Fellow Dems: Let’s Put This Phrase to Rest
I’m through most of my grieving process around this election. But there’s a phrase I keep hearing people say, and it sends a shiver down my spine.
I heard it twice again this weekend. “People are voting against their own best interests.”
Fellow Democrats and progressive voters, please give me a moment to try and convince you to stop saying this.
I’ll use a marketing lens to argue:
- This phrase misunderstands The Problem
- It potentially makes The Problem worse.
1) Misunderstanding The Problem
The phrase falls into the “Better Product Wins” Fallacy. Pepsi famously has been running the Pepsi Challenge since 1975. They show in a blind taste test, most people prefer Pepsi over Coke. Yet Coke has 19% market share to Pepsi’s 8%.
The “better” product is losing, and badly. The better brand is winning.
Policies are the politician’s product. The politician and their party are the brand.
Democratic policies, the product, are popular. In Missouri this year, voters increased minimum wage, expanded paid sick time, and amended the state constitution to grant the right to access abortion. Policies the Democratic party champions.
But assuming that people vote for the politician based on their product assumes voters are carefully analyzing the benefits of all policy proposals. And then those voters calculate the impact of a broad suite of policies against their own lives and priorities.
It is asking for a lot of time. It’s also not how we pick products.
Continuing to contest elections by arguing we have a better product dooms us to Pepsi’s position. We should keep having a better product, but we also need to focus on building a brand people want to identify with.
Our brand is The Problem.
2) The Problem is we’re seen as out of touch elites
Here’s an example of The Problem. McDonald’s is the most popular restaurant in America, and carries a 58% approval rating among the public.
Trump knows this, and regularly uses it as a way to show connection to the way the majority of the people live in this country.
When he posted a photo of him and his buddies eating McDonald’s, it was swiftly and met with derision by folks on the left.
Building a great brand requires expressing a set of values, such that the brand becomes shorthand for consumers to express their connection with those values.
Marketing legend Seth Godin says it succinctly as: “People like us do things like this”
“There is no more powerful tribal marketing connection than this.
More than features, more than benefits, we are driven to become a member in good standing of the tribe. We want to be respected by those we aspire to connect with, we want to know what we ought to do to be part of that circle.”
The greatest brands focus on this relentlessly:
Are you creative? Apple.
Enjoy driving? BMW
Crave an adrenaline rush? Red Bull
Care deeply about nature? Patagonia
With the McDonald’s image, and the predictable ridicule from the left, the message is “Republicans eat McDonalds. Dems make fun of people for eating McDonalds.”
If “people like us do things like this”, which of those two group identities is going to be more popular?
This is The Problem.
We’re convinced of our product’s superiority, and have neglected the Democratic brand. We’re seen as the group of people who mock people for eating at the nation’s most popular restaurant. That is a losing brand position. It makes us look snobby.
Ridiculing people for voting in a way that we perceive is against their interests is part of The Problem.
Let’s not become the party that scolds, ridicules, and looks down on people.
