Marketing

Enablers of Mamdani: America’s Universities

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Supporters for Mamdani tended to be more college-educated than those who voted for Cuomo; many have graduate degrees. One might find this surprising, since university graduates are supposed to have more knowledge about things like history and economics…and more ability to think clearly about things. But actually, it makes sense that Mamdani’s greatest strength is among college graduates, especially young college graduates. Why? Several reasons:

First, there’s student debt. A lot of people believed the promises about the right educational credentials practically guaranteeing a future income which would make any educational debt incurred almost trivial by comparison. Now they’ve found out that it isn’t so, and they are angry not at the educational institutions that benefited from their tuition, but on broader factors: ‘society’, or ‘boomers’, or, especially, ‘capitalism.’

Second, the education that many of these former students received encouraged them not only in an anti-capitalist attitude but in a broader hostility toward American society, hence priming them for a sense of resentment and an affinity for those promoting revolutionary change. In effect, this indoctrination largely immunized the universities they attended from blowback directed against themselves.

Third, there is a sense of entitlement coupled with a limited sense of options: the idea has been broadly promoted that college is the way to go for career success. At the same time the idea has been promoted that noncollege jobs (and noncollege people) are inherently inferior.  There is a feeling that “I did what they told me and now look where I am.”

Here’s an interesting email that Peter Thiel wrote to some Meta executives and board members back in 2020. Excerpt:

Nick — I certainly would not suggest that our policy should be to embrace Millennial attitudes unreflectively. I would be the last person to advocate for socialism. But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why. And, from the perspective of a broken generational compact, there seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to start accumulating capital in the form of real estate; and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it.

College debt has contributed to the negative-capital phenomenon, and what is taught in all too many colleges has contributed to the feeling that it’s impossible to get out of the negative capital trap.

Of course, Mamdani may not win the NY mayor’s race: only a small percentage of New Yorkers actually voted for him, and his extremism is sure to drive considerable pushback. But I’m afraid that we haven’t seen the last of the phenomenon he represents.  This post notes that:

The kids who were radicalised and indoctrinated into Critical Theory at elite universities in the 2010s are now in their mid 30s. And they’re starting to climb the ladder. Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York is just the first of many, I fear.

The marketing approach taken by the Mamadani campaign also bears examining.  @signulll says:

one under discussed part of the mamdani campaign was the usage of the video filters. every video used the same soft, humanizing tone consistently. it crafted a world around him. an aesthetic, almost utopian one. close shots, warm tones, delicate pacing.

it framed him as the delivery vehicle for a better feeling reality. beautifully cinematic. no surprise,

his mom is a well known filmmaker. this was vibe warfare. & he won. you have to understand how modern culture works in order to partake in it no matter what your underlying mission is.

…to which @Olivia_Reingold responded:

Filters are just the beginning.

Zohran is the director of a Hype House first and politician second.

From what I can tell, his team can shoot, produce, and edit a reel within an hour. That means there is about a ~60 minute lag time between when he appears in public, shaking hands in a given location somewhere in the city and the moment it goes live on his various channels.

Not every video of his gets uploaded to every one of his pages. They understood that their recent “Hot Girls For Zohran” video, in which esteemed political theorist Emily Ratajkowski declared that Zohran is like so totally cool, would preform better on Instagram than X, and so they pushed it primarily via Instagram reels and by adding @emrata as a collaborator to the post. T

hey are the kind of operation that would never be caught dead uploading a horizontal video to Instagram. This is a vertical-first shop. It’s the kind of team that makes Trump’s viral TikTok dance (the iconic shimmy) look cute. Zohran has introduced a new era that has instantly outdated that craze, making it look ‘so 2024’ in retrospect.

You’ll notice he cultivated virility without a signature dance, gesture, or gimmick. There was no TikTok dance that spread like wildfire. Merely supporting him became the meme.

All you need is a look at Cuomo’s feed to understand why the man got cooked.

(‘virility’ corrected to ‘vitality’ in comments)

I’m sure I’m not the only one who is reminded of a filmmaker named Leni Riefenstahl and her accomplishments in shifting the political winds in Germany. And no, I’m not asserting that Mamdani is equivalent to Riefenstahl’s client (although there are some points of similarity), but making the point that the aesthetics of the way that something is presented–in video or otherwise–can have a lot to do with how successful it is in the marketplace.

Your thoughts?

 

The Social Engineers and a Synthetic Candidate

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Gad Saad, a Canadian professor who seems a lot saner and more courageous than the general run of academics, has published an article in Newsweek:  Kamala Harris is Hoping You Turn Your Brain Off and Vote on Emotion.  He cites actor Ben Stiller on the reasons for his support for Harris:  “All the energy and excitement that is around this movement right now.”

Emotional appeals are of course nothing new in politics: Plenty of people surely voted for John F Kennedy because he seemed more ‘youthful’ and ‘vigorous’ than did Nixon.  And, as Professor Saad noted, emotional appears are also common in commercial marketing–“Sell the sizzle, not the steak” is an old saying in sales and marketing. And constructed iconic figures such as Betty Crocker have long been common.  Still, it is also true that the marketing had better not depart too far from the truth about the product: if the steak is no good, the restaurant isn’t going to be getting a lot of return visits. If the cake mix results in an inedible cake, the customer is probably not going to buy that brand again.

Although emotional appeals are nothing new in politics, it seems clear that the Harris/Walz campaign is taking such appeals to new heights/depths. The characters projected for Harris and Walz has been constructed by some very smart people based on their assessment of what will sell.  Does ‘opportunity’ poll well? Then have her talk about the ‘opportunity society.’  Is ‘freedom’ valued by most Americans?  Then have her use that word a lot, regardless of how disconnected it may be from her actual policies.  Indeed, the strategy appears to be to have her delay talking about policy as long as possible, similar to the way an overpriced restaurant may want to avoid having you see the actual menu until you’ve already made a reservation, parked (with valet parking) and have your entire party sitting down at the table.

There’s a pulp novel from 1954, Year of Consent, which projects a future United States which is nominally still a democracy–but the real power lies with the social engineers, sophisticated advertising & PR men who use psychological methods to persuade people that they really want what they are supposed to want. When I reviewed this book in 2021, I saw some disturbing parallels with our present society.  Today, and especially in the context of the Harris/Walz campaign, the parallels are even more disturbing. Review is here.

In the world posited by this novel:  While the US still has a President, he is a figurehead and the administration of the country is actually done by the General Manager of the United States, who himself serves at the pleasure of the social engineers. Don’t we see a great deal of this today, with the increasing power of the administrative departments–and, especially, the figurehead nature of the current President, all highly dependent on the goodwill of the Communicating Classes?  And isn’t the rage against X/Twitter and Elon Musk driven by the perception that this platform dares to defect from the unity of those Communicating Classes?

Are there enough people in the US today who are willing to seriously think about issues and policies, rather than just supporting and voting for what gives them a positive instantaneous feeling of some kind?  By analogy, will they evaluate the car for reliability, performance, mileage, and crashworthiness, or will they just go with the model that shows the car with happy and attractive people?

And how can rational candidates do a better job of coupling solid policy stories with emotional appeals that are truly relevant as well as hard-hitting?

What is the Purpose of Holding & Expressing Political Beliefs?

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The late Clay Christensen, IMO one of the relatively few business academics whose books/articles contain ideas that are genuinely thought-provoking and useful, discussed the ‘job’ for which a product is ‘hired.’   An example: milkshakes, sold by a restaurant chain which wished to increase its sales of that product line.

The chain’s marketers segmented its customers along a variety of psychobehavioral dimensions in order to define a profile of the customer most likely to buy milkshakes. In other words, it first structured its market by product–milkshakes–and then segmented it by the characteristics of existing milkshake customers….both attribute-based categorization schemes. It then assembled panels of people with these attributes, and explored whether making the shakes thinker, chocolatier, cheaper, or chunkier would satisfy them better.

Marketing 101 stuff. But it didn’t yield much in the way of results.

A new set of researchers came in with a different approach–to understand what customers were trying to get done for themselves when they “hired” a milkshake. They spent an 18-hour day in a restaurant and recorded when the shakes were bought, whether the customer was alone or with a group, whether he consumed it on the premises or drove off, etc. Surprisingly, most of the milkshakes were being bought in the early morning. After analyzing the data, the researchers returned and interviewed the customers. Evidently, these were people who faced a long, boring commute and wanted something to eat/drink on the way. Milkshakes were superior to alternatives because they didn’t get crumbs all over (like bagels) or get the steering wheel greasy (like a sausage & egg sandwich.)

The most important thing is that the same customers, at different times of the day, would buy milkshakes in other circumstances/contexts…and the desirable product attributes would be different. For example, they might come with their kids after school. And whereas the same person in his role as a commuter might want something that is relatively slow to drink (thick shake, large container), when he reappears in his role as a parent he might want something that goes down relatively fast (less viscous shake, smaller container, maybe even a larger straw.) What matters is not just who the customer is, but what he is trying to do.

OK, the idea of milkshakes for breakfast is not something I find appealing, but then I don’t need to combine breakfast with driving.   Some people do.   More importantly, Christensen’s insight generalizes beyond the milkshake field, and I’ve wondered what applicability it might have to politics.

So, why do people have political opinions?   What ‘job’ are they hiring the opinion to do?

Is the opinion based on their analysis of which policies/politicians will benefit them, and/or benefit people they care about?

Is it based on their impression of which opinions they had better express, if they want to keep their jobs–friends–boyfriends–girlfriends–spouses?

Is it the ‘job’ of the opinion to make them feel better about themselves?   Is it to get virtual revenge against people in their past–parents, employers, Mean Girls, school buillies?

Is it based on a desire to avoid cognitive dissonance by not contradicting views that they have held previously?

What other reasons do political opinions get ‘hired’ for?…bearing in mind that several factors may influence the hiring of a particular opinion…and what are the implications of this angle on things for practical political marketing?   (if any)

(Christensen story is from his book The Innovator’s Solution, co-authored with Michael Raynor)