What Will This Forthcoming Seismic Year in Politics Mean for Advertisers?
I think there is a symbiotic relationship between brands, advertisers, and the political discourse. Both advertisers and political players borrow from one another. This relationship is now about mutual learning and understanding as the crossing over occurs wholesale at the heart of media, technology, platforms, distribution, talent and the minds of the entire electorate.
Just as historically we’ve seen parties piggy-back on the latest and greatest technological gains or behavioural shifts (see Obama use of social media, and before that direct email targeting) so we will see more of this need to educate and wise up.
Look at how citizen marketing was a big part of Obama's success in the 2010s where assets like the Barack Obama "Hope" poster, designed by American artist Shepard Fairey, was printed hundreds of thousands of times and approved by the Obama campaign itself. It was hugely powerful, not unlike the first Apple iPod campaign in its leveraging of street art paste-up vernacular.
We’ll likely see parties this forthcoming year enlist the help of sports stars and musicians better too, who can work the streams and algorithms harder than any political strategist. Audiences inherently distrust politicians and are disenfranchised with the new political populist battleground. They’ve rejected the madness and instead look to their favourite stars for guidance. Athletes, artists, DJs, presenters, sports stars who want to push issues are the real game changers in our society right now. So they will take heed from Vinicius Junior (anti racism), Marcus Rashford (Child poverty), Stormzy (diversity in the C suite) where culturally symbolic talent will fight for the cause and galvanise the electorate in a way politicians can only dream of.
AI is likely to play a huge role in the political build-up just as it does with advertisers. I think we will see innovations in the political space which will resonate back with brands too. AI can study the impact of language in the last thirty years of campaigning, and decide in an instant which words to swerve for their 'apathy triggers', as well as which to use on repeat to resonate more. This is equally effective in press releases or brand campaigns, who can use previous history as part of a learnt language model to steer output in the right direction.
Perhaps most vital of all is the actual place of the battleground, as this is most the media distribution heartland for political discourse, the social media town square, and therefore the place advertisers would want to show up to as well. It is potentially chaotic, but unavoidable.
This hot spot is increasingly political in its nature. Elon Musk’s recent rant at the New York Times conference brought attention to his feelings about the Twitter / X boycott.
There is a huge public discussion right now on free speech, the right and the wrong of press ownership and where it is right to spend media dollars. It has never had this much scrutiny or potential cause for concern.
While polarisation is so easily enabled using technology, platforms and channels which serve a true range of opinion and views complete with nuance and large swathes of grey area, should be encouraged. So a streaming platform like ‘Rumble’ has grown rapidly in awareness amongst audiences.
Although often anti-establishment or connected to controversial talent, this isn’t about outliers living in the margins. This is big business, huge audiences, massive public discourse and feeding a frenzy of conversations which many of us are only just catching up with. It is both about politics and advertisers, and the interrogation of the two has never been so entwined.
These platforms, places and destinations are where advertisers mix with ideals, where free speech bastions clash, where political ideology is thrashed out, social media and communities thrive and yet are often fuelled with division, or anger. Advertisers and the entire tinderbox political discourse has been brought together with plenty to lose or gain.
