PRESIDENTIAL MARKETING

Right now most polling shows Biden to be ahead by double digits. Anyone who believes this is an idiot. First, polling doesn't usually mean a thing till late in the campaign. Michael Dukakis was leading George Bush by 17 points in mid-summer in 1988. Bush won 40 states and swamped Dukakis.

Next, people don't tell pollsters the truth. As a matter of fact, people don't tell anyone the truth. I suggest you read "Everybody Lies" by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. There are a lot of people who will not admit they will be Trump voters.

The NY Times had a long piece this week about how politics is reflected in Facebook activity. In my opinion, the key line in the piece was this..."I know enough about the modern media landscape to know that — what (people) actually read, watch, and click on when nobody’s looking — is often a better indicator of how they’ll act than interviewing them..." Amen.

There are numerous critical issues facing the country - COVID, the devastated economy, police conduct and race relations among them. The populace is highly polarized and many people will be voting against something rather than for something.

I expect the Republican strategy will be clear and simple. It will be a new version of the "Willie Horton" strategy -- only we can keep you safe. They will do their best to stay away from COVID, the economy, and the relentless string of scandals that have surrounded the current administration. It will be law and order 24/7. Don't think for a moment that it's not a powerful strategy.

Can the Democrats generate an equally powerful strategy? Mr. Biden is not a terribly strong candidate. While there is an enormous trail of shit behind Mr. Trump, there is also a lot of footage of civil disorder that the Republicans will pin on the Democrats. The Democrats need to convince people (with more than platitudes) that they can support "progressive" issues without appearing to excuse violence.

Former SF Mayor Willie Brown, a Democrat, said, "If they stand up and condemn the 'demonstrators,' the left wing will label them as Trump flunkies and they’ll be in all sorts of trouble. If they keep quiet or offer passive responses, voters will assume they’re OK with burning and looting."

The Democrats also need to show that they can get beyond their unfortunate habit  of dwelling on how terrible everything is. Whining is not a strategy.

Logic tells me that after the four years we've been through it would be impossible for Mr. Trump to be re-elected. But my marketing instinct is that unless the Democrats can come up with a strategy that's more sophisticated than "Trump sucks," it's gonna be close.

Before you write to tell me how stupid this is, don't bother. I have a perfect record of being wrong about everything I've ever written about politics.

Then a year ago lawmakers called on Mark Zuckerberg to get off his ass and take the policing of gun and rifle sales seriously. According to the Wall Street Journal a Facebook spokesquid said, "The company was... “evolving” its automated system and retraining human reviewers hired to catch violating content, “including looking for key words.” 

This week the Journal reported that firearms dealers are still doing a brisk business on Facebook by the devilishly cleverly scheme of "disguising" firearms as stickers for firearms with gun maker logos. You can't make this shit up.

I guess Facebook's thousands of highly-trained moderators and brilliant AI algorithms and "key word" identifiers and "evolved" automated systems can't figure out that stickers for guns accompanied by gun maker logos could really be ads for guns. You gotta be a real fucking genius to figure that one out.

It's just amazing how time and again one solitary reporter can uncover stuff that Facebook's billion dollar systems and thousands of wiz kids can't find.

Facebook is moaning about this privacy measure. They say their Facebook Advertising Network (not their primary site. Please don't make me explain this. Try reading this) could suffer as much as a 50% drop in its advertising business as a result of this move by Apple.

FB positions themselves in this fight as the protector of the little guy who might not find it quite as easy to spy on us everywhere we go any more. It's a darn shame.

Well, it turns out we're not as stupid as we thought. Even Google engineers can't figure out how to use their own privacy settings.

Google says, "We provide clear descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time." Yeah, right.

Documents released in a lawsuit filed by the state of Arizona against Google last week revealed that Google engineers couldn't figure this shit out either. They said...
   - "The current UI feels like it is designed to make things possible, yet difficult enough that people won’t figure it out."
   - "Add me to the list of Googlers who didn’t understand how this worked..."

Soon thereafter someone made the mistake of accepting the world's worst job. His name was Antonio Lucio (by all accounts, a good guy) and this week he quit. It takes more than wishful thinking to "inspire a global marketing organisation." As for "overall company reputation," the less said the better.

Some kind of world record had to be set this week when TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer quit after 3 months. TikTok is the current darling of the social media industry. It's been under significant pressure from the Trump administration about suspected ties to the Chinese government, and has also been the subject of buy-out talks from a number of suitors including Microsoft and Walmart.

But c'mon 3 months? Even I could last 3 months in a job. Maybe.

Not only did Apple steal their logo from the Beatles' Apple Records, they stole their whole identity from them. Some people gotta lotta nerve.

Thought of the Week

If you ask "How do you know that?" you find that many advertising people don't know anything at all.

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