De-mystifying the success of Trump (and Sanders)

Written 8 August 2016

De-mystifying the success of Trump and Sanders

By Jan Halper-Hayes, Ph.D.

Written 8 August 2016

Donald Trump’s campaign strategy and execution has defied all conventional political wisdom.  A frequent question throughout the primary season regarding Mr. Trump has heightened now that he is the presumptive nominee: How can a businessman with no political experience be President?

Perhaps we should be asking: ‘’How will a businessman bring innovation and necessary changes to a dysfunctional political system?’’

In business terms, he has created a new market space in the political sector unlike any other politician. It is impossible to compare his innovative approach to politics and campaigning to any other former candidate; that person has never existed until the rise of Donald Trump.

To give some context to this successful phenomenon, we can draw parallels to businesses. It took Barnum & Bailey over one hundred years to reach a revenue level that Cirque du Soleil achieved in only 20 years.  Children wanted to stay at home with the Playstation games and animal activists raised an awareness of how cruelly circus animals are treated. Cirque du Soleil created an uncontested new market space that made the competition irrelevant. They appealed to a whole new group of customers: adults and corporate clients willing to pay a price several times higher than any traditional circus.

Mr. Trump succeeded because he realised that if he was going to win, success would never come by competing in the political cookie cutter mould where it is hard to distinguish the differences amongst the candidates.  Usually, the candidates take their issues from the party platform attempting to put a personal spin by saying the same thing in a slightly different way. As more people have moved away from the Republican party, Trump realised joining an extremely small market would lead in one direction: failure.

We can refer to this type of politician as the Known candidate. In the 2012 election, more Americans voted in American Idol than those who voted in the 2012 Presidential election. America, the greatest democracy in the world ranks 31^st out of 34 developed nations in having the lowest voter turnout except for Japan, Chile and Switzerland.  These predictable Known candidates have left voters feeling apathetic, disengaged and disenfranchised.

Both Mr. Trump and Senator Sanders have ventured into the uncharted waters to create the New Candidate.  The difference was their approach to strategy and execution. When have the Democrats ever had a socialist who could consistently outraise a well-known Democratic candidate who had unofficially been coronated?

Donald Trump took no time to knock Jeb Bush, the favoured candidate, out of the market in short order.  Jeb Bush’s campaign wasted $156 million operating as a Known candidate, unwaveringly stubborn and resistant to changing the campaign strategy to respond to the current voter marketplace. Despite an abundance of advice, both Bush and Kasich thought they could win by reciting their records as governors. 

Never before have we seen any candidate attract tens of thousands of voters to rallies. During this 2016 primary season, both Trump and Sanders brought innovative approaches to their campaigns. Neither had strong ground games at the outset. They both proved that did not matter.  Setting aside any argument about the viability of their platforms, they both touched a level of emotion in their respective supporters that we have not seen since Ronald Reagan or John F. Kennedy.

During this primary season comments such as: ‘Share my values’ or ‘Be like me’ fell in the lowest quadrant of issues that mattered. Separating the content from the process, both of these candidates knew being themselves, warts and all; being outraged and voicing what voters thought and felt proved to be the winning combination. They both broke from the competition.

Returning to our Cirque du Soleil example, it was neither an ordinary circus nor a classic theatre production. A businessman and a socialist paid no heed to what the competition was doing. They broke the market boundaries. They are neither a Known candidate nor have they run a known campaign.

By doing things as they had not been done before (innovation) and bringing passion and emotion (value) their approach was more than simply strategic. They realigned the entire political campaign process.  They embraced the entire system. Every expected activity, process and behaviour became unpredictable. Trump definitely placed himself in an uncontested market space by bringing in new voters to the Republican Party and increasing the voter turnout of Republicans who in past elections sat at home.

For the past 20 years, businesses have always looked to the ‘best-practice’ model. But how do you create differentiation when you repeat what has always been done? How do you win an election when the registered voters of the other party exceed that of yours?

Known candidates attempt to exploit existing demand. They think of beating the competition rather than eliminating it from the playing field. They align their campaign and its messaging by choosing either differentiation or campaigning on their record. Sanders had little record from which to campaign, and Trump didn’t have a record at all (politically speaking).

Known candidates’ campaigns focus on known tools, practices and people.  The New Candidate makes the competition irrelevant, creates and captures new demand, and shakes up the entire system. Trump has blazed the trail. Bernie is determined to challenge the super delegate process in the Democratic Party.

While the media stayed stuck in their own archaic model, they proved to be completely out of touch with reality.  They attempted to force the candidates into providing boring policy detail, when the supporters could have cared less about the policy intricacies. The press took great pleasure in trying to portray Trump as ignorant because he could not spew out talking points in the only way, they knew how to capture them.

Both the media and the Known candidates set aside their wilful blindness too late in the game.  The pundits held onto their dearly beloved and terribly erroneous insights despite being proved wrong over and over and over. 

What Known candidates took for granted: Raising funds from big donors, using money for traditional ads, hiring huge ground staff and steadfastly and robotically repeating to the same talking points; all proved to be losing combinations.

Instead, Donald Trump focused on what should be eliminated from a dysfunctional process, realised a well-reduced ground game could achieve the same results, spoke of issues that other politicians fearfully avoided touching and created a momentum and a candidate that the political market had never offered to the voting market segment.

We do not know if we will ever see another candidate in the form of Donald Trump. His innovate strategic execution can be likened to The Home Depot, Bloomberg, Federal Express and Southwest Airlines for starters.

While the other candidates hypnotically executed losing strategies, Donald Trump rejected conventional wisdom.  When CNN launched, the establishment networks: ABC, NBC and CBS referred to it as Chicken Noodle News.  Ridicule does not inspire rapid imitation.  The Body Shop shunned expensive packaging, but its competitors could not imitate because it would have invalidated their current business models.  Donald Trump’s rejection of lobbyist and major donors’ money made it impossible for any candidate to follow suit because it would have meant rejecting the people who funded them.

When you take an innovative approach to a system that is not working for the majority of people regardless of their political affiliation; it requires someone to create new solutions to old ways of doing things.  Known candidates chose to ignore the voters. Donald Trump has done more than simply create brand buzz; he not only got every strategic element right; he returned the power to the people.

Dr Jan Halper is Managing Director of the Strategic Consulting firm, Presage Advisory, a media commentator on Republican politics and author of the international bestseller: Quiet Desperation: The Truth about Successful Men. Follow her on twitter: @Biz_Shrink