The Ultimate Political Comeback: Trump’s Brand, Musk’s Megaphone, and Harris’s Impossible Task

So, he did it. He finally did it. After months of crying out for someone who can beat The Blues, we finally saw it. Incoming Manchester United manager, Ruben Amorim dismantled Man City 4-1 in the Champions League earlier in the week. Oh, and Donald Trump won the US election.

There was a sense of inevitability about what can only be described as the greatest ever comeback in politics. If you were gobsmacked in 2016 this time around, there was little to be surprised about as Trump booked his return to the White House.

This week’s edition will look at how both candidates approached marketing in the run up to the election, which in Donald Trump’s case has been decades in the making. This edition will focus on what happened prior to the election and how effective each candidate’s strategy was in crafting a narrative for the American people.

Like in marketing, understanding your audience and being able to communicate your story is essential in connecting. Trump did this, Harris had an impossible timeframe to try and do this and the incoming president was boosted by Elon Musk’s cheerleading antics.

What the world doesn’t need is another 42-year old Brit from the suburbs of leafy Hertfordshire analysing the election result. That isn’t the purpose here. It is more to look at the overlap between marketing, politics and effectively connecting with an audience.

Here we take a look at Trump the marketing machine, Elon Musk’s gamble pays off, and the impossible task at hand for Harris.

Trump’s brand has been years in the making and is a stroke of marketing genius

Although the results seems inevitable now, a week ago it felt like both candidates were neck and neck. It turns out, the polls were way off and Trump won The White House with ease. But how did he get here? Trump’s brand has been years in the making and his election win is because he is a master controller of the narrative.

It is hard to separate Trump the politician and Trump the marketer, as his appeal to his base is tied to both who he is and how he is perceived. Whether you like him or dislike him, there is no argument that what we have witnessed this week is nothing short of remarkable and the greatest comeback in American politics. This isn’t a story about his ethics, it is about effectiveness in crafting the perception of him as a winner, victim and the only person that will stand up and fight for you:

Just take a look at his website and the promotion of “never surrender” t-shirts:

On paper, it should 100% matter that a presidential candidate is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in relation to payments made (hush money) to Stormy Daniels, but it hasn’t mattered and this type of publicity is turned on its head to be a net positive for Trump, with his core base defending him at every corner. Side note - the design of the t-shirt is awful too, looking more like a stag-do T-Shirt from the mid noughties to Magaluf. I was half expecting “69” on the back and “Player” as the name on the shirt.

He has been positioned as a tough talking no-nonsense negotiator who will get the deal done, despite six businesses going bankrupt under his leadership. His MAGA supporters believe he is a self-made billionaire, despite being born into insane wealth. His main sell to the American electorate is “America First”, despite numerous examples in his career of outsourcing jobs to Mexico and China.

Trump is approaching eighty, but his values have remained the same throughout his life. Inspired by Johnny Harris’ excellent video on “The REAL story of Donald Trump” (I highly recommend a watch) I’ve plotted a brand values overview of the President elect.

These are the five key values that has got him, again, to the top job in America and what is now appealing to his base. These values have played out time and time again in what we saw regarding January 6th, his insecurities (i.e. he once posed as ’John Barron’ to exaggerate his wealth to get onto the Forbes Rich list) and his response to getting a conviction is part of his values playbook.

But the key thing here is that the majority buy into it and his communications strategy is far more effective than that of Kamala Harris. No matter what he does, he will always be defended, never apologise or take responsibility and long for recognition for his actions. This has been years in the making and he is one of the most successful influencers in history.

You see, all of these combined with “I’m one of you. I’m fighting for you” is the message the majority of US voters wanted to hear. I mean, he even has it on his website through the campaign.

"I understand you and we’re together in this. Your life is going to be better with one of us in the White House” is a very effective message, much more so than what Harris and the Democrats could offer. Whether it is true (it isn’t) is irrelevant here, what matters is that the US electorate wants what Donald Trump is and has to offer whilst rejecting that of Kamala Harris, who couldn’t shake off the negative associations of Joe Biden.

Despite the huge numbers involved, political advertising has minimal persuasive impact, which exerts only a small influence on voters' preferences, regardless of the ad's content, context, or the characteristics of the audience. This is why it was inevitable that Donald Trump’s huge organic reach and mass following that has been built up over decades would win out in the end. He controls the narrative and now he controls the country again. If 2016 was shock, 2024 is a reflection of what Americans want from a commander and chief.

Elon Musk’s big Twitter gamble pays off

When Elon Musk walked into the Twitter officers carrying a sink, the joke was “Let that sink in”. Naively, before I heard what his ‘joke’ was, I thought it was a play on “I’m going to throw the kitchen sink at this”. He most certainly has thrown the kitchen sink at it, nearly destroyed it - but his acquisition of a social media platform to amplify his message has paid off significantly.

Firstly, Musk is similar to Trump in that he craves attention, has insanely thin skin and vocalises his distrust in traditional media outlets. Musk has been touted as a name that will hold a high position in office and over the weekend was reportedly part of a conference call with Trump and President Zelensky, a far cry from sending out creepy Taylor Swift tweets.

Although we’ll have to see how Trump’s tariffs on China play out and the impact on Tesla, Musk is a winner here, certainly financially.

Everyone, me included, focused on the Twitter acquisition as a business play. “Can he get more advertisers on board?” or “can he increase the number of DAUs?” are now secondary to what the ultimate goal was for Musk - to have major influence in policymaking and being the centre of attention.

His acquisition of Twitter in 2022 has been subject to heavy criticism in how he conducted himself with regards to firing of employees, reduction in content moderator tools and his retweeting of far-right content to his huge following. He is now in prime position to join the new Trump administration and exert his influence even more than he could do in a 140-character (now 280) tweet.

Kamala Harris had an impossible task

Let’s be honest, she had an impossible task to try and convince the US electorate that she was different to Joe Biden and why Donald Trump would take democracy to its knees, again. Not since Manchester United forked out from Ajax have we seen such a colossal waste of money for zero output.

But what could be done? Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Nancy Pelosi blames Joe Biden for sticking around too long and given the data from the science.org study, was this insane amount of spending on media going to make any tangible difference against the marketing machine that is Donald Trump?

Earlier in the week, I tuned into The New York Times The Daily, and they revealed just how much had been spent on the US election by both candidates in an episode entitled “The Ad Campaign”. At $3.5bn, this was the most expensive general US election in history, with the majority of this money being allocated to media and advertising.

Breakdown by channel versus previous cycles. Please note this is for the full presidential cycle and includes projections:

Harris focused on taxation, most likely to try and reassure voters that things will be different, and abortion rights whereas Trump doubled down on immigration and crime:

From the digital side, Harris looked to Meta and Google, whilst largely ignoring X - given Musk's significant influence and the audience it now commands:

Despite the huge spending to try and introduce herself, tell her story and downplay Donald Trump all within 100 days, Kamala Harris fell way short in the race for The White House. The assassination attempt on Trump in July was a significant event, which unsurprisingly captured the most interest from US searchers.

Although search intent isn’t voter intent, he was, overall, a much more searched for candidate, which grew in popularity as election day loomed:

Website traffic shows a strong start for Harris, which was then overtaken by Trump, especially in key states. Again, this isn’t a reflection of voter intent, but visitors wanting to find out more about the candidate, donate or buy merch.

In the end, whether you love or despise him, Donald Trump continues to triumph as one of the greatest political influencers and communicators on record. His ability to create a cult of personality, built on patriotism, resilience and strength that resonates with his base is masterfully effective. Kamala Harris spent big on paid advertising, but it was no match for the brand equity, organic reach and power of Donald Trump.