Inside The Marketing Machine Of Billion-Dollar Presidential Campaigns
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Aren't everybody election day in the united states is just a few days away and i'm here to officially endorse nobody because you should have try to get political advice from a pod gaster that you like. I'm just a guy who does business, and i've made a little bit money in the internet that does not make me an expert in politics. However, today's is about politics, but not the way you might expect.

I am fascinated by the marketing machine that is underneath political campaigns, regardless of which candidate are going for. There are spending over a billion dollars trying to persuade people to do a thing. That's how business works to.

There's a marketing machine trying to convince people to push a button at the end of the day. And I wanted to understand the science, the tactics and the persuading techniques that the different campaigns have used over the years, the best stories about what's actually going on under the hood. And so I invited on a guy named saja iza berg. He studied this for a couple of decades now, and he wrote a book that I thought was really could call the Victory lab. So I invited on to come tell us some stories about how the marketing machines underneath .

political campaigns work. I think it's fasted. Enjoy the.

And the things like there's this thing where this whole industry they get paid to help politicians get elected. I think it's something like six billion dollars a year goes to this group of people whose job is to be in marketing machines for for political purposes. And when something works, they let you know.

The incentive is to go tell the world how genius you are and how IT was your tactic. That was the thing that worked. And when IT doesn't work is like position and had no choice. Man, we can do there. They need to deflect in order first to survive.

When you were writing your book, which is called the Victory lab, did you I guess, so how did you get around that bias? And how could you figure how open for these people and sharing what's actually working not? And did you have to kind of like read between the lines to try to figure out where they just sort of grabbing extra credit versus what actually happened?

Yeah one of the most um difficult things reporting in this area. So you know I I was fortunate that I reported this book between election cycles. If you go in right now and you ask, uh, Harris campaigner, the trump campaign or the super packs working for them, you know show me exactly how your your testing your ads on on forms they that maybe they will tell you some stuff.

They very selective will leak out stuff and they they will help them raise money usually. So you'll read a story in wired. One story and wired that's like inside commoner's is add testing machine and details are very carefully selected over the course, you know, during the campaign to give out to one piece that then they can send out when they go out.

When he goes to do a under ring time in palo alto, they can convince you know a bunch of of tech executives that that she's running a smart campaign. So during the campaign though, it's very difficult to get real details on what they're doing. They know want to the value of impressing their donors is up against not wanting to you to give away the anything to the competition.

I want to to tell you about a really cool figure and upset that I don't think most people know about. It's called the marketing and content hub. So here's what works you're doing, content marketing.

That's what I do that so many brands do is works really, really well, but that could be very time consuming. So what they do is they have tools like content remix, which will take one piece of content and immediately turn IT into a bunch of pieces for all the different platforms in one click. Or they have leads scoring, which will basically shine a light on which leads that you have or most likely to purchase.

And then they have the next week. So you get reports, kp and all kinds of A I powered insight that you can share with your team and not be flying blind anymore. So if you're doing content marketing, highly recommend to check out the content hub and marketing hub for hub spot. You can visit .

hub spot com to get started for free. Back to the same, right after election day, the campaign basically ceases to exist. So everybody is on to another job.

A lot of them are you know looking for work or are returns. Their consulting firms are starting. New firms develop some track or tool during the campaign.

There are like some conference where they all go to like some some beach resort area where they go they all get drink and start talking.

Yeah I think there's like a post election sort of conference circuit where democrats, republicans come together to to kind of trade nodes, but they they need to launch a business. I mean, basically like every two years, there's not like a news or the window for startups and especially every four years.

And so there's a window where they go from being afraid that they will get fired if they talk to a reporter, because if you were quite tly gained even the most minor thing insight campaign, that is, you know, variable immediately, variable s because they don't want anybody but the spokesman, the canada, talking for. Then two days later, they are trying to figure out what they are going to do with the rest of everybody in the campaign. And so there's starting to take credit for everything they did.

So you know I remembering in twenty twelve you had this um the obama analytics department, which is really pioneering out the day like fifty two, fifty four people in this analyst promotions. Time is huge. They called IT the cave and these guys you know I was reporting to at the year, facilitate at that point in, and was able to eat out bits of of of news over the course of the campaign through really judicious reporting.

And I would hear stories about the campaign ager sumi people and the analysts reported into his office to say, did you talk to saucer because you know there are some inquest to find that like IT was pretty and in the day after, you know a whole bunch of them, basically we're going to arch IT to um launch of phone for them and were out giving in just everybody who wanted and taking credit from whole bunch of things that not there is alone to take credit foreign in. The issue with that campaign is that has a binary outcome, right? One kid that wins and the other one loses and no one thing ever shapes that outcome.

Not traditional things like, you know what, whatever happens on tuesday, IT did not happen because one of the camps shows the right advice. Presidential nominee, not IT did not happen just because of that, just because, you know, Harris had a Better debate performance and trun IT did not happen just because turn out was up in pensylvania, down in the vata. IT was a confluence of dozens, hundreds of big and small things.

And it's it's a story telling exercise to see who can basically tell the most convincing story about why the election turn out the way I did. And their political actors want to tell that story, right? Like moderates and the democrat party of common hwan will say because he took moderate positions on this and that, but there are people who form a technical, practical perspective to say it's of the tvs are really persuasive or because our social media strategy was so good and you need a good bullshit meter.

And you know and and the best way to really be alert to everybody's incentives for telling certain types of stories and be skeptical of of of the time for people have A A real, obviously transparent agenda. And I and I think you know, form of readers, viewers perspective, be be wary of any sort of monopoles al explanation for anything in electoral politics. No one thing did anything right right now. Well.

I do think it's fascinating that you you know when you're talking about the behavioral change aspect um one of the great things any entrepreneur sort of learn from a jacon season and so that basically saying, hey, if we want to win in politics, we could do things that have worked in politics.

But maybe there's things that have worked in the business world or you know, celgene wrote a book, you know persuasion not for politics at all, but you can use things like that. I mean, it's like what the way you describe that kind of like, hey, voter history is public. Here's yours and here's your neighbors and will be sending an update later.

That's elf on the shelf. That's, hey, the elf is watching and is gonna santa if you've been not or nice this as simple as that, I don't need to explain the virtues and why you should be not. It's very simple. Somebody's watching. And and I think that that's a very powerful thing.

I also found that interesting because what we're traditionally hear, if you just go turn on the news, you turn on CNN, you're going to hear a talking head explaining, they're going to talk about certain stories and they're going to be they are going to bring on some expert pundit who's going to tell you about how this thing that the vice president said during the you know convention, how that has a huge group effect. But it's actually just the most recent thing that happened ah and one thing I found fascinating was the story that you wrote about biden twenty twenty campaign and you talk in the in the article you wrote about, they realized that they were flush with cash. Um they were going to have more funding than they.

They were going to have more funding, not less funding, than what they needed. And so I guess the campaign ager, somebody you know, ask somebody other team to go, if you had to actually ten million to spend to have the highest impact, where would you spend IT? And there was this idea about misinformation.

And as biden called to the malky factory, and I thought this was pretty fascinating. Can you talk little bit about the a arki factory, and specifically, this idea of the harm index, if you remember that I I can. T what i've found fascinating there.

So you know I think that in two thousand and twenty there is um the campaign LED a this information. But I think really to stop back like they were trying to understand this new viral media environment. So you know you go back eight, ten years and in the politics campaign uh Operated, attracted communication by you, they get a record of all the T V ads are bought um by by hand.

You could see all of their services that will that will record and um allow you to access them digitally um uh you can see all your opponents campaign finance reports. You have pretty good sense of where they are getting money and how they're spending IT. Um you ever you and you can read the press coverage or he was on the news.

You had a pretty good idea where voters in information, what the internet change is now like basically anybody had the ability to launch um a story and some these get call LED this information because are the are transparently false. But for gal Operators, the real thing was like stop moving that we don't know where I came from or where it's going and and and what the motives of the people behind IT are, right? Because it's not coming from our opponent. We know what our opponents trying to accomplish that they have the same brain we do. But if this is like Masoni and teenagers who are trying to gain like uh online clicks for for ad revenue, or this is a forever intelligence service, or this is somebody like in their basement doing IT for the last like we don't we can game out like what their stories are.

go in viral IT could have an impact and we don't know who or why it's it's but who's buy that yeah .

and so the initially impulse wise, don't you know you would have all these sort of lessons from the old world, kind of media consulters like doll, let IT an attack go on the answer right? Always beyond all the fence um and like yeah that makes sense of your opponent is attacking you on what you know is one of their big themes.

But if like somebody in in sketch an is making something up about you to impress their friends, maybe you shouldn't respond and maybe you can make the problem a whole love worse by responding right um you elected you can you can end up engagement, uh uh our brothers can end up can end up helping spread by you trying to fact check IT. And so the buying campaign mentality is lets shift from thinking about this is a supply side problem, which is thinking about individual bits of content that are coming out every day and deciding how and when to respond them. And basically they said, playing with a all with like whatever the new thing that was trending that day, and let's like this more, is a demand side problem that most of self we try don't need to respond to.

It's not actually going to change voters opinions. But the stuff that we do need to respond to, the campaign said, is the stuff that that meets existing anxieties the voters have about biding, or about paris, or about certain issues. And so let's proactively try to understand which viral narratives would be most damaging to the campaign, do the most harm, so that when they pop up on a time, we have a framework for not overreacting or reacting to the wrong one.

So this was the harm index. That was the the idea there.

Yeah that's big survey over the course, the summer of of twenty twenty and and they took a lot of storylines, some based in truth in a lot based in in uh some margin of lies that the tory with the ticket so they you know and they would ask voters basically like free question, why are you familiar with this to, uh, does IT do you think it's true? And three, to what to make you less likely about .

for the and that's there's very simple right three, three, three questions .

and they're ing this in person.

This is and they would just show my headline .

right theyd be like honey top urban corruption, right? So yes. So the one hundred biden corruption does this was before the laptop, I think, but you know from, but already been impeached about trying to dw tension to ukraine ties.

A lot of people said that they were familiar with this hundred people. Not that many people said that he would actually make them less likely to vote for jail by in, and then need to focus groups and get out the people. People did not think the ban was fundamentally driven by its personal financial pain.

And so they might have thought that was they might have been familiar with that. They might even thought that there was some food to IT. But I didn't really change the way that they thought about the however the suffer related to his age and his mental and fermi that stuff. Obviously a lot of people knew about IT um and at the same time now a lot of persuadable voters said that would make them less likely to vote for biden and the focus groups revealed IT wasn't that they were actually this was the news, the campaign.

They find an age problem in twenty twenty um in the way that the communication staff on the campaign had deal with this less far was they would set up with photo ops of him, him bicycling or like him to drag up the stairs to his plane and and what came back from the focus groups was like, this was all wrong. Voters were not worried about uh, his physical well being. They won't concern like that.

He wasn't gna get his steps in in the White house. They were they saw as a fundamentally weak political figure. I think of this had to do with being defined as vice president. He was like, he he won the primaries. That is never the main character that race.

And there are a lot of voters who said basically like, I kind of like the guy, but I don't really know what he cares of out or what he wants to do, or who he gonna listen to. And that manifest its IT wasn't IT was about his political. We just, but IT manifest itself in being suspected to questions, being raised about his visible condition and mental condition.

And so what the the way the campaign responded to those was, firstly went out. They started buying ads in places where people who would be exposed that type of cut intent, persuadable voters who would be exposed that type of content work. So there have been this effort on the left for a while to to boycott fox news and ripe art websites.

The buying campaign, they know we're buying advertising there because we want to get next to the content of people seeing do they bought like search terms. So if you typed in, you know by in and see IO or something, you you would probably get cooked and shown like a youtube pro al ad. And they were things that, if you were, model is one of the persuadable voters who was sensitive on this each day, you would get targeted, but you would not any idea that that was about his age, the most successful. And they tested to these people was fifteen seconds of biden to camera just talking about, and I grow in friend and I middle class values, and that's why I want to you cut taxes on middle class people and raise them on the richer or something like really. But now, because all the research suggested these people just wanted to hear him in his own voice, saying what he cared about, what he would do, that the people who who were who could be turned off by the attack, by claims that he was seeing, I just wanted to hear that like he can articulate his basic is basic world .

vio right in a firm voice director camera not edited like.

you know and they were specious of cities that looked too glossy or too slack um and so there is a sort of push away from kind of the traditional aesthetics and political advertising, right? Like a lot of like, here's a headline and here's a thing and here's a cut and here's some yeah version and here's and here's some stock footage of farmers like, no, it's like really saying very clearly looked unedited because because the people who are sort of open to this, where ones who reserve a neily suspicious of political communication.

right? right? And so this idea of they took the stories and they're like, yet the sleepy jo stories, you got the creepy you stories, you got the herbie stories tested on.

People figure out three questions. Have you heard about this? Do you think it's true? And is this going to like, you know, make you less like little to vote for for bide in super simple. And then basically counter figuring out what is the counter programing message. At first they thought, hey, show, want to bike that counters, not a sleepy gel message. I think they have the score where on the x access that is like number of people who are aware of IT on the y access is like how much is going to impact their votes. So they they could just have a board that showed all the issues as I oh a lot of people are aware about this hundred biden thing but it's not not affected about low harm score, twenty five harm score and then yeah .

it's that march on like I think the first little podcasting is described. Church people love that.

So the x .

access was the reach, says harman dex. The ex. Access was the reach, right? Only people had heard about IT and why access was what the infor fact yeah you know.

impact.

And so you know and basically that the campaign thinking tactically on this was um if it's in the bottom is on the left of this thing. We don't need to worry about IT if IT has high impact but low reaches, keep an eye on IT because if it's spreads, if IT makes the jump out of like some corner of fortune to to you mass media, you know, getting to Normal people on facebook and we will have a problem, let be prepared. And then the south, the upper right hand quarter, it's reaching the voters we care about and IT will change our opinions like that's where we need to act.

right? rep. Hey, let's take a quick break to talk about another podcast that you should check out. This is called the next wave and toast by mat wolf. And the land is part of the hub spot podcast network, which of course, is your audio destination for business professionals like you.

You can catch the next wave with mat wolf, and he's talking about where the plug is going with A I creators, A I technology, and how you can apply IT to your growing business. So check in out, listen to the next wave wherever you get a packet. What about um trump? So you wrote that book in twenty twelve, I think twenty eleven, twelve the time.

yeah. So then this guy who is, you know, this persons, this T V personality, comes from the business world, not a politician at all, runs s his campaign. I think he even has admitted that like IT wasn't like he didn't think he was going to win initially.

And therefore he's such like, I didn't really have a plan because I know nobody thought we would when when we were doing our best. And then when we got when we won, I had figure out the plan, day one, what when you look at that, what do you see? Do you see this kind of, like mater marketer?

Do you just see this nominally? Do you did he use the Normal playbook? Was did he throughout the Normal playbook, what did, what did trump do?

So time in twenty sixteen, what he didn't, the conventional sense was the big, the big shift was he went from an H. T. B dominated can pain for paid advertising you have, as he dominated TV almost every day of the year in terms of free media coverage but his budget um which is much smaller than Hillary clans, was typically there's a lot sited in difference between TV spending, digital spending and and and also by direct mail and some of the the non digital .

tools and I think like half the .

money like that. The only place where you might see that these days is like a city council can in in a place where it's too expensive to buy television. And all they can do is is you spent forty thousand hours on facebook ads, right? right? You never see high level campaigns any size that they are expert on. And the reason trump spent was ready to spend money online starting, uh, in railway, starting in the spring and twenty sixteen was the jury. Cushier came to him and convinced him that is what problems doesn't like spending money, you know, hates also doesn't .

use a computer. So this is kind of amazing. Like did you see this clip that's going viral right now of him sitting? They're watching come speech from some I think there is like a document or I guess this is like clip from IT and so told the art of the surge I .

am yeah and so he's .

sitting next to this blond woman. I don't know who he is and he's literally like orating his tweet so he sees commons say something on TV and then he goes, um no way we're gona let that happen exhibition point um not on my watch and and then she's typing and he says and he just does like sixteen of those in like this like clip because people never knew like when they get to to use computer is even behind the social they doing that which is is that point.

He'd had a twitter account for five years and and he understood that to be a big part of his celebrity and ability to drive traditional news coverage, spending real money on on facebook ads, not just on, you know, self made content, hoping IT IT spreads organically.

That came because because Jerry pusher came in and convinced ed him that instead of all the other things in the campaign, where consults are begging you to spend money and IT goes out the door, that you could make this a revenue centers by und by to for fund raising, typically TV pay the money to try to change people's opinion, and you hope you get vote afterwards. If you buy ads, you can. You target them well, and you have people who want to give you money, you can.

Obviously, this is why charity do online for raising and stuff and so trying to started spending real money on facebook because he was seeing a return on and that resonated to him IT was IT was IT was the you know know IT was the economic mode of mentally more than that was uh part of a political strategy and what he ended up doing um in by the combination of his organic ability to draw attention um on mine in ways that the traditional al politicians could not and the fact that they work um employing city's ing IT through through end up being eventually some some real paid spending mostly on facebook advertising but also a little other platforms. He was able to create a community online that was you know really deep and meaningful and to the people who are part of IT and I think that we thought at the time, you know, the idea was that obama was the great digital era politician because he had he had developed the best, you know, the best and biggest lists. That was the measure in in twenty sixteen.

The measure of a successful online politician was how many sign ups, how many email addresses you have, how many people are giving you their cell phone number, and opted into lending new text zone, how many people follow you on platforms. And that basically was supporters that you can now communicate with for free, right? That s all that all that represents is you no longer have to pay to advertise to them.

They have have given you the information and authorization to talk to them. And but what did obama do with that? These tens millions of supporters who had had chosen to um sign on in some way would he basically asked them to give money.

And occasionally a volunteer takes some action. But IT was very transactional。 IT was very one sided. Uh and what we realized in retrospect, CT and I was basically every politician in the united states till l trump came along what trump did mostly by instinct, not by any strategy.

Or I think great track conception of like how to community because he gets IT in a in a animal. Alister way was that you should think games like a poster does, right? And that means observer like red to amplify, retweet or shared his his supporters content.

why? Because if you're the obama campaign in two thousand twelve, you spent hundreds of millions of dollars on opinion research, polling, focus groups, other quality of research, testing your ads in your meal. You have come down at that point.

You have come to the to the syllabus on what you want to say, on which issues, when, to whom, how and the whole campaign is this command atul exercise, to make sure that you are saying the exact right thing at the exact same time, at the right time to to all the write people. So the idea that you would take your most enthusiastic supporter who's tweet at you, all the anger, just like share with your followers, is so antha thetis o to the wait. Political professionals think about the best way to community and rum doit, because he doesn't impossible. Haha, that's funny. Let's share IT. Right, right?

And what he .

did was he created a community of people who are invested, who felt like they were part of the campaign, and they ended up, you know, the whole mean culture around him.

The online mega community is is, is A, I think, a far more satisfying, satisfying placement members to reside online because they get all this reinforcement from, like I did, people that obama or hilary clinton or job and never gave, even if they collected a lot of names of people who end up giving the money I want, is that is a gift that I have not seen. We've seen politicians and get some part of that for some period of time. Berny standards had some of that whenever ver else, but there's you know still support the did you have to roll linux H A start amount of control over your communications. And there are very few politicians who to do that.

That is fascinating to me that I did not know the the story there of cushioning coming in and basically like changing the frame from we spend money to try to buy votes for, so we spend money to break in more money, and then that one dollar becomes two, that two becomes three and three becomes four, that we can just continue to fn raise this way. And then and ultimately, if somebody y's giving you the money, they're probably host gonna give you their vote, right? It's not you're only .

doing one versus the other. Japan's have always a very clear divide, both terms like the within the headquarters in terms of the budget be and in terms of what you say in where and something because of regulations around around political spending, but like fund raising. Communication is a very different beast inside a campaign, then persuading or or get out the vote communication and totally different offices in the campaign.

But like what trump, I think, sort of just naturally found now was if you're spring a lot of money prospecting on facebook, telling people why you're great, some of that will go to people who will end up chipping in ten box and signing up for a recurring payment, right? Some IT will also will go in five of people who is opinions. You are helping to shape some of IT will go help turn people already support you into volunteers by getting the and that campaigns did not typically think they thought of IT is we're having we have our under raising targets.

We have our who almost by definition or not, your persuading targets. Because your persuading targets, ts of people with minds are made up your fun basic targets. Are people already support union trying to get them to give more?

Yes, yes. okay. So I like that. And that seems like, you know, trump is this kind of blend of celebrate is is I get influence for brand right in the same way that ki ki genre can sell.

You make up Better than make a brand that doesn't have an influencer or that know George colony counsel alcohol or you know ryan als can go sell cell phone service through my mobile IT. Seems like the ads using trump worked and IT sounds like you've also kind of pointed out that he created a bit of a community where's like I can't even really tell you what is come. I could tell you trumps community, which is the maga movement, I kind of know who they are, what they look like, they, what they stand for and what they're all about. I do not even know what the name of the community would be for combo IT would only be people who late truck.

I think, is the only answer. There is a little bit lamb, the k high of, like a little cluster of como supporters. But that campaign did not last long for a reason, which is I don't think the tourism, particularly on base endues asm for never met .

a lot of k rivers SHE has bit at some disadvantage .

in there been advantages to starting a campaign in july. But a lot of disadvantages and a lot of IT is that, you know audience, online audience takes a long time to build. And you know, I think that SHE, I think you'll been interesting conversation I had after the selection is to whether you will have had the shortest presidential campaign in modern american history by far right? I mean, the. The general tendency has been towards these two year campaigns and she's going to have a four months right campaign.

Well, she's done a couple things well, right? SHE raised a lot of money. She's she's out raised trump.

She's also, you know her tiktok when he started, you know picked the medium and this seems like they're picking alternative medium. So you know trump has done a lot of podcast. She's got a couple of podcast seems to be a bigger part of the equation.

This time he went super viral on tiktok right away and they had a bunch of songs and little ear worms like, no J D vance's. I'm I never trump guy songs that that was great. Now they've done a bunch of things like that.

You know, when he said the thing about eating the dogs, eating the cats, you know within minutes it's viral on tiktok as a song that somebody remixed. And so I think we've done a lot of interesting things there. Does any of that stand out to U D of opinions on any of that? I'm curious how you look at that.

Um you know I think when one other thing that they did, which is pretty novel, is that they have gone into the like being in amplifying little bit of every crazy little thing that trump says. I mean, there was a school of thought among democrats was pretty prevAiling.

I think for for a most we don't give them oxygen, don't give them exposure, you're only feeding the whatever and they would sold journals why you taking a speeches live and why are you guys sharing our clips of everything he says? And now go to the camera. H Q. account.

And IT will be if like, those guys know the media matters, guys are whatever else, or just clip like all these while things go on fox new, just seven seconds, he said that, you know, you can elect cute yourself with a, with a car on the moon or something. You might look at this crazy O O guy. That's a very different mentality about how to go at trump in particular.

Then democrats had. And so you know, I think that they they feel like the the the digital team in in the campaign, which is basically inherit entirely from that by in canadian, they feel a little unshackle. They have much more to work with. I think that there was you know um obviously they have a account who's more dynamic and him closer to pop culture than more celebrities who are eager to be associated uh with the campaign they also in I think that there was A A A sense by in um so emphasized like the dignity of the office and trump is benee's this that there was A A sense of like let's not get down in the mud and and play trumps game and and um I think that there's a real freedom to do kind of name calling and stuff that did the by an people would have thought us are a petition than their brand you know and so so yeah I think the'd been far more willing to mix IT up in online.

Um I I I do think so this is an area where SHE probably you know and engage with influencers and such but if she'd had an next three year to cultivate those relationships online, some of that would be showing fruit now in a way that theyve just been scrambling to. I mean, they're doing things in August. That campaign are usually doing the previous march like you know signing the logo right? I mean like really like they want type things.

You've studied and covered elections for like more than fifteen years, I think. Who do you think is running the Better campaign right now, not who's gonna in, but who's running a Better campaign?

I thought trump for most of the year was running as good to campaign is he could run. Now I started to see a real mismatch, which what they claim as our strategy and and the organization that they have been building for IT, which is you have in short, so much of the trump plan seems to be based on mobilizing Young men, especially Young of color um uh and there's reasons and polling to suggest that there's real room for for him to gain in a way that the few republicans have there but the you know that's that's this job of basically going to people are not voters and turn them into voters and all the research I learned about suggested you know the best way to do that is high quality face to face interactions.

Uh, from a volunteer, we should have volunteer from a voters community and them to have these sort of social and meaningful interactions to give them really practical advice like, you know, where's you're polling place in in all of that stuff. And the campaigns made a decision to effectively outsource a lot of that, what people call ground game or field organization. But the real boots on the ground part of campaigning to amErica pack.

which is the elon mask of .

funded super pack, and typically the division of labor on campaign, has been that that sort of nuts involves labor intensive. Lord, that does not scale up easily, right? You going from one hundred people and we stold alphy knocking indoors to two hundred people knocking on doors, and we stold offely takes twice as much working capital.

Going from one hundred adds on in pennsylvania to the same max, running twice as often takes basically no more effort. And so the way that there's been this big question for about fifteen years about how do you divide responsibility to treat campaigns in the super packs outside different sets of rules, different advantages of them. And typically the way it's broken down is that campaigns and the party committees will do that labor intense of work that doesn't scale up, and the money on the outside will basically buy ads, mostly TV some digital, to amplify the message because they can't corn IT with one another directly. The the term people bloomed up that model and they're now trusting this outside group that the mass runs to do this door knocking thing.

And what is he doing? Because I actually haven't followed IT fully. I he's going, mr.

Bee, he's given a way, a million dollars a day. I don't know. I know what that is. Can you explain that? What what is you on doing?

So he's paying people to get their friends to sign petitions, shows you like in a forty seven dollar or volunteer or something, if you can get your friend to sign. This seems like I believe in the first second amendment and give your information. And what is that?

why? Why that?

I can come up with a few theories of what they could do with that information. But that seems like a pretty round about way to get information that's already available, like there's already a data abase of every voter in the state.

And if I wanted to know people in pennsylvany who care about you know who are conservative or mega or an an organ like that's accommodation publicly available viable information I couldn't have to pay people to go collected from their neighbors uh and so IT seems like a tactic you would use that far Better if you're still have a long term movement organization building thing, which doesn't i've been seen any indication that ah elon musk is trying to build A A generational movement here. Um does not seem like a particularly effective way to to to get people to to vote for the first time or the second time in their in their lives. So that's one big part of what they are doing.

They're doing just a lot of basically hiring day labor to go knock on doors. And there's been a bunch of report wide, text reporting daily beast on it's like IT is in any industry hire ing people off the street and paying them by the hour or or um or poor contacts um leads to a lot of bad work and you have a lot of really porn sentence or people either be inefficient or or give you bad data if you if you if you're paying them uh uh per complete. So I I I have sort shifted my view on the confidence of the the trump organization, uh, over the course of year. But that seems like they haven't aligned their strategy with their their organization for more traditional democratic ign, a kind of more sensible logic to and even if if she's made a few mistakes along the way.

IT sounded like the thing you doing, udo, he's trying to sign. You can't pay people to vote. That's a rangle. So it's kind like i'll pay you to find the petition and the petition says something that sounds very like agreeable like I support free speech here who doesn't right? Like that sound sounds very reasonable but like seems like there must be some some three d chest going on that i'm not I don't fully understand which is what what do you do after that?

What's support of that? Yeah I mean, if you use that information and then you're having really good Operation to call those people, maybe target them with the call them and knocked on the door and say, I know you're a first and second and voter and you sign a petition to voting yourself to the cause. Now do this and this like there's actually a reason to think that works.

That's just in one step, that's just the first step in a three or four step process and need to be really good and targeted at the next few steps because, you know one real difference is important, I think for your audience hate mind when you um learning from a Jason field is is great important along the breakthrough i've written about of comfort people in politics looking to to business or elsewhere. But there are some really different really important differences in between business marketing and political marketing. And one them is that the cost of of this targeting out of a false positive in your modeling is really high in politics, right? So if you are if you have a consumer product and your coke and you put a coke at in front of somebody who's on a like SHE has diabetes or like whatever, okay, you wasted ten cents for that person.

Big deal. If you are the trunk campaign and you send a dornoch r to do to get out the vote reminder to somebody who is your data tells you is should be a trm supporter but they're not um or there's one trm supporter in that house but you remind three other people, the three women living with that truck o untruth supporter in this election day on tuesday too and that makes them more likely to vote or are your person just kind of english and you know like lazy and they are knock on the wrong door and the apartment complex and they end up going to the to the Harry supporter and reminding them you've not only you even just wasted that interaction. You've created a vote for your opponent.

There is the not the only thing like that in the marketing world where there's that cost to uh misi dentist ying your targets is maybe an insurance or or. Or credit cards, whether if the company thinks that they can extend you at ten thousand dollar or a credit limit and you're not good for a daya big mistake, right? And if an insurance decides that you the year, you know should be a five hundred premium and IT turns out that you cost them a lot more, they really screw up the most consumer marketing.

Like there is not a huge downside to getting your message in front of the wrong people, the politics there is. And I think that's the mistake that a lot of people, and perhaps elon or the people around and make as they move from business of politics. They say, let's just throw resources at IT when I needed to, when I needed to build, you know, create interest in tesla. W, I just bombarded all these people digital advertising about tesla or offer them all a free test drive and you know cocktail and our and our at our cool um uh uh showrooms like that probably works to start building interest in tesla. Ts, a terrible way to to try to turn off voters for your candidate.

I A quick break. I know that you're listen to my first million. That means you will love numbers.

Well, i've got a new podcast called money wise and the premises simple. We talk to high network people. So people who have somewhere between fifty to five hundred million dollars.

And we start with simple premise, which is tell me exactly how much money you have, how much money you make every month, what your report folio looks like, how much money you spend every month, and every other bit of information that involves your network and you are spending. And the reason we do this is because I want to a demystify money. So we just have this.

And who has a ninety four million doll portfolio for selling her business? And SHE spends three hundred sixty thousand dollars a month that he talks about where the money is, what he spends IT on, and why SHE spends that much. If IT makes her happier now.

And then we dive deep on different topics, like children buying versus renting, giving money away. We basically are having a conversation that I see a lot of rich people having behind closed doors. We do IT publicly to check. IT out is called money elise. And you could find IT whatever you get your part cast.

And when you've been looking into a space like there's like how disillusion do you get? And really, I guess the question is you've now studied multiple election cycles. You've you've talked to the teams behind this and then the different subsections of this industry.

What's I going to want to clean my house? And I moved the house and i'm like, oh my god, there's ten years of my kids snacks under here. Like, what's the thing you're like? I wish I didn't see that.

Wish I didn't know that. What what is the ugliest part of this that that really has? No, you you saw, I turned you off.

I mean, I think the disinformation stuff is, is I generally was encouraged the early years of writing about this because the people who are at the cutting edge of using this data experiments, we're generally the business of trying to get more people to vote or giving voters information that was more relevant to them. And that struck me is like democracy was was improving because of technology and innovation.

Um uh if I use campaigns of a lot of data about individual voters, that doesn't really scaring a lot of people, have a lot of da about voters and are usually instead of giving you some vague thing about morning in america, if if I think likely to care a lot about about um you know cancer research and I give you a new turn on message about what I my campaign would do for cancer research like I think that that's a gently good for the country what has changes? I think you have so many people have the ability to reach large numbers and voters now, or just not constrained by a lot of the expectations about honesty and can be held accountable for what they say. And and I think that that that is is is scary to me what's going on now.

because AI has now made IT easy to do deep fake audio. I can make. I can make IT.

I can make Donald trump say anything for, like, you know, thirty cents on my computer right now. I can make a video that shows, you know, something that I want happening. I could have a phone banking works. Why can I just spend up an army of iphone agents to just call everybody what is what have you seen as the new tools? And is that as that happened this cycle or you think it's next cycle.

relatively, maybe less the cycle than I would have thought if we had this conversation a year ago? No, I think that campaigns this is in place. There were some campaigns that wanted to be first, so they realize that get a lot of attention and and um and wanted that.

But I think most campaigns are afraid of the backlash of um um are being associated with with A I even though not necessarily even from the manipulation, but just you auto non live colors and and so I think there's a hurdle that that campaigns have from a kind of brand image perspective about being associated with with new or potentially serving basie feeling technologies. And so there's been less of that. But where people are using A I the most of this campaign is like are the same way we all might use.

So which is like brainstorming first drafts of of fundraising emails. You know, like most fundraising emails, they need to come up with new one's every day to to people basic use the same types of themes and and messages. You're pregnant to E, B, test them anyway.

So instead of having a bunch of know twenty three year old to just know graduate from local local arts colleges, like typing out your first draft and trying to see whether the one that scares people into thinking you're losing is going to do Better than the one that has like jello s signal sher under IT, why not have the machine come up with tend of her jailer ones and test those? And that's I think like probably that the most were seeing um A I R automation being used in this campaign. But I think obviously that will change over the next few years.

right? Um why why is CBA doing like a fortnight map? They just released like something like advertising in video games.

So I think others have done in the past. I mean, those people are even old enough to vote. I think that is before they played. What's the psychology around that.

So and start from the position having more money than they know what to do with. And they're being an unusual scarce dy issue for political markers, which is like one you have one day by which all yourselves have to be completed. I don't think there's another in the street in their season industries.

I guess the fourth fireworks store.

So um halloween store five makes some interesting pricing decisions on november first straight. So one thing is that they like have a lot of money. They have to get out the door and all of the TV is brought up in, you know we're down to seven battle ground states.

The T, V markets are saturated. There's a point at which you can know longer. Send out new direct mail. Um if you wanted to get more volunteers knocking indoors, you probably had to start building offices and having staff to train them months ago. And so at the end of the campaign you start to seek uh, the end of the you ready for election you started to see campaigns making decisions that are driven less fine, efficient, my overall efficiency and more by basically where can we very quickly parked money and and I think that that um you know that's when you start to see like sound frx and stuff like that because of nowhere else to put IT .

some some people have called this election the the sort, the podcast election because you have parks have become this huge medium. You have unedited, unfiltered, versatile of one of the only ways you can actually see what a candidate is really like. I was joking with my body.

I said, I think going on, theo van s pod ga h should be a new um federal standard for presidents. I just need to know if my presidents are good, hanger or not. And theo van might be the only guy who could save us there.

Your trump did rogan J. D. Vance's did a three other thing with rogan and famous, I comalong and you know, rogan said, hey, you can come out to Austin and less, you know, two, three hours, uneducated in my studio.

SHE said, no um there are two reactions to that. One was, wow, what a dropped ball. You could have gotten front of thirty million people in a like, super meaningful way.

Another was how there you, joe, she's the vice president and there's a few days left for the election. How do you have demands? You should be no prowling to her to do this.

And other people would say you're not going to convince anybody who lisses to rogue to vote for you for camera anyways. What do you think about the role of podcast? And was that a mistake for commute to not go on? Rogan.

I think that her campaign um was slow to put her outs in a lot of different venues. There's a week or SHE did call uh uh uh and and he's do hard. What was shocking about that was that he was doing so little of the early on and like again database camp gn from scratch really quickly at at an inopportune you had to pick a VP, you had to get ready for you know a nomination, speech, debate, all the stuff that he did not express, you was going to have to do a few weeks olier.

So um but also one of the advantages the democrats had in in dumping and and you had somebody who result to send more energy and theory SHE can like worker day and do a bunch of things that but is and expect to do. The other thing is she's more dynamic and she's you know more even with pop culture. And I think there was some sense that wow, democratic will go from somebody who does like three rallies a week and his his staff is afraid to put in, you know, I like face the nation not even feels on my does somebody who can do five events a day and interviews non stop.

And she's charismatic and and and intelligent and all these things. And that never really came to fruition. And I don't know how much this, I think, might be one of things we started to learn after the election when when some journalists or book authors get a little access into what they were thinking, I think when the question is how much of that was just the din of the time to do as much a bit. And and that would be could be sensible to me on the or was IT that the staff is fundamentally afraid that the downside of going into an unstructured two hours with joe rogan all sets the the upside of of of getting in front that audience.

could you give me a couple minutes on your new book so you got this new book out. What's the what's the premise? And then can you give me maybe one of the juicy findings or learnings a, uh, stories that you had from IT?

Yeah, it's about this, a new era we've got to the out of this, but the new a symmetry that's created when in this digital environment where campaign rise at their opposition is is not their opponent.

It's not another candidate or party IT could be the forest intelligence service or somebody who's in our attacking you for ship and gig ols who knows what and and how sort of what does the search for a playbook for for learning how to communicate in that environment? Because IT blows up so many the expectations about about campaign strategies. And I write a bit about that bite in an example in there, which I think was really a really important shift and starting to think about.

The recipient of this information more than the producers of disinformation, which has been, I take a big mistake that they not just campaign with people in media make and trying to understand what impact will have. But I also really, really, if the group will we defend truth that um this this uh the progressive group that uh has been trying to fight conspiracy theories um around the twenty twenty election around around coffee vaccines. They specially gonna to hired some of more successful like jeff and mean makers online know a guy who like the most likes on him， get and stuff. And their theory of the case is that you need to be engaging in the, in the, in the vacuum of the .

internet meme warfare. You have .

to fight means with means and be funny. And you know, be kind of in the pop cultural conversation, do not feel like political communication, do not feel like marketing. And I quote one of their um the sort head guide, he says I eat ARM the right to communicate with people and to do that you have to usually entertainer inform them first. And I think this is a really interesting way of starting to think about how traditional political communication has to fundamentally rethink itself from the one way broadcast dynamic that a lot of the modern uh thinking about camping was shaped into the kind of two way or or multilingual ort of environment that of social media.

IT reminds me of like when you had TV and movies, or like the dominant video, like media. And if you were making A T, V show, you could afford to spend the first few minutes, if you watch the first couple minutes of A T V show, it'll be like the scene started in new york, a guys Walker. We don't know who is what he's doing.

And then there's like this harmless scene. And then I finally, like you get to the characters in the story. There are of a tiktok, or you to video, like in the first five seconds, they're doing something to tell you, do not click away.

Stay on this video. You gotta watch this video, like, I think out with mr. beast. And he's like he could recite to meet the first forty seconds of script from a video he did three years ago, because he drilled at so many times and every word was chosen of, like, I cannot like, leave this first minute up for grabs and what he talks about because I S M.

I said, you know, do you look at TV and what you can learn from them and he goes, yeah, but what they could learn from us mean he's like the TV would never survive on youtube. He's like people would click away to have terrible retention rates, terrible click through rates. They couldn't survive in our world.

And so simple bolly, what you're talking about is in the old world or it's my message versus the other canada's message. And that's just those two is a one v one. You there's one playbook and now you're saying you're just playing the field.

There's the field of the internet where they're stories and information coming from all kinds of different people with all levels of accuracy y and different levels of impact. How are you going to a respond to not a one view one, but sort of you versus the entire field of content that out there right now? What's your playbook to win there?

Yeah, absolutely. I think we're only now starting to get, you know, people have a campaign having a more instinctual understand IT used to be so much of online campaign know in the two thousand and twenty ten was because of these things were already doing off offline and figure out to use them online, right? okay.

So we want to make thirty second videos and put them on T, V. Let's just turn them into, yeah, maybe we have to go from vertical, orizondo, vertical, whatever. But let just figure how to get them on to onto social media platforms.

Can we can we do something online looks? Can we basically tap our direct mail e program out of the U S P S and put IT into email? And now I think we're starting to get people in politics of its a generational shift, some of its democrats realizing how poorly they have been outfox on online during the champa to started like we need to really step back and rethink some of these foundational questions of how and why you communicate to certain people.

I want I want to leave with one last question, which is what do you think is the most misPriced or misunderstood opportunity in elections? Meaning if somebody hired you and they're like you're going to you're consultant um .

and you got to give them input to do .

something that maybe they're not already doing or maybe they are doing but not enough of, where would you place a bet that you think has sort more upset than people are currently um taking advantage of.

So less maybe our economic upside um by sort of political entrepreneurs b site would be in communicating with the voters outside of elections cycles. And you know I think there's great example now like the best I think we're if trump is this election, we're going to look back and say arguably his best period was a period in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two when he was largely out of the news. Republicans were distancing themselves.

The media was in covering him, democrats and hope he was gone and stopped attacking king him. And he was able to start to build up some sense of installed gia for the trump is a lot of IT like not based on a real understanding of what twenty twenty was like when he was president, but have distance helped him? And if democrats would have like a foot on his neck or advertiser reminding people, yes, the wherever unemployment was in in, in inflation warned twenty twenty one was because of the guy who was just there reminding people about some the coca dinner like they pulled away from him at just the moment that they prop they could have um continue to define him and I think there are a lot of reasons for that.

Political money disappears out of cycle. You only get the surge of interest in pyle but um they're short. People starting to talk about party base branding, right? So like so much of our listen poly communication pay commit s are always entirely about candidates. And yet like when we start this conversation, was that basically forty five percent of of the country, or democrats, and forty five percent of republicans, and they always, well for their party, no political advertising and spend branding the parties. And I think they are advantages to do that, doing that in a countercyclical way when people are not being bombarded by tons of TV ads. What be reminding people the republican party stands for this and this here, how the democrats hold of last time a vice versa um and try to think about not just winnings loads in the election, but by sort of long term audience building for a party like IT.

Uh maybe you could also be one of these these political consultant shops that are making back what what is what is the business that stand you if how much IT makes in the in this sort of election, in this election marketing businesses or any whether it's a polling company or a research company that like is there any like multi hundred million dollar or companies out there.

that business is most astounding. Media buyers who get paid a commission of of of the ad. They place when percent of ad person of a ad span and digital advertising is more labor intensive for them.

But buying TV is, you know they're only shown these stations in in with content that you can put ads on. And you know IT doesn't take any more work to double to buy and they get paid a commission off. Then there you know that that that in this been that way for decades.

and is there one like dominant add buyer that .

that like this notice one in each party. But um and you know there are probably having revenue in the someone also make ads. And so the part of a bigger media business and you know playing on a high end in the in hundred million dollar revenue rains, we are not talking about you know huge companies. But um but IT IT really does not require at this point a lot of savior or add buyers.

One give me one more. There are any other cool business that uh that he maybe it's like a one man shop that makes ten million a year. Just doing a specific or is really interesting business is that that you did stumble into.

There are still some interesting up to be done with data modeling um especially you know to a boutique firms that will do campaign specific modeling. But what's happening now is that the things that presents al campaigns were able to do, only presentin campaign are able to do maybe twelve ago now some warning the county executive can use.

And i'm not sure that there are the more opportunity that the people have master, but I think that there a truly opportunities to figure how a package and translate that for small scale campaigns that do not have professionals always working on them. The person ring for state rap in your neighborhood, her brother might be like the effect, effect in manager and whenever else. And often that the delta between what what I had engaged a person trying to run a campaign can do.

And the ophrys ation of the tools and data available is too much to bridge and they will do IT. But pride is a way up to Price those and and create tools. There are more accessible that that's where I think that's a place that if people were looking to try to get into the surf tech end of the political business there, there's Price of opportunity.

Very cool. So I appreciate you coming on and give us extra time. And this is fascinating.

Thank you so much. Where should people find you? Send them to my.

you call the light detectives, in search of a playbook for winning elections in the disinformation age and my website, sasa eyes, and works as my first name and last name dot com. Um you can find my books there. My first one is about the global sushi business, which maybe of interested to to you to so been really fun. I I love talking about politics from an angle different than what people are saying on CNN on any given day.

So thank you. Thanks so much. great. 第一 feel like。

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