Trump vs Biden: What B2B Marketers Can Learn from the US Elections

This episode delves into the fascinating intersection of political marketing strategies and B2B marketing, inspired by the Trump vs. Biden elections. Our panel of experts breaks down how key tactics from these campaigns can revolutionize B2B marketing, covering the importance of digital ad spending, the role of generative AI in crafting personalized messages, effective storytelling to connect emotionally with audiences, and the impact of data-driven personalization. Tune in to unlock valuable insights for enhancing your marketing approach.

Guests

Bryan Law, CMO at ZoomInfo

Maria Pare, Marketing Director at Toluna

Mike Kelly, CEO at Kelly and Newman Advisors

Cory Johnson, Head of Growth at Synthesia

Today's podcast episode is titled “Trump vs Biden What B2B Marketers Can Learn from the US and Other Elections” this year. There are 44 elections happening around the world. That is a world record. Never have so many democratic elections happened in the same year. US election in particular influences all of us. Um, the outcome is going to change or not change lots for the world. Um, $4.5 billion will be spent by the campaigns themselves. Mike was telling me the other day that overall, he's seen a figure of 16 billion spent by influence groups and the campaigns themselves. So that is a very substantial

proportion of the total amount of digital advertising in the US, which is about 150 billion. Um, overall, although not all of the 16 billion will be digital, of course. And so that is a very intense petri dish of new forms of marketing every, every time there is an election. Um, recently it has

been tied to a modish form of technology. So Obama was the first internet election, Trump's first, um, win? I bet. I have to say that, um, is, uh, you know, was called the, uh, the election of social media, um, this year is

expected to be the election of generative AI, meaning the campaign, the group, the team that harnesses generative AI most effectively be the one that will win. And we've seen the Democratic Party in the US, um, has been presumably successfully using generative AI to write letters, fundraising

emails to uh, specific electors based on their information that they hold on historical donations and other information so personalized. It's not written by a campaign staffer anymore. It's written by an AI personalized to an individual. So that is a form of marketing, you know, based on personalized, highly personalized information.

1 to 1 form of digital advertising. And you've probably seen in New Hampshire primary, there was somebody, some mysterious person using, um, a, an app called something 11, which I can't remember the name of. Forgive me. Uh, that is the 11 labs. 11 labs. Thank you very much. 11 labs. That was it. Um, that

was doing a deepfake of Biden's voice urging people not to vote in the election so what can we learn about the future of influence? These events are massive experiments in contemporary, uh, very expensive influence

of masses. So what can we as B2B marketers learn about the future of our world from what's happening? We have some amazing guests joining us today. Uh, first up, the top left, we have Mike Kelly, who is the inventor of the modern advertising business as president. of AOL uh, and executive

positions at Time Warner, AOL, um, uh, has been the chairman of Unruly Media and is now director at Quantcast and Dynamy, amongst other, uh, very fast growth technology and ad tech, specifically businesses. We have Brian Law, the CMO at Zoominfo, uh, company that has recently, well, a couple of years

ago, um, floated on on Nasdaq has seen exponential growth. Um, but, Brian, uh, I met you first when you were at, uh, Tableau, I think, um, and then of course, acquired by Salesforce. Uh, previously you've been at Rackspace and senior executive at Google. Um

Corey, a growth marketer, uh, growth marketing manager at Synthesia. Synthesia is a newly minted unicorn, um, in the AI avatar avatar space. So really fascinating, um, very, very fast growth, very, you know, interesting world right now. And Maria, marketing manager at Toluna

um, industrial software company, previously at the Think tank and Galp Energia. Um, so I'm delighted to have you all here with us today with a really fascinating topic. And I wanted to start out by asking perhaps Brian and Mike to start us off. Um, this is the only question I'm going to direct at individuals beyond

this. Let's just have an open conversation as we as we always do. But I would be I'd be really interested to know, what do you think will be different about how influence groups broadly go about influencing voters across the world

this year? What do we know and what is just still a mystery about how they'll attempt to to do it this year?

Sure. Yeah. The, I mean, first of all, nice to meet you all. It is a fascinating topic. Um, every single company

I'm involved in or not every single, but most of the ones I'm involved in at some point in the cycle say, you know, we should do better in political advertising, you know, how do we how do we get involved in political advertising? So you take runs at it and you learn a lot

for. So it's very hard. These groups are huge. They're distributed. They've got lots of people, um, knocking on their door. Um, but I think that their marketers, like everybody else, is what I've learned. And so, you know, ad agencies that specialize in it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And like, all good we're talking about, forgive me, we're talking about companies

in your portfolio are companies you're involved with political or the political, the political advertising world.

Yeah. Um, when you when, when the companies I work with who usually deal with brands go after it, what they realize is it's just like any other brand marketer. Um, um, it's just it's super specialized and

there's a ticking time bomb, um, the election. Um, so one of the things that and just the last few years, advocacy groups, which, um, had always been in that cycle, you know, they would they would raise their money and spend their money, uh, during that, uh

kind of intense time frame, they become more always on. So they're always using data, always using, um, insights, uh, to try to get people to donate to their influence group and then use that money to influence whatever it is, the environment, guns, you know, whatever the subject is, candidates

have gone super deep and super local. So it used to be that they would, you know, uh, the, the prime, the primary way to do it was television advertising. Uh, they realized that they had to fight for every vote all the way down to the bottom. But now I think with digital even going more and more digital, it gives them an opportunity to go deeper. And then the, the final thing is that, like all good marketers, um, they follow the consumer. So as the consumer has moved from offline to online and is the industry has moved from online to offline to online with streaming television

etc., etc., they're right there and following. I wouldn't say that they're particularly innovative, but they're super fast followers. And so when you see something like, I guarantee you that every one of these groups is thinking, how do we do fake robocalls, you know, and, uh, so it's

it's a fascinating if you just look at them through the lens and don't think they're not that special, they're just like any other marketer, except there's, uh, a time bomb.

Yeah.

The election day is, of course, why it's easy to get them to spend money. Yeah.

So maybe I'll, I'll add and maybe start with

where I just think politics does a really incredible job in marketing. And then where I think it's going to be different. So, uh, to me, I mean, at the end of the day, you're obviously marketing to people. And so being consistently distinctive is really, really important. So you stand out. Uh, secondly is your emotional and you're telling stories. Uh, I was actually reading something a couple

of weeks ago that was saying I was looking in the US at the Democratic and Republican Party, and the differences now are much more about sort of a dislike for the other side rather than like a passion for your particular beliefs. And you're you're tapping into sort of the emotion that folks have, maybe a bit of an aside goes back to when I was

an undergrad, I took a second law class and it said sort of prosecutors versus defense attorneys. Why are prosecutors always more effective? It's because they tell stories. Defense attorneys try and poke holes in stories. And it's kind of funny. I was just looking actually, for another podcast, uh, maybe a month ago. There's still research showing that which highlights the defense attorneys haven't learned that they need to tell the stories. And

stop poking holes. Um, but I do think politicians do a really good job of trying to tell a story. I think, in fact, Trump does a really good job of it, of trying to tell a story and creating an emotional reaction to a story, and then being really distinctive in that story that you tell.

Creating emotions is what marketers are all trying to do. We just had an award ceremony this morning

of a load of B2B ads. And yeah, all the judges were looking for does this ad create emotion? And so yeah, clearly. And then others too. Yeah, yeah.

And then I think to to Mike's point where I've seen sort of shifts in sort of leveraging sort of those truths, is the more specialized in your messaging, the more emotive

reaction you probably can create in a person, and the more you can leverage Gen-AI the easier it is to do that at scale. Uh, and so I think those are really, really powerful pieces. And then obviously, as you mentioned, sort of the deepfake, I think the potential to do that effectively and leverage, influence, uh, of sort of a credible character is potentially even more powerful

Uh, just because it's not just voice, it's video. Like we've been trying it with different platforms and it's it's scary how you can make someone speak in a different language and say something that they didn't actually say at all. Uh, and I think that's going to come out more. And then the last piece that I would highlight is, um, and this is really true in the B2B space, we notice it with our customers is a is a data provider in the B2B space

Uh, all of the Gen-AI is wonderful. Only if the data that underlies it is good. Uh, and so it's going to increase the prominence and focus on really good data. I think you generally have that from donations, in part because it's required. Uh, but it b to B, that's a big lesson for us is how do you ensure that the data is really good. So when you're doing that sort of automated creation and personalization

that it's relevant?

Yeah, I think, uh, I've seen a synthesia making some footballer speak 15 different languages. I remember that, yes, absolutely. I also expect people to get a lot smarter. The content producers themselves about

where the data behind the behind the Gen-AI has come from. Has it come from them? If so, they're going to start trying to lock that down. But also, hopefully as consumers and users of AI, we can start to be more, uh, carefully discriminatory about, you know, which gender is using, what sort of data, and is it high quality enough

there's definitely lessons we can take there. The most successful politicians are ones that tell stories, that tell stories that have really, really deep emotional impacts. Unfortunately, sometimes those stories

that have the deepest, most emotional impact, uh, sometimes quite kind of negatively themed, unfortunately, from a political perspective. Um, but yeah, there are clearly ways of telling hopeful and positive stories too. What do you think? What do you think has changed over our lifetimes

How is how is you know, if you think back to ten years ago, 20 years ago, you know what? How has political campaigning and advertising changed?

I have to say, culture wars. Right. They've become the the sort of thing of the week in many ways, you know, whether it be, um

you know, the recent sort of, uh, the Senate committee on the, um, on Claudine Gay or, you know, Black Rifle Coffee, a coffee brand in America that really positions itself as like a the right, the brand for right wing people. Right? Right. I think, you know, it's it's this it's this crazy world we live in where every other week or every

week, almost, there's a new culture war issue, which, you know, increasingly you feel as an individual, whether you're on social media or not really, or even as a company, sometimes you need to have a position on, um, which is, you know, that that's the that's the big change, I think. I think they've always been there. Um, you know, I remember reading about

in the 1990s, there were a lot of culture wars in Australia, for example, centered around Rupert Murdoch media and so on. But it's really ramped up in the last ten years. And I don't know if it's social media. Um, and what I see with AI is I know it's a bit of a cliche, you know, it's just a tool. Right? But it is. Right. It's, it's it's accelerating existing trends

Um, and I think it's doing it quite rapidly. Um, and so the technology itself, it doesn't really make new things. It just accelerates positives and negatives in many ways. Right.

Um, and so, so culture wars can actually be potentially, arguably cynically

but can be a great thing for a brand like Black Rifle Coffee that can say, you know, yeah, I'm going to absolutely dive into this head first and use the existing wave of emotion and sell coffee to I mean, if I read their meta tags on their black rifle coffee, Google.

I see black

rifle coffee is an SOF. I don't know what that means. Veteran owned coffee company serving premium coffee and culture to people who love America. I think it's right. It's a very odd way of phrasing an ad, but it works for them.

That's one way to make the best of America.

You drink our coffee. Um, and, um, yeah, it's very strange that I don't think

you'd have that ten years ago, other than a sort of general sort of good feeling like Ford made in America.

Um, yeah, obviously a risky thing to do as well. Yeah. Because, yeah, the tide changes or people become less interested. I mean, they're probably onto quite a good winner there, but, um, who knows, who knows?

I think, you know, they, they go in the opposite direction of everyone else and

I suppose it does them.

Well, business wise, it can be dangerous to try and it can be dangerous to try and go the opposite direction. Right. So if you're trying. Yeah, I think so. We've been discussing, um, coffee some time ago. It used to be possible to set up these kind of, uh, for growth hacking. Used to be able to set up these things that auto like to posts on LinkedIn. Yes, yes, on Facebook of

course. That would have been really, really dangerous. Even ten years ago, people were posting kind of quite political stuff, but now totally impossible to do because you have no way to stop your brand auto liking some political comment. Exactly, exactly.

LinkedIn has become and people say it's always like Facebook. But I almost think LinkedIn has become a political forum. I see people posting, whether it's Gaza, Palestine

um, whether it's about employment rights, whether it's about, um, this or that political issue of the day, or I saw one the other day, it was talking about woke liberals and d, uh, diversity and inclusion, and it's just bizarre that people would post that on LinkedIn. But they do, and they increasingly do. And yeah, you can't just order like comments anymore because God knows what you're

putting your brand to really.

Um, and so yeah, LinkedIn, LinkedIn used to have a good the community would self-monitor. Yeah. And say, hey, you know, don't put a picture of your dog up here. This is not what it's for. But that's kind of gone out the window. Maria, what do you think? What what have you seen the changes in your, uh

in your lifetime?

I think what I, um, what I've seen is polarization, basically. And, um, bubbles

so we tend to be in our own bubble and see the opinions that are reflect our own, basically. So there's less, um, social media tends to create, um, these bubbles where people are always

interacting with those who they agree with or the exact opposite. You interact either always with people you share your opinions, or people who are on the exact opposite side

of things.

We were talking about paywalls, Maria, weren't we? This idea that.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that's what I've noticed as well is that and it's not just that I noticed. It's it's a fact is that in 20, in these last 20 years, since, uh, most

prestigious, media outlets became, adopted, the internet and spread to to the online platforms

is basically at the beginning we we went through different stages. Um, we had more access to news, we had more access to information that was free and quality newspapers were available to everyone. And you could

actually, uh, know about things that were happening elsewhere in real time because I did not have access to the New York Times, where I lived. But then all of a sudden I did, and this was like kind of a for people who loved, uh

to be informed. This was really, uh, a positive thing. But then since then, things have changed dramatically. And good content nowadays is paywalled. And what this does is that people who can afford to be well informed

do, and those who can't are more subjected to, lower quality information. I will not qualify it in a different way because, it's just

um, something I don't want to do, but nowadays it's it's the way it is. And in each country, maybe there's an outlet or two that for instance, in the UK you have the Guardian, you have the BBC, and in other countries you will have some other, um, quality, uh, newspaper

papers, but they don't, they don't might not represent every opinion and they people might not read them. They might identify, not identify with the editorial line of that particular.

But this just there's less of it. So it's as you say, Maria. It's like, yeah, well not

as you said, but it's like reversing the, you know, the printing press had democratized. Exactly. It used to be people that can read were the wealthy and monks and thing and then post printing press. Now everyone can read, everyone has information. And now, I mean, this is too extreme, obviously, but that potentially, uh, you know

the wealthy have access to higher quality information and yeah, you know, I, I, I agree with you, Maria.

I think that the there are some catalyst events over the you know, if I look at, you know, I don't want to say sadly, but obviously changes in my lifetime is a much longer arc than some of

the other people on the phone. Uh, but to me, it's sort of like the, uh, the invention of 24 hour news, which didn't exist before. CNN and CNN only launched in 1982. So 1980. So that always on 24 hour news cycle

and cable television with its massive distribution, which then of course led to MSNBC and, uh, Fox News, etc.. So the news cycle now, you know, it's like you have to have somebody, you know, you have to have a pitcher and a catcher, and the pitcher is throwing out their messages, and the

catcher is the 24 hour news. Who needs an insatiable amount of news to fill their 24 hour news stuff? So the cycles have just become so more. So what plays into that? Like jet fuel is digital because digital can take that and even cut it down

into smaller and smaller little bits and bytes and let it flow wherever it wants to flow. And now I think with with generative AI, we're just seeing a democratization of the tools available to people to cut those into even finer, finer little pieces. And I hate to say like this

is nothing new. Um, it's I'm sure I'm sure pretty much everybody has seen Citizen Kane, the movie Citizen Kane, but the, you know, uh, he runs for president and he loses or governor, I guess, and he loses and, uh, the news and he runs newspapers and the newspaper

guys, they show him in the press room, and, uh, one of them says, which one are we going to go with? And the first headline was, uh, Kane wins. And the second one they lifted up is corruption at the polls. So, you know, that was in the 1930s. Uh, so nothing really has changed. It's just how it kind of comes, uh, at

you. Uh, so I think those things have changed, but I don't think has changed are the things that and and it's done incredible things like the bubbles, for example. We have a situation in the United States now where just about, I don't know, ten, 12 years ago, everybody would hang a

flag, uh, for every national holiday. Uh, but today, uh, the one side has appropriated the flag, and it means something different now, it means you're a conservative American. It's so weird. Um, but I remember I was on

the board. There's there's actually a political action committee for the advertising industry. It's called Professionals and Advertising. And I was on that board for, I don't know, 5 or 6 years. And you get fascinating speakers. And one of them was this guy Alex Castellanos, who was a Republican, uh, consultant, a political consultant. And this is

I'm not kidding, 15 more than 15 years ago. And he said, basically, human beings only care about five things their financial, personal, financial situation, uh, their personal safety, law and order, their family, their environment. And then

patriotism, national strength. He said. Every politician is trying to figure out how to get three of those five things in their column. And you see that still today, and some are just better at it than the other. And then I think the final thing that's changed that no one could ever predict. And and people were stunned and

as a New Yorker, I can tell you, uh, what was a widely viewed joke became president of the United States. And I'm not making a political statement. I'm just saying that. All right, you can you've never you've never. We've

never seen anyone like this person, except maybe Joe McCarthy. And he never even tried to run for president because he knew he wouldn't get elected. So now it's not that Trump is brilliant or whatever, it's just that he's figured out a way to get he's figured out a way to get three or maybe

four of those five things in his column. And he has used misinformation. He's used the press, he's used the 24 hour circuit. He's used it like a, uh, like a maestro. And he will use his people will use artificial intelligence in this cycle to do the same thing. So

anyway, that's my that's my rant. I think that that that it really hasn't changed. It's just the way it gets done has changed. And then the one thing that's different is we've never had anybody we've never had to deal with anybody like this before.

Yeah. I mean, obviously many other countries have.

We have an election

in India this year. Uh, obviously the BJP, um, has been extremely effective at telling the story about, uh, about nationhood, Hindu nationhood, the concept of the nation as a, as a, as a body, a female body getting invaded by Muslims from Pakistan and

you know, you can imagine the kind of the rhetoric that goes with that. Uh, it's a very, very good it's very effective story that, you know, when people, you know, are very, very easily understandable invasion sort of story. Um, that is, you know, other

countries have had to deal with before.

And yes, I like what you said, Michael, about, um, storytelling in general. And I think your I didn't think about it before, but you're right. Trump is a brilliant storyteller and harnesses, you know, three of those five because he's like, if I think back to the 2016 campaign, what really stuck out was that he made all of the other candidates characters in his story. Right. There was little

Marco, there was low energy Jeb. There was, I don't know, the other ones. I can't remember the other one at the moment. But, you know, it was all like, he you're right. He was he was he was creating characters. He was putting them up. He was creating a story, build a wall, all these slogans. Yeah. It's very it's, um. You're totally right. It's it's. Yeah, it's he was doing it with new means, but

for 16 years he was the star of a television show.

Yeah.

And it, it totally, you know, his whole real estate thing and everything. It takes a back seat to that. But I don't know. I don't know him, but, you know, his

personal love, everything. His whole identity is around that show. And, uh, and I think he took an approach. And they think about they sit down and they think about what episode. I mean, I used to say to my wife during the first iteration of this, uh, you know, uh, season three,

episode one. I think they think that way, you know, a reality TV program as well. So, yeah, there's reality TV programming of the United States of America. It's weird.

A few things I'll add. So there was a book, I think it was in the 1950s. It was called Reality and Advertising. Um

and to me, the thing that probably is most interesting is how little is different that from that book versus sort of marketing books I read today, which is I mean, at the end of the day, you're marketing to people and you're playing on sort of how they're how they react to things, how they learn, how they how they, uh, memorize and how they recall. Uh, and so I think my to your point, a lot of there's been a lot of consistency, but where I do think there's

differences is, as you mentioned, the frequency of information that we're getting. So the 24 hour news cycle, the fact there's lots of different platforms you can access information. And so they get heightens some of those things. I said at the beginning that you need to stand out. You need to have a really powerful connection with someone because you're just you're competing with everything else. Um, uh, Maria, as you mentioned

sort of the sort of the bubbles or sort of the algorithms, the loops that you get into that, that ability to really sort of tailor the content. Uh, and then I also think there's sort of been a, I mean, there's been a democratization of content creation. And so in addition to sort of the sort of the, you know, the the trusted news sites expanding, you have a lot more people who can create it, which creates sort of concerns

about the veracity of it. But the two ways that people get paid is either, um, you know, there's a there's a paywall or they're getting sort of enough eyeballs that they're sort of funding themselves. And so it's a question of how do you sort of generate those eyeballs and sort of create sort of that, sort of that excitement or attachment or emotional reaction or whatnot. Uh, and so I do think all of those things feed

into greater polarization and, uh, again, a stronger tie in to sort of the emotive components. And I think it's fascinating. As a B2B marketer, we've sort of had this conversation sort of a few months ago within my team of what can we learn from what all of these politicians are doing and how do we internalize it? Uh, and, you know, B2B

isn't always known for focusing on emotion over sort of rational messaging, uh, and really thinking about how do you effectively tie into sort of the end user versus talking about your company? Uh, and so to me, there's just a ton to learn whether or not you agree with the individual politics of the people. I think there's a lot to be impressed with how they market and sort

of what you can do to internalize it. And where I think there's the question is maybe different on B2B is from a brand point of view, is where are you willing to go versus where are you not willing to go and how you do your marketing? Uh, and I think that's there's potentially less latitude for brands than there may be, are for politicians to sometimes take different approaches. Uh, and I think

that's where at least where we're trying to think about how to be, uh, sort of learners and students of what's going on in the political space, but also sort of understanding where we're comfortable going and not going.

I think it is interesting how politicians absolutely choose to win. They need a they need a majority, but they don't need everybody. And so, you know, much more

able to kind of pick a particular segment. Although perhaps brands could learn from this as well. They don't need very no brand needs to sell to every human being on the planet. No B2B companies needs to sell to every business on the planet. If you can get five times the strength of an emotional reaction by focusing

on a particular niche, then you can by trying to weigh up everything and go in the middle. Perhaps that's what you should do. Um, yeah.

I do think that this, this statistics and the that have lived in B2B marketing for years, uh, have gotten

in and, and political advertising, they've always been hyper focused on here are the only people that matter. Um, but they didn't have the, uh, outlets before, you know, they had to do general television advertising. So it was a blunt instrument all the time. And the marketers in the political area that I talked to now they're very focused on

what's going to move the needle. They the so there's 16 billion we're talking about. I mean, it's going to be directed at relatively small number of people. And before you'd be slammed and you still will be slammed by television ads just because the that world is built around that. But, um, I was talking to

the big media agency that does a lot of work for the Democrats. And, uh, he said, basically, you know, it's 50 individual elections, all 50 states, and about 7% of the voters are going to decide who wins or who loses. And so what we are

trying to figure out is who are those people, what do they care about and what will influence them? So you think about AI and we think about AI as creating hits for, you know, creating content that's going to influence these people. But also how about how about, uh, extracting what

will persuade them, uh, out of, you know, their habits? ET cetera. ET cetera. I think it's going to be fascinating to see the messaging and how pinpoint targeted it's going to become. Maybe not in this cycle, but over time, because really, all they want to do.

We saw that Michael in, uh, we saw that

in the, uh, in the UK. I can't remember what election it was. I think it was 2017, uh, where there was this company, Cambridge Analytica. I don't know if it reached the US. Right.

There wasn't the, um, really the AI then? I don't think, but it was a lot of a lot of data and a lot of pinpointing and a lot

of targeting of people with certain interests who reflected other interests and so on and so forth. And just this whole map of areas where one political party was very much like, we can make these people angry about something, so they'll vote for us. Essentially, that was the that was the whole thing. And yeah, they can. And AI is just gonna make that so much easier. Uh, yeah

It's it's quite scary.

Um, just just to add to this, I think there's another area where AI will play a role.

I think in terms of spreading the message, whatever the message will be, um, there's going to be restrictions because

as, um, social media is now more regulated, political ads are are actually not going to run in some platforms like Twitter or X and TikTok. They won't run political ads. Other platforms will do it. But there's much

more, um, regulation, uh, self regulation in some cases, uh, and in different countries, obviously in Europe, these things are, are being addressed at a European Union level. So it's going to be different. Uh, very

very soon. But I think that area where I think AI is going to play an interesting role is in polling and analyzing data, probably more than in content generation, because you're going to be able to analyze data and extract insights almost instantly

So I think in how you then can target those groups and see shifts and address them almost immediately through messaging, through, calling people because there is still that

also, messaging that is not necessarily delivered, uh, through through social media, but through other channels. And I think that will have an important impact in how how things

happen much more quick, quickly, how you change your messaging because you have the data, you know how things are going and you know where to apply the pressure. So I think that's an important area for, for, uh, AI and the other

thing that I think has happened and is happening, uh, and here regarding what is interesting for us in terms of B2B, uh, marketing is when we look, for instance, at ads in general from many years ago, even in B2C

you would have very long articles, like in print magazines, uh, you would see these kind of stories. And I really like, uh, you know, like magazines from the 50s and 60s where you see old ads with a lot of copy and telling a story about

a product or a service, and you kind of get wrapped in it. It's usually very nice copy. And of course, all that is changed. And that's what I'm getting at, like the attention span of people. And we and I think in the previous elections we've learned about

this way of and I think that's what's so persuasive and, and compelling about, uh, for instance, Trump's messages. It's how short they are because they are counting on work that's been done before on you by, I don't know, by the American

dream, uh, and other narratives. So you don't need to say the obvious and you can just hint at it. And I think he's very good at that, at filling in some gaps of the story he wants to tell without needing to make a lot

of considerations because he's he kind of knows what people want, and he's just saying it. So I think the attention span. Is shorter, much, much shorter than it used to be. And there are so many more

uh, sources of entertainment and of of information. And I think for marketing, I think that's what's also happened, uh, over the years is like, we need to make the message shorter. We need to be more focused

We need to be more incisive and, um, maybe not tell you everything in 1 in 1 page, but break the message into small, smaller portions and just the the most, the most efficient messaging that we see is, yeah, it's it's emotional and

it's hinting at what the solution is or what your product ultimately does in a way that makes it really, really obvious and everyone gets immediately but doesn't necessarily list out every feature.

And but Maria, what you said spot a couple of, um, thoughts from me. So going back actually to your comment on Cambridge Analytica, um, it was a separate book that I

had read that was talking about, uh, some researchers who took the data, uh, and essentially what they were able to do is looking at your, your music preferences on Facebook. Uh, they could actually predict your personality across five dimensions. And it actually didn't take that much that many sort of inputs to have a better sense of personality than your coworkers. Uh, even

up until, uh, sort of your, your spouse and Maria, to your point with Gen AI, I, you just have the ability to process way more data much more efficiently than you did in the past. And I don't think B2B marketers are leveraging that. In fact, the big again, because we're a data company, uh, a lot of what we talk externally about is all the amazing things you can do in the data processing

side, so you can just be much more thoughtful about these are the companies you should be going after. These are the individuals you should be going after. These are the messages that are relevant leveraging all of that data. And that tends to actually be a lot of the conversations that we're having with our customers and sort of big players in the space. So. So you want to call that one out? Um, the second piece to me, where there's a

little bit maybe of a difference is, is politicians, uh, obviously over time are wanting to sort of ensure that they have sort of a passionate following because they try and get bills passed and whatnot. But there is a very sort of timely component to what they are going after with the election. Uh, which I guess in the B2B space, I associate with sort of in-market companies. So the ones that have high intent to buy now

but you're trying to sell to them in a demand sense, but you're also trying to do your top of funnel branding, because there's all of those customers that are going to be buying over time. And in sort of the comparable politics, you do have the people who are sort of going to be buying over time because you want to make sure that they're going to support you, but you really are trying to going for sort of that individual moment. And that's where I think a lot of the focus is. And so maybe there's a little bit

of a, um, a little bit of a difference there. And then the third thing I just wanted to to call out, I really love the research that comes out of the Ehrenberg-bass Institute. And they talk a lot about, um, uh, sort of who's most important. And they say you really need to be going after the long tail, because ultimately, like, that's where you're going to have success is sort of the sort of infrequent buyers

uh, which is a little bit different than what Mike was talking about, which is you're really very targeted on this 7%. Uh, what they found is actually if you look at companies in a category, the distribution of of your buyers is not that different company to company. And so there's an overall orientation around segmenting in the B2B space, uh, where practically you do need to get just

a lot of people aware of your brand, a lot of people thinking about your brand, talking about your brand, purchasing in small amounts because there's somewhat of a natural distribution of heavy versus light.

And there's obviously B2B companies are just companies in general, mostly have the advantage, uh, you know, not generating very intense, visceral emotions is one advantage is that ultimately, people

might just buy you because everyone's buying you. It's unlikely that there's going to be a demographic or a group of companies that will never, ever, ever buy your product, no matter how useful it is. Whereas for obviously politicians, that's definitely the case. How do you how do we think, um, I'm sorry, before I get to that, Mike, you mentioned

uh, you were talking about Biden.

Yeah. I mean, the the the podcast is Trump versus Biden. We haven't talked much about Biden. I don't know if that is a harbinger, but, um, uh, you know, it's it's, uh, Brian, back to your point on the micro-targeting and the segmenting. I do think that

they go overboard on it for sure. Um, uh, but I did have a friend in the Obama campaign, and he was saying that every meeting, you know, like us as marketers, okay, there's a tail, there's a future, etc.. Uh, but what he was telling me is that it's so clarifying that the only thing that matters

is getting to Inauguration Day. Nothing else matters. There is no other w. There's no brand lift. Oh, we got them from 15 to 20. Isn't that great? Uh, it's like if you're not standing up at the podium there, it's all for naught. Yeah. And so the very few things have that kind of clarity

uh, of purpose. And I think that's why you see so much money going after it and such intensity. Um, but if you think about the, uh, where parties have won and lost, it's taking two segmented approach and too much of a here and now approach, because every, uh

every year more people join the electorate, things change. I mean, we've seen huge shifts in how ethnic groups, certain ethnic groups, uh, feel about different politicians here in the United States. So you're right. You got to play both games. Uh, but once the money's on the table for the presidency

it's pretty, pretty focused. Anyway. Sorry.

You know, the micro segmentation thing is balanced against just having a really freaking amazing story. Like, if you've got a really, really good story, that is that is going to be somewhat broadly applicable, you can somewhat disregard the

micro segmentation because you once you've done enough analysis, you kind of know that this story is going to be so amazing. Then you centralize on this and don't distribute it. Uh, disperse it too much I guess. Right. Um, although you also have to be really lucky.

But it did did put Biden in the chat because, you know

uh, they got a lot of smart people. Maybe Biden's listening.

Well, Biden definitely tells a story in what he says, the words he uses, how he says it, his tone. I think that's very much telling a story of, yeah, he comes across as a character in his own

right, I would say. I would also say, though, he's judged much more harshly, isn't he, than, than than I think even Trump by some segments of the media. I think, you know, I personally like Biden. I think the Infrastructure Act is fantastic. And I know it's not really like stirring hearts, right, that he's building a bunch of wind turbines in the middle of nowhere. But I think, you know, he's quite he's quite inspirational fellow. I don't know

if he's the best storyteller, though. I think that might be it. Right. He's, um he does all these amazing things. The American economy, as far as I'm aware, in terms of sheer numbers, maybe not on the ground, but in sheer numbers. Right. It's doing really well, 5% per year. It's fantastic, especially compared to a lot of European countries.

But I don't for him.

Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. But he doesn't he doesn't communicate that. I don't hear

him. I don't know, maybe just because I'm based in the UK. But you know, when I'm hearing clips of Biden on social media, I don't really I don't really I don't really hear him say, you know, we're getting the country started again. We're, we're we're going back to the, to the, to the, to the, um, New Deal. And we're, we're really sort of he doesn't it doesn't really get out there and do that. I don't know. Um, I

think he's a steady hand a little bit. I don't know. That's, that's my impression of him.

It to to my comment on sort of prosecutors and defense attorneys. Um, my sense is, is, is Trump is a little bit more the prosecutor and Biden's a little bit more the defense attorney. Um, and I mean, one of the things that was interesting is I was thinking back, uh, Cory, you were

talking about it in the last, um, go round. Uh, Trump did talk a lot more about his competitors. Uh, and it this is just something we think a lot about as a company of how much do we want to talk about our competitors? Because ultimately you're trying to you're trying to tie into how your memories work. And ideally when, when sort of your your brain is thinking about a buying situation

you want to have them think about your company and you don't want another competitor sort of involved in that sort of mental linking. And so generally you don't want to talk about your competitors, uh, sort of particularly in the primary, you want to maybe talk about the opposition party or some external issue. And I think as the president, really what you want to be doing is really focusing on sort of the external issues and not giving the competitor

the, uh, and I think my sense is, uh, Trump did a pretty good job this time of really not talking about his challengers and avoiding the debates and really just focusing on Biden and sort of broader issues. Uh, I think Biden has spent a lot of time talking about Trump and less time talking about sort of the broader issues and sort of making the case and telling the story. Uh, and so I

think as I look just tied into things, I'd mentioned that story telling, as Corey mentioned, I think is really, really important. And having a clear narrative and what you're getting across, uh, because, yeah, setting aside sort of agreeing or disagreeing with the individual policies, I think that's really important. How do you create the emotive reaction related to a story in a few key consistent points that you you convey over time

How has the audience changed? Are there any lessons we can take from how, uh, the general public reacts to new forms of influence that we might be able to use in B2B? As you know, over the last ten years, five years or whatever, what are the ways in which audiences expect different things or expect different things from different channels?

I think the biggest thing is

that Facebook has shifted over the past five years entirely from a platform for broadly young people, right? It's completely shifted towards the opposite. I don't think, you know, people use Facebook my age anymore. Maybe I'm wrong. Um, there's a number of groups that I'm a member on or used to be, I leave my Facebook

recently that are sort of interest groups and things like that. But by and large, you know, I don't think people use Facebook. I think people are divided almost along generational lines with Facebook now, and it's completely flipped. I think that's the biggest change in five years. You know, you could talk about how Obama won 20, uh, 2008 or 2012 on the back of Facebook. You can't you

can't really say that anymore. Um, yeah, it's Instagram as well, to a certain extent.

So what does that tell us is if we're doing B2B marketing, obviously that would, you know, imply that you would use Facebook for different things? Yeah. We've talked about how

LinkedIn might have changed and the audience on LinkedIn might have changed.

It's interesting in terms of B2B marketing. I was talking to a colleague of mine, actually, um, he used to do, uh, it wasn't B2B, to be honest with you. It was B2C, but it's instructive nonetheless. He was doing, uh, advertising for a landscaping business in Bournemouth. Um, and on Facebook, if

he was targeting 30 year olds, 35 year olds, uh, homeowners, um, you know, of a certain income level, he could get a certain number, but there would be a band. There would be there would be a barrier to scaling those ad campaigns. If he was targeting people 50, 60, 70, there was no limit. You

could just keep piling money in and you'd keep getting results. Right. And, um, I think I think that's, that's quite instructive with regards to Facebook. It's not going to be universal. It's going to be the same in every country. But I think I think that is quite a big thing. There are different groups, whether it be generations, whether it be political affiliations. I don't think, for example, a lot of a

lot of people have left Twitter, right. If you're left wing, you don't go on Twitter anymore. It's not universal. If you're a right wing, you funnel into Twitter more than you ever would before. Right?

Uh, so that's the polarization thing again. So as a marketer in general, you need to think through. Yeah, put different messaging on Twitter than you put on, I don't know.

Or you choose not to be there entirely. I mean, there's a lot

of brands, um, that recently with, um, Elon Musk's, um, anti-Semitic statements who left Twitter. Right. Um, I can't name them any many off the top of my head, but they did. They stopped advertising. They said Disney, for example, I think Lester Gray and he criticized Bob Iger in public. Yeah, it's it's almost like the the

web is becoming a closed space. And there's there's different segments of it depending on the bubble. As Maria said. Right. What bubble you belong to determines where on the internet you are, what you're hearing, um, and really what you're being targeted with.

Yeah, I haven't come across any B2B marketer that's actively targeting based on political beliefs, but

Something something I was going to say, um, there's some research that, uh, Michael Platt did. He's the head of Wharton's neuroscience initiative. And, uh, what he found, which I thought was really interesting, is I think a lot of times the way that I think about marketing is individual brains. And he talked about sort of like our collective

brain and sort of the more consistency across people you have in a perception of brand, the better brand recall is an example. Um, and so potentially when you're in a bubble, maybe it makes sense, you can sort of do it within that bubble. But actually a lot of what B2B marketers need to do is create a sort of consistent perception of who they are, uh, and sort of at scale. And so

um, yeah, I would just imagine, related to your specific political point, that probably would be challenging if you're trying to appeal to a broad audience. Uh, in my sense is you really do want to influence as many people as you can. Um, just because you I forget who mentioned, uh, I think, uh, maybe Thomas, you mentioned it. Uh, there's not the same passion normally for a brand

that there's going to be for a political candidate. Uh, and so you don't have as much to work with. Some, some brands have passionate followings, but that's harder to come by. And so you're trying to figure out what can you do to incrementally increase the probability that you're going to be thought of in a buying situation, versus how do you sort of tie into sort of these deep rooted emotional perspectives that people have? Uh, and I do think there's maybe a little bit

of a sort of a difference in terms of how you're trying to influence people's, uh, behaviors.

Um, to to your point, uh, I think there's a very big difference between, um, the political world and, and the B2B world, and it's

that the people who speak so the politicians speak in their own name, and they they are telling their own story and they are connecting personally with their audience. And brands cannot do that, especially in the B2B world. So what I've

seen in the last, let's say, five years and I would go to LinkedIn for this, is that the brands, the B2B brands and the people who create these connections are usually CEOs of of tech

companies, smaller tech companies, sometimes in the B2B, in the, uh, you know, uh, martech, uh, space. And they have like a point of view, um, there's companies like Winter, uh, there are um, company that that has

their own panel of B2B, uh, marketers and specialists, and they can, uh, and you get, uh, insights from like, it's like a consumer panel. Um, there's, um, other companies in the martech space that have really passionate

uh, CEOs and they, they run their own, um, campaigns on, on LinkedIn, and they do it beautifully. And because they have a point of view that then is associated with the brand and what the brand does, and I think those that's

the closest to political campaigns and candidates that, that, that we see. And it's something that obviously you cannot, um, you cannot reproduce. So a charismatic CEO was actually talking about the brand

in the way that, that, um, I'm trying to describe here is an asset that you see in politics a lot, but it's it's not scalable. It it happens. It's so I think that's, that's um, and I find myself sometimes thinking

of these people, as, you know, I become passionate about their own cause, you know, do you think that, do you think that audiences have been trained by changing political discourse and the amount of money spent on, on, you know, new forms of marketing and politics to have a higher, uh, bar for, uh, emotional

impact and personal stories, i.e., 20 years ago, a B2B brand might have been able to put out quite boring ads and it was fine.

But they wouldn't survive today because people's expectations about wanting to be emotionally stimulated and narratively stimulated are higher. Not why that works. Maria.

No, what I think is

that, um, I think we're catered to by the entertainment industry so much that I don't require brands to entertain me. That's my personal view. Uh, I have art and film and

and, you know, music and so many other things that that games that cater to all those needs that sometimes I want brands to just be good at what they do. And I want to have this is like, um, you mentioned in the prep, uh, information

for this podcast, you know, like the disruptors sometimes I don't want disruption in my life. I just want a company that does what they say and give me the service, and it's good service and that's it. Problem solved. And on to the next thing. Um, yeah. So

that's me.

Yeah.

Yeah, it can be overstimulated, I'm sure. All right, well, look, everyone, thank you. So we're just coming to the end now. Um, this has been a really, really interesting conversation, and I can't wait to try and pull these strands together into, uh, into kind of a unified whole. We'll speak with you all. Of course, when we when we when we do this

Um, but, yeah, a real experiment for us, uh, bringing two very different worlds together. I've really enjoyed it. Um, I hope you have too. Thank you, everyone, so much for this. We'll invite you all, of course, to our slack channel, and I'm sure we'll have more conversations there. We'll share all our documents there. And thank you everyone.

It was it was really good chatting

Thank you. It was great. Nice meeting you all. Nice to meet you all very soon. Bye bye bye.