizations, but a lot of moderate voters might be.
In the same way, when you’re pitching your product to customers or your company to investors, the most important question you can answer is what your audience already believes about your market, your competition, your company, your technology, or even you yourself.
If you can find just one or two things they already believe, that’s plenty. If we can find nice (and true!) things to say about either Trump or Biden that people across a wide political spectrum might actually believe, then there’s hope for whatever you’re pitching too.