The US Election and the subject of “connect” in message delivery

The USA presidential recent election was an historic election in many ways. This  was because of the characters involved and the antecedent or pedigree of the two main candidates: a woman, Hillary Clinton, former US secretary of state was almost going to break the glass ceiling and an outsider; businessman Donald Trump was attempting the highly exalted office of the President of the United States of America.

And the businessman, political outsider finally got the result with 279 Electoral College votes against Hillary Clinton’s 218 votes he became America’s 45th President. Like it is said “product features rarely drive consumer choices, consumer decision making goes much deeper than that”.

Donald J. Trump said in his victory speech at the Hilton Hotel  that it has been a journey in the last eighteen months.

Within eighteen months, the message from Donald   Trump was ‘Let’s make America Great again’. According to reports the campaign was built on wild inaccuracies and vague to non-existent policy proposals; and he built his campaign on divisive anti- immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, garnering even the support of white nationalists.

Within the same eighteen months the Democratic presidential candidate also created and led her campaign theme with the phrase” Stronger Together” focusing on positive messages of unity and the old standard American value of brotherhood and good neighbourliness yet the voting public who are the consumers in the America’s market place voted for the business man outsider as the next President of America.

In the field of marketing communications what is the import of this result knowing full well that even the polls showed the likely winner of the election will be Hilary not because of her gender but rather because she has a message that seems to connect with the reasonable mind in the society, a message that is not divisive, a message that seems to hold the old America ideology of supporting each other and building bridges instead of walls how come that message didn’t give the value of the result in the market place against a message of divisive, a message of abuse and a message of character assassination and abuse?

That is the crux of this conversation and we should look at the consumer or voters connect to messages based on the result.

It must be added that Hilary and Trump spent over 80% of their campaign funds in wooing the public to vote meaning there was high level of advertising and other relevant communications channels involved in the campaign or movement as the President will like us to see his initiatives.

The Americans got the options like the average consumer and voted for the man in whom all we saw as observer including the traditional news channel was divisive messages and he Trump did an excellent job even against his 1998 quotes “that if he runs, he will run as a republican … they believe anything on fox news…”

He relied on the social media more than Hilary, his messages came first on twitter and the traditional news channels were responding or reacting to his twits and twitter handle while a segment of the Republican party kept disassociating themselves from what is assumed to be a bad candidate but yet the voting public swing to his messages at the end of the day.

Lesson on consumer engagement is that while the lead channels were conscious of pushing the message of a dysfunctional personality based on his series of scandalous comments and supposed illogical conversation, President Donald Trump was connecting with a larger voting public and the poll couldn’t notice it until the die was cast.

He struck a chord according to Vox.com with the public “as an unorthodox candidate without a political background, selling a call for southern border wall, a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants and his strong opposition to trade deals, among his other bombastic talking points

In subject of connect, it is the consumer that is always the king not the brand and in this case the voting public are the king makers and they made a choice of a President who was clever enough to again use his acceptance speech to start the process of reconciliation with the American public. Here him:”…I mean that very sincerely. Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division, have to get together. To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people”

Donald J. Trump, 45th President of America connected with the emotions of the Americans more than anything else, he worked on the emotions of the Americans in such a manner that it is always difficult to understand why a teenager will drink one soft beverage instead of another, it was a classic case of the man who was speaking to the minds of the Americans of particular class, school and ideology, the class will count when it comes to the action required to pick the next president, not the media as a vehicle, he drove the message to the heart of the public that are the critical mass, yet that message which was divisive at the commencement and all through the campaign has entered into the second phase of reconciliation with a well scripted victory speech asking for Americans to come together. Could it be a case of the end justifies the means? Congrats Mr President!

Akonte Ekine